The Flash S04E16 Review: Fastest Woman Alive

The Flash, Season 4, Episode 16: Run, Iris, Run

Yeah, this episode got a lot of flak online, because how dare they remove Barry Allen's speed and give them to Iris West. 

Honestly, it's just something that happens for a single episode, sort of a Freaky Friday situation, although just with powers as opposed to bodies. And it's... it's not a bad episode, honestly. I just feel that they actually really tried to do something more interesting with Iris-the-Flash as opposed to "she tries to use Barry's powers". It does feel like an old-fashioned season one episode with Iris in place of Barry, and Candice Patton's a great enough actress that her giddy enthusiasm in getting superspeed (with pink lightning for some reason) is pretty fun. But at the same time... the episode is so messy. There are multiple B-plots that feel like they're scripted by a different writing team compared to the past few episodes, and while we do get a brand-new character introduced (an Asian one, to boot!) he's such a plot device that I feel that he's going to go the same way that H.R.'s scientist girlfriend was in the end of the third season -- introduced for a specific purpose, then forgotten. 

The B-plots are particularly frustrating. with Ralph Dibny being reverted back to his ultimate douchehole mode. Yes, I do get that the man's frustrated and he really doesn't want to die, but after the character development he went through in regards to facing off against Trickster and later his moment with Izzy Bowin, it really feels like three steps backwards here when he not only refuses to help out anyone, but ends up being a gigantic douchehole to everyone. Now I don't expect Ralph to completely transform into a goody-two-shoes, but at the same time... this is such a bizarrely badly-written character progression that it really hurt my experience watching this episode.

There's also the fact that Iris was motivated to throw her neck into danger just because Ralph said some mean words to her and she wants to prove him wrong, which I feel is bizarrely immature not only for Iris, but especially for Ralph -- whose career through the past episodes involves him struggling and trying to conquer his cowardice and selfishness. 

Meanwhile, Harry has the idea to look into video footage and wants to use Thinker's Thinking Cap on his own brain, while Cisco is so angry at this that he flat-out refuses to help Harry. Their plotline is genuinely unsatisfying and feels shoehorned in so that there'll be some faux conflict between these characters beyond a shrug and "oh yeah, Harry made this, he's super smart now". The plotline feels somewhat forced, and both Harry and Cisco are being complete dicks for no real reason. 

Iris's brief stint as a pink-lightning Flash is pretty neat. I'm not as enthused about the cheesy "WE are the Flash" line, but I actually enjoyed Patton's performance as she tries her best at playing superhero, and there's a neat bit of energy that the show hasn't really had in its past few episodes. We also get the surprising acknowledgement that, yes, Iris's reporting career isn't just something that the writers forgot about, but also something that she, in-universe has sort of put to the side as her characterization became more intrinsically tied to Barry and STAR Labs. Still, though, the episode does end up with some very questionable plot points, like somehow the only way to stop a fire tornado is... a tsunami? And Vibe and Killer Frost constantly being left behind (other than the one time Cisco pops on over to teleport Iris out of the burning building) feels like an intentinal handicap so hat we jump through hoops to get to a big spectacular climax... something that didn't work as well as it was probably intended. 

The main bus metahuman in this episode is Matthew Kim, a.k.a. Melting Point, an original character created for this season with no comic-book counterpart. He has the ability to transfer metahuman powers completely from one person to another, and it's insanely convenient... but while he sees himself as some sort of judge that goes "you deserve this power! You don't!" he didn't realize that his ability doesn't remove powers, but rather transfers them. Which is what happens when he transfers the lava-shooting powers of one Eric Frye into -googles- Jaco Birch (two more metahumans with no comic book counterpart). The fire-shooting dudes are all hammy, fun throwaway villains, but they're not the bus metahumans we're looking for, with Eric Frye's powers being operational all the way since the first season. It's some neat fluff with some fun CGI bits with a fire tornado and a tidal wave. 

Regardless, though, Matthew Kim ends up joining Team Flash, seemingly on a quasi-permanent basis because his power-transferring ability might just be the key they need to beat DeVoe. I'm not really that sure about him as a character, though, because he's honestly pretty flat. Granted, the episode focuses more on the central cast, but at the same time I kinda wished that either this episode or the next would actually explore who Matthew Kim is, or if he's as much a plot device as Harry's Thinking Cap. I mean, no one even mentions him holding a knife to Iris's neck earlier in the episode? Really? 

Overall, an episode that would've been fun, but has a fair amount of problems with its B-plots that it ends up feeling messy instead. At least we got the scene where Harry suggests they genetically transform the bus metas into chickens. That's funny. Jaco Birch's hamminess ("LONG LIVE ROCK AND ROLL") is also hilarious. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Thinking Cap Harry gives the last two metahumans' names as Janet Petty and Edwin Gauss. I can't find anything about Janet, but Edwin Gauss is the real name of the Flash supervillain Folded Man, a scientist who built a suit that allows him to travel into the second and fourth dimensions. He fought Wally West's Flash, and briefly joined the Rogues.
• Iris's costume seems to be based on the superheroine XS, a.k.a. Jenni Ognats, grand-daughter of Barry Allen and Iris West in the comics, and a supporting member of the Legion of Super-Heroes. 
• The Thinker's helmet is finally christened the "Thinking Cap" by Cisco, which is what it's called in the comics. 
• Neither Matthew Kim, Eric Frye or Jaco Birch are characters with any sort of equivalent counterpart from the comics. While there's a minor villain called Dr. Melting Point in the comics, there doesn't seem to be any connection with Matthew Kim or what he can do.

My Hero Academia 177 Review: Persistence

Boku no Hero Academia: At the Construction Site

A pretty good chapter! We continue the Midoriya vs Gentle fight, which takes place at a construction site, and it's always a cool, atmospheric location for any fight, be it anime or otherwise. We start off with a brief acknowledgement of Midoriya noting that it's a combination of Hatsume's gadgets and Ashido's dance lessons that allowed him to pull off the combo last chapter, before going through a bit of a comedic routine where Gentle ends up stuck by his cape onto a girder and acts all panicky and ends up sort of digging himself into a deeper hole, losing an argument with Midoriya. Which is fun and all...

And then after what seems to be a gag manga routine, Gentle suddenly shows off his skills again, bouncing around the construction site by causing all the girders to become elastic, and causing Midoriya to simply be unable to calculate or predict Gentle's trajectory due to all the bounciness of the girders, as well as causing the air to be bouncy. The visuals are also particularly cool, too! We get to learn a bit more about Gentle's quirk, about how he can't really remove the elasticity from an object and must wait for it to resume its own inertia... then reveals to Midoriya that he plucked out the rivets holding together one of the beams, and then makes note of the old civilian, putting Midoriya in a "chase the villain or save the civilian situation"...

And Midoriya, instead of jumping down to save the old man as Gentle had assumed he would, jumps in the way of the steel beam to catch it, and it's pretty damn badass. Also slightly insane. I do really like how Gentle does come off as a gentleman in all this, noting that, no his intention isn't dropping the beam on the old man -- but rather strictly to delay Midoriya. We get a brief cut of the 1A class anticipating the festival for a page and all that, all the while Gentle and La Brava makes use of a giant crane as a catapult to shoot them towards U.A.

The chapter ends in a very impressive two-page spread of Midoriya lifting up the beam with one hand, while using the other to unleash a flick of pressured air, nearly hitting La Brava and Gentle... to which La Brava notes that they might have to use her quirk. Overall, this fight's been really neat, striking a very great balance between utilizing a funky, wacky pair of villains, some very interesting usage of superpowers and a genuinely badass moment for good old Deku here. Definitely looking forward to next week's chapter. 

Hearthstone: A Look Back - Whispers of the Old Gods

As we head into the Year of the Raven, I think it's neat to look back at the Year of the Kraken, the very first standard rotation year, and just see how much the cards ended up making an impact or not. I'll try to keep my reviews this time around short, to around one or two sentences, because it's less of an extrapolation and more of an evaluation.

I think moving forward this is how I'll to "retrospective" looks, and not just review them at the end of the expansion the way I did for Kobolds & Catacombs, because looking back at Old Gods... there are a lot of cards that became better and worse across their two-year lifespan in Standard meta.

Keep in mind that I'm going to rate these cards based on how much they affected the meta as a whole, so a card like Flamewreathed Faceless or the C'Thun package, which don't see any play now but saw a fair amount of play during the Year of the Kraken, will still have relatively high ratings, as are cards that aren't good back then but ended up being brought to the spotlight recently thanks to new tools, like Y'Shaarj.

Druid:

• Fandral Staghelm: 5/5. Amazing card. Saw lots of play in multiple archetypes, particularly during the heydays of Jade Druid but also across other druid decks too, because combining two Choose One effects and not being a crappy body really makes Fandral stand out. Even outside of Jade Druid, some decks both in Standard and Wild still tech Fandral in for the value with Nourish and/or Malfurion the Pestilent.
• Wisps of the Old Gods: 1/5. Never played, too impractical. 
• Forbidden Ancient: 1/5. Never saw play, even if you get it off it's a crappy silenceable vanilla minion. 
• Addled Grizzly: 1/5. I think saw a brief experimentation when people tried to make token and beast druid (haha beast druid) work, but never really saw proper play. 
• Klaxxi Amber-Weaver: 1/5. I'm rating the C'Thun package a 3/5, because they were immensely popular and stable during the Old Gods and Karazhan era, but ended up falling out of favour. Klaxxi, however, ends up being cut out of even Druid C'Thun decks eventually. 
• Mire Keeper: 5/5. Probably my vote for the best card that druid received this expansion, being a very stable ramp tool that also gives you a body on the board, but also has the flexibility to build up the board on later turns. Perhaps one of the most balanced yet played-everywhere card for druids. 
• Dark Arakkoa: 3/5. I think Dark Arakkoa and Druid's ability to ramp is what makes C'thun Druid even work where every other C'Thun archetype faded away. 
• Mark of Y'Shaarj: 4/5. Saw a some amount of play during the 'beast druid' era, but ended up finding its niche during Un'Goro and Frozen Throne as one of the biggest buffs for an aggro druid list that ran a lot of beasts. After Innervate and Patches got nerfed, though, aggro druid's sort of petered out. 
• Feral Rage: 1/5. A flexible card that unfortunately just isn't good enough to slot in most of the time. It's still seen some play, so it's not quite as bad as the other 1/5 cards on this list. 

Hunter:

• Princess Huhuran: 1/5. Deathrattle hunter never worked, and Huhuran just doesn't do enough either away. Absolutely outclassed by better cards printed later like Terrorscale Stalker and Play Dead. 
• Call of the Wild: 5/5 [pre-nerf], 1/5 [post-nerf]. Blizzard rarely nerfs cards, so any card that gets nerfed in its lifetime is 5/5 by default. Call of the Wild is that end-game clinching card that Hunter needed, but ended up being way too powerful that it got nerfed. After that it never really saw play.
• Giant Sand Worm: 1/5. Neat concept, but too expensive. For what it's worth, I tried using him in a Kathrena Winterwisp deck recently... but it's so bad when you draw it. 
• Forlorn Stalker: 1/5. A conditional version of hand-buff, when none of the hand-buff cards actually saw play. Poor Forlorn Stalker. 
• Infest: 1/5. Too expensive and too slow. 
• Infested Wolf: 3/5. A very great mid-range tool that saw a fair amount of play, but ended up falling out of favour as more cards get introduced to the standard year.
• Fiery Bat: 3/5. A staple Hunter 1-mana drop for a fairly long time, eventually sharing it with Alley Cat in Gadgetzan. Definitely a very well-designed card. 
• On the Hunt: 1/5. Not a good enough effect, honestly. 
• Carrion Grub: 1/5. Neat in arena and Deathstalker Rexxar, to be fair. But as a card you put into your 30-card deck? Vanilla cards will never suffice.  

Mage:

• Anomalus: 1/5. Never actually saw play. Too uncontrollable and can easily backfire or whiff for such a huge mana investment. Not even Frost Lich Jaina decks run Anomalus -- Baron Geddon is almost always better.
• Forbidden Flame: 1/5. Every single damage-dealing Mage spell is better. That said, Forbidden Flame isn't the worst thing to get out of random spell generators. 
• Cabalist's Tome: 5/5. Easily one of the more powerful Mage tools. While it doesn't see as much play as it did in the past, Cabalist's Tome draws you three cards for 5 mana. It's a neat card advantage tool, but saw even more use with Yogg-Saron and later on Quest Mage. 
• Cult Sorcerer: 2/5. Neat stats, but ended up being played in decks solely for the spell damage effect as opposed to C'Thun stuff, since 30 cards isn't enough to fit in all the good mage spells and sub-par C'Thun minions. Eventually got axed when Mage finally settles in with a secret package thanks to Karazhan and Un'Goro. 
• Demented Frostcaler: 1/5. Stats and effect's too weak. 
• Servant of Yogg-Saron: 1/5. Too random and useless in constructed. Actually decent in arena, though. 
• Faceless Summoner: 1/5. Saw a brief amount of usage in the Old Gods era because value, but ended up not synergizing with the mage package at all. Great in arena. 
• Twilight Flamecaller: 1/5. Mage has way too much spell synergy and good spells to not really bother with "Arcane Explosion bundled into a minion", although, once more, Twilight Flamecaller's actually great in arena. 
• Shatter: 1/5. Funny, but too impractical.  

Paladin:

• Ragnaros, Lightlord: 2/5. Really like this card, but as the Years of the Kraken and Mamoth rolled along Paladin grew more and more Midrange and Aggro that you can't really afford the slot to put in Ragnaros Lightlord, and even if you can afford a late-game legendary you end up defaulting to Tirion, and later on, Tarim. Still one of the big value legendaries, though, it just doesn't fit the meta. 
• Forbiden Healing: 2/5. Neat effect and a good card, but like Ragnaros Lightlord, doesn't really fit the meta. 
• Vilefin Inquisitor: 5/5. Never actually saw play during the Old Gods era, but as Murloc Paladin (and aggro paladin in general) gained more tools, Vilefin Inquisitor became one of the most powerful cards in that deck due to its powerful battlecry and its very decent 1-mana 1/3 stats.
• Rallying Blade: 5/5. Also never saw play during Old Gods beyond some funky Divine Shield deck, but it turns out that especially during Frozen Throne (which added Righteous Protector) Rallying Blade's 3-mana 3/2 weapon status with a potential upside is good enough to run especially in aggro decks. Move aside, Fiery War Axe! 
• Selfless Hero: 2/5. Saw a fair amount of use early on in aggro paladin, but ended up cut for murloc and later Silver Hand Recruit synergies. 
• Steward of Darkshire: 4/5. Surprisingly, she turned out from being a "cool effect, shit deck" card into one of the more powerful tools available to aggro paladin, doesn't she? She's positively a nightmare to deal with alongside her buddies in the dude paladin that sprang up in Kobolds & Catacombs. 
• Divine Strength: 1/5. I genuinely forgot this card exists. 
• A Light in the Darkness: 1/5. Too slow and unreliable.
• Stand Against Darkness: 2/5. While initially laughable, Kobolds and Un'Goro both added significant synergy cards which propelled the archetype into being one of the more powerful decks in the meta. Sadly, though, eventually cut out of Paladin decks even in Wild with the advent of Baku/Genn paladin decks, with far more efficient ways to swarm the board. 

