Gotham S04E22 Review: Cataclysm

Gotham, Season 4, Episode 22: No Man's Land

Huh. This season finale for Gotham is honestly more of a setup for the next season, which apparently is building up towards Gotham's grand finale. I have been extremely appreciative of Gotham's latest bunch of episodes thanks to just how fun and how fresh a take it is on the Batman mythos as opposed to how Gotham actually started. This season finale helps to clear the board from a bunch of the plotlines that went on throughout this chapter, while simultaneously setting up the adaptation of the No Man's Land arc from the comics.

The episode begins with Selina being rushed to the hospital, with her spine later revealed to be shattered. She ends up being a complete non-factor for the rest of the finale, and not even the whole "don't leave me, Bruce" is spun into any sort of drama when Bruce inevitably gets pulled away from the hospital. She survives, but they really need to work her into the fifth season somehow, otherwise this would probably count as the worst case of fridging a love interest ever. Jeremiah, with Ra's Al Ghul's help, ends up causing a bit of chaos in the GCPD when he demands to see Bruce or he will detonate all the other bombs he had left. He did leave at least one behind, though, which blows up the mayor.

With Gotham City under military lockdown, some random military dude takes over operations in Gotham City and kicks Gordon out, upon which he gets captured by the Riddler and tortured with a weight press in order to resolve the weird Riddler/Leslie/Gordon love-triangle-but-not-really subplot. It's probably one of the weaker parts of the episode, with Leslie quickly smooth-talking Riddler, then letting Gordon off with a not insignificant amount of romantic tension between them. This all ends with Riddler and Leslie stabbing each other with a knife, with Riddler being kind of a psychotic jealous not-boyfriend and Leslie defending herself. The end of this episode hints that the two of them are probably coming back next season because Hugo Strange has access to their bodies, so we'll see.

Meanwhile, Jeremiah predictably kidnaps Bruce and Ra's people kill all of the military dudes guarding him. Jeremmiah and Ra's have teamed up to make sure Gotham City gets reduced to ashes and that Bruce will embrace his destiny as the Dark Knight and Ra's Al Ghul's heir. It's interesting just how well the Jeremiah and Ra's storylines work together as they are both joined by their purpose to 'combat/train' Bruce Wayne, and to fuck up Gotham City.

Meanwhile, a coalition of Gotham City members including Alfred, Barbara, Penguin and Tabitha team up to take down Ra's Al Ghul and Jerome. Out of revenge for Selina, and to save Gotham City and Bruce, we get a pretty great action sequence as the good guys fight against Ra's, Joker and their minions. Barbara manages to get Bruce to hold the reforged magic curly dagger, and ram it straight into Ra's chest, finally killing him in no uncertain terms, turning Ra's into exploding ashes and dust. It's a great season finale action piece, and I'm always up for those.

Ra's death and whatever happened to Jeremiah (I think he escaped in the confusion?), however, isn't enough to stop whatever's going on with Gotham City. All the bridges blow up, cutting Gotham City off from the rest of the world. The martial law that the military dude inflicted is still in effect, and while evacuations are taking place all over the city, Gordon, Bullock, Lucius and the GCPD resolve to stick around to retake their city from all the criminals that are going wild. The ending goes on and on a bit with Bruce's resolution to stay and embrace his destiny, Hugo Strange looming over Lee and Riddler, and a series of montage of Penguin, Mr. Freeze, Firefly and new players Man-Bat (with a hilariously bad costume), Mother and Orphan showing up all over the city... I think that's probably one of the bigger weaknesses of this episode. After the huge climax, the episode sort of keeps going on and on with so much setup and buildup about No Man's Land, and it feels a little tiresome. It's still pretty exciting nonetheless, though.

Oh, and there's the conclusion for the Butch/Tabitha story. Hugo Strange manages to cure Butch with some insanely simple plot device (fresh blood!) and just as Tabitha and Butch have a great reunion, Penguin comes up, congratulates them and Butch and Penguin bro out... and then Penguin shoots Butch in the head, killing him, and then shoots Tabitha in the leg, noting that this is his revenge for Tabitha killing Penguin's mom all the way back in season two. It's an impressively neat bit of continuity and honestly? It is definitely a neat little nod to Penguin's pettiness and how he takes everything personally. We'll see how this ends up getting resolved in the fifth season.

