Thursday 1 August 2019

Quick Crappy Pokemon Reviews: Generation 5 Part 11 - Cryogonal to Pawniard line





Y’know what? I was sure that Cryogonal was a reference to the mirror from ‘The Snow Queen’ but I can’t seem to find any evidence of that, it seems that Cryogonal is just a huge living snowflake that looks like Sinistar’s brother and I was just doing a Bulbapedia and trying to find a more intellectual basis to the killer snowflake. And that’s completely unnecessary because ‘killer snowflake’ is enough of a reason to exist by itself, you don’t need to be intellectual when you’re a huge murderous ice thing. This thing really is living ice, if it gets to hot it becomes living steam, and that seems like a wasted opportunity to give us an Ice/Fire or Water/Fire forme or even better a Water/Fire regional variant! Alola and whatever they’re calling the UK for Sword and Shield are way above the melting point for ice, we could have an awesome gaseous ghostly Sinisnow! I did say I had no idea what I was going to write for a lot of these, right? As is, Cryogonal is just dandy though, one of the most visually pleasing ‘oddball’ Pokémon designs, it’s almost like architecture, really pleasing architecture, which is probably why I thought it was based on a mirror I guess.
And it’s a big ol’ ice face with chains of pure cold that trap its prey, good shit








Now here’s a Pokémon that can rock the doofy Gen 3 style as hard as it likes, because flatfish are doofy Gen 3 Pokémon IN REAL LIFE.  It doesn’t really excuse the random yellow markings that really just look like a Wingull just ‘dive bombed’ the poor thing if you get my drift, they were clearly just thrown on to give it ‘something extra’ when it didn’t need anything extra.
Anyway some fans were very unhappy about Stunfisk, some quite rightly took it into their hearts and loved it like a child but some were rather offended by its existence and I really cannot see how anyone could be cross with a thing a silly and obviously meant to be silly this thing, It’s a joke Pokémon yes but so was Farfetch’d (wait, does this make this an equivalentmon?) and is the odd joke Pokémon really an issue? Especially in a generation that introduced so many new ‘mons? There’s still 150 other Pokémon in this generation so can’t Stufisk just be allowed to be, fandom? Just be allowed to be a silly pointless little thing flapping around being all Electric/Ground and laughing at Abominsnow because it’s a cool Pokémon and yet has so many weaknesses whereas Stunfisk is the kid even the nerds picked on at school and it has so few? especially when it was so unproblematic – it wasn’t difficult to catch, nor was it everywhere, it was just 20-100% in a few locations, bobbing about being daft. A jokemon every so often is no reason to blow your tops, now under-designed feeling markings – that’s a real reason to go all caps.
And if any animal is a good basis for a jokemon, surely flatfish are it?






Meeeeh, meh, meeeeeh, meeh, meeeeeeeeeeeh.
Mienfoo looks like it should be doing its monk training in the Hundred Acre Wood, this is not a criticism
My only thoughts on Mienshao are: why are those bits on its nose and whiskers peach and not purple like everything else?
Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh








So I looked on Bulbapedia and spoilt the whole Black & White Pokedex for myself a short while before the games came out over here, I’d like to say I did this to get a bit of an advantage as these games would be using an entirely new Pokedex and I’d be unfamiliar with them all, after all its no different from being familiar with a number of Gen 1 ‘mons from watching the anime before the games came out. I’d like to say that, but the truth is that I just did it because I have poor impulse control sometimes. And while doing this I came across Druddigon and thought it odd yet strangely likable, a solar-powered gargoyle is something that I was already predisposed to like, yes (Disney’s Gargoyle’s is one of my favourite shows, not cartoons, shows) but I’m talking just from a visual standpoint, as I don’t think we had any more to go on at that point. It looked off, both like a Pokémon and not like a Pokémon, having quite a fakemon vibe to it (I think it’s the head that does it) but it was undoubtedly cool and just so damn spikey.
And that as the last I thought about Druddigon, or heard of Druddigon really, until today.
Poor ol’ Druddigon, the least loved of the dragons but looking at it again I think the exact same things I did back whenever – it’s slightly off, slightly fakemon looking but cool and spikey and definitely has a lumpy, gargoyle appeal that makes me like it all the same. I wish it’d got a Mega Evolution, it would have allowed for a nice big over the top thing and might have made more people (myself included) remember it exists.






Now you might be saying ‘but Pokémon already did golems, Golem is called ‘Golem’’ and my result is ‘yes, but that was a meteorite turtle’, Golem itself is so un-golem-like that that really the only connections to the golems of legend are it’s name and it’s Ground typing. Golett and Golurk are ‘proper’ golems, like Elgeyem vs. Clefairy this makes them slightly less original but to that I say “shut up, of course the first Ground/Ghost type was going to be golems and of course they were going to be a mix of Golems and Japanese robots”. Sorry I tried to keep that a proper debate but, well, I’m just incapable, this isn’t a debating society or bloody speech team it’s me bullshitting about Pokemans. 
So allow me to bullshit: Golett is a cute lil’ robot! It really reminds me of another robot, but I can’t think which one, maybe it’s just such a good design that it reminds me of ALL cute robots, even those not from Japan (it does have a slight Alpha-5 vibe about it does it not? He’s not Japanese) and then it becomes Golurk, which is just a flat out mecha! People complain about Generation 5 and yet it allowed us to fly on the back of a Ghost type Gundam made of living rock by an ancient civilization? That alone makes it better than Gen 4!
If I do have an issue with two things this cool it’s that big-ass bandaid on Golurk, apparently it’s a ‘seal’ and is an intentional design feature by the ancients but, well, it isn’t is it? it’s a standard piece of ‘shorthand’ in Japanese manga and anime for a bodge-job fix, no different from how those crossed lines on the forehead are a ‘shorthand’ for angry. This would be fine if there was just one Golurk, if it was just going to be the golem character for Darkstalkers or something, but there’s loads of these, so they just all look broken and it they all have a shit design feature that was never rectified. It doesn’t look ugly or anything, it just slightly breaks my willing suspension of disbelief that an ancient civilisation who had the science to create living rock robots didn’t have the good sense to put an important valve somewhere safer and make it not look like someone had put a duck-tape over it for the time being.
Also, perfect Pokémon/Darkstalkers team-ups:

 


I so want Pokken vs Capcom, though given the developer I think Pokken X Namco might be more likely, but I’d be happy with that: Hypno versus Heihachi! Dirty old bastard battle!








It’s like Game Freak sat down and tasked people with coming up with the most unsafe looking THING that a Youngster could possibly have in its possession to really play up the old ‘gag’ that children really shouldn’t be running around with weaponized animals. Look at Pawniard, it has knives for ribs! It has knives for hands! It has a huge blade in the middle of IT’S FACE just because fuck you I evolved to the point where my entire body is ludicrously fatal, and they hunt in packs! They canonically gang up on things and stab them to death with their knife-ribs! And have their favourite sharpening stone each, which is adorbs. Bisharp is a ‘just gets bigger’ evolution but that’s fine if you ask me, it’s all Pawniard really needed – if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, just make it bigger and give it shoulder pads. It does somehow look slightly less lethal though, perhaps because it can now pick things up when Pawniard’s only answer to everything was to stab it first?
In case you’re wondering what the fuck these are, they’re not an animal of any kind, they’re one of the humanoid ‘mons, like Gardevoir or Hitmonchan, and seem to be based on old types of Japanese armour, I guess the fact that they look like Kamen Riders is just a side-effect of them being from a game featuring any involvement from Satoshi Tajiri and Ken Sugimori.




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