Gen 5’s equivalent of
Chansey and… you know what? Yeah. If I couldn’t have Chansey I’d be happy to
have an Audino. It’s still a lovely colour scheme, still an indistinct, random
whatever (though this design recalls more traditionally cute things like dogs
and baby elephants) and it does something different with the nurse idea: your Audino
comes complete with an in-built stethoscope that are part of its ears and that
aren’t nearly as gross as they could (and given this is Pokémon, probably
should) be. It’s certainly one of the equivalentmons that’s the closest to its
source material, one that feels the most like an ‘alternate company equivalent’
used as a copyright free stand-in (ala The Squadron Supreme or The Sentry) and
I don’t like it anywhere near as much as my beloved Blissey but it’s fine.
it’s Mega, fittingly
looking closer to Blissey, is just lovely, a really pleasant little frilly
design and LOOK AT IT’S LITTLE SHOOOOES! IT HAS LITTLE FRILLY SHOOOOES! Little
shooooes are so cute. Though I think the stethoscope thing becomes a bit
grosser now, with that random little tentacle on its chest, even if it does
seem to hang from a meringue (and meringues are tasty! I don’t think I’d want
to lick a Mega Audino though, and they have really good hearing so licking it
would probably make its poor frilly ears hurt). I don’t really know why Audino
was judged worthy of a Mega Evolution, but I’m glad it got one this pleasant
looking (though it is rather reserved for a Mega).
Thinking about it, I think
what might make me warmer to the more derivative Audino than the more creative
Roggenrolla line is that Audino had its own thing: it’s the Pokémon in the
shaking grass in Black & White (and Black 2 & White 2) that yields high
Exp for level grinding whereas Roggenrolla is just another catchable Pokémon,
and doing the same job as Geodude in that regards (loitering in large numbers
in caves) Audino had something to… hang feelings on? Ok I’ve run out of the
ability to be legible, lets move on.
Well now, I honestly don’t
know how I feel about this line.
Which, if you’re a Pokémon
fan and especially one who has been around since before Generation 5, may seem
a bit odd, as people had VERY strong feelings about this, and those strong
feelings were spelt y-u-c-k. The continually bulging veins were dubbed gross, the
faces were dubbed gonky and ugly, the weapons were judged dumb and overall the
three – Timburr, Gurdurr and Conkeldorr – were judged as inferior imitators to
their equivalents: Machop, Machoke and Machamp.
I’ll agree with last point,
they lack the simple elegance of the Machop line and…and…what’s the word? The
Kinnikumanness of Machamp (not that I’m biased towards Pokémon that look like
things I like or anything, no sir) and the Macs weren’t calling for a
replacement (which might have hurt a number of these equivalents now I think on
it, the likes of Roggenrolla, Audino, Tympole and Timburr were fixing things
that weren’t broke and no-one wanted rid of, which might explain why the fandom
has cooled on them also: now they’re just one of many lines in their Types that
can be used in new ‘Dexes for variety or just because why not?). I don’t have
an issue with the bulging veins personally, I mean I wouldn’t want to poke them
but there’s clearly been some thought put into where they’re placed and
Conkeldor’s make a lovely pattern that wouldn’t haven out of place on a
Legendary like Diagla/Palkia or Reshiram/Zekrom and aside from the veins I
don’t think they’re any different to most of the humanoid Fighting Types we’ve
had since the Machops. I wouldn’t say they were any weirder looking than
Hitmonchan or Hariyama.