Priest:

• Herald Volazj: 1/5. Haha Volazj. To get how bad Volazj ended up being, they printed a cheaper, more mana-efficient version of him in Mirage Caller, and that still saw no play. 
• Forbidden Shaping: 3/5. Particularly good in arena, pretty decent in constructed as a card you just sometimes jam in to trigger Lyra or to fill out a highlander deck. 
• Embrace the Shadow: 1/5. Auchenai Soulpriest's just so much better.
• Shifting Shade: 4/5. While it's not around a lot now, it is one of the most powerful cards, synergizing amazingly well with N'Zoth and Priest's game plan of simply overwhelming the enemy with value. 
• Twilight Darkmender: 1/5. Turns out C'Thun priest just didn't really work out, and Darkmender's a bit too awkward as far as the cost and effect goes. 
• Shadow Word: Horror: 5/5. Everyone laughed at this card during Old Gods. Afterwards, in Gadgetzan, Shadow Word: Horror formed one half of a particularly devastating combo with Pint-Sized Potion. Even after then, Shadow Word: Horror ended up being one of the premier board removals against huge token decks, coming out early enough to wipe out the little swarms of pirates and murlocs and mechs before they become threatening. 
• Power Word: Tentacles: 1/5. Too expensive, never saw play. 
• Darkshire Alchemist: 3/5. Very flexible card, but ended up being completely overshadowed by the cheaper and more powerful Greater Healing Potion. 
• Hooded Cultist: 1/5. C'Thun Priest never took off after the initial experimentation phase.

Rogue: 

• Xaril, Poisoned Mind: 2/5. Never the most popular card, but Xaril's definitely a card that saw significant amount of play and techning in. It's actually a very cool card, it's just a shame that it doesn't quite hvae enough synergy or sustained value the way that Shaku does. 
• Shadowcaster: 2/5. A very fun card that enables a fair amount of funky combos and archetypes, although her costs really prohibits her from being super good. 
• Blade of C'Thun: 1/5. Too expensive and bulky. Vilespine Slayer would completely eclipse this in the future. 
• Journey Below: 1/5. Decent in arena and saw some experimentation, but ultimately cut out because Rogue's really big on streamlining decks. 
• Undercity Huckster: 3/5. Doesn't see as much play now especially after Swashburglar came on the scene, but definitely a very solid card that saw a fair amount of play back in the day. 
• Thistle Tea: 1/5. Too slow and expensive that even Quest Rogue doesn't run it. 
• Bladed Cultist: 1/5. Too unwieldy, and doesn't have any real synergies. 
• Shadow Strike: 2/5. A neat utility tool at the beginning of the standard year, but as Rogue gets more tools, the "undamaged" bit became a bit too restrictive and everyone defaulted back to Eviscerate.
• Southsea Squidface: 3/5. Very decent card that saw a fair amount of play when people tried to make N'Zoth Rogue work, then in Pirate Rogue, and most recently in Kingsbane Rogue. Never the most powerful cards, and sometimes gets cut out, but still, not bad.

Shaman:

• Hallazeal the Ascended: 1/5. Never saw play, and later got eclipsed by better Lifesteal.  
• Eternal Sentinel: 1/5. Even during Shaman's heyday, Eternal Sentinel was never more than a fun curiousity because you know what's better than spending mana to unlock your overloaded crystals? Spending mana to kill the enemy. 
• Hammer of Twilight: 1/5. Never saw play. 
• Evolve: 5/5. Easily a card that carried Shaman through a fair amount of the past two years, especially with the addition of Doppelgangster in Gadgetzan. While Shaman might be slightly weaker now, remember a time when Shaman reigned supreme as the uncontested king, and this expansion's one of that contributes heavily to that. And even then, Evolve's one of the few cards that manages to make Shaman merely "bad" and not unplayable.
• Master of Evolution: 2/5. Evolve's cheaper and evolves your whole board. Poor Master of Evolution.
• Thing From Below: 5/5. A 0-mana 5/5 Taunt? Synergizes with totems and evolve mechanics? Yeah, this is why Shaman's so powerful, especially during the Karazhan/Gadgetzan era with cards like Totem Golem, pre-nerf Tuskarr Totemic, Flametongue and Mana Tide Totems all working well with making Thing From Below a monster to face.
• Flamewreathed Faceless: 4/5. A fuckton of stats for 4 mana! It's not that good right now, of course, but that's only because Standard Shaman doesn't have access to Tunnel Trogg. One of the more oppressive cards, and while not the worst offender as far as Shaman's concerned, definitely a contributing factor. 
• Stormcrack: 1/5. Never saw play since it doesn't go face. 
• Primal Fusion: 1/5. Haha totems-on-the-board synergy. 

Warlock:

• Cho'gall: 1/5. Too impractical, and Warlock's big spells are all removal. 
• Renounce Darkness: 1/5. FUN AS HELL! Not competitive.
• DOOM!: 1/5. Outclassed all the time by Twisting Nether because, hey, 10 mana is a lot and warlocks already draw cards very well. 
• Forbidden Ritual: 1/5. Never saw play. 1/1's are just not that good, especially if they're icky tentacles and not demons. 
• Darkshire Librarian: 2/5. Discard Warlock is something everyone tried, especially after Karazhan, and Darkshire Librarian iss one of its better cards, but Discard Warlock sucks. 
• Spreading Madness: 1/5. Too expensive for what amounts as a joke.
• Possessed Villager: 3/5. Actually one of Warlock's most powerful 1-mana drops, especially during the initial post-rotation era. But turns out that as expansions go on, warlock just received so much superior, demon-synergistic cards that Villager sort of fell out of the wayside, ultimately with the Patches package, Mistress of Mixtures and Kobold Librarian replacing him. 
• Darkshire Councilman: 4/5. Easily one of the most powerful cards for Warlock, being a staple in zoo decks. And everyone thought it'd be poop! Darkshire Councilman's easily one of Warlock's strongest cards, and particularly terrifying to see back during the Keleseth-Patches era.  
• Usher of Souls: 1/5. Haha, a shittier Cult Master. 

Warrior:

• Malkorok: 1/5. Great in arena. Too slow in constructed
• Tentacles for Arms: 1/5. Infinite value ain't worth shit if you got to spend so much mana on a piddly 2/2 weapon. 
• Blood Warriors: 1/5. Very interesting gimmick and art, but costs too much and essentially replaced by Sudden Genesis, who summons them straight onto the board... but also saw no play. 
• Blood to Ichor: 2/5. Saw a lot of usage early on in Old Gods, but fell out of favour thanks to more reliable whirlwind-style effects over the next couple of expansions. 
• Bloodsail Cultist: 5/5. Pirate Warrior might be dead with the nerfs to Patches and Fiery War Axe, but back when Pirate Warrior was King, Bloodsail Cultist's very stable turn 3 for a relatively small ask and a pretty powerful upside really made her one of the more powerful cards for a time. 
• Ancient Shieldbearer: 2/5. C'Thun Warrior is... okay? It's just not as good as C'Thun Druid, and C'Thun Druid isn't that good once new expansions came in. It did see a fair amount of play during the Old Gods and Karazhan eras, though. 
• N'Zoth's First Mate: 5/5. Yeah, this humble little bug pirate is one of the stronger cards as being part of a powerful turn 1 opener that ended up with so many other cards getting nerfed. N'Zoth's First Mate and his buddy Patches is just essentially a slightly-weaker version of Muster for Battle that comes out on turn 1, and you sometimes follow up with a Coin upgrade, or Coin Bloodsail Cultist on the next turn. During the Gadgetzan era the ladder is so besieged with Pirate Warriors that we actually got one of the fastest nerfs ever to N'Zoth's First Mate's other buddy, Small-Time Buccaneer.
• Ravaging Ghoul: 5/5. One of the most solid cards Warrior's had, pretty balanced and synergizes well with a lot of things, plus adds a body on the board. We might've forgotten, but during the Old Gods era, it's practically found in every single Warrior deck. It might not see a lot of play in the past two expansions, but Ravaging Ghoul was one of the reason why Warrior was one of the most powerful classes during the Old Gods era. 
• Bloodhoof Brave: 4/5. Great stats, has taunt, works well with whirlwind effects. Particularly great during the Old Gods and Karazhan era, where Control Warrior's actually quite good. 

Neutral Legendaries:

• Shifter Zerus: 1/5. Haha Zerus.
• Nat the Darkfisher: 1/5. Haha Nat. 
• Mukla, Tyrant of the Vale: 1/5. Not terrible like the previous two, but still too expensive for what he does, and just doesn't do much.
• Hogger, Doom of Elwynn: 1/5. Too unwieldy and doesn't really do enough. Maybe with some extra stats? Neat in arena, though. 
• Twin Emperor Vek'lor: 3/5. One of the most powerful cards in a C'Thun deck, and especially insane if you manage to get him off with Brann Bronzebeard. One of the more powerful tools in a C'Thun deck, and a way to stall before the big eyeball drops. 
• The Boogeymonster: 1/5. The only legendary I disenchanted without a second thought.  
• Soggoth the Slitherer: 2/5. Neat gimmick, and actually an unexpected big wall to drop on spell-heavy decks, but ultimately doesn't do enough for the huge amount of mana you spend on him, and when big minion decks came along, there are just so many better 8/9/10-mana minions than Soggoth. 
• Deathwing, Dragonlord: 3/5. Surprisingly good, actually. Doesn't see that much play early on, but between Big Priest, Big Druid, Dragon Priest and Recruit Warrior decks, people really love Deathwing and slotting him into those decks and try to make him work. While Deathwing Dragonlord ultimately tends to be too slow and gets removed easily, he's still pretty damn cool and shows up enough.
• C'Thun: 3/5. Actually pretty great early on in Old Gods, but ends up that despite the coolness of the gimmick, C'Thun is just balanced, and you're spending way too much resources for an end-game that might not work all the time. And once Brann and Thaurissan rotates out, it's really, really hard to get C'Thun decks to work properly. There are some attempts to make C'Thun work, like recently with a wacky Kun/C'Thun combo, but ultimately, while very interesting, C'Thun and his brood are just average. Honestly, they get 3/5 only because they were very dominant in the early Year of the Kraken.
• N'Zoth, The Corruptor: 5/5. The uncontested king of the Old Gods expansion, N'Zoth is a finisher that works amazingly with everyone else, single-handedly made a bunch of decent or crappy deathrattle cards playable, and the only Old God to see consistent play throughout all two years that he's rampaging in Standard. Clearly, the best card of this expansion bar none. Easily one of the scariest threats in the game and one of the biggest value bombs -- that still manages to be fair. 
• Y'Shaarj, Rage Unbound: 4/5. Y'Shaarj was mocked endlessly for being the only Old God that looked like it sucked, and it did! For four expansions. And then Frozen Throne came along, and with it Eternal Servitude and Shadow Essence, leading to the genesis of the Big Priest archetype that makes huge, huge use of the mighty Y'Shaarj as an unironic, powerful card. Combine Y'Shaarj with Barnes, and some decks like Spell Hunter even try to work this wacky package together. Easily one of the biggest surprises during the Year of the Mammoth was discovering that Y'Shaarj went from an unplayable joke to a powerhouse. 
• Yogg-Saron, Hope's End: 5/5 [pre-nerf]; 1/5 [post-nerf] Another card that is so powerful he got nerfed! And I'm kinda sad and hope they revert Yogg-Saron when he moves into wild and just, I dunno, ban him from tournaments or something... but alas, the God of RNG is now a barely-playable card that sometimes people insert into Jade Druid or mage decks just for shits and giggles. Pre-nerf, he can single-handed win games with his insane effect, It's probably a well-deserved change, I know, but I definitely miss old Yogg. 

Neutral: 

