Let's Play New Pokemon Snap, Part 9: Final Illumination

So last where we left off, we get teleported from a mysterious ruin with the five totems of the Illumina Pokemon we've been meeting throughout all this time.

And I emerge... in front of a dilapidated, desiccated tree in the middle of a grove. Which... I immediately recognize as Xerneas. Hey, Xerneas! Old buddy, old pal!

Now, out of the Kalos games, I played Pokemon Y... but Pokemon XY was when I really got back into Pokemon after a multi-generation hiatus. That year was extremely insane as I caught up on Generation IV and V (and those two had a lot of content), caught up on the Pokemon Adventures manga, and went full-on geek as I tried to figure out what was going on with these Mega Evolutions and a new type and the new drip-feeding of new Pokemon... man, I miss Xerneas and Yveltal. Their little Legends game is coming out soon and I'm super excited about that. 

And the Xerneas 'boss' fight, if you can even call it that, is actually a tad less stressful than the preceding Steelix boss fight. Xerneas transforms into a ball, and zips around and I just have to conk it with an Illumina orb to get it to turn into a deer, and then conk it again to get it illuminated. The thing is, Xerneas is kind enough to do a huge roar every time he's knocked out of his orb form, making it rather easy for me to do that. 

The encounter with Xerneas just takes me through the abandoned ruin, which is pretty chill and a fair bit brighter than the longer Houndoom-infested ruin elsewhere in Aurus Island. We eventually find the full version of the mural where it shows Xerneas in the middle of the other five Illumina Pokemon, being the source of the power... and the blast of energy that Xerneas is exuding is a big honking green "X". That was actually rather obvious in hindsight, and very visible in the ruined mural we saw earlier in the ruins area, and it's one of those things that gets super-duper obvious when you realize what it is!

And... and that's it for the "main story" of New Pokemon Snap. After the end of the route, Xerneas has the five glowing orbs representing the other five Illumina Pokemon spin around himself, then around me, then he reverts back into becoming a tree. I return to the LENS base, where the Professor gives his big explanation to the mystery he's been researching, which is the fact that... well, we kinda figured out in the previous level, where Xerneas and the Illumina Pokemon were the ones that created the barrier to protect Lental from the meteor. 

And... and I'm actually half-expecting a fight between the Illumina Pokemon and whatever threat comes from that meteor, like Deoxys or the Ultra Beasts or something. The meteor actually turned out to be completely irrelevant! Which... which is honestly fine, I suppose. This is a photography game, I suppose I can't really complain that it doesn't have an epic action-adventure ending. 

I really could've done without the final cheesy cutscene, though, where the Professor is actually confused why all this Illumina phenomenon is happening immediately at the same time and stuff, and Todd, Rita and the other kid all say in unison that it's essentially the power of friendship, and that my character is so beloved by Pokemon that it stimulates the Illumina Pokemon to come out. Hmm, okay? I kinda wished that there was something a bit more concrete I do in the boss fights, actually, like saving a Pokemon with my apples or whatnot. But... small complaint. 

The credits roll, rather cutely with some of the great (and not so great) photographs I've taken throughout my adventure, and closes with a picture of the group with the LENS base Pokemon. That's neat. 

The game then reboots and I get like three cutscenes that trigger at the same time. First up, I get 'burst mode', which is like a regular camera but I assume it'll make it a lot easier to capture fast-moving behaviours. That's going to be useful if I enter a stage with the singular focus to catch, like, a super-specific behaviour like that shot of Stunfisk zapping Octillery in the beach. I don't plan to go out of my way to do too much of the sidequests, otherwise we'll be in this game the whole year... but it's nice. 

The Professor also tells me that I'm getting scores at the end of each trek, which is not something I look forward to. The post-trek button-mashing exercise is long enough as it is, I don't need two or three more A-button presses. Honestly, I almost wished that they gave me a 'skip the evaluation' or 'evaluation summary' option. 

Then I unlock like three different new levels. I got a bit confused, and apparently this is a function of the DLC. The original 'post-game' level is the Evening Reef level, which was a conspicuously missing area considering the regular reef is listed as Reef (Day). The other two -- the a Badlands area in the volcano island and the River area in Belusylva Island. The little shrinking adventure we have was also originally released as a DLC, but it gets unlocked without having to beat the game's main story. I'll be saving these two areas for later on, because I actually did a couple of extra explorations in older areas instead. 

The evening reef is still pretty calming, and the sunset just looks fucking majestic. Honestly, I think we can safely say that New Pokemon Snap is the absolute prettiest Pokemon game in the franchise without exception, right? I don't think any of the mainline series games comes close to this. I'm still confused a bit with the massive whirlpool, and I might actually look up a guide on how to get it to cough up its secrets. 

But there are also a lot of very nice moments. There's an Alolan Raichu actually surfing on top of the ocean waves with his tail, which isn't something that I think you can do in the games. It's something I've seen Alolan Raichu do in the clips of the anime, but it looks so majestic with the better water particle effects of this game. I think this is also a cheeky nod do the original Surfing Pikachu, which was in the original Pokemon Snap. 

There are Squirtles happily blowing bubbles, and a majestic Primarina is perched on top of a rockside also blowing bubbles and singing. Backdropped by the sunset, she looks pretty majestic! Drifblims also float around the skies and it's honestly never going to be something that I would think about doing but it makes total sense. Oh, and at night the Clamperls rise up from the abyssal level of the ocean and have an adorable little assemble on the reef. At a second run, I also get a Vaporeon to rise up from the blue hole. That's neat.

The little side-branch that used to have the Pelippers now contain a family of Lapras, and with the power of the Illumina orbs I can get a baby Lapras and a mama Lapras to sing together. Is that a reference to Ash's Lapras from the anime? It feels like it is. 

I return to the night reef in the second level, and there's also the 'rising sun' pattern of Vivillon fluttering around, which I thought was neat... but the most surprising behaviour is... among the five or so Drifblims that hover around, one of them is holding a Clamperl! OH NO! Poor Clamperl! It's being kidnapped by a ghostly child-napping ghost balloon from the underworld! And this is a game where we've seen so many predator/prey pairs chasing each other on-screen! What is it going to do with the Clamperl! 

...nothing harmful, actually, and it's a bit of a surprise considering this game! Following the Drifblim to the end actually shows the Drifblim dropping the Clamperl back into a part of the ocean where other Clamperls are. That's... that's surprisingly wholesome. I love it. 

I also do the Lapras interaction again, but this time a nearly-missable little blue blob flits in and out and joins the singing... it's... the Prince of the Oceans, Manaphy! 

I shouldn't be so surprised, but I went "WTF!" and got quite surprised... and I don't know if this is just the post-game or whatever, but I looked it up and apparently legendary Pokemon will start appearing in other areas now. Hmm, interesting! 

I did a bunch more experience farming while watching some anime just to get my area levels up to 3, then I go to the six boss-fight levels to see what's new. I do know that new Pokemon pop up in the Meganium level, like Combee and Eevee... but repeating that level now has Meganium randomly have SHAYMIN ride on top of her head if you get Meganium to investigate a nearby cliff. Yeah, I did this level before at level 2, and Shaymin most definitely isn't there, so there's a nice little incentive to go back for sure. 

A lot of the other levels don't have too much in them. The Wishiwashi level is neat in that the two jerk Wailmers from the underwater level show up, and some Finneon and Luvdiscs hang out with the giant Wishiwashi horde. The Volcarona lair has some Monferno and Archeops. Milotic's level is a lot nicer to travel with more Pokemon on the lake, with Serperior, Trevenant, Lotad and Magikarp. Man, Milotic's really majestic, huh? 

The Steelix level takes me through a slightly different route, I think, and throughout it there is a little side-story of Crobats and Noibats like chasing each other, until the giant Steelix comes and drives off the Crobat and I guess it likes the Noibats a bit better. 

