My second part of my coverage of Paldean Pokemon! I really don't have a whole ton to say in this opening segment... these are just the more regular Pokemon, after all. The weirdos are all at the end of the dex!
Click here for the previous part.
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#924-925: Tandemaus & Maushold
I guess Tandemaus could count as the 'regional rodent', except it's nowhere as commonly found as Lechonk. Well, you're free to consider whatever you want as the regional rodent or whatever. The gimmick, of course, is that Tandemaus are actually two cartoon mice considered as a single Pokemon. A lot of Tandemaus' design was lost on me the first time I saw it, no thanks to its tiny in-game model and the fact that the whites are very bright. The artwork or zooming in to them when they're not hopping around show that their tails are joined together, and each Tandemaus has different 'shading' that resemble a cartoon shirt or pants.
So yeah, the joke is that these are a couple of mice that live together, move together and basically an exaggerated version of animals that mate for life like lovebirds. The specifics of how a Tandemaus functions... best not to ask. They hatch from the same egg the way Kangaskhan manifests a baby upon the moment of birth, or how Exeggcute is technically also a colony of six minds. The dex entries note that the pair will stick together no matter what, and will split any food they find exactly half and eat it together. Oh, and since they are two Pokemon, they are classified as 'genderless'. Cute!
Not the most interesting thing out there, but I think the plainness is meant to be the point, since the selling point of Tandemaus is its gimmick. One thing to note is that its attack animation (or eating animation, if you engage in the sandwich making) has them open their mouth insanely wide, showing a giant void with buckteeth, which people find unsettling but I find hilarious. I'm pretty sure the giant teeth and the evolution is what elevated this line to a 3/6 instead of any score lower.
Tandemaus will evolve into Maushold like most Pokemon do, at a certain level... but they must do so in a battle, and the funny thing is that Tandemaus' evolution into Maushold does not actually cause the game to pause and enter the iconic evolution screen, something that genuinely caught me off-guards when I saw it. You're meant to be surprised when you check your party and see that your two parent mice reproduced and gave birth off-screen!
There's even two variants -- the most common one turns Maushold into a family of four, but there's a 1/100 chance of a Maushold only having a single child and being a family of three. There's no actual difference in-game, just a cosmetic one, but this is much more memorable than the 50 Alcremie variants, yeah?
The Pokedex is pretty adorable, too, with different dex entries for both variants -- "the little one just appeared one day. They all live together like a family, but the relationship between the three is still unclear."; and "the group might be a family of related Pokemon, but nobody knows for sure." It's of course riffing on how all Pokemon breeding happens offscreen because Nintendo can't acknowledge sex, and whether it's the Rotom Dex trying to spare an underage human trainer from learning about where baby mice came from; or if there is something more unnatural in the creation of the baby Maushold is interesting. They also have a signature move (most Pokemon introduced after Generation VII does) which is called Population Bomb, which I find kinda funny.
I'm not the biggest fan of this line, if we're being honest, but that's okay. Not all Pokemon are meant to appeal to me, and Tandemaus and Maushold, I think, are a quintessential example of a design that I really 'get' but I don't particularly love.
3/6.#926-927: Fidough & Daschbun
Who's a good boy? Yes you are. Okay, yeah, I still remembered the days when the fandom were begging for more doggos and were super-excited about Rockruff. This generation gave us two! The first is the Fairy-type Fidough, who is an adorable puppy with... some spiral-shaped pastries for its ears and its "necklace". The Wiki identifies these as Ensaïmada, a Spanish pastry. Okay! I don't know enough about pastries!
We've been assigning the Fairy-type to most food-based Pokemon ever since Generation VI, so it's no real surprise here that the bread dog is an early-type Fairy. I do like that it's not just a dog made out of bread, though -- there's a fair amount of talk both in the dex and in the NPC's that Fidough are prized because it has yeast in its breath that induces fermentation, so presumably bakeries raise Fidoughs to aid in breadmaking.
Also, there's a pun here. Fidough is a pure-bred dog. Get it? Pure BREAD? Yuk yuk yuk yuk.
I don't like Daschbun as much as Fidough, though mostly I think it's because the brioche or whatever the type of bread that makes up Daschbun's ears and neck look a bit less cohesive compared to Fidough. Pretty all right as far as a 'dachshund made out of bread' design goes, and I appreciate that they didn't go for the obvious 'hot dog dachshund' joke. The dachshund's long body and tiny leads does lend to it being a loaf of bread!
