What a clever way to do air
pollution, which of course is a BIG-ASS thing in Japan. They could have just
made an evil cloud but that would have been exceptionally uncreative and far
too derivative of Gastly so instead they make a balloon! The balloon that would
be the balloon if you filled balloons with smog and car fumes. A delighted,
disgusting, bumpy, pock-marked, pore covered balloon that comes with it’s own
toxic symbol from birth (hatch). And the it gets bigger, sicker and grows a
tumour! Aside from the tumour thing, which is perfect when it comes to a
pollution Pokémon’s evolution I’ve always likes how much heavier Weezing has
always looked, it’s always made me assume Weezing is not only filled with more
gas but that it’s thicker and sturdier to, which, as an evolution, it really
should be.
Bogleech went into a lot
more detail on these because
they’re favourites of his, you should check that out, cos I’ve run out of
thoughts for this segment.
Oh, I do have one more
thought: Koffing’s name really should have been ‘Koffin’ to be a play on words.
Rhydon was the very first
Pokémon ever designed and the very first Pokémon ever coded in, it’s a bit of a
shame then that nowadays it’s just the weak-link midvolution, the very first
Pokémon has become Combusken and Quiladin.
Ok it’s not as bad as
Combusken or Quiladin, it doesn’t look like a giant set of cock and balls, nor
is it one of the most awkward designs in the whole series, in fact taken as it
was originally meant to be digested – a big standalone kaiju – Rhydon is an
impressive beast, not quite up to the same level of ‘impressive beast’ as
Nidoking or Kangaskahn but easily beating out Lickitung and Nidoqueen. The
problem is that it evolves from Rhyhorn (also one of the original 31 ‘mons
btw), who has the nicest armour design of any Pokemon but even if it didn’t -
and it really does, that rocky hide is gorgeously flowing and the complete
antithesis of that ‘underdesigned’ thing I keep bringing up but fail to
properly explain – Rhydon is still going from having spikey armour to no armour
and that seems completely contrariwise but also a massive let down. You could
argue that, like Primeape’s tail, Rhydon has evolved beyond the need for
Rhyhorn’s armour, it’s big enough and tough enough that it no longer needs all
that plating because it can just crush opponents heads like grapes (in that
dangerous ‘hood that is the Safari Zone) and I can get into that fanwank just
fine but the counterargument is ‘while you may be right and it may make sense
and even be a sign of power, looking less like War Machine will always be less
cool than looking more like War Machine’.
Rhyperior (another Gen 4
evolution no one was expecting) rights a lot of the ‘wrongs’ of Rhydon, bringing
back the thicker, highly designed armour plating (though not getting close to
the beauty of Rhydon) and the overall craggier, rockier look (I do find that
utility belt to be THAT ONE THING about the design though, I can deal with the
cup but the belt just sticks out, if they’d only put some gaps between each
plate it would hvae looked better, oh well). In fact you could – and I do – see
it as the predecessor to the best of the glorious overtop Mega Evolutions
coming in Gen 6 with its ridiculously big forearms and boulder tail, it looks
like The Shredder mated with an ankylosaur (and he totally would, the slag)
then went Super Saijn. But this all leaves the most historically significant
Pokémon as the one I put up with until I can find the item to evolve it, and
this does genuinely make me a little gloomy. It could all have been avoided by
simply not choosing to pair the two designs after they brought in the concept
of evolution, I can see why they did because it makes sense to put them
together, but they really shouldn’t have.
See those up there? Those
adorable pink egg creatures with their little eggs in their little pouches and
their smiley eyes and happy faces? BEWARE THEM. Oh they’re not secretly creepy
or anything - unless you think that Chansey and Blissey use fertilized eggs
but, well, I’m sure they don’t – they’re just bastards to face off against.
Chansey and Blissey have magnificently high defence and a moveset that is
stocked with healing moves so they’re good by themselves and good as assist
characters and utter shits to K.O.
Chasney was one of my ‘at
the time’ favourites, and yes it did stick out alongside the more traditionally
badass likes of Electabuzz, Scyther, Haunter, Muk and Mewtwo. I like these sort
of characters you see, the cute and kind characters who nevertheless can be
totally awesome when needed and Chansey is just that: it’s usually a sweet
waddling nurse for the Pokémon world but get it in battle and it’s healing eggs
become bombs it throws at opponents and it becomes a Pokémon shield, absorbing
anything anyone can throw it, even Dragons, Psychics and Legndaries. And it was
very visually appealing, very round, very pleasing colours, very cute, very
abstract, very original and yet very comforting.
So I said ‘was’ right, you
caught that right? Why am I talking in the past tense? Because Blissey came out
and did everything I liked about Chansey but ever so slightly better – it’s
pink and white made it nicer to look at and it went from being a figurative
badass fairy godmother to being a literal badass fairy godmother! (Why isn’t
Blissey Fairy Type? It’s a fairy godmother, why it no Fairy!?!). it did
become even ‘girlier’ I suppose but I collect vintage Care Bears so like I care
about that. The Space World Demo you’re probably sick of me bringing up by now
featured a prototype version of Blissey by the way:
Yeah… we dodged a bullet
there methinks, it has an arse for a head and TWO egg pouches, managing to mix
ridiculous and uncreative in one design is impressive but this thing sure
ain’t.