The Xerneas level has... a completely different bat! Woobat! Oh, so that's the source of the random heart markings on the totem temple level? That's so weird and random and I love it. I was wondering if it was connected to the legendary or something. Nope, it's just a bunch of bats. Some other Pokemon like Sigilyph, Houndoom and Absol also hang out here, and I do like that the Absol lurks near the giant meteor mural, as if going "see, I warned you guys about this". And at the end, we see Xerneas curled up next to an Umbreon and Natu. That's surprisingly wholesome and rather unexpected for the Dark-type Eevelution! I think I'm only one Jolteon left from completing the set. 

At the time of writing I've obviously also done the new River and Badlands areas, but I'll save it for next time! This has been a really fun ride as I complete the main story. I think there's enough secrets and new areas in this game to keep the Snap train going for a couple more posts, but it's definitely been one of the most unexpectedly charming and wholesome games I've played for a long while. 

Random Notes:

• I'll definitely be doing a lot of the post-game (and originally DLC) areas, but this has been extremely therapeutic to play. I've actually been trying to play a couple of other games and watching other series that... hasn't been working out that well? I guess I kinda missed the point where these games and shows are supposed to be entertainment first and foremost, and I just need to play what makes me comfortable, even if it does mean that it's another Pokemon game. 
• So, what next? I'll probably play Legends ZA if it comes at any point of time later this year, but I do have a copy of Detective Pikachu Returns. I might do a speedrun of the remakes of Diamond/Pearl or Mystery Dungeon, but that will probably be a two or three part blog post similar to how I handled Let's Go Pikachu. We'll see. 
  
• I also purchased The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, and will probably be playing it after this. I'm not sure if I want to do a proper Let's Play of it, though. 
• I am a bit disappointed that Xerneas doesn't go from flying orb to depowered Xerneas form to rainbow-horn Xerneas form. It was always a bit of a point of confusion for me when playing through the Kalos games that Xerneas had an additional 'off-power' form when he's sitting in our party that Yveltal never had. 
• Man, Todd and Phil really don't have a personality at the end of the day, huh? Rita at least has some bit of sassiness going on for her and Professor Mirror has this whole bit about him trying to confirm his hypotheses, but the other two might as well not be there. 
• I reached the level 3 versions of the daytime Belusylva Forest, and I get a bunch of new interactions. I can knock away an Arbok menacing a Wooper, and the Wooper's expressions after being rescued is adorable. Sobble and Venusaur also start spawning in the level 3 day jungle, which... yay! Venusaur is expected since Blastoise and Charizard were unlocked in level 3 locations, but Sobble has been very conspicuously absent whereas his two Galar starter buddies Scorbunny and Grookey were very prominent in the first couple of areas.
• I was trying to do some of the easy-looking requests just for the heck of it, but some of them are really kind of confusing on what, exactly, counts for these specific behaviours. And sometimes (like the Vespiquen one) I just complete it without even knowing what specific behaviour that the Pokemon is doing. 
• Rather interestingly, Professor Mirror has no comment about Manaphy and Shaymin. Does he not know these guys are legendaries? 

Movie Review: Monsters - 103 Mercies Dragon Damnation

Monsters: 103 Mercies Dragon Damnation

So some time back, they adapted one of One Piece author Eiichiro Oda's earlier works, the one shot "Monsters". Like most authors, Oda went through various different one-shots before One Piece was published (and even then, there are at least two or three different 'Romance Dawn' chapters that Oda published before the canonical first chapter. But out of all of Oda's previous work, one stood out because it was retroactively made into part of the sprawling storyline of One Piece, which is Monsters -- with the zombified corpse of its main character Ryuma showing up in the Thriller Bark arc of One Piece.

I remembered reading the Thriller Bark arc and... honestly, without knowing the 'meta' reason and origin behind Ryuma, it really did feel like there was something that was intentionally special about him beyond just being another swordsman for Zoro to defeat, and while ultimately he was just a mid-arc boss fight while other characters would be the final villains, I felt like there was so much put into Ryuma's story that he felt different. The amount of backstory given to him felt like this was a character foreshadowing something huge in the future... and we did get that with the Wano arc. But it was a nice, pleasant surprise for me to know that Oda adapted Ryuma from his previous work Monsters, and did so in a way that wasn't confusing at all and felt rather integrated to the world of One Piece in general. 

And we get the animation, and it's... it's gorgeous. That's the first thing I do want to say about this. The colours are vibrant, and the shots of Ryuma and Cyrano pulling out their blades against each other in the climax is easily the coolest shot in the OVA -- I'm a sucker for those grayed-out sketchy artwork. But the shots of Ryuma and Cyrano clashing in the tavern, and obviously the money shot of Ryuma killing the dragon are all very cool!

That said... not a lot of people talked about this, and I think a good chunk of it is that Monsters in general is very standalone. It's meant to be a one-shot, and while that's cool and the voice actors and animators did a great job at highlighting the core twist of the story (that Cyrano and DR are actually villains scamming the citizens and betrayed Flare), the buildup and the resolution are... very predictable. The characterizations are also rather predictable, with Ryuma being a stock goofy-but-ultimately-heroic shonen protagonist, Flair being there as the crying girl to be rescued (or avenged, in this case) and both Cyrano and DR are pretty simple card-carrying villains beyond the twist.

There is also the fact that anyone who's going to watch Monsters is 99% likely to know of Monsters from One Piece, so the huge twist that the goofy wandering swordsman Ryuma is actually a super-badass 'King' of the swordsmen isn't going to blow anyone's minds. 

There are also some moments of confusion in the story that I felt could've done by rearranging some of the dialogue from the source material, specifically about the Dragon Horn. The twist goes that the village was actually ransacked and plundered by Cyrano and DR, and for a while it looked like there was no real dragon... but then apparently they actually do have a real magical dragon horn... I understood it, but I really felt like the exposition about whether a dragon actually attacked Flair's village in the past could've been done better. 

Ultimately, though, am I really going to complain and bitch all that much? No, not really. I love that one of an author's earlier works got recognized and adapted, and I did enjoy the time I had watching the OVA (or, well, ONA because it's released online) so yeah. It's not something I felt like it was anything super special, but it was a nice watch regardless. 

One Piece 1127 Review: Island of the Giant Pokemon

One Piece, Chapter 1127: Adventure in the Land of Mystery

So I don't really have a whole ton to say here. That's not to say I didn't enjoy this chapter, of course, but this is the "chaos at the beginning of an island" shenanigans! It's like when we first met the toys in Dressrosa while random fairies steal stuff; or Luffy fighting a sword-wielding baboon at the beginning of Wano; or all the stuff with the initial zombie parties in Thriller Bark. 

We do get confirmation that everything here is happening in Elbaf, and apparently for this village, the architecture is made up of lego bricks. The Elbaf village Shanks hung out in was made of more regular viking wooden logs and whatnot. And apparently the Straw Hats' arrival (which we still don't know how it happened!) ended up in your typical bit of chaos. Something is burning and they're afraid that it'll spread to Yggdrasil (which is what the giant tree is named, of course). Some bee-creatures called the Stingermols are knocked out, and a giant rabbit called the Ear God had apparently collapsed at some point. 

And apparently Nami is in a place called Big Steinn Castle. She's the one responsible for zapping the bees with her clima-tact, and she lampshades what the fuck is going on. She's woken up with new clothes, giant bees are attacking her, and Zeus isn't being particularly helpful. She cries for Luffy, Zoro, Sanji or even Usopp, and while it does feel rather natural as something Nami would say, it's also a rather nice highlight of how this arc will hopefully be revolving around how Usopp's going to overcome his status as a giant coward.