• Cyclopian Horror: 1/5. Too unreliable and low-statted. 
• Faceless Shambler: 2/5. Actually saw some degree of play in warlock decks that use giants, but eventually fell out of favour. Especially susceptible to silences and devolves. 
• Twilight Summoner: 1/5. Too slow, even in a deathrattle deck. 
• Crazed Worshipper: 1/5. Too slow and understatted, although some C'Thun decks used this dude as a one-off. 
• Darkspeaker: 1/5. Neat gimmick, but never saw play. 
• Validated Doomsayer: 1/5. Hilarious, but is actually kind of a crappy card. 
• Ancient Harbinger: 1/5. An understatted tutor card just isn't good enough to slot into your 30-card deck, especially since you probably don't care about drawing C'Thun or N'Zoth before turn 10 anyway, and if you drew him you won't play him straight-away... you do need to time it right. 
• Scaled Nightmare: 1/5. Too slow and expensive. Has the caveat of being decent in arena, though. 
• Blood of the Ancient One: 1/5. Very cool effect, but very hard to pull off and the Ancient One can be removed or blocked with taunt. 
• Disciple of C'Thun: 3/5. One of the better C'Thun cards, essentially a better (and potentially repeatable with Brann) Argent Horserider. 
• Silithid Swarmer: 1/5. I rarely like to call a card useless, but Silithid Swarmer's one of them.
• Blackwater Pirate: 1/5. Stats are too weak, and there are way better pirates.
• Eater of Secrets: 3/5. Tech cards honestly will just get a 3/5 from me. Eater of Secrets isn't the best tech card (that'd go to Golakka Crawler) but it's powerful enough to sometimes just win you matchups against hunter and especially mage when you drop this to eat a bunch of secrets. Or sometimes just Ice Block. But the fact that it's a shitty 4-mana 2/4 against other classes makes this not that good. 
• Midnight Drake: 2/5. Saw some use in Dragon Priests, but tends to get cut more than not .
• Corrupted Healbot: 1/5. There are better unfair minions in constructed. Great in arena, though. 
• Corrupted Seer: 1/5. Racist consecration with a body is great for value, but too expensive for most murloc decks. It's a neat tech choice, but eventually is phased out as the murloc decks got more streamlined as pure aggro decks.
• Skeram Cultist: 1/5. It's one of the crappier C'Thun cards thanks to using the more fragile setup of the Boulderfist Ogre stats, and tended to be cut -- you don't want too many C'Thun buffing cards in your C'Thun deck.
• Doomcaller: 2/5. Doomcaller tended to be run as a one-off for the potential of getting extra C'Thuns back in the day, but, again, C'Thun decks aren't that good. 
• Tentacle of N'Zoth: 1/5. Not that good, stat-wise and effect-wise.
• Zealoud Initiate: 1/5. Also not that good, stat-wise or effect-wise.
• Beckoner of Evil: 3/5. Decent. One of the cards that you always see in C'Thun decks to get the eyeball ball running. 
• Bilefin Tidehunter: 2/5. Saw a fair amount of use in early Year of the Kraken zoo and murloc decks, but gets phased out eventually as more powerful and less fragile murlocs pop out. 
• Duskboar: 1/5. Boar Rager. 
• Twilight Geomancer: 1/5. C'Thun doesn't need taunt, honestly. Run Skeram Cultist or Crazed Worshipper if you're so desperate to run bad cards empower the big eyeball -- at least those do something.
• Twisted Worgen: 1/5. Worgen Infiltrator's actually much better than this sorry thing. 
• Am'Gam Rager: 1/5. Honestly even crappier than Magma Rager. 
• Spawn of N'Zoth: 2/5. Saw some play in token druid decks, actually, but not that much. 
• Squirming Tentacle: 1/5. A decent, safe pick in arena, but definitely not a good card for constructed. 
• Twilight Elder: 3/5. Probably the strongest C'Thun buffing card due to his continuous effects and his great 3-mana 3/4 statline? Again, though, the C'Thun package ended up petering out.
• Aberrant Berserker: 1/5. There are a lot of better 4-mana cards. 
• C'Thun's Chosen: 3/5. A decent, harder-to-kill card, and alongside with Disciple, Beckoner and Elder, tends to form the backbone of every C'Thun deck. 
• Evolved Kobold: 1/5. Briefly seen in a couple of world championships in an unexpected manner. Particularly nonexistent in constructed. 
• Infested Tauren: 1/5. They tried to pair Infested Tauren up with N'Zoth to be the new Sludge Belcher, but turns out he's just not good enough. 
• Polluted Hoarder: 2/5. Likewise, saw a fair amount of experimentation, but turns out that other sorts of draw mechanics are just better. 
• Cult Apothecary: 1/5. If you heal when the enemy has a big board, it tends to just mean they're going to whack you with even more damage and ignore the understatted Apothecary. 
• Psych-o-Tron: 2/5. Evil metalhead hello hello actually saw some usage in Quest Warrior decks, but not by much.  
• Nerubian Prophet: 1/5. There was a period of time when they tried out Nerubian Prophet in Evolve Shaman, but even there it's not that good. 
• Bog Creeper: 1/5. AMAZING in arena. Practically never seen in constructed. Boggy gets to show up in hero portraits with Nemsy, though. 
• Grotesque Dragonhawk: 1/5. Stats too poor. 
• Eldritch Horror: 1/5. Haha, expensive vanilla card. 
• Faceless Behemoth: 1/5. Haha, another expensive vanilla card. 

The Walking Dead S07E11 Review: Eugene Plays Video Games

The Walking Dead, Season 7, Episode 11: Hostiles & Calamities

So, yeah, this is a very Eugene centric episode. And it's the third episode this season where we have a member of Team Rick be brought over to the Sanctuary and be indoctrinated by Negan. With Daryl it's more of a torture thing. With Carl it's more of a tour. With Eugene? Eugene is a lot, lot more scared and terrified compared to Carl and Daryl, who are both cocksure badasses, and I'm honestly surprised to find myself relatively invested in Eugene's trip in this episode. More than anything, unlike several other character transformations (Carol's transformation into a pacifist, for one, or Abraham dumping Rosita for Sasha) it actually feels organic and a choice that I can buy the character doing, especially considering the events that happened in this episode.

Eugene is an interesting character in that I find the man hilarious. It used to be that he and Abraham are easily the funniest characters in the show despite them not doing much due to their unique vernacular, but Eugene's got something that Abraham doesn't, and that is uniqueness. You see, as much as he tries to do so last season, Eugene is the farthest thing from a badass fighter. Abraham calls Eugene a survivor, and that's correct -- Eugene survives, but he's unique in that he doesn't survive because he can fight. On a good day,  he can't even kill a single shambling zombie. He's a nerd, a socially awkward one, who might suffer from some ambiguous disorder on the spectrum. He survives because of two skills: the first is his skill in bullshittery (he pulls out that Human Genome Project scientist lie again when Negan interrogates her) and the second is his ability to actually mix in some actual oomph to his bullshittery, like crafting bullets, or here, finding out the idea of encasing zombies in what's basically armour in order to make Negan's wall o' zombies intact.

(Also, incidentally, Negan's rant about how the zombies are breaking down actually makes logical sense and also explains why the zombies have been less and less of a threat)

(Also, also, Negan raises the very excellent question as to why Rick never actually used Eugene like this. Honestly Team Rick always treated Eugene as more of a load than anything and never really respected him -- Abraham aside, and even then it's a back-and-forth thing -- so yeah)

In short, Eugene may be pathetic, but he's not completely useless, and has shown that bit time and time again. And seeing this pathetic nerd just babble and trying his hardest not to shit himself in front of Negan, who's in full "intimidating psychopath" mode, is great for both characters, because shit, Eugene's already pissing his pants before Negan even actually begins speaking. 

But Negan brings Eugene into the Sanctuary not for punishment, but because he wants people who can be useful to him. And the moment Eugene proves that usefulness, even with an idea ("god damn if that isn't the coolest thing I've ever heard!") Negan is more than welcome to reward him. Actually, not even just that -- Negan's people quickly gives Eugene access to a room with a fully-stocked fridge, a jar of pickles he can take, and quickly soothes the scared man that 'you're one of us now'. The show has been surprisingly good at showing Eugene's reactions when he sees all the nice amenities like food and television and that sofa, and in light of the fact that the Saviours looted every such thing from Alexandria, well. 

And the moment that Eugene proves himself useful as Mister Smarty-Pants? Negan lets him hang out with three hot chicks. Not for sex, mind you, just to hang out as a reward (and as a test of loyalty, I bet). And I laughed my ass off when Eugene decides to play old 80's video games instead. Eugene is actually a barrel of laughs in this episode, but none of the jokes landed better than Eugene playing around with the radio, happening on that Easy Street song that was used to torture Daryl... and starts head-bobbing to it. That is the single most hilarious joke I've ever seen in Walking Dead and this is a season that's already rife with jokes courtesy of Negan, Father Gabriel and Tara. Both Eugene and Negan play off surprisingly well with each other.

Another great moment of this episode is the awkward meeting of Dwight and Eugene, where they just stand in awkward silence and Eugene starts wanting to discuss about Dwight's dick, and Dwight quickly just doesn't want to talk about it.

But the episode keeps it relatively ambiguous whether Eugene is just trying to bullshit his way through or if he's legitimately seduced, though I'm actually leaning towards the latter, if nothing else due to how enthusiastic he is to bark orders at the end, though one could still argue that he's just being very good at maintaining his act. After all, he put up that 'there's a cure in Washington' lie for nearly an entire season. If there was one member of Rick's group that would be seduced by Negan it would probably be Eugene.

There's also the fact that Eugene saw the poor doctor get shoved head-first into the furnace, and considering Eugene's a coward, shit, the carrot/stick comparison is definitely drummed into his head. The biggest point for his full conversion into the church of Negan is really how he interacts with Negan's wives. After fun science boom boom projects and video games, the wives ask Eugene to make like a suicide pill for Amber, the wife who Negan catches to be fucking her old husband in the Carl episode and is in such a sorry state in this episode. Eugene realizes that, no, they're trying to kill Negan instead, and despite having plausible deniability, Eugene refuses to synthesize said poison. 

The B-plot of this storyline, once more, is Dwight, the other character in Negan's camp that has enough screentime to justify being a semi-main character. After getting thoroughly pummeled by Negan's men for letting Daryl go (the timeline's a bit fuzzy here, because it apparently happens directly after episode 8, but I guess Eugene's seduction lasted a bit longer) apparently Dwight's ex-wife Sherry escaped.

See, Dwight is a jackass. It really sucks what happened to his wife, forced to become Negan's wife after losing her sister and all that, but Dwight embraces his persona as Negan's enforcer so much, and lest we forget, he killed Denise, he tortured Daryl and he stole Daryl's crossbow, the tit. His wife is basically disgusted with the monster Dwight has became, and escaped, because she can't stand seeing Dwight descend even further into depravity. There's the weirdness where apparently Dwight has memory problems? That felt forced.

And we briefly sympathize with Dwight when we see him a broken man, sitting at his old house and reading the farewell letter and leaving behind the beer and chips, but then he later frames doctor Carson for being Sherry's lover by leaving part of the note in Carson's office. And then Dwight is back in full jackass mode and I hope someone shoves him into the furnace. It's definitely a nice bit that fleshes out Dwight without turning him into "oh he's a good guy after all!"

Mind you, Negan was a complete idiot for shoving the one doctor he has into a furnace instead of just punishing him a little. I know he's a maniac, but still, that felt particularly silly considering the sheer amount of things he lets Rick's group get away with. 

So yeah. I'm sure that considering the nature of this show (Team Rick Must Win) both Eugene and Dwight will end up being punished down the line, but I really, really enjoyed this episode. Maybe I just kind of enjoy Eugene a lot in general, but I felt that this episode is pretty great. 

One Piece 900 Review: Pet Cemetery

One Piece, Chapter 900: Bad End Musical

Huh. That happened. I'm not as enamoured with this chapter as the internet happens to be? I guess it's my own fault for sort of hyping myself up for the Big Nine Hundred, but at the same time... I sort of expected more. I guess the big twist at the end of the chapter is still kind of a big event in a way, so it's not just a procedural chapter... but I dunno. I expected something slightly more, I guess? It's still a good chapter. It's just not as "WHOA" as I hoped it would be. 

The first chunk of the chapter is just Big Mom eating the wedding cake and being super-duper overwhelmed by how good it is, which, of course, is to be expected. It's what we've been building up to for a while, and to have that moment not happen for a somewhat extended amount of time would be poor writing. So yeah, we've got Big Mom eating, we've got Perospero and the rest reacting in happiness to Big Mom calming down... but of course, they only credit Pudding with the construction of the cake. 

Meanwhile, the Straw Hats and the Sun Pirates are escaping, but Oven and Brulee pop out of the mirror, with Brulee apparently bringing Anti-Germa bullets... And then Oven just COOKS the ocean and goes Hot Sea Hell, essentially cooking Wadatsumi and the rest of the fishmen and presumably sinking them? We get to see Wadatsumi sinking, but the rest of the Sun Pirates aren't seen for the rest of the chapter. That's actually pretty goddamn badass. 

We get Big Mom eating the cake again, and then we get a weird, psychedelic Disney acid trip as we zoom into her mouth, and apparently there's a "Pet Cemetery" within Big Mom's mouth? With... more of those dancing trees and flowers with eyes? And the second half of the chapter is essentially a back-and-forth cutaway from Big Mom's wacky reality and the flight of the Thousand Sunny as Big Mom's big ship, the Queen Mama, shows up and just launches cannonballs. And it's... it's weird. Big Mom's pretty much hallucinating in his scenes, reverting back to her fat form and seeing all the children from the orphanage that she "ate" in her flashback, while in the present day the Germa 66 siblings get gunned down and Judge faces off against... Snack, I think? The last couple of pages is what appears to be the Sunny exploding, with the final panel being the Straw Hat flag on the water...

And, of course, we're led to believe that the Queen Mama just shot the Thousand Sunny and blew it apart. Obviously the characters are save somehow -- via Fishmen interference or if it's actually not even the Sunny at all, but I am curious if the Sunny actually did just "die" at the end of the chapter. Comparing it to how the Going Merry was destroyed it certainly felt abrupt and callous, though. Again, an interesting chapter. I'm just unconvinced if it's worth all the hype and the padding out of the story for. 

Arrow S06E13 Review: A Wild Plot Twist Appeared

Arrow, Season 6, Episode 13: The Devil's Greatest Trick

Some people think just because a plot twist is unexpected, that the author has successfully bamboozled his or her audience, that it is automatically good. But it's not. I would rather read a predictable, by-the-books story that has a satisfying conclusion any day over a story that takes sudden, surprising plot twists just to go "bwaa" and befuddle the reader. Admittedly, this is some tricky business to find a balance as to what comprises a good plot twist and what isn't, as dragging an obvious twist for way too long would make for an unsatisfying twist either way...

But by god is the twist in this episode of Arrow feel like it came out of nowhere. The revelation that Cayden James was played by a third party, that despite all his chessmaster pontification and his glorious Michael Emerson voice and articulations he's not the main villain of this season, isn't too far-fetched. But the revelation that it was actually Ricardo Diaz, a character who no one saw coming because for the simple reason that, hey, he's quite literally a character who has never been given any focus or relevance? Yeah, that's honestly kind of dumb. I'd honestly take Laurel or Anatoly or Vigilante as the true mastermind, as that would at least have some sort of a sensible character progression from one point to the next.

It's not even like the plot twist in the previous season where Adrian Chase is actually Prometheus instead of Vigilante as everyone expected from the comic books, because at least within the confines of the show itself, Adrian Chase's behaviour prior to the big reveal does make sense for either Prometheus or Vigilante, making the twist, as "troll"-y as it was, still make sense. Here? It just came out of nowhere with no buildup. 

Of course, the episode is honestly not that bad up until the final five minutes or so. Cayden James did get hit with a fair bit of villain decay as the season went on, but Michael Emerson's performance and the fact that he's just ever-so-different from most of Arrow's previous villains is interesting enough. He's nowhere as bland and enigmatic like Mallus is, and he's definitely not a hot mess like the Thinker. A good part of it is Michael Emerson's own ability as an actor to make shitty lines and shitty character developments look positively shining -- a talent that he's honed through his time in Lost. At worst, he makes James look like a simply unhinged and deranged man, driven to extremes due to the death of his son... but god damn he does make it work. That's what a great actor brings to the table -- and honestly, that's what half of the long-runners in these CW shows do. Perhaps the highlights of this episode is Michael Emerson's solo scenes in his dedicated flashbacks... which honestly still feels 'too little, too late' for the character. 

