This is why I decided to
rank the ‘mons individually, this exact Evolutionary Line was behind that
decision.
Imagine this: you’re on a
desert route, there’s sand everywhere, you’re a little pissed off because the
sandstorm keeps buffeting your Pokémon and you haven’t got a Blissey or
Bronzong or whatever, but you look across the sand there is a huge sand and
stone coloured hippo swimming through the it, mouth open, huge valves on its
back gushing more sand making you question it’s anatomy but almost making it
look the ultimate Ground Type, it’s such a Ground Type it produces sand like
waterfalls from it’s very body. and it looks great, it looks like it could have
been Generation 1, all the superfluous markings and bullshit of Gens 3 and 4
are not there, it looks organic, it looks mean. Now hopefully you’d shit
yourself but once you were done filling your trollies you’d appreciate how
fucking awesome that thing is (and then catch it). That was Hippowdon, it is
great - even though I still mispronounce its name as ‘hippodown’, I’m not
dyslexic I’m just really stupid.
Hippopotas is one of my
least favourite Pokémon designs, a little of it is the ‘un-designed body markings’
on its body though the colours help mask them, most of it is the fucking
proportions of its fucking face: I get it, it’s an exaggeration of a hippo’s
head, I get it – Japan responds well to this sort of ‘gonk’ design so the
design team would have no reason to think bad of this this – but I hate it, it
looks ridiculous, that gap, that gap between the nose and the eyes with the,
the things, the things that I think are supposed to be ears but look little
spikes of skin, the cartoon frog eyes, the size of the nose and eyes relative
to the face and the body, it all just make me cross, I want to smash it with a
rock.
Like
Buizel & Floatzel I remember when these were revealed/leaked utterly HATING
the two of them and doing so all through my first playthrough of Diamond &
Pearl, like Buizel I now can’t imagine
why though, maybe it was the eyes? They’re VERY Gen 3-4 those eyes.
Ok, let’s look at this a
bit more in depth:
Type wise/in battle:
they’re Poison so no problems there, lots of good status moves, and Drapion is
Dark/Poison, very tasty.
Distribution wise: other
than the fact that they were another new Pokémon found only one location
there’s no problems there, they’re pretty standard Safari Zone Pokémon and
no-one’s getting on Rhyhorn’s case for its distribution in its original games. They’re
even right by the entrance to the Great Marsh (the Safari Zone of Gen 4)
Design then? Well, There’s
a common complaint from Pokémon fans that newer Pokémon don’t look
naturalistic, they look more like plastic toys and these two sure have that
going for them but they’re scorpions and scorpions have fucking armour that
looks plastic.
Of the two Drapion is my
preference, it’s so… freaky, it looks like what Tim Burton would design if he
was tasked with coming up with a Pokémon, like a monster made of killer jack-in
the-boxes coming to slowly kill all your Psychic Types, it’s anatomy is a
little heard to figure out and ‘see’ the right way ‘round – what you’re seeing
is a four legged animal with a long neck and a head with pincers hanging off
the sides (as scorpions pincers really are attacked to their face) but it’s
just as easy to see it as a six-legged creature with no neck and a long
accordion waist, I’m not knocking this though, it makes the whole thing
weirder, I’m good with it. given the choice I would probably have removed
whatever the fuck those things are in Drapion’s mouth, just because they
confuse me, how does Drapion close its mouth unless they fold like paper? And
if they do fold like paper then theyr’e a bit crap aren’t they? On that, both
of these really remind me of folded paper or card, like on paper plate doll or
streams and that’s one of those things I have a weird affection for.
It can’t have just been the
eyes, surely?
I’m never going to beat Bogleech’s
description of Toxicroak as ‘a frog of pure murder’, not in this review, not in
in any review. These were the first Gen 4 Pokémon I saw revealed/leaked where I
thought ‘yeah, as designs these are as good as Gen 1 & 2’ which is odd
because they are in fact very heavy in the markings and you could, at a push,
call Toxicroak ‘busy’ with all that black piping going on. I think why this
wasn’t and still isn’t a problem for me is because frogs actually look like
that (Poison Arrow Frogs apparently, I’ve never done a lot of research into
frogs because I’m insanely phobic of them) so it doesn’t look ‘wrong’ or ‘off’
and the busyness of Toxicroak doesn’t really notice, sort of like how the
outfits in Tron 2.0 are in fact very busy but it’s fine because we expect that
of Tron costumes, but when you put it on say, everyone in the Justice League or
the Weather Trio it looks really weird and far too busy an detailed.