Overall, it's honestly shaping up to be an interesting story in the fifth season. We've got a little proto Bat-signal, we've got the villains carving up Gotham City, we've got Bruce starting to do his own acts of vigilantism and honestly, Gotham's in a pretty good place at the moment. Definitely looking forward to the next season!

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• No Man's Land, of course, is an adaptation of the No Man's Land mega-arc in Batman comics, where Gotham City is split off from the rest of the world thanks to a massive earthquake. Due to the government abandoning Gotham and decrying it No Man's Land, the entire city gets turned into a warzone and the criminals and good guys alike fight over territory in the broken-down ruins of the city. A somewhat similar concept was also featured in the video game Arkham City. 
• The spotlight in the sky that causes Bruce to meet with Gordon on top of the GCPD building is, of course, a reference to the Bat-Signal. 
• Selina being paralyzed due to wounds to her spine, of course, recalls Barbara Gordon's fate after The Killing Joke, where she was paralyzed from the waist down thanks to an attack by the Joker trying to goad someone else into experiencing 'one bad day'.
• I'm not sure if Barbara's group has been referred to by that before, but she stakes out her territory as "Sirens' territory", a clear reference to Gotham City Sirens, a comic book that features on the three biggest female criminals in Gotham City, namely Catwoman, Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy. 
• The two villains you probably don't recognize from the final montage are:
• Man-Bat, one of Batman's older enemies, Dr. Kirk Langstrom gets turned into a humanoid bat monster thanks to a genetics experiment gone awry. We'll probably talk about him a bit more next season.
• Mother and Orphan is the New 52 reboot version of Cassandra Cain, otherwise known as the second Batgirl in the original DC continuity. New 52 reinvents Cassandra Cain's backstory as a serial killer, expanding upon her family's connections to the League of Assassins. 

Gotta Review 'Em All, Part #20: Victini to Zebstrika

The fifth generation was an even bigger 'soft reboot' compared to the third generation, because for the entirety of the playthrough before fighting the champion, none of the older pokemon from the first four generations actually showed up in the game. Every single pokemon you meet are part of a brand-new batch of pokemon, ostensibly because the fifth generation is set in a region based on USA instead of Japan, and that much change is predictably met with a knee-jerk reaction. Joining in and returning to the franchise back at the tail-end of the fifth generation, I swear that judging from the reactions many people have, it's as if the fifth generation de-canonized the first four.

And while there are a lot of familiar substitutes to classic pokemon, and some really... questionable design choices, the fifth generation's not all that bad. In fact, the good, well-done designs from the fifth generation are some of the best designs in Pokemon full stop. It's just that some of the bad ones... are really bad. Which is a really strange feeling, as compared to the fourth generation that I just finished reviewing where a significant chunk of my reactions are just "eh" or "m'eh". After this batch of early-route pokemon is out of the way, I'm sure that when we get to the middle parts of the Unova dex my opinions are going to be far more polarized. Either I really like something, or I really don't, and very rarely is there going to be a middle ground.

Overall, Generation V definitely has its haters and I honestly can't fault them for hating some of the many Pokemon introduced in this generation, but I'd be lying if I didn't say that I enjoyed the games and the designs immensely. Some of my all-time favourites come from Generation V, that's for sure.

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#494: Victini

• Types: Psychic/Fire
• Japanese names: Bikutini
• Categories: Victory

The Unova pokedex starts off with #000, Victini, who is actually a legendary pokemon that comes before the starters. It's a weird configuration, and seemingly caused by Victini's status as an 'event' mythical pokemon that is apparently released as an event when Pokemon Black/White were initially released, sort of a 'Day 1 DLC' deal that went on for a month, allowing you to ride a boat to the Liberty Garden area in-game, and find Victini in a room.

And honestly? Victini's actually pretty cute, and after being underwhelmed by generation IV's lake guardians and Manaphy, I actually took a liking to Victiny and its giant V-shaped bunny ears, its happy blue eyes and fanged mouth and its weird butt-wings. And in his movie, Victini really likes eating macarons, which I found adorable. Victini's a neat design (apparently based on usagiringo, a way to slice apples to resemble rabbits), and it's a new type combination of Fire/Psychic... which makes as much sense as anything. They at least give Victini a lot of Fire-type exclusive moves, like V-Create and Searing Shot, which are V-shaped flame attacks exclusive to Victini. Victini's some sort of a lucky-charm pokemon, constantly making victory signs and apparently blessing trainers that it likes with enough "luck" and "energy" that they supposedly always win. Supposedly being the operative word, mind you, because the movie shows that all Victini does is to give the pokemon an extra boost by transferring his own energy. As far as legendaries go, Victini's pretty inoffensive, although not particularly impressive. 