There's really not much to say here, the Pokedex entries just say that Daschbun has a sweet aroma and is prized for that, which is a whole lot less interesting than Fidough's yeast breath. It's got a signature ability, Well-Baked Body, which makes it immune to Fire-type moves because it's already properly baked? Okay?
2/6, they are good doggos. #928-930: Smoliv, Dolliv & Arboliva
It's a Smoliv! A smol olive! I absolutely love this. It's a simple design, a blob design, and... I shouldn't like it that much. We've had a lot of blob designs in Pokemon over the years, but the absolutely adorable face that they gave poor, panicked Smoliv here makes him look just so pathetic. Look at this green blob with an olive on top of its head, with its o~o face and those very thick lines around its pure-white eyes!
It's not as helpless as Bounsweet, though, who in lore is just pathetic. Smoliv unleashes the power of pure, undiluted OLIVE OIL, which is bitter, astringent and causes enemies to flinch. It's not an actual adaptation of real olive plants, I don't think, but it's still adorable.
Also, I do love that shiny Smoliv actually has black olives on all three of her stages. Neat!
Yeah, we're in the 'plant blob that turns into something vaguely humanoid' trend that has been cropping up for quite some time now, and... I hesitate to use the term 'plant waifu', but damn, they do have one of these almost every generation, huh? And for a stage, Dolliv looks like it's going to become one of those same uninspired vague humanoid-plant-in-a-cute-skirt that has been done to death with Lilligant, Tsareena, Bellossom and the other Liligant,
Now, on its own merits, I still find Dolliv to be rather pleasant-looking, though obviously having those little eyelashes and a not-afraid mouth makes it an inferior face compared to Smoliv. I do like that it's got two olives that form a hairdo, though the rest of Dolliv is... serviceable. Not really too much to say here, Dolliv exists with humans to give them olive oil. Sure.
Far, far more ineresting, though, is its final stage. Instead of giving us another variation of a vague leaf-dress woman, Arboliva is a much, much more creative affair, transforming into a... what is this? A bird-person? When inactive, Arboliva actually moves its wing-arms in a giant circle, making it look like some sort of a weird topiary or a wreath. Actually, it's probably a direct reference to olive wreaths, which they use in Olympic games and the like! And the olives are purple now. I actually kinda like that the head isn't exactly a 'bird' or a 'human' properly. This is an olive tree monster, and olive tree monsters can have whatever heads they want to.
I do like that Arboliva still has all the features that Smoliv and Dolliv have, too, with the Smoliv head still forming the core central head, and Dolliv's "dress" is now like a poncho over its brown trunk dress. Now I definitely would've preferred those weird, tiny little white feet to be out of the way -- whether they were going for a bird or a plant, just having the brown talons/roots looks so much better.
Because olive branches represent peace, Arboliva is, of course, very compassionate, and will continue to share its olive oil with other Pokemon... but when threatened, it will "launch its rich aromatic oil with enough force to smash a boulder". Imagine that, being hit by olive oil so hard that rocks crack! Arboliva doesn't have a Olive Oil Pump as a move, unfortunately, but the line does have a signature move and a signature ability -- Seed Sower auto-casts Grassy Terrain when Arboliva is hit, and Terrain Pulse transforms the type based on the terrain. Terrains are kind of... not particularly well-realized in the game, but they tried.
Anyway, I didn't expect to like Arboliva that much. It still misses the cut for being one of my all-time favourites, but I do really like what they did with this one.
4/6.#931: Squawkabilly
Hmmm, not the biggest fan of this one, no. It's about time we got another parrot or parakeet, yeah, since it's been a while since Chatot. The Pokemon itself is also based on the Monk Parakeet, an invasive species in Spain, so there's even a locality-inspired element to it. But Squawkabilliy is such a... boring design? It doesn't evolve, so all it will ever be is just a cartoon bird with a funny hairdo meant to resemble a punk's pompadour.
There are four colours -- as you can see in that Pokedex image screenshot -- and Squawkabillies exist in green, blue, yellow and gray variants. And... the whole point is that they make flocks based on their feather colours to fight over territory, and make a racket as they move through towns to scavenge for food. The green ones are the most numerous (allegedly, according to the Pokedex) and the other gangs are pissed off at them because they form the biggest rivals. There's a bit of a nice tidbit that the white Squawkabilly likes to live near towns because its colouration affords it camouflage, but out of the eight dex entries that the species has over Scarlet and Violet, this thing is pretty unremarkable. They take over the Corviknight taxi role from the previous game, and... that's about it.