The thing, though, is that the conclusion with William throwing a hissy fit and randomly showing up at the final confrontation, somehow causing Cayden James to -- at the final part of his grandiose plan -- realize that he was the one that failed his own son... that wasn't particularly satisfying from a thrills or emotional standpoint, but at least it's a conclusion that can make sense, from what we know of Cayden James's character. But suddenly writing James out and replacing him with the very ill-defined Ricardo Diaz? I know Kirk Acevedo, Ricardo's actor, is a great actor, but removed from the context of the actors playing them, Ricardo Diaz probably had barely more screentime than Mr. Sheck, the dude disposed off by Vigilante a couple of episodes ago. Not to mention that his speech about "taking over the town" doesn't really jive with what we know about him. 

And honestly, the rest of the episode feels a lot better even though it's predictable. Yes, it's predictable that Felicity and Aleena would be able to reveal the fact that Cayden's son was killed in foul play, something that ended up happening through the first half of the episode. A very angry Dinah and a very sassy Laurel's beef, and Quentin's decision to help out Evil Laurel and redeem her, are all melodramatic, but delivered relatively well enough to still allow me to follow -- even if Quentin's definitely edging closer and closer to losing his marbles. William's also somewhat annoying, but at least I can get behind his story. And, naturally, Anatoly Knyazev is still the best character in Arrow. "City is about to become crater, Kapiushon!" And either Laurel or Anatoly would definitely work a lot better as the real villain, honestly, if they were going to go by that route.

This means that this whole Cayden James story we've been invested in over 13 episodes (and a bit more, if you count Cayden's faceless cameo in season 5) ends out with one of the weakest and most unsatisfying conclusion ever, with the justification of "BAM WHAM PLOT TWIST DIDN'T SEE THAT COMING!" And that's the shittiest kind of writing. The episode itself isn't necessarily bad, with a lot of neat action scenes and a lot of great character moments from Anatoly, Laurel, Quentin, Dinah and Cayden... but ultimately ends out with a very sour taste thanks to the 'twist'.   

Oh, after all my rant about Cayden James's story being mishandled, we get a brief faceless Flash cameo just because. Couldn't they have just asked Barry or Cisco to just vibe the bomb out of Star City entirely? Just a thought? You can't just acknowledge the other show with all your super-powered buddies and not drop some justification about them fighting Zoom or Weather Wizard or something!

Overall, an episode that starts off promising (if predictable), ends up bogged down in its second act by a bunch of rather melodramatic subplots, and ends out petering off with some really, really piss-poor last-minute plot twist that leaves a very, very sour taste in my mouth. 

The Flash S04E15 Review: Flashtime

The Flash, Season 4, Episode 15: Enter Flashtime

I don't really have that much words for this episode. It's not that it's bad, it's very decent... but at the same time, my head's just really reeling about the fact that apparently if this is how Barry Allen and other speedsters perceive time -- i.e. everything slows down -- it makes a lot of the times that Flash just lets some random villain get away because it's not the third act yet, or the nonsense about how he can't outrun the Thinker's portal when it opens fast enough to be perceived by us viewers watching the show without super-speed... I can just chalk it up to simple artistic license and "don't think about it too hard", of course, but at the same time the show really shows that it remembers every single sci-fi goobledeygonk it does, which is the catalyst to the resolution of this episode, ending up with the Speed Force mythology feeling far, far more muddled and weirder than it already is.

It's a pretty gimmicky episode, I guess, a simple, standalone episode that really could've taken place anywhere in the show's life. It's the style of episode that's been seen in many Flash comics over the years, an entire issue that takes place over the course of milliseconds, with Barry trying to prevent a nuclear explosion on the way, quickly rattling off the justifications about why he can't just run it out or whatever, and then one-by-one transferring his speed to talk with Cisco, Harry, Iris and Caitlin. Oh, and Jesse Quick returns for a very, very welcome guest star cameo and I'm definitely sad that Flash's lost both Wally and Jesse.

Jesse actually gives us the very, very plausible solution of "let's go back in time and punch out the terrorist before she detonates the bomb", to which Barry goes absolutely FUCK NO. And I get it, he's learned his lesson since Flashpoint, but at the same time... it's like, five seconds. Not going back to prevent someone's murder or whatever. Nothing's going to really change all that significantly in those seconds, and it's not like The Flash is running alongside a show that features a bunch of carefree dudes dicking around with time and shrugging off significant changes as "eh, we meant well, so it's okay". 

Still, after I finish complaining about the fact that the CW showmakers clearly just don't give two shits about logic, and I can just sit back and enjoy a rather decent episode. It's certainly not stellar, though, and the B-plot of Jesse and Harry trying to work out their distant-father-pushy-daughter kink feels like a bland rehash of their dynamic we've seen multiple times last season. Jay shows up to... to really not do much, to be honest, beyond announcing that he's retiring and training a successor. It's shoehorned in and I'm not sure I'm that big of a fan.  

Still, it's a fun enough bit with some neat moments for both Barry and Jesse, making this a particularly successful one-off episode, even if the ending feels like a gigantic asspull. overall, a fun, but ultimately honestly somewhat forgettable episode if you remove the gimmick. Yes, mysterious Jitters girl that's totally not Dawn Allen shows up to talk to Caitlin and Harrison, but even that's not a particularly huge moment. That moment with Jesse and Harry at the end with the reverse-neural-inhibitor is amazingly done, though. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• The main terrorist identifies herself as Veronica Dale, otherwise known as Hydrax in the comics, leader of the minor terrorist group Eden Corps. In a neat twist considering how many villains Arrow borrowed from other DC properties, the Eden Corps was originally a minor Green Arrow enemy, although they did manage to do what no other villain ever could -- kill the Green Arrow, albeit indirectly, by forcing him to detonate a bomb with a plane in it to stop it from blowing Metropolis up. 

Movie Review: Dragon Ball Z - Bojack Unbound

Dragon Ball Z: Bojack Unbound

Another Dragon Ball Z movie, and ninth of the DBZ movies. "Bojack Unbound", otherwise known as "Galaxy at the Brink! The Super Incredible Guy!" in Japan, is... a mixed bag. Like most of the pre-Beerus movie DBZ villains, Bojack has as much personality as a dead battery... yet somehow the movie felt fun in a way that none of the previous non-serial movies felt. Perhaps it's because it's relatively unpredictable and lets Gohan get the center stage, even giving him a pretty believable character arc in the process. Perhaps it's because the movie knows that its main villains are doomed to be unmemorable muscleheads, so it spends the first half of its screentime in a fun little tournament. Perhaps it's the fact that it doesn't take itself too seriously, and uses pre-character-development Mr. Satan, everyone's favourite butt-monkey, as a source of comedic relief. 

So the first half (or one-thirds) of this 50-minute movie ends up just having a tournament between the world's strongest warriors thrown about by some rich jackass, while most of Goku's involvement ends up just watching through cable-vision with King Kai. We quickly establish this as having taken place after the Cell games -- Bulma quickly drops in with the explanation that Trunks have returned after killing the androids in his timeline, Goku's dead and Vegeta's depressed because his rival's dead. And it's actually a nice buildup to Gohan's supposed role as the 'protector of Earth' now that Goku's dead... something that the Buu Saga and Super would sadly undo. 

But anyway, speaking on that terms, the movie itself is fun. The setting itself apparently uses some sort of weird... hologram roller-coaster thing to justify the wackier and prettier settings that they use for the fight? We did get an actual neat fight between Trunks and Tienshinhan, which is definitely appreciated. 

The first half has some neat fun moments like Piccolo being underwhelmed at the poor excuse of the Tenkaichi, some 'haha silly Yamcha' jokes, and Krillin just trying to get along... until suddenly the tournament is hijacked by Bojack's goons, killing a poor sumo dude and Satan's apprentices. King Kai quickly gives us the explanation that Bojack and his crew were essentially space pirates that were sealed by the Kais within King Kai's planet, but the actions that Goku did -- bringing Cell to blow up there -- ends up freeing them from their prison. 

It's the sort of backstory that is neatly built into the manga/anime's lore, while not being a glaring weird deal like Cooler was (why does no one mention Cooler's existence before and after?). Sadly Bojack and his crew ends up as extremely uninteresting. Bojack's a huge musclehead that manages to be even more boring than the screaming vengeful menace that Broly had, and his trio of goons fall into the same role that many movie villain goons fall into -- tiny turban-headed Bujin is the creepy one, mohawked burly Bido is the brute, and sexy lady Zangya is the quiet one. The three are essentially interchangeable, with Bujin manipulating magical strings to trip people up and Bujin having an actually pretty cool swordfight with Trunks. 

Anyway, Bojack's gang curb-stomp Krillin, Yamcha, Tien and Trunks (!), and go to town on Gohan. Piccolo and Vegeta show up, Trunks gets up, and we get some neat moments of Vegeta regaining his battle senses... but everyone gets beaten up. And then we get an actually distressing moment where Gohan gets choked half to death by Bojack... until Goku instant transmissions from the other world, punches Bojack one time, then gives Gohan a pep-talk... and then Gohan goes Super Saiyan 2, and easily one-shots Bojack's crew. 

It's honestly a movie that I perhaps enjoy more than I should -- it's honestly a pretty generic anime movie -- but it's got enough fun and deviates ever so slightly from the common trope of DBZ movies... and I think it does help that this particular movie does feel like a mini two-parter "breather" episode that could've been slotted in-between the Cell and Buu saga the way that Dragon Ball Super likes to slot in two-parters and three-parters between larger arcs, the first of the movies that I legitimately feel like it's inconsequential enough and doesn't feel like a huge walking continuity error. I dunno. I guess I'm just a sucker for good Gohan stories? It's also pretty decently animated, too, and honestly if Bojack has more personality beyond "sneering alien warlord" it would be far more enjoyable. 

The Walking Dead S07E10 Review: Iron Maiden Zombie

The Walking Dead, Season 7, Episode 10: New Best Friends

It's basically a direct extension of the previous episode, where this time around, we're getting yet another community, namely the Junkions. I mean, the Scavengers, as the internet tells me. Again, the rather rapid pace that we're moving separate plotlines alone is definitely something I'm a fan of. I've been bitching about how bad season 6 and parts of 5 are for a while, and here, while the structure is a relatively predictable "Gondor Calls For Aid" type of storyline that'll probably culminate with all the various communities banding together to fight Negan in the finale, it's at least delivered relatively well. So far, we've got two communities that are more or less allied with the Alexandrians, which is Hilltop (the boring one) and the Kingdom (the tiger one), and there's also Oceanside (the triggerhappy one) though it's been puzzlingly kept vague beyond the obligatory flash-to-Tara's-guilty-face shot every episode.

The Scavengers are a bit of an oddity. They live in a gigantic junkyard, there's a whole lot of them, and... and they speak like cavemen for some reason. Has it been that long that some people's language capabilities have deteriorated? I mean, I guess. They're like these crazy junkyard warriors that you'd think to find in a post-apocalyptic world where the apocalypse happened like a couple generations ago, not like, three, four years tops. They're led by Jadis, who, has a cool bob hair and a cool bit of dress, and they kidnapped Gabriel last episode. I have really grown to enjoy Father Gabriel's character in the past two seasons (despite loathing the dude in season 5) and that moment where he shoves a knife to a random Scavenger's throat, and how Rick always believes throughout the episode that Gabriel did not sell them out is amazingly done.

But let's get to the core bit -- Jadis pushes Rick down into like this junkyard gladiator arena, where there is this insane iron maiden knight zombie waiting for him who would look more at home as a miniboss in Resident Evil more than in Walking Dead. We've had some unique-looking zombies in the past, like the well zombie, or the drowned zombie, or the fall-through-the-ceiling mall zombies, but nothing, I don't think, as absurd as this. And I love it. Zombies have kind of lost their threat over the past few seasons and rightfully so -- our heroes are getting more and more prepared and experienced in killing zombies, but at the same time the title of the show is the Walking Dead, so how do you make zombies interesting? Well, short of going full-blown video game and making body horror bosses, this is definitely a nice bit.

Rick, of course, beats knight zombie and earns Jadis's respect, but they talk in business deals, apparently, wanting lots and lots of guns in exchange for their manpower in manning them. The Scavenger community is a bit weird in that I'm not entirely sure if every single one of them is actually a bit nuts (in the kingdom, Ezekiel knows it's all an act; and Negan's just a maniac) but eh, whatever. I'll take slightly-unrealisticc-but-feasible compared to boring humdrum any day.

The Scavengers plotline isn't quite strong enough -- even moreso than any of the other plotlines this season -- to carry an entire episode on its own, so thankfully we have some Kingdom stuff to tide us over, which, thankfully, brings Daryl back to form. We've got the bit with Ezekiel and Morgan first, though, because tensions are rising high in their meetings. The Saviours evidently aren't that big of a dick to non-Alexandrians who honour their deal, because they kind of back off relatively quickly when Ezekiel tells them that, hey, the deal was for however many watermelons, count properly.

But at the same time, the Saviours are all kind of dicks, and Richard, who's always ready to fight the Saviours judging from last episode, kind of antagonizes them. Morgan tries to step in, but while he did prevent people from dying he got his precious stick taken from him. I absolutely loved how restrained Morgan is, and how polite how he asks for his stick back because it's from someone precious to him -- I almost expected Douchebag Saviour Kid to snap the stick in half and drive Morgan berserk.

Whatever the case, though, Richard is angry at this and tries to enlist Daryl, who is clearly not a pacifist non-killer like Morgan. It's a bit of a convoluted gamble, but Richard plans to kill a bunch of Saviours, and plant a bunch of clues to lead them to Carol, causing the Saviours to attack and/or kill Carol and causing Ezekiel to be driven into a rage. Daryl is confused why Richard is being so glib about the identity of the lady, figures out it's Carol, and that is a big no-no even if he wants to hurt the Saviours real bad. Daryl and Richard fight, they miss their window, and it's interesting to see what Richard's going to do now. He's not the most well-developed character and right now is just more plot device than actual character, but I'm interested if he'll go full-in with the Carol plan or if he's going to try something else.

Daryl and Carol finding each other is definitely one of the show's most emotional scenes. It's been... a while since they're separated, yeah? Since before the season 6 finale madness, with all the convoluted piece-moving to get the characters to be separated? That's an awesome bit between those two where it's not even an outright romance like Glenn/Maggie, but the bond between Daryl and Carol is easily one of the most organic things in the show and I really can't help but go 'awww' at that. On the other hand, Daryl doesn't tell Carol about the deaths of their friends because... I'm not sure why, exactly. I guess he doesn't want to see her become even more broken and blame herself for not being there? On the other hand, one way or another Carol's going to find the truth, but in the heat (or the warmth) of the moment I can't say that I can't at least empathize with what Daryl's trying to do.