More giant monsters show up, though, with Nami being chased by a giant hedgehog, and she encounters Usopp in the jaws of a giant cat. Nami unleashes a giant lightning blast that takes out the hedgehog, but the giant cat keeps chasing them around. Usopp has also been given a makeover, with baggy Asterix-and-Obelisk style pants, a Viking helmet and a glorious comical beard-and-mustache getup. Absolutely smashing. 

Nami discusses the possibility of absinthe causing hallucinations, which leads to a rather silly moment where Usopp builds on this and tries to confront the 'illusion' cat, only to get bitchslapped and one-shotted. Poor Usopp. They fall down the tower onto the grounds below, and the giant cat transformed into a giant lion. And as the lion roars, Nami tries to protect herself with the wounded Usopp. Dick move, Nami, dick move. 

But then the monster trio arrives, unleashing a triple-combo attack. Luffy unleashes an Elephant Whip, Zoro unleashes a Black Rope Dragon Twister and Sanji goes all-in with an Ifrit Jambe: Epaule Strike attack. Okay, Sanji. I guess he has gone on record in saying that he won't tolerate people hurting ladies in his presence. It's a fun sequence, and we get to see the designs of the monster trio -- Luffy is basically what you expect him to be, just regular Luffy in stereotypical Viking gear. Sanji goes for a more knight-looking vibe, while Zoro, uh... he kinda looks like he's cosplaying X-Drake? That pair of goggles don't do him favours. I know it's based on some historical eye-guard part of the helmet, but it does look kinda goofy. 

We get a comedy moment where Nami makes a gag about how "I was so scared when Usopp died", when Usopp is still very much alive and complaining next to Nami. We also get the subtle confirmation that the Ear God was beaten up and COOKED AND EATEN by Luffy, Sanji and Zoro. So... yeah, we still don't know how the fuck our heroes got here, but they sure did come around and start beating up animals. Which... might be a point of misunderstanding and/or conflict with the locals, I guess, depending on how much they revere this so-called 'Ear God'. 

Not what I expected going into Elbaf, but I'm enjoying this ride!

Random Notes:

• Inari Pilgrimage of Yamato Cover Story: She's hanging out with Inuarashi to discuss the kidnapping and stuff. Inuarashi is now the Daimyo of Kuri. Presumably, the other Scabbards we haven't seen have all became Daimyos of various regions. 
• There's some buzz about it on the internet, but Luffy's 'Elephant Whip' attack was misattributed as a Gear Fourth technique and not a Gear Third one. I really do think it's just a typo that the editors missed.
• There is a whole lot of discussion about whether the giants we see are actually giants or not; or if they're actually in Elbaf or not; or if the various errors (Luffy's sword/axe changing from panel to panel) are an indication of this whole thing being an absinthe hallucination. I'm not saying that it's not possible, but I really do think it's just an honest mistake and that I wouldn't really like it all that much if it's a hallucination -- I feel like Elbaf has so much potential and stories to be told without resorting to hallucinations.
• And besides, scale has never been One Piece's best suit and I don't really buy all that much into one-panel arguments of 'oh, the bees are this size compared to the giants and this size compared to Nami and therefore...' when we've seen sizes fluctuate wildly so much within chapters. 
• By the way, I love the one-panel meme acknowledgement of Nami tripping over the lego floor and complaining about being hurt by it. 
• If it isn't something else, then maybe the giant cat ate the lion devil fruit, allowing it to transform from one animal to another -- similar to Komainu and Pierre before. 
• Chopper is still MIA. I guess having him talk to the animals would've made this chapter not happen at all. 

What If S01E05 Review: Marvel Zombies

 What If, Season 1, Episode 5: What If... Zombies?!

Ah, the zombie one!

I really enjoyed this episode, mostly because of how irreverent and funny it is. And I don't think I would care for a show that's entirely just a dark comedy spin on a pre-established series, but I feel that one episode out of many -- and one that both adapts and lampoons one of the most trope-heavy genres of all time (after superheroes, of course) is pretty fun. 

It also honestly draws a lot more than I thought from the source 'Marvel Zombies' miniseries, which means nothing to most of the casual viewers, but I definitely appreciate it. 

This What If episode also features a rather sizable cast of random characters and gives all of them something to say or do -- a stark contrast to the terribly-handled finale to What If's second season where no one other than the main three characters had anything significant to say. 

The episode is kicked off with the zombie apocalypse already underway, with Hulk -- or, well, Bruce Banner -- dropping down onto Dr. Strange's sanctum just like the opening of Avengers: Infinity War. He's soon followed by Thanos's two goons, Ebony Maw and Cull Obsidian, but unlike the prime timeline the streets are empty and there aren't any superheroes around. Ebony Maw gets some words of his monologue out until Dr. Strange, Iron Man and Wong show up... but they're zombies! And they immediately dispatch of the aliens and turn them into zombies. 

After this bit of glorious black comedy, Bruce Banner is rescued by a ragtag bunch of survivors, which is where I talked about unlikely characters meeting and interacting with each other. We've got Spider-Man, Wasp, Sharon Carter, Winter Soldier, Okoye, Happy Hogan, and Kurt. Kurt, if you forget, is one of Ant-Man's sidekicks from his movies. Oh, and Dr. Strange's Cloak of Levitation is around, too. 

Spider-Man (who is recasted for What If due to legal issues, but the Tom Holland energy is strong) gives us a rundown in his trademark annoying-teenager style. Riffing on Zombieland, Spider-Man shows Bruce, and ergo, the audience, about what's going on in the zombie apocalypse. And, well, in-between having jokes and introducing the audience to some of the more obscure MCU characters (like poor Sharon Carter -- I'm convinced her role in Falcon and the Winter Soldier is because the movie creators and audiences kind of collectively forgot she existed) and giving us some comedy in the form of naked Bucky. 

Unlike the comic-book version of Marvel Zombies (where the zombies retain their personalities and can speak), What If's Marvel Zombies work on regular zombie rules, with all the zombified people being groaning, shambling wights. And Spider-Man (and to a lesser extent Happy and Kurt) ends up being one of the funniest characters throughout the episode, constantly giving bits of pop culture references or genre-savvy commentary. He also has a great dynamic with Wasp/Hope, who acts as a surrogate big sister or mentor to her throughout the episode. 

And I'm going to go through Spider-Man's character first since I'm already in the groove, but I think one of the best scenes in this episode is Peter's later acknowledgement that he's doing this just to try and keep his team and himself upbeat in the face of disaster after losing literally everyone in his life. This proves that they can have their cake and eat it, by having Peter inject a source of levity into the otherwise dark'n'edgy topic, while also giving a fair bit of pathos to these characters. 

Anyway, after the big wacky introduction by Peter (and we get a handwave explanation for the zombie virus, which came during the retrieval of Janet van Dyne in this world's equivalent of Ant-Man and the Wasp), we are also very quickly given our first 'zombie video game mission', where our heroes want to investigate Camp LeHigh. We get a fun fight in the big train station in New York, where our heroes fight against zombie Hawkeye and zombie Falcon. Some hilarious comedy as Bucky lampshades his shared status as Captain America's sidekick with Falcon (and both Sebastian Stan and Bucky Barnes are great at this deadpan comedy). Zombie Captain America is the final boss of this little gauntlet in the train station, leading to a fight against Bucky, who ends up bifurcating Captain America and taking his shield. Captain Bucky, everybody! This is the closest we'll get to that since the MCU has to give the shield to Falcon!

And, just like any zombie apocalypse series, we get people dropping like flies. Happy gets pulled off by a zombie horde and continues going blam-blam-blam with his Iron Man glove even as a zombie. Sharon Carter gets zombified by Cap, before Wasp flies into her and expands, blowing up poor Zombie Sharon with some graphicness that would never fly for a real, non-zombie takedown. 

