Welcome to Generation V an…
this took so long to write, I’m sorry, a busy and then bad month plus the sheer
volume of Pokémon introduced in this generation slowed things to a fucking
crawl.
Anyway Welcome to
Generation V, the second generation for the Nintendo DS and the first Pokémon
region to not be based on a part of Japan, Unnova is based on New York and yes
that ruined desert does seem to represent ground zero for 9/11. It encompasses Pokémon
Black Version and Pokémon White Version and for the first time since
Yellow, direct sequels in the form of Pokémon Black 2 and Pokémon
White 2 which should show you how popular and successful Black and White
were at the time – with some people.
Black and White were vey well written games, with a great story, great
characters and easily the best villains in the series and the games included a
number of upgrades to gameplay, least of all the ability to use TMs
indefinitely. But it also relied heavily on now-defunct online features, broke
the competitive scene by turning it into the ‘weather wars’ (where most
competitive battling relied on weather-based Abilities) and it included the
gimmick of having a whole new Pokedex, a whole new 151 little critters and for
the pre-credits game (which is most of it) players would only be able to use
those new 151 new ‘mons. What causes further breaking was that fans of Gen 5
had a habit of saying they liked it, and defending it, to the point that it
upset older and nostalgic fans who were commonly the people criticizing the
generation (especially it’s Pokémon) because god forbid groups of people can
like different things and say so without it all getting nasty.
I liked the two sets of
games this generation, and replaying Black 2 and White 2 recently I realised I still
like them, but I tend to think of the new Pokémon they introduced as one big
homogenous lump of good but not exceptional, I was sort of right.
Victini’s a pretty good way
to start this off, because it’s a nice overview of the positives and negatives of
the whole ‘dex as far as I’m concerned. Victini’s
a solid Pokémon design and a delightful move away from the Gen 3 and 4 art
style to this new style that’s kind of a modernized version of Gen 1-2’s, it’ll
only really stick around for this generation but that makes perfect sense; this
is a very… calling back generation, so the art style calling back is only
fitting. Honestly the thing I like about it the most is that it’s based on
usage-ringo, or ‘apple bunnies’:
How cute are they and how cute
is that? ‘We want a bunny but not an obvious bunny, cos we’ve done that” “Dude
– APPLE bunnies, they even look like v’s” “Brilliant!”. Actually the V motif is nice and clever (though Grant Morrison did
it first with Weapon X) with V for Victory and V being the Roman numeral for 5
(as in Generation Five) and this being the Victory Pokémon in Generation V,
neat stuff.
The negatives though? Well
like a lot of Gen 5 mons, despite being completely fine, it leaves me rather
cold and it pales in comparison to the Gen 1 Pokémon it’s an equivalent of.
Maybe. I’ll explain:
Victini is this
Generation’s Mew, Gen 5 has a lot of equivalents in it’s ‘Dex (we’ll get to
that) but here things are far less egregious as every generation has at least
one ‘New Mew’ and Victini is like the sixth one, each region having it’s own
Mew is no different from having it’s own birds, fish or fossils. Still the
point applies as no ‘New Mew’ has had that sense of mystery and excitement that
Mew had, nor have they managed to replicate it’s simple yet appealing design,
though Victini is certainly mega cute and, if you’ve seen it’s film(s), pretty
damn cool. HOWEVER Victini’s little gimmick was that it was number 00 in the
Unnova ‘Dex, the first official Pokémon to be number zero, but not the first
Pokémon in general: that was the infamous MissingNo and in case you forgot: I
REALLY like the infamous MissingNo (I’m calling it that from now on) and I’ve
heard claims that it was inspired by and an attempt to legitimize The Infamous MissingNo,
kind of like how Gouken in Street Fighter V was inspired by and Capcom’s
attempt to legitimize Shen-Long. BUT I can’t actually find any proof of that,
and design wise and function wise it’s not comparable but it IS a powerful,
‘secret’ Pokémon that’s number 00 so unfortunate comparisons happen allthe same
and the victory apple bunny is nowhere near as awesome as The Infamous
MissingNo, I know it’s not really a fair comparison but I didn’t
make it number 0.
Snivy looks SO MUCH like
Snively from Sonic the Hedgehog, it’s even Snively’s signature colour (green),
this can’t be a co-incidence, I refuse to believe it, Pokémon comes to an
American-inspired region for the first time and it has a Pokémon that looks
like a character created for an American version of a Japanese franchise, owned
by Nintendo’s once-biggest rival and then-good buddy? ALL THE PIECES FIT!
Lemme just…there; tin-foil
hat safely stored away.