So yeah, definitely a decent, if far from perfect, episode.

Gotta Review 'Em All, Part #10: Treecko to Delcatty

This marks the start of our journey into Hoenn, the "Advanced Generation"  of Pokemon. Jumping from the pixels of the Game Boy Color to the more sophisticated Game Boy Advanced, the third generation heralded many changes to the franchise as a whole. Leaving staples that were common in the first two generations, like the presence of Kanto and Team Rocket, the third generation tried to blaze its own story with a pair of games completely and wholly unrelated to the Johto and Kanto games, starting the tradition of each generation being its own region. The third generation would also see remakes of the original Red/Blue games with the same engine, for the Fire Red & Leaf Green versions.

While initially the response was somewhat divisive, I embraced the third generation whole-heartedly. Having being on break between the second and third generations for a fairly long time, I came across  the third generation on perhaps one of the most unlikely sources -- trading cards -- relatively around halfway when the third generation was going on. And after everyone started playing Pokemon in school again, I got into the franchise once more. Between the manga, the anime and the games, the third is perhaps the generation that I have the most fond memories of. I was older than I was when I experienced the first two generations, so I know a fair bit more of the intricacies of the game, but was young enough to not be a cynic about games as a whole. So yeah, if the third generation is as biased as the first generation... sorry? (Not really sorry.)

Click here for the previous part.
Click here for the next part.
Click here for the archive of all the "Gotta Review 'Em All" articles.
__________________________________________________________

#252-254: Treecko, Grovyle & Sceptile

• Types: Grass [all three]
• Japanese names: Kimori, Juputoru, Jukain
• Categories: Wood Gecko [Treecko/Grovyle], Forest [Sceptile]

I've always had a soft spot for the Treecko line. Maybe it's because when I was a kid Treecko was sort of treated as the 'weakling' of the Hoenn starters due to never gaining a secondary typing like Torchic and Mudkip did, with the entire evolution line staying pure Grass-type. But I've always liked Treecko. Treecko is a more humanoid gecko creature, with less dinosaurian or draconic features compared to the likes of Charmander, instead having suction-tipped limbs and a rounded snout, and its leaf-typing is a neat reference to Uroplatus, otherwise known as the leaf-tail gecko... which, y'know, is exactly what you imagine them to be. Treecko and his evolution line also played a pretty huge role in the Ruby/Sapphire period of the anime, becoming one of Ash's most frequently-used pokemon, with his Treecko being characterized as that 'cool dude' who constantly has a stick of grass in its mouth. Treeckos are generally shown in the anime and manga to whack people with its huge thick tail, which is a neat little detail.

As a kid, Treecko was the last starter I experienced. Having gone through the game first with Mudkip and discovering that it becomes a Water/Ground type (and it learns... Mud Slap, I think, at a relatively low level) and Torchic becomes a Fire/Fighting type because it learns Double Kick, I thought Treecko was going to become a Grass/Dark because it learns Pursuit at around the same time that its cohorts learned their future second type's moves. Thought I'd share that funny misconception of my youth.


Treecko then evolves into an amazing-looking and sleek dromaeosaurian monster called Grovyle, and Grovyle's pretty damn cool. It's a sleek dinosaur that honestly plays into the whole "dinosaurs are actually feathered" deal way, way before feathered dinosaurs became the proper and popular way to depict the beasts... except, of course, instead of actual bird feathers, Grovyle uses long, tapering leaves. And as shown amazingly in the anime, Grovyle's arm leaves are able to extend into arm blades. It's a rather cheap and often-recycled trope to use curved blades that extend from the sides of one's arm, but it's still very cool. Also always loved the long ponytail-style hair that trails from behind its head, and I'm always a big fan of how Grovyle and Sceptile, despite being based visually upon theropods, still looks gecko-y somewhat from their expression if not their clawed leaf-blades and claws. If there's one thing I feel Grovyle doesn't quite do well is that it reduces the club-like tail that both Sceptile and Treecko have to two piddly leaves, which I felt ended up being somewhat of a disconnect... a minor one, though, because as a whole Grovyle might probably be my absolute favourite of all mid-stage evolutions.

The three Hoenn starters, for the generation they debuted in, had their own signature moves. Grovyle and Sceptile's was Leaf Blade, which had an insanely cool animation in the third generation -- newer ones just have a floating green sword materialize and slash the enemy, which is less cool than the actual leaves being animated to form an X-shaped slash onto the enemy.


Grovyle, of course, finally evolves into the mighty Sceptile. I used to be really confused with its official art,  not realizing that the tail was supposed to be a huge dinosaurian tail with pine leaves growing out of it. Sceptile looks more upright than Grovyle, and sadly the distinctly-separate leaves on Grovyle's arms are drawn as if they're just blunt claw-like extensions of Sceptile's body... but I've always found Sceptile to be cool nonetheless, with those weird seed pods on its back apparently being able to be launched towards the enemy and explode. Sceptile looks pretty dang cool, and I've always loved how its default expression is a lazy one, but anyone who saw Sceptile in the anime or in Pokken knows that this dude can just slash and hack with blinding speed, turning its arm-blades into the same leaf blades that Grovyle can. Overall, while it probably isn't quite as exciting as Blaziken and Swampert are, I actually like Sceptile a fair bit and over the years it's actually replaced Blaziken as my second-favourite Hoenn starter, having gone through several runs with it.

 5/6.

#255-257: Torchic, Combusken & Blaziken

• Types: Fire [Torchic], Fire/Fighting [Combusken/Blaziken]
• Japanese names: Achamo, Wakashamo, Bashamo
• Categories: Chick [Torchic], Young Fowl [Combusken], Blaze [Blaziken]

See, I used to really like Blaziken as a kid. And I still do.... just probably not quite as much as I used to. But I've grown way,  way too fond of little Torchic that sometimes I feel bad evolving it to its final form. Because Torchic is just so fucking adorable, a baby chicken-bird with near-rudimentary arm-wings, and just so absolutely precious in both anime and games with how it is tottering about. It's easily one of the more popular starter Pokemon due to its appearance alone, which is a shame that it ends up deviating so much as it evolves. Apparently a fire-breathing chicken called Basan exists in Japanese culture, which is neat. Torchic was also prominently featured in the anime and manga, partnered with main female character May in the anime and basically acts as the 'cute' mascot. I can't really blame them, Torchic is pretty cute!

 5/6 for Torchic.

And then we get Combusken, which is truly the most awkward-looking middle-stage evolution among all the starters that have came before and have came after. From the gigantic bulb-like thighs to the splayed-out airplane arms with weird claws, to the strangely phallic head and a bill that looks pretty strange, I've always disliked Combusken, and only really forgave it because it's a stepping stone from the adorable Torchic to the badass Blaziken. It's also in Combusken that we start to realize that the line is based on chickens. Kung fu chickens, in fact, since Combusken becomes a Fire/Fighting type. It's a neat pun on the whole concept of cock-fighting, and considering Pokemon as a franchise is often compared to cock-fighting... well, I guess it's appropriate? Combusken itself is honestly boring and honestly if it's standalone I'd complain about it much more... especially considering that it unfortunately resembles a completely different definition of a cock.

 2/6.

Blaziken is a pokemon that I had to see in action in the anime, manga and games to really appreciate. When I first saw its official artwork on the side of a TCG booster pack, I was dumbfounded to see what a dumb-looking thing it is. What are those white-hair-things that taper backwards? Why are its legs look like weird furry pillars? Why does it have a gundam V-crest on its forehead? Of course, Blaziken in any sort of animated version ends up being cool. It's often characterized as an over-the-top fighter, uppercutting enemies and doing some crazy burning kicks that wouldn't look out of place in a high-blooded manga like JoJo's Bizarre Adventure or Fist of the North Star. A humanoid chicken with the ability to wreath its chicken-leg-arms in flame, delivering powerful kicks (the move Blaze Kick used to be unique to Blaziken), is pretty damn neat, and I end up really warming up to it due to its role in the Pokemon Adventures manga, and especially its incarnation in the Pokken games where it just goes ATATATATATATATATATA in hilariously hammy fashion.

It's highly popular in the community for good reason. It's pretty cool, as far as humanoid Pokemon go, and I've always loved humanoid Pokemon that looked somewhat animalistic too. Again, while the main official artwork might be a little underwhelming, Blaziken has stolen my heart as soon as I first evolved my horrible-looking Combusken in my Ruby playthrough. Perhaps it's just that I've been used to it over time, or that the weird hair-wing things aren't as weird as they look in other poses... eh. While I really wished they incorporated more chicken-esque aspects to it instead of making it look like a generic overdesigned shonen enemy, Blaziken skirts the line enough between merely being complex and cluttered. I do feel that as an evolutionary line, these three are perhaps one of the least smooth evolution, design-wise, among the starters. Overall, despite my criticism, I am actually very much fond of this fire chicken.

 4/6.

#258-260: Mudkip, Marshtomp & Swampert

• Types: Water [Mudkip], Water/Ground [Marshtomp/Swampert]
• Japanese names: Mizugoro, Numakuro, Raguraji
• Categories: Mud Fish [all three]

"Do u liek mudkips?" is a now-rarely seen meme... but, yes, I do like Mudkip. It is my most often-picked starter Pokemon in the Hoenn games, and I played variations of the Hoenn games more than any other generation. And for the most part, it's simply because Mudkip is just so fucking adorable. And I have nothing towards Treecko or Torchic, since I love them both as well, and both their final forms are pretty damn cool... but I've always loved Mudkip, Marshtomp and Swampert. They're all adorable while both Marshtomp and Swampert look like they can kick ass without losing the adorableness like so many other Pokemon do (looking at you, Blaziken, with your 110% badassery). 

Mudkip takes an already interesting animal, the mudskipper -- amphibian bony fishes that can live and move out of water with rudimentary leg-like fins. Obviously the designers took a lot of liberties with Mudkip, as other than being found in swamps and having fins, Mudkip looks more like a weird cute frog or newt baby more than a mudskipper fish. Still, I've always thought that it added to Mudkip's charm, because just look at that precious derpy-ass face. Between its eyes and its huge head-fin and its orange cheeks, I've always loved Mudkip. The adorableness of Brock's Mudkip and Ruby's Zuzu in the anime and manga respectively honestly solidified Mudkip as my absolute favourite in a generation where I'm real big fans of Blaziken and Sceptile as well. In fact, generation III and I might be the only generations where I can unironically say that I truly love all three starters. Mudkip just ends up being the favoured child. Its dex entries note that it senses stuff with its fins, and actually has the strength to lift boulders and crush rocks, noting that even as a kid Mudkip's destined to become something far more powerful than just an adorable frog-fish baby.

Also, shiny Mudkip is a lovely, lovely shade of pinkish-purple. How can you not adore him? You can just imagine this little smiling buddy just trotting along with his precious little legs behind you. I feel like he gets along with fellow huge-smiley-face-adorable-swamp-creature Wooper, because like Wooper, Mudkip evolves into a Water/Ground Pokemon, Marshtomp.

Marshtomp is another one that I have a soft spot for, although I kind of am somewhat pissed that it ends up going to a green-blue shade for no real reason, while both Mudkip and Swampert share the same shade of blue. Still, I have always liked the jolliness of Marshtomp's face (even though the current 3D model has caused him to be the spawn of a new meme where Marshtomp's face is the "face of no mercy" or some shit like that). He's just so happy to stand on two legs! His fins are more pronounced and his tail's split into two, and it's far more readily adapted to land life, and likes the mud a lot. While perhaps nowhere as cool-looking as the likes of Charmeleon or Grovyle, Marshtomp always looks pretty happy and jolly with its bwaaaa face and its happy hands and I love him. Marshtomp and Swampert used to be the only users of Muddy Water (i.e. a dirtier Surf) but they've learned to share it with other muddy, swampy Pokemon like their buddy Quagsire. 

And then he evolves into the burly Swampert, which just looks like a monster. It has that awesome mixture of looking like a brute while still looking cute enough, and I've always sort of preferred more un-traditional definitions of cool, which in retrospect is probably my favourite starters tend to deviate to the likes of Torterra, Swampert and Venusaur. Swampert is a neat creature that's essentially a bigger Mudkip, but with Marshtomp's more developed arms. It looks like it tends to spend its time on all fours, but can go bipedal when needed. Also loved how the little eyes are part of the head-fins. Always loved how the dex entries like to play up Swampert's strength and the insistence that it's faster than a jet ski when swimming, and that it can break rocks with a single punch. And as someone who's used Swampert a lot, the bugger is a pretty hard-hitting monster. Always been a big fan of Swampert, and always will be. One of the pokemon among the many of the ones I like that I have such a strong, strong attachment to.

 6/6.

#261-262: Poochyena & Mightyena

• Types: Dark [both]
• Japanese names: Pochiena, Guraena
• Categories: Bite [both]

From the third generation onwards, we'll get two 'early-game mammals' per game, and one of them tends to not be a pure Normal-type. Poochyena is the first of this trend, with it and its evolution Mightyena both being pure Dark-types. While a simple look at them might suggest that they're simply a dog and a wolf, Poochyena and Mightyena are in fact based upon hyenas, which are actually closely related to cats... their faces just look like dogs, especially the brown hyena. Taxonomy! It's confusing sometimes. Regardless, though, Poochyena is an adorably, scruffy little buddy that definitely looks like what a Dark-type (or asshole-type) mammal would be. It is known as the 'bite pokemon', and it chomps down on its prey and hunts them to exhaustion, and I've always enjoyed how it looked so fierce yet still adorable. I'm a big dog person, of course, which might lead to my own bias towards liking Poochyena, but it is a neat-looking little hyena pup. And while hyenas tend to be characterized as 'villainous' animals (thanks, Disney) I do appreciate that neither Poochyena or Mightyena portray hyenas as scavengers -- actual hyenas are pack hunters, and they don't scavenge any more than lions do.

These two, incidentally, are one of the very first third-generation Pokemon I've seen, popping out of that aforementioned booster pack I bought without any knowledge of the third generation. I was like "a dark-type wolf Pokemon? Neat!" This was, bby the way, fresh off the second generation, where Dark is still hyped up as such a big deal. Nowadays Dark's one of the more common types.  And considering how much the third generation shaped me as a fan of this franchise, I have definitely something to owe to these pups. Shame that they were extra-shit in the Generation III games due to having a powerful physical stats, while Dark-type moves were all considered Special. 