And... with no evolution, no signature move, no signature ability and not even any sort of differences between the forms... not even like, giving them a Oricorio-style move that differs between forms? They're gangsters so they could be Dark/Flying? Make the alternate forms exclusive to different games like Basculin was? Incorporate the Terastralization thing to have each of them get 'locked' into a different Tera type? Something, y'know?
1/6.#932-934: Nacli, Naclstack & Garganacl
Oh, now we're getting something kinda fun! Nacli is a rock salt formation shaped like a cupcake, and... well, let's get the obvious thing out of the way, because this thing is kind of a reference to Minecraft. I must admit that I don't know enough about Minecraft's aesthetics to say if Nacli and the rest of its line is a specific reference to anything beyond the typical blocky aesthetic and the square eyes, but I do think that Nacli does make for a fun Rock-type equivalent to Geodude in Paldea.
I also really like that while the whole 'salt cube' thing is clearly well-shown by the salt cubes (which salt can naturally form, something I thought was always man-made until researching for this article) that make up Nacli's face and the, uh, chunk shoved into its head. The main 'hair' of Nacli gives the impression of a mushroom or a cupcake, which I felt does wonders in making Nacli feel like a more 'natural' rock monster, so to speak... but looking at the sediment layers does make it rather clear that Nacli is like a bunch of rock salt crystals embedded in a chunk of sediment rock. Which I don't think normally looks as neatly cube-shaped like Nacli, but it's neat enough! I don't know enough about geology!
Like Fidough, Nacli is treasured by ancient Paldeans because it constantly creates salt from its body. Honestly, while not really knowing what the final evolution would be, I basically took a Nacli all the way to the end. And... I do like the evolutions a fair bit, but Nacli is one of those that the first form really is my favourite.
5/6.
Naclstack is the first evolution. Get it? He's a stack of NaCl, because every part of his body is made up of cubes? It's interesting that there's the huge, rugged chunk that looks like half of Nacli's "mushroom" hat that forms the back of Naclstack, but the rest of him, particualrly those wacky legs, are made up of cubes. There's not really even a proper mouth here, just a long, horizontal rectangle of brown stuff that looks more like a log shoved through Naclstack's head. And... he's a rock salt monster, and I honestly do appreciate that some of the more inorganic monsters don't really look like any animal or plant. The eyes do look a bit more like what people call to be 'voxel artwork', something that I'm not particularly familiar about
Naclstack also first gains access to Salt Cure, the line's signature move based on the process of ice curing, and... it's a damage-over-time (becuase salt curing takes a while) but it deals more to Water and Steel types? I get the Water-type, but I guess the Steel type is meant to be because salt rusts? Naclstack is explicitly noted to weaponize this to dry cure its prey, meaning that, yes, this rock boar dinosaur thing is a fearsome predator.
Anyway, I do like Naclstack a fair bit. A bit unorthodox for sure, but I do appreciate what it's all about.
The final form, Garganacl... yeah, he's my least favourite out of the three stages, though I do like the effort to make this humanoid rock monster look not at all as humanoid as something like Coalossal, which just looks like a generic tokusatsu monster. You're a creature made out of rock and sediments, you could look a bit weirder!
And Garganacl delivers, in a sense. I do like that all four limbs basically sprout from the same 'height', with some neat sedimentation details running down and there's a lot of salt 'cubes' embedded in them. If Garganacl's arms are hanging slack, it does look like the mountain-like structure is supported by four pillars. It's weird, but it's neat. The 'mountain' or 'pyramid' or whatever is meant to represent something like the salt mine itself? Not the biggest fan of the head or the face, mostly because it looks a bit too mundane compared to Naclstack and Nacli. It looks like something that a Transformer or a Gundam would have, y'know?
Garganacl is noted, and even shown in its pokedex artwork, to just walk around and cause other Pokemon to follow in its footsteps to lick the salt left behind. Somehow, despite Naclstack's salt being used offensively to salt cure the enemy, Garganacl is able to use his salt to cure injured Pokemon? You'd think rubbing salt into the wound would make it more painful? Although I guess Garganacl might have perfect control over its salt creating abilities that it creates the right sodium chloride concentration to be a disinfectant or something?
Anyway, I did use this Pokemon a lot in my playthrough and... it's easily the least favourite, visually. I'm sorry. I still do like Naclstack and Garganacl on principle, but just not as much as many of the new Pokedex additions this time around. I do really find it funny that this Pokemon is apparently pretty good in the competitive meta-game?