We get a moment of calmness and drama in the midst of all this as Peter gives a whole speech about losing people from his friends to his aunt to his Uncle Ben (making this alternate universe world ironically the first time 'Uncle Ben' is even properly mentioned in the MCU). The drama continues when Wasp discovers that she's been infected, giving poor Peter Parker another gut punch as this newfound big-sister figure goes Giant-Woman and tears through a giant wave of zombies to allow our heroes access to Camp LeHigh.

Afterwards, our heroes discover that the one that had sent out the distress call from Camp LeHigh is the Vision. Vision's Mind Stone is able to reverse part of the zombification process... leading to something that is technically a homage to a part of the original comic run, but is just another bit of ridiculousness in it all -- Ant-Man's head is in a jar. He's honestly kind of irrelevant other than to give Paul Rudd a lot of opportunities to crack jokes, but that's a good reason to have him around. 

And turns out that as our heroes talk a bit with Vision, turns out that Vision is luring survivors to the camp so that they can be fed to Zombie Wanda -- whose powers are too strong for Vision's Mind Stone to work on. Presumably, this is because of some infinity-stone related shenanigans? Zombie Wanda becomes the final boss for our heroes to take down. She kills Kurt and Okoye, but our heroes manage to talk to Vision and get him to see sense long enough to entrust the Mind Stone to Spider-Man. Our heroes run to try and get to a jet that will take them to Wakanda, which can hopefully create a cure. 

Zombie Wanda sees the destroyed body of Vision and goes insane. She continues to pursue our heroes, and there's a comical (and almost mean!) takedown of poor Bucky, before Bruce Banner jumps down and Hulks out to hold back Zombie Wanda. We get one last fight against a zombified, gigantified Wasp, but the survivors manage to fly off.

With their numbers reduced to two men, a head and a floating cloak, Spider-Man bemoans their fate. T'Challa, however, gives an amazing speech made more poignant by his actor's death (which was very recent at the time of the airing of this season) and the whole 'King of the Dead' aspect of Black Panther that the MCU hasn't quite managed to cover. “In my culture, death is not the end. They’re still with us, as long as we do not forget them.” 

Very appropriate to be the hopeful close-off to a zombie-themed episode... if only the episode didn't pull one last black comedy joke and show that Wakanda has already fallen to Thanos, who apparently got zombified offscreen. 

I do actually really like the zombie episode. It's got a lot of black comedy, and it's quite self-aware with how ridiculous all of these deaths are and how out-of-place Spider-Man and Ant-Man's brands of comedy are. At different parts of the episode, both characters actually do admit that what they're doing is driven by coping and madness respectively. There are a lot of honestly quite great moments in this episode for the characters, with Spider-Man and Wasp's speeches in the middle of the episode being one of the highlights. Black Panther and Vision also have quite a fair bit of great moments, but the more I write about this episode, the more I like it. This one's pretty cool. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• This is the first What If...? episode to not adapt events spiraling from a single movie, but rather an actual Marvel comics alternate-reality concept, that is Marvel Zombies. The zombies in this version are groaning, growling nearly non-sentient ones instead of Marvel Zombies' very sentient and intelligent undead, though. 
  
• Several plot lines -- like limbs of Black Panther being used to feed a zombified loved one by an insane superhero (T'Challa is held hostage by Hank Pym/Giant-Man); and a superhero surviving as a disembodied head (Wasp/Janet in the comics instead of Scott Lang) are taken directly from the comics. 
• Additionally, in Marvel Zombies 3, Scarlet Witch keeps the non-zombified but still alive remains of the Vision in a stronghold, which is the reverse of what happens here. 
• The timeframe of this movie -- specifically Ebony Maw and Cull Obsidian's arrival -- lines up with Avengers: Infinity War.  
• Peter Parker also makes homemade films with annoying-to-those-around-him commentary in Spider-Man: Homecoming, though being the last survivors of a zombie apocalypse is a lot more grim than the background events of Civil War.
• Kurt keeps getting freaked out by what he thinks is the mythological creature Baba Yaga, as he was in Ant-Man and the Wasp. 
• Bucky makes a dark comedy joke about Steve Rogers' "until the end of the line", well, line from Captain America: The First Avenger and Captain America: The Winter Soldier .
• T'Challa's "death is not the end" line is a more somber version of the line he has from Captain America: Civil War.  
• This Reality is Designated... Earth-89521
• Role Reprises: New 'debuts' in this show include Evangeline Lily (Wasp/Hope van Dyne), Paul Rudd (Ant-Man Paul Bettany (Vision), Jon Favreau (Happy Hogan), Emily VanCamp (Sharon Carter) and David Dastmalchian (Kurt)
• Returning from previous episodes are Mark Ruffalo (Hulk), Chadwick Boseman (Black Panther), Sebastian Stan (Bucky), Danai Gurira (Okoye) and Tom Vaughan-Lawlor (Ebony Maw)
• Notable non-reprises are, surprising no one due to the complex 'sharing' of Spider-Man between Sony and Marvel, Spider-Man himself, who's voiced by Hudson Thames instead of Tom Holland. 

Let's Play New Pokemon Snap, Part 8: League of Explorers

And now... Outaway Cave! It's not quite as impressive, admittedly, compared to the Area Zero Descent from Pokemon Scarlet/Violet; not in the way that I genuinely feel like the snow or beach or volcano areas blow the mainline games out of the water. But I guess I might just be spoiled by how the 'underwater depths' level is basically this, but the ocean is inherently a lot more exciting than a cave.

And the cave has a bunch of interesting Pokemon, too. The Carbinks and the tiny Joltiks scuttling around are pretty expected, and so do the massive Crobats that move around patrolling their territory. But having some Braviaries hanging out in the cave is a bit unexpected. 

And most interesting are these random black portals of shadow that surprised me. My first thought is like 'oh cool, we'll have a ghost-type side-path', perhaps similar to the Elsewhere Woods. But chucking apples at it just makes everyone's best buddy Gengar peek out his head in confusion. Bless you, Gengar. 

As I go deeper and deeper there are some disturbing noises that I hear, and turns out that it's Croagunk ribbiting. Okay! There's a cool area where a bunch of Sableyes are scuttling around digging for stuff. More Crobats hovering around two Rampardos who are just roaring on top of a little island... I guess Lental just has all the fossil Pokemon alive and well, huh? This truly is some kind of a 'lost world' where these prehistoric Pokemon have survived to the present day. 

Level two of Outaway Cave adds some extra Pokemon, like Noibat fluttering around in many parts of the cave. In contrast, a bunch of the Crobats are sleeping upside-down, which I find is adorable. Do they have, like, specific niches of time that they fly around hunting for prey? Like, when the Crobats are sleeping, the Noibats are out, and vice-versa?

In another display of predator-prey relationship, a group of Sableyes are chasing around a Carbink, which makes total sense. I didn't really think it would be the case, but Carbinks would absolutely be food for the Sableye, huh? There are also Clefairy hanging out near the crystalbloom flowers, but also, interestingly, Drifloon -- being balloons, I don't think that they would find a cave disconnected from all the empty air, particularly one filled with spiky rock points, to be a particularly good habitat. But hey. 

 

I then pass through a bunch of giant steel formations that the game tells me are made up of solidified magma. A Mawile hangs out there. Now that's more like it, that's a more interesting-looking cave structure. The cave then splits off rather unexpectedly to like a hidden grove deep in the depths of the cave, with a bunch of plant-covered ruins deep in the depths. It's pretty nice-looking, and, of course, this unlocks our fifth and next Illumina Pokemon...

Who is located deep, deep in the depths of the subterranean network. It turns out to be a massive Steelix, and just like Wishiwashi beforehand the game really does make Steelix feel super-duper impressive as it flits and swoops and drills through giant holes in the tunnel walls, moving in and out far more swiftly than its bulk would make you believe. I really do like this -- again, it's such a great usage of a Pokemon that honestly is a bit underappreciated. 