Poochyena evolves into Mightyena, which... which honestly is far too lupine to really make me instantly go 'yep, that's a hyena' if not for the name. Its dex entries even highlight traditionally lupine features like being loyal to its 'alpha' and skilled trainers. And honestly, that's okay in my books -- keeping it ambiguous and taking traits of different beasts is neat. It's a simple design appropriate for a more badass, grown-up version of the cute little shaggy pup you captured in your first route. It's neat, and I really like how they managed to make Mightyena's black coat look both ruffled yet somewhat majestic. I'm not the biggest fan of the weird markings around Mightyena's eyes that resemble weird tattoos, but the alternative is making him just become a boring cartoon dog, and Mightyena already somewhat looks like a boring cartoon dog even with those markings, so. Overall, a pretty neatly drawn pair of hyena-dogs. 

 4/6.

#263-264: Zigzagoon & Linoone

• Types: Normal [both]
• Japanese names: Jiguzaguma, Massuguma
• Categories: Tiny Raccoon [Zigzagoon], Rushing [Linoone]

This is the more traditional normal-type rodent, and we get a more down-to-earth one in Zigzagoon, which is a fun little raccoon with furs that spike outwards in a zig-zag pattern. It always runs in a zig-zag pattern, hence its name, which I always loved as a little detail that sets it apart from actual real-life raccoons, something that I thought was a brilliant little addition without being too fancy for an early-game Pokemon. I've always liked Zigzagoon a bit more over many other early-game route Pokemon, simply because of how clean the design is. And while Zigzagoon isn't the only Pokemon with the ability Pickup, it was the first that I experienced the ability with, and I loved the idea of this little bastard trailing behind me and stealing things from people's trash or something like that. We've dabbled on Abilities in the past, but the third generation's big improvement, beyond graphical and mechanical stuff, is the addition of Abilities for every single pokemon -- something that'll shape the generations to come.

Zigzagoon evolves into Linoone, which is a mean-looking bastard that, instead of running in a zig-zag line, it runs in a straight one and can only turn at sharp, right angles. It also has really sharp, mean-looking claws. Linoone is based on some sort of a weasel or mongoose, and it looks fierce yet still somewhat cool, a neat, stark contrast to the cute-and-unthreatening-housepet Furret and the feral-rabies-spreading-screeching-scum Raticate. Linoone isn't my cup of tea because while I'm inherently appealed by dogs like Mightyena I don't care much for rodents, but I appreciate Linoone and Zigzagoon for what they are -- a cute normal-type rodent that evolves into a cooler one. Nothing particularly impressive, but it doesn't do anything really wrong either.

 3/6.

#265-269: Wurmple, Silcoon, Beautifly, Cascoon & Dustox

• Types: Bug [Wurmple/Silcoon/Cascoon], Bug/Flying [Beautifly], Bug/Poison [Dustox]
• Japanese names: Kemusso, Karasarisu, Agehanto, Mayurudo, Dokukeiru
• Categories: Worm [Wurmple], Cocoon [Silcoon/Cascoon], Butterfly [Beautifly], Poison Moth [Dustox]

Instead of having two competing Bug-types, one of which is more heroic and cute and the other all mean and stingy and poisonous (Caterpie/Ledyba vs Weedle/Spinarak in the past two generations), the third generation made the 'cute flying' early-route bug and the 'evil poison' early-route bug part of the same evolutionary line. They all start off as Wurmple, an adorably spiky little caterpillar that evolves into one of two pupal stages depending on its own personality value (i.e. basically random), Silcoon or Cascoon, which will determine the final form that it takes. Wurmple looks neat, taking a different trope of caterpillar compared to the likes of Caterpie, being spiky and looks like it's the type of caterpillar that will make your arm itchy by touching it. Also love the two stingers on its tail, although I'm not sure about the weird butt-mouth. It's not as bad as Magmar's butt-head since these actually look like they belong on an insect face as some sort of pedipalp deal, but eh.

I remembered the Wurmple line being somewhat controversial because they're just rehashes of the same caterpillar-pupa-butterfly deal that Caterpie was in the first generation, but I've always thought that it's kinda neat for each region to have its own ecology. A lot of people look at the later-generation Pokemon and go "pfft, do we need another Caterpie or Pidgey?" and my answer to that is.... yes. As long as they're drawn well, yes. Of course Hoenn will have Wurmples and Zigzagoons and Taillows instead of Caterpies, Rattatas and Pidgeys. It's a whole different region!

Silcoon and Cascoon are pretty similar, with the differences being their colour and eyes. Silcoon is white and looks like it's tired of life and just really need a proper night's sleep, while Cascoon just looks just so fucking goddamn angry at the world. I've always loved how the older sprites and the official artwork shows that Silcoon and Cascoon both have 'spikes'.  Or, well, silk anchors to the branches and leaves around it, something real butterfly and moth pupae often have. Unfortunately, for some bizarre reason, despite Silcoon and Cascoon all being consistently portrayed with 'spikes', since the transition to 3D, they are just shown as weird spheres with the spike-things retracted. Which is not a design choice I'm particularly fond of. I mean, it's not like this has ever stopped them from animating Diglett's little dirt pile, right? Like, I get it, the anime does it... but I didn't like it in the anime either. 

While Silcoon's just your boring old cocoon, I've always loved the description of Cascoon never forgetting anyone who attacks it while it's in its helpless pupal stage, wanting to hunt down whoever did it for payback once it has emerged as a Dustox. Also love how Silcoon and Cascoon adapt different types of butterfly/moth pupae, being different from what they did with Metapod. 

Silcoon evolves into the Bug/Flying Beautifly, this generation's version of Butterfree and it's based very evidently on the swallowtail butterfly due to the forked hind-wings. Beautifly is also very colourful, with its wings having a neat mixture of yellows, reds and blues. Combine that to the neat fun of having more humanoid eyes mixed with the very anatomically-accurate-to-real-life curled proboscis, and Beautifly actually makes a better butterfly pokemon than Butterfree ever did. Of course, you'd think that Beautifly is a happy little butterfly buddy that drinks nectar and spreads pollen, right? It's so cute, and friendly, and in the anime it's a happy butterfly dude, but... "despite its appearance, it has an aggressive nature. It attacks by jabbing with its long, thin mouth to drain the prey's fluids." So yeah. This adorable little beauty is a psychotic, territorial murderer that literally drinks the blood and fluids of its enemies, actually making Beautifly the more brutal one out of the pair. I've always loved this bit of detail, and while it's all happy and friendly in the anime, Beautifly being a cute face hiding a monstrous personality is present even in its Japanese name, Agehunt. Yeah, this butterfly hunts.

Beautifly is a Pokemon that I've never paid that much attention to, having already had a first love in early-route bugs in Butterfree... but one that I grew to appreciate so much during a relatively recent Nuzlocke of Pokemon Sapphire. One of my longest-running monsters is a Beautifly (I think he's named Aizen) who surprisingly kicks a lot of ass. So yeah, thanks, Nuzlocke challenges, for making me appreciate this previously-under-appreciated pokemon.

Cascoon, meanwhile, evolves into the Bug/Poison Dustox, adapting different traits of months compared to Venomoth -- who honestly is more of a butterfly, really. See, the easiest way to differentiate butterflies and moths is to see how they fold their wings, and Venomoth folds his wings similar to butterflies. So Dustox is actually our first real moth Pokemon. Dustox, like real moths, are easily drawn to light, have powerful radar-antennae, likes to destroy trees when feeding and spreads toxic dust. It's neat, and it is apparently based on Actias artemis, the Japanese moon moth. I guess so? I do like Dustox a lot, from its funky triple-dotted eyes to its fat moth antennae, and its fan-like wings. Dustox's neat, but I've never really taken all that much to him. I think it's the amount of colours for what's supposed to be a more drab Pokemon. The purples and greens clash too much, I think, and looking at shiny Dustox, who simply replaces the greens with yellows, it's such a shame the designers didn't go that way instead.

Overall, a bunch of neat bugs that look both natural enough to be early-route Pokemon, but at the same time differs enough to be unique.

 5/6.

#270-272: Lotad, Lombre & Ludicolo

• Types: Water/Grass [all three]
• Japanese names: Hasubo, Hasuburero, Runpappa
• Categories: Water Weed [Lotad], Jolly [Lombre], Carefree [Ludicolo]

After we pass through most of the early-route essentials (well, there's Taillow as the early-route bird) we quickly go into a particularly hilarious critter with the unique typing of Water/Grass. It's actually surprising that this is the case -- we never really had any other aquatic plants other than this lilypad? Anyway, I love Lotad. It's one that I encountered very early on in my first playthrough of Sapphire (Lotad's Sapphire-exclusive), just outside of Petalburg City, and I did a brief double take since I was playing the game relatively blind, and I was like "what the fuck is this thing?" It's a cute little... weird blob with a duck face, the most adorable pair of beady eyes, stumpy legs and a huge lily pad on its head. I captured one and it became one of my party members for that first playthrough of Sapphire. It's a really weird little bugger, with a weird type combination, and we get some neat details from future pokedexes that it likes to ferry smaller Pokemon that couldn't swim. According to the Sapphire dex, apparently it used to dwell on land until the leaf on its head became too heavy and it returns into the water.

 5/6. Lotad is a good boy!

Lotad quickly evolves into Lombre, which, despite the slightly-racist connotation that tries to pull off a pun with 'sombrero' and ends up like it's calling Lombre a 'hombre', is obviously less based on a particular race, but rather a Kappa. Not the horribly dumb-sounding meme, but the river spirit in Japanese culture commonly portrayed in many works of fiction. Kappas are already almost-always depicted with a dish filled with water on its head, but Lombre combines this with the whole lilypad thing to make itself a Water/Grass creature. Lombre is as mischievous as the kappa it's based on, apparently being dicks and pulling the fishing liens of fisherman just to fuck with them. Alas, while a lilypad kappa monster is a great concept, the execution is definitely suspect. Lombre's face is just straight-up ugly and not in the charming way, and one of the bigger complaints of Generation III is how artificial some of its colour schemes look. And with Lombre's sharp edges in how the green parts of its body cuts off like some sort of weird spandex suit, I can't disagree with that. Also not a big fan of its weird mouth, those weird nub-ears, and the awkward hands.

Also, despite half of its dex entries emphasizing that Lombres are active at night (like real-life kappas), Lombre has never been time-zone specific. It's a huge, huge loss in my book, because Generation III largely dropped pokemon appearing depending on the time of the day, and while it returns in subsequent games Lombre is never affected by it.

 2/6 for Lombre.

Once exposed to a Water Stone, Lombre evolves into the hilarious Ludicolo, one of the downright happiest-looking pokemon in existence. It's a weird dancing pineapple-duck-thing with far, far more undeniable Mexican inspiration to it, but god dang just looking at this thing and imagining it waddle back and forth just makes me happy. I mean, it might just be Miror B from Pokemon Colosseum that led me to really love this dumb thing. I mean, while I'm slightly disappointed that they're dropping the obvious kappa monster aesthetic that Lombre has, Ludicolo's happy face is just so infectiously joyful that I can't hate it. It's just so festive and so happy to be dancing and alive and be weird. There's perhaps something that could've been done better here, but for the most part I honestly find it such a weird and happy-looking thing, even if it probably has a wee bit too much going on in a simple design. It works, though, in the same sort of style that Magmar does. It's not my favourite, but I can't deny that I do like it.

 4/6 for Ludicolo.

#273-275: Seedot, Nuzleaf & Shiftry

• Types: Grass [Seedot], Grass/Dark [Nuzleaf/Shiftry]
• Japanese names: Tanebo, Konohana, Datengu
• Categories: Acorn [Seedot], Malicious [Nuzleaf], Wicked [Shiftry]

The Seedot line is the opposite-game rivals to Lotad's line, with Seedot being exclusive to Ruby and Lotad being exclusive to Sapphire. And while Lombre and Ludicolo are (ostensibly) based on the traditional Japanese yokai Kappa, Seedot's evolutions are based on another, equally-famous kappa, the tengu (I've seen tengu translated as 'mountain goblin' in many English-translated mangas). But just like the Lotad line, Seedot starts off as a innocuous living plant. In its case, Seedot is an acorn with the most adorable little feet and a pair of weird eyes that perhaps rank as my favourite among all Pokemon eyes. It just looks so adorable, and is often portrayed in various sources as using the top of its head to hang down from branches and then surprising unsuspecting fools by dropping down.

 5/6 for Seedot. I like Seedot. 

Seedot evolves, particularly drastically, into Nuzleaf, a Grass/Dark type that is quickly obviously some sort of tengu (or, well, some sort of goblin or forest sprite for those less aware of Japanese culture). And... I'm not gonna lie, it's a bit of a jarring evolution and other than the association with plants and their brown colour scheme, I wouldn't have guessed that Seedot evolved into Nuzleaf. Nuzleaf does play on the tengu fantasy pretty well, adapting the more humanoid depictions of the Tengu, with its sinister nature reflected in its Dark-typing, while both the tengu's iconic long nose and wind-manipulating abilities are also adapted. It's not my favourite design, though, with those weird nipples being not particularly necessary, and I've never been a fan of the huge bulb-thighs that the likes of Nuzleaf and Combusken have. I do like how there's a bit of a Pinocchio deal going on with Nuzleaf hating having its nose be pinched, and apparently like real tengus, Nuzleaf likes to play flute-like songs with leaves. Over the years I've grown to appreciate Nuzleaf's weird mark-face a bit better, and if you've asked a younger me about Nuzleaf I'd have nothing but vitriol. Now I'm just mostly neutral.

Like Lombre, Nuzleaf reaches its final form via exposure to a stone, specifically the Leaf Stone, and it's far, far more apparent how tengu-based Shiftry is. Between the far more sinister face, the long, flowing hair, the clickety-clack Japanese sandals and the fan-like arms, Shiftry is a fierce-looking design that honestly looks quite neat. I've never really been that big of a fan of Shiftry, but it's one of those that's just on the cusp of going from "neat design" to "holy shit I love this", I think. Shiftry definitely pulls off a lot of tengu stuff, with all its anime and manga appearances portraying him as a powerful forest spirit creating giant typhoons and hurricanes with its fan-arms. It's a neat, cool-looking evil forest goblin, and I don't mind it.

 3/6, bordering on 4/6.

#276-277: Taillow & Swellow

• Types: Normal/Flying [both]
• Japanese names: Subame, Osubame
• Categories: Tiny Swallow [Taillow], Swallow [Swellow]

The third generation's early-route bird is a cute little swallow bird, with the iconic mainly-black-with-red-details that they are often depicted in Asian countries. There's honestly not really that much going on for good old Taillow, but it's a neat little design for a cute little bird. It's a scrappy bird that will challenge Skarmories if it has to for a meal, and apparently really likes crying at night. Its design I think doesn't quite communicate the same level of scrappy-ness that Pidgey and Spearow did, but it's a cute baby bird. I don't really have much to say here. Taillow does show up early enough in Pokemon's history that it ends up coming off as a neat contrast to the likes of Pidgey, Spearow, Hoothoot and the other small birds, being in sort of that middle ground between scrappy and cute. A couple generations down the line the regional birds really have to kind of work to be distinctive.