4/6 for the evolved forms. #935-937: Charcadet, Amarouge & Ceruledge
Um... yeah, not really my thing. I get what they're going for here, he's a little knight guy with like a squire's helmet, and the flamers coming off of him is reminiscent of like those feathery flourishes common on knights and whatnot, but I just don't really find the design appealing at all? He's just a little man with stumpy arms. I did remember Charcadet being revealed relatively early on in the buildup to Scarlet and Violet, being one of the few Generation IX Pokemon that I did get to see... and I'm kind of underwhelmed. I think I also thought that this was going to be a Kubfu situation where this kinda has the feeling of an easily-marketable legendary.
He's not. He's just a little kid made up of charcoal (though the charcoal only really seems to comprise his head. He's a scrappy little guy and stuff, and he's got a branching evolution -- both of which revolve around you doing a sidequest to get a certain type of armour (it's version exclusive), except... there's really nothing in Characadet's design or dex entries that indicate it needs armour? At least have something like Bagon throwing itself off of cliffs to fly or a story like that.
The Scarlet-exclusive Armarouge becomes a Fire/Psychic, and it's arms have grown to full human proportions and the helmet is a bit more well-defined. The Auspicious Armour you gave to Charcadet has formed a body plate and two gigantic shoulderpads that would make even World of Warcraft's armour designers do a double-take. The end result is... I like it better by Charcadet, but not by all that much. A bit hard to see on this artwork, but in the game, Armarouge's pauldrons are actually levitating. I guess he can't really lift those up with those noodle arms and oven-mitt hands.
I do really like, however, Armarouge's animations. Those gigantic, completely impractical-looking shoulderpads slide down to the tips of his arms, and Armarouge puts them together to create a gigantic cannon that's an obvious reference to Mega-man... and I guess the Psychic part is to control those shoulder pieces or something? Again, a rather flimsy justification because shooting fireballs is something all Fire-types can do inherently. The cannon's cool, and elevates Armarouge from getting a pretty abyssmal score, but it doesn't really fit into getting the Psychic type of all things?
2/6.
The Violet counterpart, Ceruledge, barely even looks like he's from the same evolutionary line due to the sheer amount of colours changed. Gone are the black and red charcoal colours, and really the only thing it has in common with its brothers are its head design and a humanoid form... but Ceruledge just goes... a bit over-the-top with how utterly edgy it looks. It looks like the fan-art of some twelve-year-old making their first fan-made Digimon and Pokemon and I am saying that as a compliment. I think there is enough in Ceruledge to like him unironically, with all the well-done black and purple colourings and all the sharp edges and he's got two gigantic blade-arms made out of fire. His eyes are also perpetually on fire, which is such an edgy anime trope. I actually like this thing a fair bit.
Ceruledge becomes Fire/Ghost, and unlike poor Armarouge, the typing makes sense here because Ceruledge is given a haunted Malicious Armour, causing it to get imbued with 'grudges steeped into the old armour' from a 'sword wielder who fell before accomplishing his goal' and turn him into a psychotic, ghost-flame-sword-brandishing murder knight.
I tend to shy away from more humanoid Pokemon, yes, but Ceruledge is actually a surprising breath of fresh air. It's just kind of a shame -- I don't really dislike Armarouge, and I get that Charcadet is just the little zygote that's unevolved into the two forms that they wanted to showcase. But beyond the cannon-vs-gun comparison, I don't really find anything to really 'parallel' these two. I really wished the dex did more in emphasizing Armarouge's (presumably) more heroic nature compared to the murder-machine that is Ceruledge. I don't dislike this line at all, honestly, come to think of it. I don't like the previous two mostly because I kinda feel like the accompanying lore is very slim, but I do respect them trying to do something a bit more different.
4/6.#938-939: Tadbulb & Bellibolt
Okay, we're going from a random super-elaborate Digimon-esque humanoid design in the middle of the early dex into something far more mundane. In Pokemon standards, anyway. Tadbulb here is a tadpole light bulb, and it's... basically what you would think a Pokemon version of this is. The head of the tadpole is shaped like a lightbulb, and the tail is just attached to the 'foot' of the bulb. Tadbulb has a rather cute if interesting face which will become much more relevant in its evolution, and I do find it interesting that it's got like a little 'helmet' of yellow hair. The first time I saw Tadbulb, it kinda reminds me of like a motorcyclist's helmet? There are white spots on the tadpole's head, and it can make the head blink on and off to alert its allies like a firefly.