And Steelix actually moves so fast between holes and the murky depths of the subterranean caves that I actually failed to get him to light up properly. Steelix needs two or three Illumina orbs to be chucked at him for him to properly glow and be registered as an Illumina Pokemon and to complete the boss fight, and I had to repeat the mission twice to properly do it. It's switching between the apple to trigger Steelix into bursting out, the rapid-fire Illumina Orb chucking, and subsequently the photography that gets me. 

After finishing the Steelix mission, Professor Mirror tells me to take a quick detour past a 'broken wall'. There is a large open area that is human-made and not at all natural, and there is a giant painting of the Illumina symbol on the ground and a giant mural of the five Illumina Pokemon we've met previously -- Meganium, Milotic, Volcarona, Wishiwashi and Steelix -- with a sixth Pokemon scratched out in the center of the mural. How (in)convenient! But the mural also shows what the NPC quickly conclude is the Illumina Pokemon defending Lental from the meteors falling, and the professor is a bit flustered to realize that his theory is actually wrong -- Illumina Pokemon appear to have existed before the meteorite, instead of deriving the power from them. Okay, sure. 

And apparently meeting all five Illumina Pokemon triggers some kind of weirdness on the professor's holographic map, where a bunch of laser light energy, for some reason, began to pool and converge upon a single area. I'm not entirely sure why this is going on other than some handwave of the Illumina energy, but I suppose the power of being photographed caused some of the Illumina energy to... surge... or... something? Whatever. I'm not supposed to really think about this too much, I suppose. 

We unlock the central island on the map, Aurus Island... which I thought was just going to be the boss fight arena for whatever legendary is going to be the final boss of this game... but nope, we actually do get another whole-ass map, which I absolutely love!

Aurus Island gives us some ruins with a bunch of new Pokemon! There are a lot of Houndoom lurking around and acting as the Liepard/Mightyena equivalent of this level, being numerous and growling and moving a lot. A bunch of Eldegoss (a rather underappreciated bugger!) hover around happily above the Houndooms, as the NEO-ONE approaches the giant temple. I then dive down through a hole in the ruins, brushing path some Houndooms and seeing a massive Noivern flapping around. A bunch of Salandit scuttle past and these are really hard to catch on camera!

These ruins are connected to a subterranean cave, with a surprisingly elaborate setup that would've really screamed "this is an ancient altar to summon a dread evil god". No, seriously, if this was Zelda or Elder Scrolls or Witcher or something, you can bet that this is going to be a boss fight room. A massive... pillar? Tree trunk? A massive thing with glowing multicoloured circuitry-like veins run up it, and the veins are connected to like, these rivers that are themselves connected to a bunch of totem-like statues which are guarded by really spooky Unovan Pokemon. There are also a bunch more ruins and relics and enigmatic creepy background murals that I can't read, but I am sure contains a whole lot of information about the ancient culture that worshipped whatever legendary Pokemon that they constructed this whole temple around. 

It is a legendary Pokemon, I hope. As much as I appreciated the Illumina boss fights, it would be bizarre if all this buildup was them worshipping like a Magnezone or Aggron or something. 

And the Pokemon here are really appropriate. Two Unovan Pokemon introduced guarding 'ruins' show up here, with Golurk and Sigilyph apparently hanging around and presumably the ancient Lentals had some kind of contact with the ancient Unovans (and whatever other games afterwards that had these Pokemon guard their ruins). The Sigilyph in particular are insane. Throw a single apple at them, and they go absolutely haywire like an ancient alarm system, literally shooting lasers in a dozen different directions. It's harmless, but it does a great job at showcasing how cool that this otherwise kinda forgettable Pokemon can be. 

Golurks, meanwhile, are interesting in that a lot of them just stand stoic and still (and block some stuff) until I activate and power them up with Illumina Orbs. They're not exactly artificial and more alien, but Beheeyem hover around being creepy with their glowing fingertips. Pretty cool stuff, all around. 

And, of course, ever bizarrely associated with creepy ruins ever since they showed up in the Ruins of Alph several consoles ago, Natu are just hanging around with these unnatural Pokemon. Bless you, Natu. Pretty cool statues all around, with the five statues around the pools clearly being based around the five Illumina bosses, but done in a very neat Aztec-Mayan statue style. 

Now equipped with the region's Illumina Orbs (is the underwater one the only hard one to find? The rest of them didn't really have a puzzle to do), I go back for the level 2. A lot more of the Golurks are moving, and a couple of Chandelures now hover around the central totem. And... it's kind of obvious that I need to light up all the crystalblooms next to each Illumina Pokemon's totem, and thankfully the Aurus Island Illumina Orb functions for every single one. 

The first couple are easy enough, but the third one has its flower hidden in a crevice located right after the pond. Then the fourth one has a trio of Eldegoss just clustering around it, and the fifth one has a Golurk that I need to activate to hit the Crystalbloom. I missed that fourth one in my first run and had to repeat it, but it's not too hard. With that, the quintet of flowers at the end of the level lights up, and it creates a massive pillar of light that looks pretty ominous. 

The Professor tells me that this will lead to the final final area, with the ultimate Illumina Pokemon and everything, and that this is the location where all the power in Lental converge together. Time for a climactic showdown... except not, because he needs to teleport me back to base and evaluate my photos, before apparently sending me back into the teleportation stream. 

I mean... okay, sure.

Anyway, both the ruins and the subterranean cave have been very delightful to go through. I am saving the final boss for the next part, and I understand there's a fair bit of post-game areas that were originally released as DLC, so we have quite a ways to play!

Random Notes:

• I'm going to assume that the final Pokemon at the end of the Aurus Island is going to be a legendary Pokemon. I actually am kind of impressed with the restraint of the game designers in not making the five Illumina Pokemon all more minor legendaries, since I really do appreciate that it gave Pokemon like Steelix and Milotic a fair amount of prominence in this game. Honestly, this game has been really good at making a lot of the normally more forgettable Pokemon feel so much more in-tune with the world around them. 
  
• If the legendary Pokemon's going to be connected to the meteor in some way, I guess Deoxys, Jirachi, Kyurem or one of the Alolan cover legendaries might take the spot? 
• Were the Illumina Pokemon protecting Lental from a meteor the whole reason why there are so many prehistoric Pokemon in Lental? Did the barrier protect the Lental region from the dinosaur extinction?
• I love that at the end of the Outaway Cave level, there's a Gengar who actually looks at the giant glowing video game marker that marks the end of the road and just grins at it while inspecting it. At least someone is aware enough about the weird teleporting stuff humans have been putting in their habitats.
• Sleeping Croagunks blow huge snot bubbles, as it turns out. 
• Wait, Rampardos only had five cards ever printed for it? Like, jeez, I don't really care about Rampardos, but for a Generation IV Pokemon that's honestly quite bad, isn't it? Like, I looked up some ranadom fourth-gen Pokemon and the likes of Roserade's got 14, Abomasnow's got 11, Bibarel's got 10, and even Rampardos's fellow fossil had seven! 
• There is a random wall in the Aurus Island temple with a bunch of hearts. I don't know if it's actually going to lead to something or if it's a clue about the identity of the guardian of Lental (it can't be Manaphy, right? And Enamorus wouldn't exist yet at the time of this game's release) or if it's maybe just an eye-rolling nod to the fake-Instagram social media aspect of this game that I haven't interacted with even once. 
• The original vehicle in the original Pokemon Snap is called 'Zero-One'. A jump to the sky turns into a rider kick.
• I leveled up some of the other areas, but I don't think there's anything that really deserves a full paragraph. There's a Blastoise sleeping at the night beach, and a Heracross that now drops from one of the trees in the Nature Park. It always is nice to find new Pokemon in these older areas, that's for sure. 
• I did a couple of the sidequests in some of the areas like the nature park, the jungle, the beach and the research station. There's not a whole ton that's particularly noteworthy for me to go 'oh, that's a really cute/cool behaviour', though.