 3/6.

#495-497: Snivy, Servine & Serperior

• Types: Grass [all three]
• Japanese names: Tsutaja, Janobi, Jaroda
• Categories: Grass Snake [Snivy, Servine]; Regal [Serperior]

Our grass starter this time around is a little baby lizard-thing, which ends up surprisingly evolving into a large snake. The three base forms of the Unova starters are all very neat, but Snivy's always my favourite due to how smug and snotty she looks. That face's just got so much personality, and the green and yellow work very well to form a pleasant colouration for Snivy. Snivy's entire line are based on the vine snakes, a group of non-venomous, green-coloured snakes with a beak-like, upturned snout. Snivy takes it to its logical conclusion, by having her personality be that of a snotty royal that turns up its nose at everything. It's not a childish prince like Piplup, though -- it actually looks like it's got dignity, helped by the collar-shaped yellow bits. Snivy, if you  notice, actually has little arms and legs, which seems to be a reference to how snakes evolved from lizards... and even nowadays, there are some species of skinks that are essentially just snake-like lizards with stubby little arms. Of course, this all cleverly plays into the running theme of the Grass starters being based on prehistoric creatures (far more consistent of a theme than the silly 'zodiac fire starters', mind you), with the evolutionary line's final form, Serperior, being based on prehistoric snakes with tiny legs like the Najash snake. The three Unova starters are all stated to be based on different types of warriors, with Snivy's line apparently being based on French royalty, with Sugimori citing the anime The Rose of Versailles as his inspiration.

I do like how Snivy's dex entries note that even while it still has arms, it prefers using its vine whips to manipulate objects instead of its real hands. She's also hilariously snooty in the anime, from what little I've seen. Snivy was, needless to say, my Unova starter, with me preferring reptiles over mammals. Of course, joke's on me because Serperior's kind of crap and rather hard to use in the game, but it ends up causing me to rely on other Unovan Pokemon, causing me to develop a larger appreciation for all the other Unovan pokemon. I still like this line for what it is, though.

Snivy then evolves into Servine, which... I don't really have much to say about. It's clearly just a middle line between Snivy and Serperior, with aspects of both, and the arms being reduced to little leaf-nubs, and the body elongating. It's not unpleasant to look at, although it does feel rather obvious at what they're doing with Snivy. Everything Snivy is doing, Servine does a bit more, while also being kind of an awkward middle stage. 

I prefer the the pre-evolved and final stage of this form, but Servine's all right. 

I don't have much to talk about Servine, but it evolves into the majestic-looking Serperior, who is regal-looking with all those markings on its body, its awesome collar and horns, and look at those teeny-tiny little fore-arms that remain, reduced to nothing but leaves! Serperior's still pure Grass at this stage, and I do like that -- vine snakes aren't poisonous, after all! Serperior looks majestic, and its regal glare is apparently enough to sometimes stop a battle. To tie in with the French royalty aesthetic, Serperior's markings are apparently supposed to be stylized versions of the fleur-de-lis, and it's a goddamn shame that Serperior isn't actually involved with any of the characters in the Kalos region in any way. 

Still, overall the Serperior family ends up being a pretty badass looking trio of regal vine snakes, and make for a pretty great starter line. 

 6/6.

#498-500: Tepig, Pignite & Emboar

• Types: Fire [Tepig], Fire/Fighting [Pignite/Emboar]
• Japanese names: Pokabu, Chaobu, Enbuo 
• Categories: Fire Pig [Tepig/Pignite], Mega Fire Pig [Emboar]

Tepig is cute and has a lot of fans, and it's all right, I guess, for a cute little pig. Between the orb on its curled tail, the yellow splotch on its head, and the weird 'pants' style black marking, I think there's a fair bit of clutter in his design, but he manages to look so dang happy and cheerful, I don't blame him. Tepig still continues the zodiac fire animal trend -- which won't be broken until generation six. I do love the detail of how if it catches a cold, instead of snorting fire, Tepig will snort out smoke. Poor Tepig! Tepig's cute. He doesn't do much beyond being a cute pig boy, but he's cute.