Tadbulb are also tiny and hover above the ground, which the dex notes that it does with the electricity stored in its body... though it can't get Levitate as an ability! It's kinda interesting that it floats higher above the ground with thunderclouds around. Also, despite being Electric-type, Tadbulbs also mostly gather around rivers and lakes, showing that some facet of its original animal inspiration still infers its behaviour.
And then Tadbulb evolves into Bellibolt, and... it's a waddling thing that is somewhat akin to designs like Poliwhirl, and in fact I think many people have compared this design to 'Beta Politoed' which I don't really think is a fair enough comparison. But before talking too much about Bellibolt, look at his face. The eyes that will immediately grab our attention are the two white orbs on either side of its head, which... fits with our perception of eyes as white, and how frogs have like bulbous eyes anyway, right? But let me quote the Pokedex entry for Bellibolt. "What appear to be eyeballs are actually organs for discharging the electricity". Yes, those are actually just electrical organs similar to Pikachu's lightning-cheeks. Bellibolt's actual face is still exactly the same as Tadbulb, with the little yellow dot-eyes being coincidentally situated like nostrils.
It's kind of a mindfuckery thing when I first saw it, and the in-game model really does confirm it by making the real eyes blink and stuff. This is something that a lot of real-world animals do, with moths and butterflyfishes having fake eye-spots, and even a type of frog, Physalaemus nattereri, the Cuyaba Dwarf Frog, has gigantic fake eyespots on its butt. It's just that these eyespots so rarely fool humans. Pretty interesting thing, honestly, and I do find both Bellibolt and the Charcadet line a bit refreshing for straying a bit from the more traditional designs.
Oh yeah, the rest of Bellibolt... Bellibolt's belly is also one of those plasma globe things you see in Science Fairs or whatever, and you see weird low-poly-texture lightning bolts spark out of the central yellow core whenever Bellibolt uses its attacks. There is also some discussion about how Bellibolt might be inspired by how frog legs were used extensively in early experiments to showcase galvanism, but I think that's reaching a bit since Bellibolt doesn't really look like a frog? Neither does Poliwhirl and I like him, but eh. Bellibolt has the ability "Electromorphosis', which causes Bellibolt to get a boost to its next Electric-type move if it gets hit physically.
Not my thing, at the end of the day, but I respect what they're going with here.
3/6.#940-941: Wattrel & Kilowattrel
And now we get to the 'regional bird' of Paldea, though it hardly fits that role thanks to not really appearing in the early areas of the game. Wattrel is an Electric/Flying bird based on the storm petrels, which I assume is where the Electric typing came from. And true to its inspiration being birds that live close to the ocean, Wattrel is found normally near the beaches and seasides. Pretty neat! I do really like the pokedex entries for this one, which describes how it produces electricity within its bones when it catches the wind... and then divebombs into the ocean to electrocute prey. Those poor, poor Veluza!
Pretty cute little bird. I'm honestly not too familiar with the family of birds, but it's kind of a pleasant looking design with nice colours. There's also the rather fun little detail that apparently Wattrel nets are harvested to make the Pokemon world version of bird's nest soup... something that is usually more associated with swiftlets.
Wattrel then evolves into the rather impressive Kilowattrel. Get it? Kilowatt? Anyway, Kilowattrel actually did impress me a lot in the 3D models because... well, not a lot of the bird Pokemon made the jump from 2D to 3D well. Kilowattrel's jagged wings and the massive wingspan, plus the bright yellow-and-black colours, really does end up grabbing my attention. Turns out that this is intentional, because real-life frigatebirds have some of the largest wing-area-to-body rartio of any birds.
It's not particularly evident until you look at certain animations or in its official art, but Kilowattrel has a massive inflatable throat sac, meaning that it's based on a different kind of seabird, the Frigatebird, which have gigantic gular pouches and the distinctive hooked beaks, angular wings and forked tail that Kilowattrel shows. Where real-life frigatebirds use their throat pouches to attract mates, Kilowattrel uses them as basically electrical storage units to store all the electricity generated by its wings.
Another dex entry note that Kilowattrels don't have oil on their feathers, so they can't dive into the ocean to hunt for prey... something that's actually a reference to both their real-life inspirations. Storm petrels do dive into the water to catch fish, but frigatebirds don't! Anyway, there's not too much to say about them. I do like that the two Electric birds are also based on seabirds.
4/6.
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