Ting-Lu is surprisingly a lot more easy to capture compared to Wo-Chien or Miraidon or even Iron Valiant, taking like four balls to get into the ball. The Ruination move that Wo-Chien has, which halves the health a la Super Fang, is very helpful, though, for sure!
Ting-Lu is Ground/Dark, meaning that the remaining Treasures of Ruin are probably all also part-Dark, which kind of makes them a counterpart to the four 'nature-protecting' Tapus and their part-Fairy typing, right? Ting-Lu's name is 鼎鹿 and while I do know that 'lu' is deer, I didn't know the exact character for 'ting'. It's that ancient bowl on top of its head!
The 'destruction' part for Ting-Lu comes from its ability to use the bowl to create gigantic destructive fissures on the ground. He's found on the Socarraya Trail on the North-Western part of Paldea, that weird huge patch of land North of the Cassseroya Lake, and I was wondering why there's this weird plateau there. I guess Ting-Lu rampaged there before he was sealed!
Showing Ting-Lu and Wo-Chien to professor Raifort does give us a bunch of additional dialogue. She focuses more on Wo-Chien's tablets that make up that scroll -- which was how I realized what that part of the anatomy was supposed to be -- and note that whatever was originally written there, which was now faded, are probably what drove the ancient king to get so insanely greedy. With Ting-Lu, she focuses more on the carvings on the vessel and what it was originally meant to be -- if it was some sort of 'eyes of a deity'...
But Ting-Lu's vessel is based on that of the Taotie, one of the Four Perils in Chinese mythology, which was something I kinda almost-hit-the-mark last episode by highlighting their more commonly-known opposite numbers. Wo-Chien doesn't really correspond to either the Hundun or the Qiongqi, so I guess by process of elimination it is the 'block stump' Taowu? Hmm.
Speaking of new Pokemon, I also finally went to the bamboo forest where Eri's base is, and brought a Bisharp of my own. I taught the Bisharp Low Kick, and then just spammed auto-battles with my Iron Jugulis on the local Pokemon until Bisharp gang leaders leading tiny Pawniards spawn. It's such a weird way to evolve a Bisharp, but one that's kind of neat, I suppose -- I always enjoy it when the evolution method really does feel like a 'training' regimen or an evolutionary adaptation as opposed to some rather stupid ways of evolution that's just gimmicky. Looking at you, Finizen.
Kingambit's Kowtow Cleave move is hilarious at it just bows, seemingly in apology, but it's actually slicing the enemy down with its big-ass sword jutting out of its helmet. I still find it rather odd that such a Japanese-looking Pokemon is introduced in the region based on Spain, but... eh? Love the weird-looking ribcage blades, the giant mustache sword, and the fact that Kingambit sits in that 'crotch open' dominating pose all the time.
It refuses to get off its seat, which is the tip of its long cape-tail, and its movement has it just hover around. I'm not sure how it does this, since it is Steel/Dark... Electromagnetism, I guess? Or just shuffling those tiny feet really quickly?
I thought I saw all the new non-legendary Pokemon, but some random trainer in front of the Pokemon League fought me with a 'Ceruledge', which is like... a Megaman-looking Digimon with flaming blades for arms. It's Charcadet's evolution, I think.
I was working my way up to my favourites, Ryme and Iono as far as the gym leader rematches are concerned... and next up is Brassius. He's all right! He's way more excited about fighting me-garde than any kind of evaluation from the Pokemon League. I have a feeling that between Brassius and Tulip, Geeta the La Primera isn't really well-liked among the gym leaders. He really doesn't give two shits about the assessment, and just wants to fight me and get inspired for his art.
I don't care for Brassius too much since he's kind of a one-dimensional character gimmick gym leader, but man, the animators had way too much fun with Brassius's expression. Man's got way too much coffee!
His team consists of Liligant, Tsareena, Breloom, Arboliva and "Truleewoodo Part 2". No Sunflora either? Hmm. I honestly am kind of disappointed, I was half-expecting a Sunflora evolution or alternate form with how prevalent Sunflora is in Artazon. Oh well.
Kofu is up next, and... he's also not particularly interesting. I think the most interesting gym leader rematch dialogues are ironically the ones that actually I find the least interesting, which are Katy and Grusha... though I also did find Brassius fun if nothing else. Kofu is just his jolly old self, talking about young and old people growing and all that jazz... but Kofu also has probably one of the longer quests to get to his gym fight, so I can kind of understand this rematch not adding much.
Kofu's team, in addition to his previous teammates of Veluza, Wugtrio and Crabominable, adds two older Pokemon -- Pelipper and Clawitzer. To spice things up, I fight him entirely just with Wo-Chien, Ting-Lu and Miraidon, though Ting-Lu was completely useless in this fight.