 3/6 for Tepig.

Tepig is pretty neat, but sadly... it evolves into Pignite. As someone well-versed in Chinese literature, I know exactly where they are going with this line -- as Infernape was Sun Wukong, Emboar is Zhu Bajie, the perverted pig demon who initially attacks Sun Wukong during his journey, gets beaten down and reforms, joining Wukong as a sworn brother. It's neat, and makes the Tepig line the 'Chinese' representative of the Unova trio... unfortunately, the execution is kind of suspect. Pignite is pretty dumb looking. And I hesitate to say that, because a lot of my favourite Pokemon are some of the dumber, goofier-looking ones, but I mean dumb not as in "aww, this think looks dumb, it's adorable", but I mean dumb as in "wow, why would the designers make this thing?"

It's a fat, awkward-looking pig-man with a random singlet and random golden bits pasted on, and it's... Fire/Fighting? It doesn't look anywhere as formidable as Combusken and Monferno did before him, and honestly? Another humanoid Fire/Fighting starter? This was where the fandom ended up throwing up their arms in the air and screaming for Nintendo to fucking do something different... especially in a generation where neither the Grass nor the Water starters actually have a secondary typing. 

Meanwhile, Emboar is... very, very cluttered. It also looks horribly unwieldy and doesn't look like it would be very mobile, and I am genuinely confused at how the fuck it's supposed to move around. The colour palette is also visually annoying, with a bunch of random red parts showing up on his legs and around his arms which just breaks the orange/black/yellow thing that his two pre-evolved forms have going on. Even the Zhu Bajie reference is stretching it at this point, with only the "humanoid pig" and vague Chinese-esque markings on his belly really seeming to give any indication to Emboar's inspiration. Emboar's scarf-beard of fire is pretty neat, I suppose, and its face is pretty threatening, but the rest of his proportions is just a weird mix of wrestling motif and vague Chinese armour bits that all doesn't end up looking well-done at all. Emboar has his fans and more power to you if you like this, but it's one of the few starters I can just straight-up say that I dislike. Sorry, piggies. 

 1/6.

#501-503: Oshawott, Dewott & Samurott

• Types: Water [all three]
• Japanese names: Mijumaru, Futachimaru, Daikenki
• Categories: Sea Otter [Oshawott], Discipline [Dewott], Formidable [Samurott]

Look at this little darling! Oshawott's adorable. He's this weird little fucking otter placed in a little light-blue dress, and he fights by pulling out that shell (called a scalchop, which is hilarious) and using it like a little dagger to cut you. This little clown otter took some time getting used to -- and compared to the coolness of Snivy and the cuteness of Tepig, it's a bit hard... but Oshawott's actually pretty cute in his own kind of way. Oshawott has definitely grown on me a lot thanks to his fun animations in the games and his portrayal in the manga.

Oshawott sheds his cuteness when he evolves into Dewott, looking very much more scrappy and fight-happy. Compared to Pignite and Servine, Dewott's actually the only middle-stage starter in this generation that has any identity on his own. He's a humanoid otter warrior, and I really like those whiskers, and the way that the dark blue fur splays out like the armour of a samurai, with Dewott dual-wielding shells this time around. Yes, unexpectedly the clown otter evolves into an otter swordsman that is based on samurais, ending up as the Japanese warrior-based entry. Their Japanese names end in -maru, the traditional common ending in a boy's name during the samurai era. I feel like Dewott could've used a fair bit more revisions, as I'm not a big fan of that... that weird fur-horn on the back of his head, nor do I really like the rather bland blue chest -- some dark blue could easily break it up -- but I don't mind Dewott. He's cool. 

Dewott, surprisingly, buckles the trend that the fire starters did, and instead of ending up as a cool bipedal samurai otter, evolves into a big, angry sea lion on all fours, called Samurott. Which isn't a bad design at all, don't get me wrong, but at the time it felt slightly disconnected from its pre-evolved brethren. Samruott looks cool, though, with a powerful looking stance, and the giant spiky seashell helm looking pretty great, and he's got these scalloped arm-guards on all four limbs. The beard and mustache is perhaps a bit too much, but it's an exaggeration of real-life sea lions, so it's neat.