Taillow evolves into Swellow, which, like how it went with Poochyena, essentially just turns Taillow into a bigger, scarier and slightly-more-detailed version of itself. But where Mightyena is based in part on real adult hyenas, Swellow takes on traits of many other birds-of-prey instead of just being, y'know, a swallow, keeping in tone with the trend started by Pidgeot of all early route birds evolving into birds of prey. Swellow, unfortunately, doesn't really have much going on for it. It's just a fully-evolved Normal/Flying bird, and it's a fierce predator... and that's about it. It's got a neat, sleek design, but I've never honestly gotten that attached to Swellow. It's featured pretty heavily in the first few seasons of the anime, but like myself, Ash eventually replaced Swellow with some of the more interesting Hoenn Pokemon out there. It's neat enough for what it is, even if I'm never going to rate Swellow high among my own personal favourites. 

 3/6.

#278-279: Wingull & Pelipper

• Types: Water/Flying [both]
• Japanese names: Kyamome, Perippa
• Categories: Seagull [Wingull], Water Bird [Pelipper]

I've never quite got the vile hatred that people have for Pelipper, but I definitely don't like it. "Hate" is perhaps a bit too strong of a word, and I think I feel towards Wingull and Pelipper the way most people feel about Zubat (if you missed my first-generation reviews... I love Zubat). See, Hoenn is infamous for its large stretches of waterways, with nearly half of the region being just the sea... and Wingull is really, really numerous in Hoenn. Wingull's honestly just a simple version of a seagull, with its head and body lumped into a cute package with some neat blue stripes. Wingull is also Water/Flying, a version of that type combination that makes far, far more sense than Gyarados. I don't really have much to say about Wingull... they're basically like real-life seagulls. They swarm a lot, they screech, and they're not super-interesting.


Wingull evolves into a completely different sea bird, the pelican. Most bird pokemon will actually change into a bird based on a different real-life species when they evolve, and perhaps none are as obvious as Pelipper, becoming a big, fat pelican. The head-body trend continues here, except it looks a fair bit more awkward with Pelipper's massive mouth. It's has weird, weird eyes that I like, and I do kinda like its weird wings, but that huge mouth is just so strange. Hell, I think I picked up an issue of the gag-manga Pokemon starring a Clefairy where they mistook Pelipper for a toilet. And honestly? I think they didn't really do that much with this line other than to make it look weird with the whole "pelican with a HUGE mouth" deal, and the dex entries don't make Pelippers to be any more interesting than its real-life counterpart. Honestly, it's just really bland, and combining it with its sheer volume in the region of Hoenn (and other regions, too, eventually) I just find it kind of blending with a lot of the early birds of other regions. I have grown to appreciate Wingull and Pelipper more over the years, but these aren't going to be a species that I particularly love.

 4/6.

#280-282: Ralts, Kirlia & Gardevoir

• Types: Psychic/Fairy [all three, Psychic prior to Generation VI]
• Japanese names: Rarutosu, Kiruria, Sanaito
• Categories: Feeling [Ralts], Emotion [Kirlia], Embrace [Gardevoir]

See, if you've read my reviews, you'll probably see a trend that I'm not the biggest fan of humanoid-shaped Pokemon. They tend to look weird and uncanny, and while there are some exceptions to the rule, for the most part the best I can say about the more overtly humanoid ones is that they're tolerable. I've softened my stance on that somewhat over the years, but the first humanoid Pokemon that I really, really liked was Ralts and his evolution line. Gardevoir gets a lot of bad rep in the Pokemon community by the sheer amount of hentai made about her (rule of thumb: never ever google Gardevoir without safe-search on) but I've always found Gardevoir to look more hauntingly weird and graceful more than a lust-object, and as a kid I've found Gardevoir to be more akin to the likes of Banette than Hitmonchan. Plus, as a kid I've always wanted an Alakazam (or really, any super-powerful Psychic-type) but never quite managed to get one because none of my friends had a Link Cable. The third generation finally allowed me to realize that fantasy by introducing Gardevoir, a three-stage pure-Psychic type that focuses more on an 'empath' theme than on the 'esper' theme that Abra's line does.

Ralts is a weird little humanoid with a green hat and two red horns, and the combination of white, green and red is just so striking. It does have some weirdness to its design, like the constantly-bent legs and how they weirdly trail off, but it does look pretty cute, as some sort of shuffling, socially-awkward psychic baby. Ralts, like Abra, is likely to teleport away if you find one in the wild, and it's a rare encounter in the early-game routes... but its existence is actually shown to you when one of the recurring characters, Wally, who gets used as the capture tutorial ends up catching Ralts in that route. Ralts gets a fair bit of screentime as a highly plot-relevant Pokemon in the Ruby/Sapphire manga, and I do find it neat that it senses people's emotions with its horns and approaches those with good feelings. Oh, and while the specificness of this line's inspiration isn't super clear, with the sixth generation, the entire evolutionary line is retconned into Psychic/Fairy. So they're like, psychic pixies or elves or something? Neat.


Ralts evolves into Kirlia, who looks far more humanoid, with the horns moving to the side and the green cap ending up looking like hair. Kirlia also gets a little dress-deal going on, and constantly twirls around like it's dancing, all the while being able to create "rips through dimensions and see the future" and "create images of non-existent scenery". The latter is, of course, a reference to kirlian photography that Kirlia draws its name from. And while Kirlia might look distinctively feminine, the entire line exists in a male to female ratio of exactly 1:1. In fact, while I have traveled with a Ralts in my playthroughs of Sapphire, Emerald, Y and Alpha Sapphire, three times out of four the Ralts has been a dude. 


Kirlia then evolves, finally, into Gardevoir. Considering the huge focus on how this Pokemon bonds to its trainer as some sort of psychic guardian angel, I've always found it a huge missed opportunity that Kirlia doesn't evolve into Gardevoir via a friendship evolution. But Gardevoir always looked cool to me, a neat combination of grace and power that made me really excited when my first Kirlia evolved into a Gardevoir and starts mind-blasting everyone with her psychic powers. It's a neat, graceful design that when I first saw it, I thought she just doesn't have a lower body beyond a fluttering dress, becoming some sort of cool non-evil banshee. She actually has long stick-like green legs under all that. I've always found Gardevoir to be cool, from the freakishly alien piece of red... thing... that stabs through her heart, and her devotion to her trainer, being a fierce bodyguard that, when threatened is able to create a black hole. That's pretty hardcore.

Yeah, definitely love (not in the creepy way) the design behind the entire line. And I've used it enough times that I actually found it super-weird when I play through any Hoenn game without one. I have been kind of admittedly burnt out on the line for a while, but the Ralts line is definitely still one of my favourite designs in Pokemon.

 6/6.

#283-284: Surskit & Masquerain

• Types: Bug/Water [Surskit], Bug/Flying [Masquerain]
• Japanese names: Ametama, Amemosu
• Categories: Pond Skater [Surskit], Eyeball [Masquerain]

Surskit is the only Bug/Water type until the seventh generation, which I thought was cool. Less cool was the fact that it drops the unique Bug/Water combination to become Bug/Flying, which, while sort of makes sense thanks to its life cycle... still makes me feel like it's a bit of a wasted opportunity. Surskit is based on awater strider (Gerridae family), those bugs that have thin, spread legs that allow it to walk on the surface of water, and it's a pretty cool gimmick to turn into a bug pokemon. Surskit only has four legs, but it does honestly have some basis in nature, with most water striders having two particularly long legs to walk on water, with the front two legs being short to help it feed. It's essentially a cute little simplified bug with eyes and a raindrop-shaped main body, and a weird... yellow horn? The dex tells us that the tip of the head secretes a thick, sugary syrup or honey, so that's... honey? Huh. Surskit recently saw a fair bit of usage in the seventh generation, being portrayed as a bit of a counterpart with the newly-introduced Water/Bug Dewpider, apparently fighting for territory, and the two species appearing on opposite times of the day.


Surskit's adult form is Masquerain, something that surprised me because I didn't think the two were related when I first saw the two of them side-by-side in a poster. Hell, they don't even share any same colours! But oh well. Masquerain is a Bug/Flying Pokemon that uses its wings antennas, which ressemble a pair of angry eyes to scare predators off, just like some real-life moths and butterflies. I do like how Surskit's four long legs have degenerated into little, constantly-vibrating wings that kind of help it helicopter around. The pokedex actually emphasizes that the four little white things are wings, and the huge eye-patterened bits are actually antennae. So delightfully weird.

I kind of am torn about Masquerain -- on one hand, it kind of loses everything about Surskit that makes it unique. But on the other hand, Masquerain is just such a weirdly unique take on an insect. It's another Scyther/Scizor situation, where I like both designs, but they're so different that the evolution takes away something from the equation. Masquerain is a pretty neat design, with such a bizarre combination of the likes of dragonflies in how it flies, combined with a butterfly's eyespot wings and a body shaped like something else... it's one of the most unique bug designs, and I can't really fault it. Apparently Nintendo/Gamefreak thinks so too, because unexpectedly, Masquerain was buffed by a full 40 stat points in the seventh generation, giving it the little oomph it needs from being a forgettable joke to somewhat-usable.

 4/6.

#285-286: Shroomish & Breloom

• Types: Grass [Shroomish], Grass/Fighting [Breloom]
• Japanese names: Kinokoko, Kinogassa
• Categories: Mushroom [both]

Oh god, I love Shroomish. It just looks so angry and pissed off, with that absolutely hilariously unimpressed and angry face. It's a pure-Grass type, and it's like this weird cross between a goomba and a fungal pod, and I've always found it to be hilariously weird and endearing with its two piddly legs and its simple colour scheme. It's our first fungal Pokemon since Paras, and Shroomish is characterized as a combination of a real-life fungus and a bottom-feeder in a forest ecosystem, living in the detritus of forests and feeding on compost, and loving to appear after a rain. With all the focus that the dex puts on its spores, I genuinely thought this dude was Grass/Poison for a while. It's not, though.

Shroomish goes through one of the most bizarre and extreme evolutions that doesn't involve a dumb-looking fish evolving into a sea serpent, turning from what looks like Oddish's distant cousin into a fungus dinosaur. A kung-fu fungus dinosaur. Or a fungus kangaroo? That's right, I was so hilariously tickled when I evolved a Shroomish into a Breloom for the first time and found out that it's not pure-Grass or Grass/Poison... but Grass/Fighting. I've never given the Fighting type much attention in the past two generations other than Poliwrath, and this generation gave us both a kung-fu fire chicken and a kung-fu mushroom dinosaur?

Shroomish's evolution to Breloom might seem like it needed some sort of middle stage explaining what the fuck is going on, but I'm such a big fan of Breloom that I honestly don't care. From the mushroom cap hat, to the weird fake-eyes on its cap, to its dinosaurian build... it perhaps has one or two things too much going on for it -- I could do without the weird neck-frill things, for example -- but Breloom is just so pleasant, and the combination of green, pale-yellow and red really stands out very well. Best of all, one of the biggest "OOOOH" things when exploring the third generation of Pokemon was when I realized that Breloom's piddly T-rex arms are actually attached to a pair of vine-arms, meaning that it can lengthen its arms to deliver powerful punches tipped with two mean-looking claws. I kinda wish the hands end in some sort of Ledian-style boxing gloves to make the 'fighting' bit more prominent, but on the same token, it's one that I don't really get hung up upon. It's even mentioned in the pokedex entries. Also, apparently the seeds on its tail are poisonous spores? While I've always been a big fan of learning the weird creatures both real and mythological that Pokemon are inspired from, Breloom is just a weird kung-fu mushroom raptor that doesn't really have much explanation beyond that, and I love it.

Breloom is just so delightfully weird, and I've always loved it because of that, having used one in some playthroughs of Hoenn games both causal and Nuzlocked. Definitely a huge fan of these two.

 5/6.

#287-289: Slakoth, Vigoroth & Slaking

• Types: Normal [all three]
• Japanese names: Namakero, Yarukimono, Kekkingu
• Categories: Slacker [Slakoth], Wild Monkey [Vigoroth], Lazy [Slaking]

The Slakoth line is actually pretty cool, and I've always appreciated Hoenn's Petalburg Forest for actually having a fairly large selection of Pokemon compared to Viridian and Ilex, and one of the uncommon encounters is Slakoth, whose two evolved forms would serve as the mighty signature Pokemon of your dad, Norman. Yeah, Ruby/Sapphire had your dad be a gym leader and it's a rightfully awesome moment when you finally kick his ass.  Considering how generic many of the sixth and seventh generation gym leaders are, I'll always remember Vigoroth and Slaking fondly for being part of a very memorable boss fight.

But the first stage of Slaking is Slakoth, which is a sloth that slacks off. Sloths are weird and adorable and is one of the seven deadly sins of man, and Slakoth is just, well, a cartoon sloth. It's a very lazy bugger who sleeps all the time and doesn't like to move, like a real life sloth... which is reflected in it's ability, Truant, which allows Slakoth to move every other turn. It's hilarious, and a very neat way to work in a Pokemon's biology into actual gameplay. The best thing of the third generation is that it allows Pokemon to feel so much more unique without limiting their moveset the way they did with Ditto and Wobbuffet.

Slakoth then unexpectedly evolves into Vigoroth... and I've honestly always thought that Vigoroth and Slaking are two alternate evolutions for Slakoth, one where it continues being lazy and oen where it doesn't. It's a huge, huge surprise to realize that Vigoroth is actually the middle stage, and that, yeah, as weird as it sounds, Slakoth goes from lazy to insanely hyper-aggressive back to lazy. It's really weird, and to this day the progression is perhaps one of my least favourites. Which is a goddamn shame, because I really love the designs of these Pokemon.

Vigoroth and Slaking aren't just sloths, but they take a lot more inspiration from monkeys and apes, with Vigoroth representing like a screeching, wild baboon or mandrill, complete with a baboon's red ass. Vigoroth looks pretty horrifyingly feral, and a pretty great design, transplanting the sloth's two claws onto the arms of a creature that looks like it wants to rip your face off. Vigoroth is the exact polar opposite of Slakoth, where it's noted that "its stress level rises if it's not moving constantly" and its heart beats ten times faster. 