One Piece 1126 Review: Respect

One Piece, Chapter 1126: Settling the Score

I'm a little late to this party, mostly because I was traveling around a lot and I didn't realize the chapter was out. Oops! 

And... for the most part, the chapter is a pretty simple 'arc bridging' chapter. The chapter is bookended with the Straw Hats and the giants on the Red Erik, with the first bunch of pages having everyone involved partying hard, while the last bunch of pages having the typical 'oh noes, what wacky nonsense have our friends gotten themselves into this time'? Which... all things considered, Elbaf might be the last time we get this before we ratchet things up with plot-heavy storylines? I highly doubt that, but there's a non-zero chance. 

We get a quick brief recap of how Dorry and Brogy are now back sailing with the pirates. Basically, their fight isn't over yet, but Oimo and Kashi basically got them to put it on hold while they go back to Elbaf to get new weapons... and somehow, here they are. There's a fun little moment of Usopp and Nami's completely polar opposites on this aspect of giant culture, with just a random detail of one of the giants mentioning something about the giants' alcohol, absinthe, which can make you hallucinate. 

Oh, and in the middle of it all, there are three short panels of Bonney and the damaged Kuma just bonding, while Bonney notes that they can finally see the horizon. Is Kuma smiling? The art is ambiguous enough with all the smudges on Kuma's face. It's genuinely surprising to see that Kuma didn't do one final heroic sacrifice, but I am very happy that for all my bitching about the Vegapunk satellites surviving, that Kuma remained... well, not dead, but damaged. Damaged-with-some-vague-hope-of-being-repaired-in-the-future. That, I think, is how you do stakes without being depressing. 

And when we next check back with the Straw Hats and the Giants at the end of the chapter, part of the crew is missing! Everyone was apparently knocked out for a while, but the Thousand Sunny and some of the crew are MIA. And then we cut to Nami in a sexy viking outfit being woken up in what appears to be a Lego house. Which... okay, yeah, sure. There are a lot of theories running around, apparently, ranging from a giants' dollhouse to something super-ridiculous like moon abductions, but... I just think this is simply just the first weird thing we're going to see in Elbaf, just like the random octopus in the beginning of Wano or whatnot. Elbaf is here, and I'm quite excited!

Two other huge things happen in this chapter, too, and one big one ties to Shanks. Remember that cover story showing the random happenings of the Straw Hat Grand Fleet? One of the events that happened was Bartolomeo going around like the lunatic he is, hawking Straw Hat merchandise on a random Shanks-controlled island. He burned that flag, and we're all quite confused... until the end of the Wano arc, when Shanks and his crew discuss going down and confronting Bartolomeo about it. And now we get the follow-up to it, with a flashback to an event that happened a month ago. 

Bartolomeo is, rather understandably, beaten up by Shanks and his crew. And he's held in the town square with all the Red-Haired Pirates around him, noting how this blatant disrespect of the flag cannot go unpunished, for the sake of Shanks' other territories as well. This scene, I think, is really meant to be contrasted with that of Eustass Kid! They're both thugs, but Bartolomeo actually probably didn't harm too many people since we know he's ultimately a good guy. He bows his head deeply and apologizes for everything that he's done. 

And... Bartolomeo gets given a sadistic choice by Hongo, the Red-Haired crew's doctor, who gives a bottle of poison to Bartolomeo and tells him to give the deadly poison (which will cause 'heavy hemorrhaging and a painful death') to Luffy within the month. Now obviously this is fake. Even if the Red-Haired Crew is the type of losers that would resort to such trickery, they wouldn't be opposed to Luffy, at least not without reason. But Bartolomeo doesn't know that. Bartolomeo knows nothing about Luffy's relationship with Shanks. 

But without hesitation, Bartolomeo chomps down on the bottle of poison and gulps the whole thing. The absolute balls on this punk! We get a whole panel of a tear-soaked Bartolomeo crying and screaming about how he's okay with dying, because by god he's not going to involve Monkey D. Luffy in the mistakes of some loser like him. He's just 'some common thug that stands up to an Emperor and gets slaughtered for it', before lamenting about how he really would've like to see Luffy be the King of Pirates. 

...and then he burps, almost with comedic timing, because of course Shanks didn't give Bartolomeo actual poison. 

And things proceed almost gloriously simply -- everyone is a nakama, friendship is the mightiest, all that jazz, as Bartolomeo sails away from the island. And I do really love how the story manages to trick us into this nice sense of security, because after all the audience loves both Shanks and Bartolomeo! And we even get a nice shot of Shanks laughing in happiness that Luffy's grown to a degree that he's starting to inspire the people around him. 

...and then Yasopp kind of pushes Shanks aside, takes aim and BLOWS THE FUCK UP OUT OF BARTOLOMEO'S SHIP.

The narration says some nonsense about how the Barto Club has 'status unknown' (and earlier fan translations use the word of 'no survivors are known')... but we all know that just like Kid and Law, Bartolomeo has survived. 

But it's still a surprising swerve from Shanks being all-understanding to them going 'nah, gotta teach them a lesson'. I do wonder if this is a similar sequence of events as the famous Luffy/Zoro/Usopp conflict in Water Seven, with Luffy/Shanks wanting to let someone disrespectful off easy but Yasopp (paralleling Zoro in that arc) noting that some things can't be left unavenged, essentially. Again, it's going to really be kind of different whether Yasopp is doing this independently or if this is something Shanks explicitly or implicitly ordered, but I do find it interesting that we finally have a nice reason for the Straw Hats and Red-Haired Pirates to actually go to war for a conflict. It also nicely makes Shanks a somewhat more complex character than what everyone thought he would be, which I, again, delightfully appreciate -- his role as Emperor of the Sea and Luffy's mentor are not mutually exclusive, and one aspect of him sometimes takes over the other aspect. It happens.

And the shot of the Going Luffy's mast on fire and falling into the ocean is a nice shot of yet another sunken dream in the Grand Line, which... again, I really do like Bartolomeo, and I think he's chosen for this role specifically because he's probably the one Grand Fleet Member most readers cares about the most. I really don't think people would have the same reaction if Shanks ended the career of Jeet or Orlumbus.

We also get some scenes from the Blackbeard pirates, which... to be honest, feels to mostly be just recap (and the confirmation that Garp is alive and in chains, but it's not a huge surprise), but we also get to see the dynamic of the Blackbeard Pirates together which feels, again, Straw-Hat-esque by design. There's some goofiness going around, like Blackbeard arguing with Pizarro, or Sanjuan Wolf trying to fix the buildings of Hachinosu by moving them around like toys. We get a quick rundown of everything they've gotten in the past arc -- Blackbeard captured Pudding; Kuzan captured Garp; and we are getting caught up with Devon and Augur bringing Caribou in. 

A little more interesting is Marie Geoise, where Lafitte is stationed. He's watching the Umit Shipping Company (one of the underworld figures from the Big Mom Tea Party, which I had to look up!) and how they've constantly been foiled by the Revolutionaries, who keep blowing up the food supplies that are being sent up to Marie Geoise. Now this feels more like a siege, and we get a nice little diagram showing how the Revolutionaries not only cut off the supply chain from nearby islands, but also the transport mechanism up to Marie Geoise itself. 

Again, there are admittedly some questions about this situation... who's doing all this bondola-attacking? Like, it can't be Sabo, Karasu and the gang, right? We saw them in Kamabaka Island. But if it's not them, why hasn't Akainu gone down and lava-fisted the Revolutionaries? It's not like the Kuma situation where he can't pursue him in time. 