But it left me bizarrely wondering what they were going for, until I did a little digging into Samurotts in the anime, and apparently, they actually go take on a semi-bipedal pose when fighting, and they keep giant golden swords on the sheaths that form the armour of their front legs, pulling out their scimitar blades -- sorry, seamitar blades -- to murder its enemies. This isn't actually displayed in any of his game animations, although the dex entries to make note of its hidden blades within its front legs, but whether it'll be portrayed doing it or not in fiction depends on whether those making the specific piece of media remembers to put it in or not. Overall, I kinda like this line a fair bit more, and over time I've grown to appreciate it a bit more. It's still pretty neat regardless, though. 

 4/6.

#504-505: Patrat & Watchog

• Types: Normal [both]
• Japanese names: Minezumi, Miruhoggu
• Categories: Scout [Patrat], Lookout [Watchog]

Ew, these two. Yeah, as the early-game rodents go, Patrat and Watchog are my absolute least favourite. Most of the others are either inoffensive or even cool-looking, but I've always been very much underwhelmed by Patrat. It's a more realistic take on the meerkat trope of constantly being alert and looking for enemies compared to Sentret and Furret, but whereas those two were absolutely charming and somewhat creative, Patrat just looks like they didn't really give a shit. It's just this generic looking rodent, drawn like Chip and Dale's ugly cousin with the weirdest looking eyes that looks downright disturbing. There are some times when just adapting an animal mostly-wholesale is okay, but only if the resulting creature looks okay. Patrat does not look okay. It looked like it had red bull administered intravenously and it's just one extra iota of excitement away from a heart attack. 

Patrat evolves into Watchog, which is somewhat less offensive. Watchog is just a cartoon meerkat, and its whole gimmick is that the weird markings on its chest and abdomen can light up to seemingly resemble the face and eyes of a larger creature, while at the same time either by design or by accident, making Watchog resemble a traffic cone or some sort of weird protective vest. Watchog's not as offensively bad-looking as Patrat, but it's honestly still pretty dang boring. Overall, not my favourite design in this generation. Not by a long shot. Doesn't help that the fuckers are actually pretty annoying in-game, popping up quite literally everywhere in the first few areas as part of trainer and gym battles, spamming that blasted Detect over and over again. I dunno -- Watchog and Patrat don't offend that many people, I think, but these are two whose eyes and general design just kind of really rubbed me the wrong way. Sorry, Watchog fans. 

 1/6.

#506-508: Lillipup, Herdier & Stoutland

• Types: Normal [all three]
• Japanese names: Yoteri, Haderia, Murando
• Categories: Puppy [Lillipup], Loyal Dog [Herdier], Big-Hearted [Stoutland]

Doggos! The fifth generation, in addition to having an early-route Normal-type rodent and an early-route pure-elemental-type in Purrloin, also had a three-stage pure Normal mammal with Lillipup. Lillipup's a cute, wacky little happy puppy, kind of based on a Yorkshire terrier, and look at that face. It's so cute. Like, Lillipup's just a cartoon dog, but he's a pleasant looking puppy. Lillipup's whole personality is that it's a puppy, and it woofs against bigger opponents but runs away if it's outmatched. 

Lillipup then evolves into the gruff-looking (gruff? Ruff? Get it? Eh?) Herdier, with a glorious mustache. It's... it's just a dog, really, and it's really super loyal and everything. Herdier is basically a version of the Yorkshire terrier where the face-fur isn't stylized and generalized as a blob of cream-coloured fur, but is picked out to resemble the beard-esque configuration that the Yorkshire terriers are famous for. There's also a bit of a Silky Terrier bit going on with the hair on its body, but it's ultimately... just a cartoon dog. My cousin used to have a funky Yorkshire terrier with an overgrown mustache that trots all over the place and Herdier reminds me of that dog, so, um... yeah, not entirely objective here. Plus I really kind of like dogs. Herdier's basically all the general positive stereotype behind dogs. Helps people, loyal to trainers, has been domesticated by ancient humans, needs grooming, and refuses to listen to people he doesn't respect. 