Anyway we follow the
real-world evolution of snakes of from small limbs to no limbs (Snivy >
Servine > Seperior) which feels like it took far too long to happen,
especially when it produces these three. I’m good with the Snivy line, I mean I
think they’re all only just above average but they’re consistently all just
above average. With so many starters suffering from shit midvolutions it’s nice
to get have a Starter line that’s all as good as each other, even if there are
only 4 ball ‘mons. In fact Servine is pretty damn cool, I especially enjoy the use
of leaves to recall Godzilla’s back spines. Speaking of nice little details: the
super-fancy super-snotty Grass Pokémon has gold LEAF on it?!? That’s genius! It’s a perfect fit for everything about Serperior!
I didn’t pick Snivy first
play-through though; because 1) I was fed up with the fandom hype around ‘Smugleaf’ here and
2) I like pigs
I often feel like I’m the
Tepig’s line’s only fan - this upsets me L
L L. It upsets me enough to use emoticons.
Most of the fandom however continue
to resent this darling little oink-oink and it’s two badass evolutions, still,
after all this time. Why? Well, you ready? The Tepig line was the third Fire
Starter (a twisted Fire Starter) to evolve into a Fire/Fighting type (in this
case, Emboar). That’s a crap reason to resent something, how many Normal/Flying
and Bug/Poison ‘mons have we had without a break, all fulfilling the same roles
(common bird, common bugs)? I will concede that it is a fine reason to be disappointed,
certainly initially, but the fandom remains so cross with it STILL that TV
Tropes can have an accurate summary that reads:
“Emboar remains one of the most disliked starters in
the series, even well into Gen VII, and is often used as a punchline for
Fire-type starters from later generations evolving into Fire/Fighting types.
Some people argue that Emboar's typing is so blatantly lazy that it ruined the
reputations of the Unova starters, or even the Unova Pokédex, as a whole.”
I rarely say this but: get
over it, already.
My reaction to Emboar was
not disappointment, in case you hadn’t guessed, in fact my reaction was utter
joy because it gave us a pig Pokémon line that wasn’t ruined the second
evolution happened! It felt like a three-stage sumo-wrestling apology for
Grumpig and the make-up sex was fantastic; we got a cute lil’ piggy in Tepig, a
feisty ‘classic wrestler’ piggy in Pignite and fucking monster in Emboar and
all of them have this lovely pottery colour-scheme, I’m a big fan of the
pottery thing by the way, the mixing of pigs, statues, pottery and the Fire
Type, statues of pigs are a big thing in Asia and FIRED pottery is a nice twist
on the ‘elemental elements’ design aesthetic – hell I don’t even really need
Emboar’s fire beard, I don’t mind it (who would mind the awesomeness of a fire
beard?) but I’m getting the fire thang just fine without the need for an actual
fire bit, still it is a Fire Starter (a twisted fire starter) and Game Freak do
like their real fire on their Fire Starters (twisted fire starters) - it’s also
just a really pleasing colour scheme for me, these look warm.
I am very cross at Dewott,
because it’s going to bring down the overall score of this line when I think
Oshawott is both cute and armed and Samurott is just badass but Dewott is…just crap. Everything about it fails for
me except it’s cute anger, none of it gels, none of it fits together, it’s the
design equivalent of getting dressed in the dark, the spike of hair, the blue
belt-fur-thing (I think it’s actually based on a real thing, maybe something a
type of Tessenjutsu practitioner wore?) that looks stuck on, the higher
contrast light blue and the low contrast charcoal next to each other, nothing
works and it irritates me because it brings a good line down and yet it was
Oshawott that got the bad and Samurott that got the bad reactions! (Ok at the
time of Oshawott’s negative response we hasn’t been shown Dewott yet but I need
a segue so shut it).
Oshawott got the worst
reaction of the three when they were revealed (if you don’t follow Pokémon as
horribly closely as I do, Starters are generally shown off very early, either
at the same time as the games being revealed or very close after), this
magnificently cute little otter with a little seashell it can take off it’s
body and use as both a knife and killer frisbee was rejected, people are
wwweeeiiird. I’d’ve thought that turning into a shell armoured sea unicorn with
retractable swords on its limbs would have made up for wahever perceived design
wrongs a beach hut coloured otter had perpetrated but NOPE people were still
cross. The general thinking (which Bogleech also puts forward) is that at lot
of this was due to the ‘Dragonite factor’ of Dewott looking a lot like Oshawott
and thus fans expecting Samurott to do the same but instead we got a bipedal
tank that looks more like a sealion or dog. I think for me the drastic change
was dampened by keeping the same colour scheme (remember I went on about that
in Dragonite’s section?) and by Samurott being so, damn, coooool. That said, I
do have one issue with Samurott as a design:
Uhh…
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