But... overall, a fun chapter. I like the check-in with Blackbeard and especially the Shanks/Bartolomeo thing. But I do feel like we're probably going to leave them behind for now and focus almost entirely on the Straw Hats in Elbaf at least for the next couple of chapters, and I'm actually kind of excited for that!

Random Notes:

• Cover Story: Yamato finds out that there's a string of kidnapping in Wano, but mostly women. Uh-huh? So I guess someone's kidnapped the carpenter alongside the women? 
• I've drank absinthe. I didn't hallucinate, but it is really strong and bitter. 
• I love the little detail of little Bonney, now allowed to actually act like a child, grabbing onto Jinbe's sleeve. I love that she just latches on to the most 'dad' of all the people around. 
• Again, this is going to be proven or disproven later on, but by process of elimination, the Straw Hats that are missing appear to be the first six Straw Hats -- Luffy, Zoro, Usopp, Nami, Sanji and Chopper. Or, at the very least, we can confirm Luffy and Nami are MIA; the other four might be (though is unlikely to be) offscreen). 
• Some of the theories about why this happens range from the six of them being the youngest; the earliest to join; the six Straw Hats that would recognize Vivi (which is kinda suspect since Robin remained on the Great Erik)...
• Honestly, I think Oda just wants to have fun with his original set of characters after being involved so much with the One Piece Netflix live-action.
• The chronology is a bit confusing, but Shanks' journey goes like this: Shanks arrives at Wano and scares the shit out of Ryokugyu > Shanks bullies Bartolomeo > Shanks goes back to Elbaf and bullies Kid > Shanks leaves Elbaf. We just saw things out of order. 
• Yeah, Blackbeard holding Pudding is very uncomfortable-looking. He's not being perverted or anything, but really, someone get Pudding away from these dirty pirates. 
• I like the visual image of Avalo Pizarro's island form picking up the ship just to get it an express audience with Teach.
• We also find out that Moria escaped, which is kind of anticlimactic. I really would've liked to see a panel or two of this during the Sabo chapters if they're not going to do much about it. Presumably, they've joined Cross Guild since there really isn't anywhere else they could realistically go to. 

Gotta Review 'Em All - Shinies, Generation VI Families

Been a while since we had one of these! I had a lot of these drafts half-completed ever since I did Gen I-IV earlier this year; just never got around to posting them. 

The sixth generation of Pokemon games heralded the arrival of 3D sprites, and this is where the shiny colours have been selected rather purposefully and properly. It's no guarantee for good shinies, admittedly, but I do really like that at least for a majority of the Generation VI and VII shinies they seem to have put in a fair amount of effort into them.

Oh, because they are chestnuts, they now have chestnut colours! I like the more monochromatic-like colours for shiny Chespin. Not the biggest fan of the yellow ear and tail tips on shiny Quilladin, and I actually like the shiny Chesnaught's colours more than the regular one. Swapping the light cream for the horn pauldron-cape thing and the legs/tail really ends up making shiny Chesnaught look so cool and it's a nice contrast between the duller gray and the dark brown. 

Oh, very nice. Very beautiful. I really like the simple act of changing Fennekin from yellow to silver. He's a silver fox! The silver fur contrasts very well against the red accents. But the addition of purple to become the primary colour -- while still keeping silver and red -- in shiny Braixen and Delphox are really good. I actually think I like this colour scheme much more than the original. 

I kinda like that they just went with this wonderful shade of baby blue for both shiny Froakie and Frogadier. 

A bit more obvious for shiny Greninja, who just becomes a black ninja frog. It's a cool colour scheme, but I think I find this one to be a bit less special than something like shiny Charizard because regular Greninja is already somewhat dark-coloured. No denying that it's still a cool look, though. 

This is what I'm saying about really nice shinies. A lot of them really do feel like they're not just a palette swap, but actually picking colours that fit well together as a standalone design. In shiny Bunnelby and Diggersby's case, the gray main body isn't too far off from the regular colours, but just swapping the dirty brown highlights with snowy white really ends up making such a nice story and a strikingly different colour scheme compared to the original. Honestly, I find this so much more pleasant than the original.

Credit where it isn't due, I don't find shiny Fletchling or Fletchinder particularly impressive, just looking a bit more faded out. Shiny Talonflame, however, Talonflame's black parts turning into bright fiery red changes a small detail but makes him look so much more like a more traditional Fire-type. I like the effect that it gives, making Talonflame look like it's perpetually on fire or something.

All these shiny Vivillons don't really look different, since it's pretty hard to realize that the main body is white instead of black contrasted to the very bright colours of the butterfly wings. But both shiny Scatterbug and Spewpa are far more pretty with the whites and blacks swapped around. I particularly like shiny Spewpa's white head and black body-bag.

Okay, this is kind of interesting. Shiny Litleo just looks a bit more pale, but both versions of shiny Pyroar swap black fur on te main body for a yellowish-shade. They went from Scar to Simba, and... it's not the nicest look? It actually looks like one of the paler shinies from the earlier generations, and I'm not particularly enthused about it.

This is where the 'multi-colour variants' really hurt, huh? Just like Vivillon, the fact that the Flabebe line are holding differently-coloured flowers is the whole selling point of the variants. And since the flowers really do dominate their colour scheme, shiny Flabebe is near-indistinguishable. Shiny Floette and shiny Florges swapping the green of their primary bodies for lavender is nice. I do really like the contrast between Floette's yellow 'ears' and the lavender body accents. 

A nice and almost natural-looking change! Shiny Skiddo and Gogoat's fur become a nice shade of almost-white gray, and shiny Gogoat in particular gets a nice contrast with his black body highlights. The horns becoming yellow and the leaf-coat turning a bit lighter all end up making the line look so different and refreshing. 

Shiny Pancham and Pangoro, on first glance, just looks like they're a lazy palette-shifted colour swaps, but they're actually meant to be a reference to red pandas. Not convinced that it's a particularly good reference, and I still am not the biggest fan of it, but I really do like shiny Pangoro's fists looking like it's bloodied and like he's been in a huge brutal fight.

Another multi-form Pokemon, shiny Furfrou basically swaps his white outer coat to black, and his black inner coat to white -- and black fur is natural colour for poodles too! I actually think that the black fur makes for a much better highlight next to the tacky dyed poodle hair and the white main 'body'. 

Another absolutely excellent series of shinies. Shiny pink Espurr is one of the nicest pink shinies out there, and the end result is such a wonderful design to look at. Meanwhile, both versions of shiny Meowstic employ a wonderful white-and-pale-yellow colour scheme that looks just so pleasant on its own. In addition to contrasting very well with the dark blue coat of regular Meowstic, the pale yellow also highlights the bright green/red eyes of the Meowstics very well. 

Amazing. Yeah, Espurr onwards we'll get win after win after win. I feel like these three are all great. Shiny Honedge is probably my favourite of the three. Both shiny Honedge and Double swap the scabbards for a gold or bronze-looking one, but shiny Honedge's red blade and 'eyes', coupled with an amazing red/purple tassel, makes for such a spooky colouration for a haunted sword. 

Shiny Doublade and shiny Aegislash share the same black-yellow tassel, but they're both nice-looking ones regardless. And shiny Aegislash is a supremely badass sword, being black with red edges... it's like the edges are stained with blood! Shiny Aegislash has a black-and-gold shield to boot, making him look extra-regal. 

Another winner! Shiny Spritzee looks positively charming with purple, and I love the shade of darker pink on his tippy-toes. I am also positive that I like shiny Aromatisse's colours more, with the dark-pink main body and the big puffy purple flamenco skirt. 