Herdier evolves once more into Stoutland, and Stoutland's... a huge lumbering dog that's kind of like the dog equivalent of... oh, all those final forms of the early-route birds that are just "hey, what do you think would happen if we added bird of prey features to a songbird?" Well, Stoutland is that sort of speculative evolution for a happy little terrier, and I got to say, I'm actually impressed that we get this bulky chunk of fur and insanely long and glorious mustache, like what a toy dog would look like if it grew up to be a gigantic rescue dog like a Newfoundland. Stoutland's dex entries even point out how its fur helps it to warm people it rescues from blizzards, and just like many imported dogs, apparently poor thick-furred Stoutland are somewhat uncomfortable in Alola. And unexpectedly for what's otherwise a rather mundane-looking pokemon, Stoutland had a resurgence in the seventh-generation games, being one of the unexpected pokemon that are promoted to Ride Pokemon, with you being able to ride a Stoutland and have him sniff around for objects. Yep, this is a dog the size of a small horse and thrice as bulky, and they acknowledge it by having you ride around on top of it. It's a neat subversion of the expected "of course dogs evolve into wolves" trope (which they do with Rockruff and Houndour). It's not something super impressive, but it's inoffensive and I do like it. 

 3/6.

#509-510: Purrloin & Liepard

• Types: Dark [both]
• Japanese names: Choroneko, Reparudasu
• Categories: Devious [Purrloin], Cruel [Liepard]

The equivalent of Poochyena and Shinx, Purrloin is the early-route mammal that's a pure elemental type, with Purrloin following the footsteps of Poochyena in being Dark-type. As stated, I'm more of a dog person and tolerate cats on a good day, and Purrloin... eh. I find Meowth, Litten and Skitty to be far cuter. Purrloin's pink eyelids and yellow eyebrows never sat right with me, and I kinda don't like how weirdly cluttered her body is with random splotches of pale yellow. I suppose Purrloin plays the sassy trickster cat, which we don't actually have yet? I love her blade-like tail, and as her pokedex entry notes, Purrloin likes to purloin your stuff, and all that cuteness is just a ruse. As the dex notes, "they steal from people for fun, but their victims can't help but forgive them." Not this victim! I don't like you, Purrloin. I don't trust you.

Sadly, despite this pretty pleasant cat pose, ever since the 3D games, Purrloin is constantly portrayed standing on two legs. Bit of a shame, since she actually evolves into a four-legged cat, and I'd have liked it if it was more consistent. Mostly because four-legged Purrloin is a lot cuter to me.


Purrloin evolves into Liepard and Liepard is... pretty damn sleek and cool! The pink eyelids form some sort of fancy Catwoman-style mask in Liepard, and the yellow leopard-esque spots help to accentuate Liepard's design while still looking natural. That blade-like tail also still looks cool. Liepard is a sinister yet still cool-looking kitty, and like most predatory big cats, Liepards are ambush predators. Again, not a big cat person, but this sleek-looking panther-leopard hybrid that likes to sneak around and stab people with her claws is a very cool design. I'm actually surprised at how much I actually like Purrloin and Liepard, despite dismissing them most of the time in the past... reviewing them has got me to really appreciate the amount of personality these sassy cats have.

 3/6.

#511-516: Pansage, Simisage, Pansear, Simisear, Panpour & Simipour

• Types: Grass [Pansage/Simisage], Fire [Pansear/Simisear], Water [Panpour/Simipour]
• Japanese names: Yanappu, Yanakki, Baoppu, Baokki, Hiyappu, Hiyakki
• Categories: Grass Monkey [Pansage], Thorn Monkey [Simisage], High Temp [Pansear], Ember [Simisear], Spray [Panpour], Geyser [Simipour]

Oh. These elemental monkeys. I'm not going to justify these creatures with more than a couple of paragraphs -- there are six of the things, but I really can't muster anything to really say much about them. These monkeys exist, and these are the exact opposite of creativity. These are the exact opposite of what the starter trio represent. See, the starter trio may have a unifying theme of sorts, but they're always independent and their own thing. Not so for these monkeys. They're just the same design in different poses, with a broccoli, a poorly drawn flame and a blue broccoli on top of their head. They didn't even try to put in any effort into incorporating the plantlife, fire or water into these monkeys, because they don't even really want to give any effort to properly designing any of these.

Pansage's at least prominent in the anime, being the main pokemon of one of Ash's companions. 


