Quick Crappy Pokemon Reviews: Generation 2 Part 9 - Miltank & The Legendary Beasts

So due to the number, order and size of sections I coudn't find a way to

break them down in a way that we didn't end up with... well, with a section that's just a cartoon cow and some of the Legendaries. Sorry, all. 

That’s a nice cartoon cow.

it’s cute, it’s friendly looking and it produces a healing item, a good cow.

But yeah it’s a cartoon cow, Bogleech already did all the sex jokes [http://www.bogleech.com/pokemon/p241miltank.html], so I’m sort of left with nothing here. It’s a nice ‘feminine’ compliment to the ‘masculine’ Tauros, which you’ll remember was a nice cartoon bull and I had equally nothing to say about, it’s cartoony where Taurus is not and pink and girly where Tauros is brown and manly so… success

Oh I tell what I do like about Miltank – it’s tail! It’s so nice to see a cartoon cow with a different type tail!

Oh yeah and half the Pokémon fanbase hate it because Whitney used one to devastating effect in what’s considered the worst difficulty spike in any Pokémon game to date, but I never had that issue (I didn’t have a problem with the barrel in the Carnival Night Zone either, suck it internet) so I have no lingering resentment towards Miltank, and am left with… it’s a nice cartoon cow with a nice tail.

At least that rhymes

for Blissey go here

Ah this amuses me – so there was a big fandom argument about what these three were, some called them the Legendry Dogs (which seemed to be more common, even though Raikou is clearly a tiger) and others argued they were the Legendary Cats so in the end the fandom said ‘fuck it’ and named them the Legendary Beasts. That is diplomacy in action! And actually far more correct too – Raikou is clearly feline, Entei could go either way and Suicune looks more like a horse mated with a greyhound than any kind of cat. 

Oh yeah, before we go any further these three have the hardest to pronounce names in the franchise, it’s ‘rye-cow’ ‘en-tye’ and ‘swee-cyoon’. It took me far too long to learn that.

Anyway I think I like the story of the Legendary Beasts more than the actual three Legendary Beasts: the story goes that there were two towers, roosting points for the Legendary Pokémon Lugia and Ho-Oh, but one day the Bell Tower burned and inside three Pokémon died (fan speculation has always been that it was Jolteon, Flaroen and Vaporeon) but Ho-Oh returned and resurrected these three, turning them into Entei, Raikou and Suicune, Pokémon so powerful they need never worry about death again, and now the three roam Johto pissing off players and setting the terrible precedent that is ‘roaming Legendaries’.

That’s an awesome story, sadly two out of three of the ‘Beasts are…well messy as shit. That’s Raikou and Entei, the yellow and brown ones, I don’t necessarily think it’s their complexity per-say, they’re based on Japanese legendary creatures and all that crap and smoke and stuff on their backs? That’s how the Japanese used to draw their legendary creatures, check out Capcom’s game Okami for instance. I don’t so much think they should have stopped drawing sooner as they should have just stopped colouring sooner. Both have colours thrown onto them which, again, might be to emulate the feeling of old Japanese art (where colour was used more to highlight than anything) but makes them look like they were coloured in the dark, here, I tried a quick fix to show you what I mean:

Things simply look better if you carry the colour scheme throughout the whole design rather than just slapping on a random bright primary colour onto one or two small parts of it. But you know what, I didn’t actually need to do that, I could have just said ‘look at Suicune’ because Suicune is only marginally less busy than Raikou but it’s colour palette and use of colours in said palette make it look far more visually pleasing - no wonder that bloke was so obsessed with it in Crystal.

So yeah, one good story, one sexy horse-greyhound-thing.

Of course, for all their design faults the Legendary Beasts still have a sense of majesty, a presence, they still say ‘Legendary’, which makes them a vast improvement over their pro-versions from the Space World Demo, mind you just about anything would be an improvement on Rai, if Suigmori did a shit on a page and spread it about with his face it would be better than Rai.

Ok I’m being hyperbolic, unfair almost, but Rai (the black and yellow one) is particularly shite; having searched for a way to describe my utter dislike for this design I’ve come up with the following: it looks like it was designed by an American teenager attempted the anime/manga style and the Pokémon style but being completely inexperience and unskilled at both, it looks like it was drawn by someone who can’t draw in a style that isn’t theirs. Or it looks like Ken Sugimori did a shit on a page and spread it around with his face, whichever you prefer really.

Though it really lacks Entei’s badassery, En (the red one) is certain a step up from Emo Dog, it still isn’t very Legendary but it’s a pleasant enough design, to me it looks like a big, soppy, lovable dog – like the dog from Coco – one gets really excited when it’s maser (trainer) comes home from work and accidentally headbutts a wall, that sort of thing. It is however very easily described as ‘a less original Arcanine’ but however again I’d’ve been happy to have had this one in the game as a second or third stage ‘mon.

Then there’s the My Little Pony that is Sui and…I’ve really got quite attached to it. It just looks so forlorn and vulnerable, yes it appears to have (naturally occurring?) scrunchies and its markings aren’t the best designed in the generation but it just seems to be designed to make you want to look after it and it works. It also has quite an ethereal, dreamlike quality for a My Little Pony too, like something you’d see in the middle distance of a dream sequence, it’d make a good Mythical Pokémon.

 The Legendary beasts we got were the far better choice, these would have felt incredibly inferior to the Legendary Birds - which were the only reference point for Legendary trios we had at that point - and while the Legendary Beasts never really seemed to have affected too many people’s views of Gen 2 one way or the other anything that could have made Gold & Silver seem like an inferior sequel and Pokémon’s initial success seem like a fluke would have been damaging to the franchise and I wouldn’t have wanted that.