Oh! A cutie! They become chocolate-flavoured! This is what the Vanillite line should've been. Shiny Swirlix is pleasant enough, but it's shiny Slurpuff with the great contrast between his dark brown and raspberry-red that really screams that this is a 'sundae' dessert. 

I'm not 100% sure, but I think they just flipped the colours and took the negative of regular Inkay and Malamar to make the shinies, which I feel is a very meta way to do it. Minus the glowing fluorescent lights, which they left intact. I really like shiny Inkay's light-pink shade, and the golden tentacles. I find shiny Malamar's green squid body to look nowhere as pleasing as his non-shiny couterpart, but the golden locks and the blood red on the beak and arm tentacles work well. 

Okay, finally a bit of a miss. It's kind of obvious what they changed here, making the barnacle heads green on both shiny Binacle and Barbaracle, but the combination of that with the dark-orange rings just isn't the most flattering. 

Oh! Oh oh oh oh! Yeah, shiny Skrelp and Dragalge are another line of winners in this generation. I do think that the dull dead-leaf brown of the default colour scheme is already suitable for the design. Changing the brown to a traditional poison-type purple is neat enough, and the dull purple is a neat one... but then the pale blue they selected for the majority of Skrelp and Dragalge's bodies really sells the 'toxic' vibe without going for the obvious purple-and-green route, doesn't it? It looks pale, almost like a corpse? 

Shiny Dragalge does have his 'hair' be coloured green with yellow highlights, which look very nice, too, and seem to be referring to actual leaves more than anything. In the original design, the head-leaf was coloured a maroon red and blends in rather well with the main brown body. I always appreciate it when shinies end up giving us a colour palette that highlights a feature that otherwise blends into the rest of the design.

Another glorious-looking pair. Shiny Clauncher and Clawitzer goes for a much more common colour that we associate with prawns, lobsters and crustaceans in general... hot red. As in, the colour of a cooked crustacean, which is how most of humanity interacts with crustaceans unless you're a cook, a fishmonger, a diver or live near the ocean. The bright red contrasted with the light blue is very striking, and the white highlights really make this an unconventional but very nice-looking shiny. 

Hmmmm, an interesting way to take this direction in that they change some of Helioptile and Heliolisk's yellow into bright red. A respectable enough choice of an alternate colour... but it's not all the yellow, with some patches being left still there. The result is a shiny that retains part of the original version's colours, which makes for a rather interesting look!

...that said, I don't quite like the red/black/yellow palette quite as much, but it's the thought that counts. 

Not my top choice of colours for either shiny Tyrunt or Tyrantrum, but both are very nice shades of blue. Particularly the light blue on Tyrunt. It's a very 'anime' colour scheme, isn't it, picking blue or purple for a dinosaur? Before 'realism' got in the way and made all dinosaurs dull brown or green?

A majestic one, and probably the other 'obvious' colour palette for an ice-type. I own one in Go, and I love how this looks like it could have been the regular colour for the Amaura line. It's kind of an obvious colouration for a snow/ice-themed dinosaur Pokemon, right?

Just because it's obvious doesn't mean it's not nice, though -- the bright snowy white works amazingly on both Amaura and Aurorus, and I actually would say that I like this a fair bit more than the regular dark blue. It's a nice colour that pairs well with the yellow sails. 

Another all-time favourite. Wrestlers are loud, vibrant and colourful, and regular Hawlucha's colours are already great. But shiny Hawlucha goes for the 'heel' vibe and while we'd get an actual heel Pokemon in the next generation, the pale purple and dull red, with neon-green accents, really do make for a good 'nega-Hawlucha' colour palette.

A simple but pleasant one. Shiny Dedenne swaps his regular orange for a nice chocolate, which makes him look like a chocolate bunny or something. I like this one. 

I can see what they changed, making the 'beard' blue and the 'head' into the same shade of dark gray as the rock body. It's one of those shinies that are evidently different, but we're grading these post-3D designs on a different metric!

Regular Kalosian Goomy, Sliggoo and Goodra have a majestic shiny that mixes yellow and cream, with dark purple blotches. One colour away, and they could cosplay as Japanese puddings! Or 'Flans', for all of you Final Fantasy fans! Very nice colouration, and another favourite shiny from this generation. 

I get what they're doing with shiny Hisuian Sliggoo and Goodra, where it's just the shell that they change from silver to a dull gold... but I really don't think it's enough. I really would've much preferred they mirrored the Kalosian shiny forms, or picked another colour palette like a slug-like green or something.

I am actually disappointed that the keys aren't changed in colour, but I guess shiny Klefki's main body is the one that changes colour instead of the accessories? I like the change of colour from silver-and-pink to gold-and-blue. 

Both of the spooky Grass-types get absolutely amazing shinies. I think shiny Phantump and Trevenant are easily my favourites, with the cool, desiccated white tree with red autumnal leaves replacing the regular brown-and-green of the regular Phantump and Trevenant. I absolutely think this is great, and both are equally badass colourations for ghost tree Pokemon. Regular Trevenant represents a haunted forests, with the creepy monster trees... but shiny Trevenant represents a ghost-tree itself, which I thought is great!

And this is a fun one! Shiny Pumpkaboo and Gourgeist swap the oranges for a deep witchy purple, a very appropriate Halloween pumpkin colour. The eyes turn neon green, which is another gloriously spooky colouration. I like the shiny Trevenant one because it's a more 'obvious' spooky colour, but shiny Gourgeist is another one of my all-time favourites.

Mmm, not my favourite shiny. They can't all be winners. I think they did a great change, swapping the non-ice-encrusted parts with yellow is an interesting idea. It's not the most falttering switch, though, and not the most noticeable on shiny Avalugg. 

Shiny Hisuian Avalugg tries to change a more prominent part of the design, with the icebreaker jaws turning a rusty orange. It's... it's all right.

Amazing. The shade of neon-teal they picked for shiny Noivern and especially Noibat looks great. I'm a bit miffed that they swapped it for a more regular neon green in Noivern... but both bats really rock the look. I've always felt that Noivern actually had too many colours going on, and eliminating the purple and swapping the green, red and black around makes for a really striking shiny. Another amazing one in this generation.

All three of the XYZ legendaries have a white-dominated shiny form... and I actually do think that the white-deer with a sky-blue upper body works better for Xerneas as a 'god of life' kind of deal. The light blue also works well and blends to the rainbow horns a bit better, and this is from someone who likes how regular Xerneas looks.

Now I've always been of the opinion that white is as valid of a colour of death as black is -- perhaps due to my own Asian upbringing. And on first glance, swapping Yveltal's black colouration with a ghostly, ethereal white makes for a creepy death-bird in the sky. 

Until you realize the white streaks on the red underside of Yveltal's body resembles bacon. Mmm, bacon.

Oh yeah. I actually do like the black-and-green verdant colours on regular Zygarde, but the white and teal-ish green on shiny Zygarde works amazingly. The snake version looks particularly striking, but I like that 100% Gundam Zygarde looks amazing. I think the red and blue highlights on 100% Zygarde's wings get highlighted a lot more with this colour scheme.

Mmm... I feel they could've changed enough. Both shiny Diancie and shiny Mega Diancie swap their white dresses for a pink dress, and the pale-gray rock gets turned into a darker, almost black shade. It really is basically the same palette at a glance, and I really wish they had done something more different. 

Mmm... no. I think they were trying for a golden shade with shiny Hoopa to match the golden rings, but for both versions of Hoopa he just looks kind of like piss. Like, I'm sorry. Particularly Hoopa Unbound. Being so monochromatic doesn't help either. 

Shiny Volcanion's a bit more pleasant. Mostly, I like just how much this feels like an over-the-top 80's neon action figure toy with bright yellow, eye-searing neon blue and pink as the highlights. None of the colours work together and that is why they work together. I kind of like this one.