I very rarely hate on pokemon. Most of the time, even on those that I don't like (like many of the fourth-generaetion legendaries) I try to play devil's advocate and see why people like it, or try to see the positives for these. I can't find any. Conceptually? Monkeys are screechy, shit-slinging animals, but there are far, far more interesting ways to adapt a monkey into a pokemon than these. Visually? They're lazy, uninspired, and the water ones look like the artist didn't even bother to try and make it look water-y. "Hey, let's just paint it blue, people will think it's water-type, right?" No. Be ashamed of yourself. Lore-wise? There's nothing about them. The grass one does generic grass stuff. The fire one does generic fire-shooty stuff. The water one does generic water-shooty stuff. There's some three-wise-monkeys deal going on with the unevolved monkeys, but they completely drop it when they evolve. Simisear is even dead last at one of Nintendo's official pokemon poll, making Simisear the official bearer of the title of "most disliked pokemon".

They don't even do anything interesting with the monkeys. You're shoved one that compliments your starter near the first gym of the Black/White games, because apparently someone threw out a box of them. Of course! Nobody fucking wants them. The first gym leaders you encounter use the monkeys, BUT instead of doing a triple-battle or battling all three at the same time or something legitimately interesting, only one -- the one with the type that has an advantage over your starter -- fights you. How utterly dumb is that? And most of all, it's not like Gamefreak doesn't know how to design interesting monkeys. Aipom and Primeape are examples of how they made monkeys that aren't boring, and motherfucking Infernape is how you design a fire monkey. Not these sorry excuses.

Yeah I'm going to stop now. Not going to grace these lazy designs with any more of my time.

 0/6.

#517-518: Munna & Musharna

• Types: Psychic [both]
• Japanese names: Munna, Mushana
• Categories: Dream Eater [Munna], Dowsing [Musharna]

A lot of the fifth generation's designs are often accused of being "ripoffs" of the original 151, as part of a marketing scheme to decanonize the first four generations and reboot it with the fifth. And I won't deny that there are some that occupy several similar-looking roles... although we've always had repeated tropes throughout generations, so it's really unclear whether this so-called theory holds ground. Munna, in particular, is often cited as being a ripoff of Drowzee, because they are both purely-Psychic lines based on the mythological baku, a tapir-esque creature that eats dreams. But honestly? Munna isn't that similar to Drowzee after that bit of inspiration. Whereas Drowzee was humanoid and evolves into a goblin hypnotist, Munna is more similar to the tapir that the word "baku" also refers too, floating around like this amorphous blob in the sky, staring at people with red eyes that are simultaneously adorable and creepy. Also, Munna has a very, very weird floral pattern on its body for some reason...

Which, of course, intentional foreshadowing or a design that decided to homage it, ends up calling back all the way to the first generation, when an NPC on Route 10 of the original Red/Blue games mentions a "chunky, pink Pokemon with floral patterns". It's unclear just how long and how far back some of these Pokemon designs date -- did someone revise a rejected design and ended up with Munna? Or did they keep wanting to insert Munna over the years but failed to find the opportunity in generations 2, 3 and 4? Regardless, this little flower-patterned dream-eating blob is here now. 

Munna eats your dreams, and apparently expels pink-coloured mist, called "Dream Mist" that ends up being a minor sub-plot in the fifth-generation games as the evil Team Plasma tries to harvest them from the Munna in a location called the Dreamyard. A bunch of researchers are also researching  this dream mist, which, of course, ends up leading to the Pokemon Dream World spin-off game where they use the dream mist to... send your pokemon into the dream world or something, I dunno. 

Anyway, Munna evolves to Musharna when exposed to a moon stone, which is creepy-adorable as well. Its eyes are always closed, and it is expelling the dream in the form of a smoke... which in the games is portrayed like a clump of tentacle instead of a constantly-dissipating smoke in the vein of Torkoal or Weezing, something that always bothered me. Musharna's a bigger Munna, and despite looking like it's constantly asleep there's nothing in the dex that really mentions that, just that, oh, it eats dreams. At least they know what to emphasize here!

 Musharna's design is apparently based on koro, a sort of Japanese incense burners, although many people have latched on to Musharna being a fetus due to its fetal position and the smoke apparently resembling an umbilical cord. I kinda feel that it's a bit coincidental (we'll actually have a stronger case for a fetus pokemon later on in Solosis) but still, Munna and Musharna aren't exactly my cup of tea, but definitely neat weirdos.

 3/6.