But then Generation 4 came
along and took one of my favourite evolutionary lines, lined it up and took a
massive shit in it. And that turd was called Happiny. A contender for minus
scores if ever there was one, a jumbled mess of a design with bits all over the
place that should have gone through the redesign phase another four or five
times or better yet, just been scrapped because Chansey had no need for a Baby
Pokémon and most Baby Pokémon after Gen 2 are completely useless, with nothing
to promote and no Tyrogue type uses what’s the point? But at least most of them
are cute and ultimately inoffensive as designs, hell I’d even say Budew was a
good design, Happiny is a wreck, the worst elements of Gen 3 and 4’s style of
design, unnecessary bits, unnatural bits, awkward composition, I’m not sure if
it has a scrunchy or if that’s part of it’s flesh, completely inferior to Gens
1 & 2’s designs and directly connected to them to prove the point, it’s
everything that fans say about Gen 3 & 4: god I hated it for bringing down
my mental (and now real) ‘overall score’ of something but that proves that it
propagates unfair stereotypes too - Happiny is EVIL.
There’s a lot of
competition – Ditto, Pikachu, Squirtle, Bulbasaur, Charmander, Vulpix,
Growlithe, Bellsprout and of course Jynx - but I think Tangela may well be the
cutest Pokémon to come from Generation 1 nowadays. I think it was supposed to
be mysterious and slightly threatening – like Cloyster and Gastly – and it’s based
on an RPG monster of some kind that is, again, supposed to be a threat – but
it’s never been anything more than just big eyes staring up at you and adorable
little feet wrapped in a load of vines. I can see me just walking around all
day, carrying my Tangela and talking to it about whatever trivial shit I’m
doing while it stares up at me, loving me but having no bleedin’ idea what the
Christ I’m talking about.
Then Generation 4 came along
and it was time to stick as many evolutions on previously existing Pokémon as
possible and I was WAY too hard on Tangrowth. I sneered and went ‘it’s just a
bigger Tangela’ without stopping to think of all of Tangela’s Gen 1 peers that
evolved into just bigger forms of themselves! Tangrowth is probably the most
Gen 1 of all the Gen 4 evolutions, and like Grimer and Muk, Tangela just
getting bigger actually makes sense to me: Tangela is wrapped in vines, so in
order to evolve, to improve, it wraps itself in MORE vines, including ones that
can function has hands, something Tangela doesn’t have and something that are
in fact very useful really. I do with
Sugimori would draw all of the vines on Tangrowth though, like he does with
Tangela. Tangela already looks like he’s made out of Play-Doh rather than plant
life and Tangrowth looks even more like that, with all the of the Play-Doh
squashed together, and I’m pretty sure that’s not what it’s supposed to be
(vines squashed together), so why does all it’s official art and all of it’s in
game sprites and models not have all the detail to imply it’s a big mass of
vines rather than vines squashed together? I’m guessing the answer is ‘you
fucking draw/render that many vines asshole, I’ve got 800 more of these bastards
to do!’.
Oh but look what we could have got instead of
Tangrowth! Look at Jaranra’s bizarreness, look at how nicely designed it’s
vines are to make an easily remembered pattern without them looking too overly
like a pattern, look at it’s big shit eating grin, look how creative and
original it is yet how much it clearly looks like the Pokemon it’s evolving
from. I want it. I want it to be a branched evolution, I want it to be Tangela’s
Bellossom, please Game Freak? Bring the Poison Stone into the next Generation
and give us Jaranra, Tsubomitto and a Poison Type Eeveelution, you’ve brought
in evolutionary items for a smaller number of ‘mons before. I’ll take Monja too
please, because Monja is now my favourite Baby Pokémon, it straddles the line
between creepy and cute better than most and looks like something you’d see
painted on a hotrod, please can we have these Game Freak?
Three questions about this Pokémon:
1)
Why does it not
have a Baby Pokémon when it actually has a Baby Pokémon with it at all times
and always has?
2)
Gameplay and story
segregation yes, but how come it comes out of the egg with a baby? And how come
it still doesn’t have a Baby Pokemon despite that
3)
Why is it’s name
so impossible to spell?
Bogleech came up with a
nice answer to number 2 – “like a number of unusual real-world creatures - most
of them insects - a Kangaskhan is born already fertilized. By the time it's old
enough to fend for itself, a young Kangaskhan would already have a new joey
developing in her own pouch” – the other two remain mysteries.
Anyway, a lot of eople get
caught up in the sweetness of Kangaskhan and it’s adorable bubby and froet what
an awesome monster it actually is to look at, without the baby it’s as fearsome
as the likes of Rhyhorn with what I find to be some very unique and interesting
armour plating, especially around it’s shoulders. It was also the third Pokémon ever created. Which
explains why it looks like nothing much like anything, although we associate it
with kangaroos because of it’s name and pouch it’s really jut a fun spin on a
kaiju – kaiju mum! That’s a good gag.
Mega Kangaskhan is equally
great but hopefully you know that by now because it got (rightful) praise
everywhere it went (until it got banned from competitive for being as
overpowered as a hand gun in a water fight). Here the baby in Kangaskhan’s
pouch gets the mega evolution, growing plating and fighting alongside it’s
mummy, cute, fun, creative, etc etc it’s all been said before and I agree with all of it.
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