I put my hat in at breeding and... it's weird? I just set up a picnic, eat some egg power sandwich and kinda hope the egg is created? It's bizarre. Apparently friendship may or may not play a role in it? The good thing is that the eggs basically don't cap at one, so I can just stay there and they'll give me a half-dozen eggs to collect from the picnic basket at once.
Basically what I needed were the treetop Pokemon -- lots of Vigoroths and Slakings everywhere, but Slakoth is near-impossible to find. I did find a single Applin in my journey, but it's a bit faster to breed for another batch of Applins to get Appletun and Flapple. At least I don't have to hunt down for the apples, since they are sold in the Delibird Presents store.
I also blaze through a bunch of classes to unlock the respective teachers' overworld interactions. Dendra's Battle Studies class is very... uh... bland. She talks a lot about auto-battles and it sounds a lot like tutorials. I guess this is where you're supposed to find out that Pokemon don't evolve from auto-battles... would've loved to have known that like a month or two before! Her final test is very alien to me since she's asking about like, Link Battle rules and Tera Raid cheers, two parts of this game I never interacted with. Thankfully I paid enough attention in her classes.
Saguaro's class is also pretty bland, revolving mostly around the picnic/cooking gimmick. There is a funny moment when he accidentally keeps trying and failing to hide the identity of a student that asked him a question, basically nearly spills out Arven's name, and then I can spill it out and cause Saguaro to get super-duper shocked regardless. I mean, Arven literally introduces himself as one of three things -- he has daddy issues, he likes his dog and he likes sandwiches. I don't think it's anything to really keep secret.
Saguaro also tells me something genuinely new and informative... which is the fact that you can wash your Pokemon in picnics! Yeah! I... I didn't know that, but I guess they kept the Pokemon Amie or whatever the hell the seventh and eighth generations call that feature. There are places that the Pokemon likes to be touched more than others, and some Pokemon (presumably like Grimer and Garbodor) hates being clean. Saguaro also actually notes that this is something that has to be taken on a species-by-species basis, something that is 100% true if you've ever kept a non-mammalian pet.
Hassel's final classes are a bit more varied, when I had expected it to be more about Tera Raid Battles and stuff. But his fourth class has a surprising guest star in Brassius, who goes and gives a surprising amount of actually pretty neat backstory. He was actually on the down and outs, forced to create 'shallow art' to make money, when he really didn't care for the art he made at that time. It's only Hassel's encouragement that ended up causing him to make the epic 'Surrendering Sunflora', which... hey, we finally realized what the 'surrendering' in that art piece is all about! A surprisingly nice and fuzzy feeling from this over-caffeinated, under-slept artist. Nice, Brassius. Hassel, as usual, gets overly emotional and cries at the end of that class. That's nice.
Hassel's other fifth class is about the Ten Great Sights of Paldea, basically giving us a rundown of every single location in case you haven't gone to. His sixth class is about ribbons and titles, and... I completely forgot that ribbons in this generation would give your Pokemon funky titles when you send them out, like 'Dirge, the Paldean Champion'.
And Salvatore's final classes all feature his adorable Pikachu, who acts out the three different alternate cries which indicate happiness, sadness and surprise. It's something that I noticed they added (or at least really improved) in this generation, that they really improved cries and the variations thereof.
And then I take all the final exams and... it's kind of... really unremarkable? Barely any talk about me completing my education and whatnot. Just a bunch of EXP candies from the receptionist lady. Man, Jacq is kind of a lazy homeroom teacher, huh? Eh. Well, that's the boring part of the school out of the way. The hopefully more interesting parts of the Uva Academy would be the interactions with the teachers outside the classes.
Random Notes:
- In this runaround to get Bisharp into a Kingambit, I evolved so many of the random Pokemon in my boxes, because the Pokemon here yields quite a fair bit and they're all easily countered by Iron Jugulis and his Flying-type moves.
- Okay, the metal sheen on Pokemon like Bisharp and Magneton actually look pretty damn good.
- I caught Stantler, and its Violet dex entry talks about how it used to be able to evolve under its own power. Poor, poor Wyrdeer, excluded from the dex...
- It's actually surprising that my core team didn't have as many of the Auto-Battling ribbons and titles as I expected. Actually, compared to all other aspects of the Pokemon games, I don't think I know too much about ribbons and the like...
- In one of Dendra's class, she notes how some people got LP illegally by hacking. Penny, hide! She's on to you!
- There is a very cool line in Salvatore's class where he points out that language is very diverse among Pokemon species, including electromagnetic and ultrasonic waves, as well as telepathy. Cute topic to note in a languages class!
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