#519-521: Pidove, Tranquill & Unfezant

• Types: Normal/Flying [all three]
• Japanese names: Mamepato, Hatobo, Kenhoro
• Categories: Tiny Pigeon [Pidove], Wild Pigeon [Tranquill], Proud [Unfezant]

Pidgey may be named after the pigeon, but he doesn't really look like one. Enter Pidove, a number of years later, who is explicitly a pigeon. Yeah, Pidove's not helping the case of being parallels/rip-offs to the first gen, huh? I like Pidove, though. His expression, especially in the games, is so blank and dumb-looking, like real-life pigeons. Personality-wise, Pidove just gather in swarms in cities, and it's apparently dumb as a sack of bricks, forgetting orders easily. Silly Pidove. He's cute for an early-game bird, but ends up honestly looking too mundane and not really having that much of a personality compared to all its other compatriots. I don't dislike Pidove, but if you placed all the early-game birds in a row, I'll probably have something nice to say about all the others, making Pidove my least favourite by default. Apparently Pidove's whole deal is that it's got a heart shape on its chest, which is a pun that works only in Japanese -- hato means pigeon, and haato is the Japanese reading of the English word 'heart'. Either way, though, the heart is a bit too subtle for it to really work even if you get the pun. 

Pidove evolves into Tranquill, which is like a weird, bigger... pigeon... thing? It's definitely not a quail, unlike what its name insinuates, and it's a big dove, I guess? It's an awkward middle-stage and it honestly doesn't have a whole lot of personality or uniqueness.

Tranquill gets a bit better when it evolves into Unfezant, because Unfezant is a bit more colourful. Unfezant also displays a stark sexual dimorphism, too, with the females being boring with a brown lower body and a generic looking head, while the males boast a pretty impressive pink, flowing plumage and a striking green lower body. The fifth generation tries its best to promote the "gender differences" stuff introduced in the fourth generation, but tries to make it more quality over quantity, making sure their  gender differences actually look different enough to warrant different sprites, and none of this bullshit "female Politoed has marginally smaller cheeks" nonsense. 

Unfezant's differences end up being cosmetic, as much as the dex entries note that the males are better at 'threatening their opponents' and the females are 'better at flying'. It's not until the sixth generation's Meowstic that gender differences in a single pokedex slot will matter. And I spent nearly two paragraphs talking about sexual dimorphism in pokemon because... there's really nothing much to talk about Unfezant, really. I like its hilariously punny name, even if Unfezant isn't particularly unpleasant. But other than its admittedly well-done design, Unfezant offers nothing from a lore, personality or mechanic standpoint, and this lack of anything interesting ends up making this entire line sadly the most boring of all the early-route birds. Sorry, Unfezant. 

 2/6.

#522-523: Blitzle & Zebstrika

• Types: Electric [both]
• Japanese names: Shimama, Zeburaika
• Categories: Electrified [Blitzle], Thunderbolt [Zebstrika]

Some people call this line "electric Ponyta", but... eh, I don't really see it? These are more like 'horse Shinx' or 'horse Electrike' considering how early they appear in the game. Also, for a region that is supposed to take place in North America, they really don't care what pokemon they put in, as Unova's premier ungulate pokemon is apparently a group of electric zebras. We've never had a zebra pokemon before, and Blitzle and Zebstrika turn the stripes on a zebra's body into lightning bolts, and gained some stylish lightning-shaped unicorn horns. It's actually a pretty neat design choice now that I had some time to think about it. There's nothing super special about Blitzle and Zebstrika beyond being pure-Electric types, and their dex entries are woefully generic "oh this pokemon generates electricity" and "oh this pokemon likes lightning" stuff that are a dime a dozen among Electric-type pokemon.

Also, I've never quite realized this but... we've not had any horse or horse-like pokemon all the way since... does Girafarig even count? Wow, that's been a long time. Blitzle and Zebstrika are honestly pretty generic -- although I appreciate that they are Electric types that aren't yellow or blue, keeping those colours solely to their eyes -- but Zebstrika's a pretty cool looking design. They're all right, although mostly I just remember Zebstrika for being one of the pokemon used by Elesa, the electric-type gym leader, and not much else. These two are not my favourite entry in Unova, but they do fill in a neat niche and they're well-drawn. I can respect that. 

 3/6.

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This is the first part of our Unova reviews, and we're kinda done with most of the more mundane animals in the Unova pokedex. So yeah, next week, expect the discussions to be far more interesting than just "well-drawn zebra" and "well-drawn bird".