And then it evolves into Slaking, "the world's laziest Pokemon", who loses all traits of the sloth and fully becomes like a lazy orangutan creature with a hideous pig-face and constantly scratching its belly. It regains Slakoth's Truant ability, and while it hits like a truck with an Attack stat that rivals some legendaries (hence why Norman's a wee bit difficult) but its crippling ability makes it very impractical to use. It's a neat concept, and the design, I suppose, communicates the dirty, lazy fat ape concept really well. At least the original third-generation sprites gave Slaking a sprite that's roaring, making it look somewhat fierce. The fifth generation and the 3D models ape (heh) the official artwork, while the fourth has it pick its nose. Overall, while I don't mind Slaking, I do feel like the line as a whole would've worked a bit better as a split evolution or something. 

 3/6.

#292-292: Nincada, Ninjask & Shedinja

• Types: Bug/Ground [Nincada], Bug/Flying [Ninjask], Bug/Ghost [Shedinja]
• Japanese names: Tsuchinin, Tekkanin, Nukenin
• Categories: Trainee [Nincada], Ninja [Ninjask], Shed [Shedinja; Husk in Japanese]

Oooh yeah, these guys. I fucking love these guys. Nintendo's love for wacky bugs are really apparent in these games, and honestly I'm not sure if Pokemon is the reason I'm such a huge bug fan myself or if my bug fan was what made Pokemon super-enjoyable for me. Regardless, the Nincada trio is a pretty cool concept that I am so glad exists, and I kind of flipped out the first time I saw them. Nincada is a pretty boring, neat adaptation of a cicada nymph, and looks pretty boring. It's white, it's got two gray huge front claws (which actual cicada nymphs are known for), and little rudimentary wings. It's Bug/Ground, which is a reference to how a cicada's nymph stage tends to stay underground. If Nincada's design looks somewhat familiar to an earlier Pokemon, you're absolutely right -- because Paras is also based on a cicada nymph. Nincada's free from all that brain-controlling fungus that has became the real thinking being behind the entity known as Paras, though, so Nincada is free to actually assume an evolved form that actually resembles a cicada.

Nincada evolves into Nnjask, becoming a fully-fledged adult cicada, with a glorious adaptation of a cicada's intricate head. It's Bug/Flying, and it looks pretty cool with a stylish combination of black, gold and red, and, as its name implies, it's a ninja bug. It doesn't quite go as over-the-top as Accelgor will in a couple of generations, with its design being essentially just a slightly-more-elaborate cicada. In fact, from the back I'd be hard-pressed to tell you that it's supposed to be a Pokemon and not just a real cicada. Instead, Ninjask prefers to show off its ninja skills in its insanely overwhelming speed stat, dethroning Electrode as the fastest Pokemon ever (and, at this point, still the fastest non-legendary, non-mega pokemon) and its previously-unique ability of 'Speed Boost', automatically raising its speed every turn. The dex notes that Ninjask moves so fast that it's thought to be invisible, and the only thing that marks its presence is its loud cicada noise. 

It's a pretty neat bug, but if that was all there is to Ninjask he's honestly no more interesting than, say, Beautifly or Masquerain. Which isn't to say that those bugs are bad -- but they're just... good bugs. This line pulls off all the stops in the weirdness factor with the fact that Nincada remains the only Pokemon to evolve into two final forms. And that doesn't mean you pick one -- Nincada literally splits into two Pokemon. What? How? That's just such an insanely awesome concept that adapts the cicada's life cycle, where after burrowing out of the ground, cicadas will molt from their nymph (Nincada) stage into their adult (Ninjask) stage, leaving behind the shell of their nymph stage (the exuvia) usually on trees. It's a neat bit and a staple for bug-hunting to find these discarded exoskeletons, apparently.

But see, for a Nincada, the shed skin doesn't just stay discarded. It comes back to life... as our very first Bug/Ghost Pokemon, the shed, discarded skin of a Nincada, complete with a goddamn hole on its back and remnants of what used to be claws, with that glorious little halo on its head. There's definitely a slight angel feel, because those weird-looking wings look more like the remnants of the rip on the exoskeleton's back as Ninjask crawls its way out. It gives this cool sense of a hollow, angelic shell piloted by a ghost of sorts. Behold Shedinja, and I cannot believe just how insanely awesome this evolutionary line is designed. 

To get a Shedinja, you must have an empty space and a free Pokeball when Nincada evolves, otherwise the shed skin just gets thrown away to the side, I guess. And Shedinja is just such a bizarre motherfucker that it ends up being another one of my instant favourites in the third generation. Shedinja is a very gimmicky pokemon, too, because it will always have only one hit point... but it has the 'Wonder Guard' ability, which means that unless it's hit by a super-effective move (which admittedly isn't that hard to do -- among Fire, Flying, Rock, Dark and Ghost, the first three in particular are very common) Shedinja cannot take damage. In practice it's useless competitively because things like entry hazards and weather effects kill Shedinja, but by god, it's so fun to use in a simple playthrough. While I tried to raise one many times back when I was a kid, I was kinda dumb about type matchups back then. I finally had the opportunity to have one in my Alpha Sapphire playthrough and it's so much fun to get him into fights where he literally cannot be harmed. There is a sense of glorious satisfaction when you realize that Steven Stone's mighty pseudo-legendary Mega Metagross can do nothing but helplessly watch as all its moves fizzle against this hollow bug shell.

The third generation has an explosion when it introduced ghost-types, which took me by surprise. In addition to Shedinja we have two more ghost-type lines and one more non-evolving ghost-type, which tickled my fancy. I always thought that ghosts and dragons were going to be one-offs thanks to how they were presented in the first two generations, and it was a treat to see one of my favourite types get so much more love... and the fact that one of those entries is the insanely bizarre Shedinja makes me just fall in love with this line so much. The third generation's dex entries also took a level in being nightmarish, too. Because, see, if an unmoving, unliving dead hollow shell of what-was-once-living wasn't creepy enough, the hole in its back will steal the soul of anyone who peers into its hollow body. And, of course, all Shedinja sprites show you that goddamn hole.

So yeah, from a purely creative standpoint, Shedinja is one of my absolute favourites. It adapts such a recognizable (yet still appropriately bizarre) animal that's culturally popular in Japan, but takes so much of a spin on it to make such a weird and creative creature like this. Easily one of my favourites. 

 6/6.

#293-295: Whismur, Loudred & Exploud

• Types: Normal [all three]
• Japanese names: Gonyonyo, Dogomu, Bakuongu
• Categories: Whisper [Whismur], Big Voice [Loudred], Loud Noise [Exploud]

Oh man, this evolution line is bizarre. It's a line that's entirely Normal-type, but unlike Slakoth or Zigzagoon, the Whismur line isn't apparently based on any real-life animal. In fact, the entire line is a weird monster species based on a sound theme, with Whismur being an adorable pink blob with gigantic ears resembling big beats, and I've always adored Whismur's weird plus-shaped eyes. Whismur gets an entire tunnel to itself in Ruby/Sapphire, and I absolutely love this little fucker. See, Whismur is a very skittish and cowardly Pokemon, and while normally quiet, Whismur is scared of loud noises. And when a loud noise happens, it will scream in terror... except Whismur innately has a loud noise -- as loud as a jet plane, in fact -- and it will cry even harder because its own loud voice scares itself, until it falls asleep tired. By god, the poor dude just can't catch a break, right? I love it, I love how it is portrayed as often shivering in the anime and manga, and I kinda like that this kind of feels like it's filling the "cute Normal-type blob" role that Jigglypuff or Clefairy filled in the first generation, but goes with a less saccharine definition of cute.

With Whismur's evolution, though, it's a bit more of a mixed bag. I kinda get what they're going for with Loudred -- Whismur's destiny is to evolve into louder and louder monsters, because they're a species whose whole gimmick is loud noises, and for its ugly face (the newer sprites and 3D models have his mouth move and it looks so much uglier), Loudred at least looks like it's enjoying itself, with its giant speaker ears and its loud mouth... but I'm not the biggest fan of its design. I  used to absolutely loathe this design, but I've mellowed out somewhat over the years, thanks to using one in a Nuzlocke challenge... but I won't say that I like him. The design perfectly communicates that this is one noisy fat bastard, which succeeds. Definitely not my thing, though.

Loudred evolves once more into Exploud, which shares Loudred's colour scheme and giant mouth with those teeth, although it's got far more things going on. It's got bloodshot red eyes, it's got two giant tails, and a lot of pipes on its head and cheeks and even its elbow and knees. Exploud is some sort of insane hybrid of a fat goblin creature, a pipe organ and a loudspeaker, and... yeah, just looking at this creature gave me an earache. The pokedex describes that its roar can simulate an earthquake... and I totally buy it. I do appreciate that neither Loudred nor Exploud really try to look like any real animal or plant but rather just a non-specific monster, which is a rarity from this generation onwards, for better or for worse. These noise-makers are not my thing, and they will never be my thing, but they're inoffensive. 

 3/6.

#296-297: Makuhita & Hariyama

• Types: Fighting [both]
• Japanese names: Makunoshita, Hariteyama
• Categories: Guts [Makuhita], Arm Thrust [Hariyama]

Oh, speaking about Pokemon that aren't my thing... I actually like Makuhita a fair bit. It's a fat sumo dude that looks like Majin Buu got repainted into yellow and invested in trying to do some martial arts training. It's like some sort of a sumo wrestler, but it's got this weird ribbon on top of its head that sort of makes it look... like... a punching bag? A dumpling? I dunno. Makuhita is the first Fighting-type in the Hoenn pokedex, and it also serves as the 'ace' for the second gym leader, the Fighting-type expert Brawly. It's neat. It's like this happy little sumo wrestler who's just so pleased to fight, but not in the blood-thirsty way. Most of his dex entries tend to focus on him storing energy to properly evolve, which ends up evolving into....

 3/6 for Makuhita.

Hariyama. Ooh. It's very messy. My opinion on this thing hasn't changed over the years. It's the sort of thing that I can't really defend when first-generation purists complain that the third generation is "overdesigned". And while the third generation do adopt a different design philosophy compared to the first two, for the most part I don't take issue in any of the design choices. Part of it is perhaps nostalgia, but I really can't bring myself to defend Hariyama. I get the concept behind it -- it's showing off the harite, a technique in a sumo match of thrusting an open-handed slap to push the opponent. But the design just looks so nonsensically messy.  From yet another example of a big spherical blob being an awkward leg, to the weird shapes of its weird yellow skirt, to way too many angles that don't really end up looking super-apparent... Not to mention that it doesn't look anywhere as adorable as Makuhita does. I dunno. Hariyama's just messy, and while I kind of appreciate that this humanoid Fighting pokemon doesn't try to just be super-humanoid, this is probably not the way to go.

 1/6 for Hariyama. 

#298: Azurill

• Types: Normal/Fairy [Normal prior to Generation VI]
• Japanese names: Ruriri
• Categories: Polka Dot 

The third generation introduced a couple more 'babies', and to explain why Marill didn't lay Azurill eggs in the second generation, they brought in one of my least favourite mechanics -- incenses. Pokemon has this little bit of weird OCD when it comes to consistency, so they keep introducing new forms to evolve or breed new pokemon, while at the same time making sure that it's explained why you can't acquire Azurills in the previous game. "But of course, you don't have the required item to properly have Marill breed a weaker version of itself". Which raises a huge question when I first learned about Azurill. So Marills lay Marill eggs naturally, and having it hold this 'Sea Incense' ends up with Marill laying an egg that hatches into Azurill... which is arm-less, far tinier than Marill and isn't Water-type, but Normal-type? Did I just cause my Marill to create a premature baby?

Pokemon isn't that dark, of course, but honestly the incense-born babies never felt right, like they're some sort of artificially-forced sub-species created due to human interference. Azurill always looks sad in all its official artwork (not the sprites, thankfully),  even though it sits on its cute little balloon ball tail (which contains nutrients, feeling so much more disturbingly like an egg yolk sac). It's cute enough and different enough from Marill for me to not mind him. Probably not necessary, but not a bad addition to the dex. 

 3/6.

#299: Nosepass

• Types: Rock
• Japanese names: Nozupasu
• Categories: Compass

Nosepass gets way too much hate, in my opinion. This pure Rock-type is definitely not the most pleasant-looking Pokemon out there, and, yes, there are so many more in this generation, as well as those before and after it, that looks so much cooler, cuter and quirkier than him. But honestly, I thought Nosepass was weirdly hialrious. A moai statue with little toy-like arms and stumpy legs, and a nose that works like a compass? Nosepass is certainly nowhere as impressive as Onix as the final pokemon of the first gym leader, I admit it, but I never hated him. He did have a rather shitty-looking sprite in the original third-generation games that got me and my friends thinking that his upraised feet was supposed to be a suction-like mouth... but I've always liked the bizarreness of this thing. Its arms can swivel up to become the 'ears' of the moai statue, and there's a neat little sequence in the anime and manga where Nosepass's "must look at the north!" gimmick ends up being a neat little adversary for our heroes to overcome. It's not the best that Pokemon has to offer, certainly -- I'm not going to make an argument that Nosepass is suddenly one of the top twenty best designs -- but I've never hated this thing. It's weird, but not terrible.

 3/6.

#300-301: Skitty & Delcatty

• Types: Normal [both]
• Japanese names: Eneko, Enekororo
• Categories: Kitten [Skitty], Prim [Delcatty]

Skittehhh! This kitty is the adorable face of this region, and you know what? I'm not a big cat person, but Skitty's pretty dang adorable. It's very stylized cat with a little chunky body, a huge head, a pleasant pastel pink-and-yellow colour scheme, a happy slit-eyed face that doesn't have a fang, and this weird little tail. Skitties really like chasing after its own tail, something depicted very adorably in the anime and manga, and when it catches it, it just hugs it and collapses because it's too dizzy. It's a neat take on the cat that emphasizes the utter cuteness of a cartoon cat as opposed to the more catlike Meowth. Ultimately there's actually not much to Skitty other than the fact that it's cute and not the most conventional cat design, but there you go.

Unfortunately, Skitty's relatively unique design gets lost when she evolves into Delcatty. Delcatty's got a nice shade of purple, and still looks pleasant in her own right, but she just looks kinda boring. It's like a rejected idea for an Eevee evolution with Skitty's ears slapped on, and a weird little necklace with weird little bobble-head pins stuck on them, looking nowhere as organic as Skitty's tail-things. Delcatty's dex entries are pretty boring, and it's just... so boring. It's like they settled on a neat design for Skitty, and just kinda panicked on designing an evolution and half-assed one. Skitty evolves through the moon stone, which plays into the moon-shaped mark on Skitty's face... but does Delcatty have any sort of connection to the moon? Nah. I dunno why I'm so hard on Delcatty, when her real crime is just being kind of boring.

 3/6.