Anyway these two are
wicked, if Napoleon Dynamite was a pervert and then a Frog he’s look like Croagunk
and I like this immensely, and it also means that Game Freak end doing a better
job of making ‘Napoleon Dynamite as a frog’ than the Ninja Turtles did when
they had Napoleon Dynamite to make nito a frog and were trying to that, another reason to hate that version of Napoleon
Bonafrog – nice. They’re sort of the opposite of Skorupi and Drapion aren’t
they? I mean they look very naturalistic and a lot closer to the Gen 1-2 style,
I liked them from the start and, ah, Tim Burton would never have designed them
this way – Sometimes I say things without thinking them through.
You can tell I don’t have
much to say about these because I spent more words critiquing Superheroes and
TMNT Reboots than I did the actual Pokémon. They could really only be cooler if
they were overtly ninjas - oh, wait…
I’m not sure about
Carnivine, I want to like it because I like Venus Fly Traps (and Little Shop of
Horrors) but I just don’t all that much. it just leaves me cold, it’s not a BAD
design at all, though it is very Klasky Csupo and it is a fun and quite unusual
way to anthropomorphise a Venus Fly Trap and looks like it’s completely insane,
that’s something that usually endears a thing to me but nope, it’s thoroughly
in the 3 out of 5 ‘I just don’t’ care’ camp, sorry Carnivine. I’d love you for
you to get an evolution or a Mega Evolution though, especially the latter, I
think you’d really benefit from the boost in profile and stats it’d bring you
and it might make me care a bit more. Or maybe If you were voiced by one of the
Four Tops…
God these came out well
didn’t they? Of the ‘common fish’ for each region these are probably my
favourite, yes even more than FUCK YEAH SEAKING. They’re just exactly what this
sort of fish look like as Pokémon with some cool references to butterflies
mixed in, the colour are gorgeous, the markings all work for me, this is going
to be a very short section. Sure they’re not the best in battle, nor the most
noteworthy Pokémon in general and nowhere near my top 25 but they’re just so
pleasing to look at and such a satisfying execution of the concept… I keep
staring at Lumineon official art…
…
…
...
For 
No longer looking at the
Finneon line feels like I’ve just woken up
And look what I’ve woken up
to! Yeti Christmas Trees! That’s the best type of Christmas Tree ever and
Christmas Trees are the best type of trees ever! Yep we’re back on the Dwitefry
Super Enthusiastic Hype Train because this is another one of my favourite
evolutionary lines in the whole series. Both stages and the Mega are pretty
much perfect. Snover is just a super adorable little tree but one that doesn’t
immediately shout ‘tree’ at you, in fact I do wonder how many people would know
it was supposed to be tree with snow on top and bark at the bottom and that is
to be commended, I don’t mind obvious inspirations in fat sometimes (like with
Vanilluxe) I think it makes them funner but if it’s an alien creature you
really should get praise for obscuring the influences. Obamasnow
Abomasnow is a tree yeti, lets unpack that - it’s a tree mixed with a yeti
that’s a Grass/Ice type, could there be a better way of doing that typing?
FUKCING ICE YETI! MY GOD! Now I was completely happy with Abomasnow as an
execution of the term ICE YETI, but then, then, THEN….
Mega Abomasnow happened,
kicked Abomasnow in the pinecones and said ‘no son, this is how you do it’ (or
more likely ‘RRRAAAGH’), look at it! it’s detailed without losing that general
Pokémon style to one closer to the likes of Digimon or Yu-Gi-Oh and it looks
fucking furious, it doesn’t just have resting pissed off face it has resting
pissed off body and it looks like an angry tree, how do you do that? How do you
design something that looks perfectly like an angry tree? Talent? Luck?
Herbology? How?? and then they decided to give it big icicle spikes that…I’m
not sure what the point of them is actually but who cares, ICICLE SPIKES
On a more serious
(business) note: a lot of people shat on this line early on because it’s
Grass/Ice typing means that it has a whopping 7 weaknesses. However competitive
players figured out that the line was actually of great use to them, it can
summon instant hail (which is useful, just go with it) and many of the Types
its weak against aren’t common in competitive play while many of the (few)
Types it resists (like Water, Electric and Ground) are. Now I don’t play
competitively but this is important because it legitimized the line and made it
far easier for me to be enthusiastic about it (which I liked purely on design
and concept) after a period of getting looked at like I was mad for liking a
Pokémon that was so ‘obviously’ shit because it had 7 weaknesses.
For 
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For 
For Gliscor go here
For Mamoswine go here
For Porygon-Z go here
For Gallade go here
For Probopass go here
For Dusknoir go here
For Froslass go here
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