As for the weapons…well I
think the issue is Gurdurr. Timburr’s wood and Conkledoor’s stone columns could
be made by the Pokémon anywhere in the wild and at any time in history (I know
the Pokedex refers to them as concrete but, well, the Pokedex is not always
reliable, is it?) but Gurdurr’s girder is clearly a man-made girder and that
raises questions that Pokémon has never answered (because god forbid the
Pokedex do that, rather than talk about how buff it is and how even a team of
Hulk Hogan, Antonio Inoki and Terry Funk couldn’t beat it up because it’s just
so cool and badass, yo), not helped by it’s name in English being ‘girder’ but
I suppose you could just say that girders are named after Gurdurrs in the
Pokémon world. So what? Did Gurdurr use something else before girders? Were
girders based on whatever that was and now Gurdurrs use them instead? Some
clarification would be nice, k thnx. And then there’s the gameplay/story
segregation that always comes with weapon wielding Pokémon when they hatch or
evolve and come out with the weapon in hand, but it’s always possible (in the
case of evolution) that evolution evolves the weapons (or belts) with the
Pokémon, I mean they do seem to be reduced to pure energy and then reform. It’s
a little thing, but a little thing that bugs me (and not only me).
So what have I decided? I
think they’re alright, but someone should have put some more thought either
into what weapon they gave the second stage of the line or to explaining away
that weapon
Much like Drillber and
Excadrill we have a set of equivalents that fix the source material’s flaws,
except this time we end up with a Pokémon that I actually thinks looks nice –
which is a little odd considering the Pokémon in question is covered in musical
warts and that’s just a bit gross. Actually, musical warts, bulging veins,
frozen snot, what WAS up with Game Freak this generation? Was the design team
being headed by a 6-year-old American kid or did they just give the person who
designed Stunky more power?
Anyway, my main issue with
the Poliwag line was how similar Polywrath was to Poliwhirl, but here we have
three ‘mons who are each delightfully unique. Tympole is by the far most
‘complete’ feeling design I feel, taking the music + frogs concept and refining
it so there’s no waste at all, it’s a drum with musical note eyes and musical
wart headphones that itself looks like a musical note. Palpitoad doesn’t have
that plus but it is a midvolution that really feels like a midpoint between the
two Pokémon either side of it, which is less common than you might think,
generally a midvolution is a Pokémon that feels like a step-up from one and a
step-down from other but Palpitoad looks and feels like a Tympole half turned
into a Seismitoad, it also has no arms, which makes it instantly hilarious. Seismitoad
is just a big awesome sound system of a toad who, apparently, vibrates its
warts to pack more of a punch, which is just creative of it really isn’t it?
It’s just a big lumbering funny looking thing that knows how to use its powers
for maximum effect, it’s basically an Ankylosaur, and a nice, satisfying
conclusion to training an adorable Tympole even if, like Palpitoad it doesn’t
really do as much with the musical theme.
The thing is, they remind
me of the artwork of comic book illustrator Jeff Matsuda, from the moment they
were revealed the reminded me of his stuff, especially around the time he was
doing Kaboom, the problem is no one knows what I’m talking about,
especially as no fucker bought Kaboom (it was great, but it came out from
Awesome Entertainment, a piddling indie label that Rob Liefeld set up after he
got kicked out of Image Comcis for talent poaching and misappropriation of funds
– Awesome had a shitload of good books including Supreme: The Return,
Youngblood Volume 3, Kaboom and The Coven with works by the
likes of pre-madness Jeph Loeb, Ed McGuinness, Ian Churchill, Steve Skroce and
Alan fucking Moore but few cared, and most of those who did seemed to only care
just so they could mock Liefeld’s Re-Gex, which totally deserved it) so
here, have some Kaboom panels to back me up:
You’re seeing it right? please
say you are, I need validation after all these years.
Suuuuun-ny Day! Sweepin'
the clouds away!
Ooonn my way to where the
air is sweet
Can you tell me how to get?
How to get to -- alright, alright this joke isn’t new or original, Throh and
Sawk, Gen V’s Hitmonlee and Hitmonchan and dubbed ‘Bert & Ernie’ almost
immediately after reveal, look like Muppets. As a Jim Henson fan devotee
I don’t see this as a problem, hell their faces are the only things about them
I really rather like. It’s everything else about them I’m not fond of, well
except the belts, because it’s explained that they weave their own belts, sure
there’s still the gameplay/story segregation issue that comes with them
hatching wearing one and you’d think Game Freak would know this by now and work
around it rather than just ignoring it, but at least they tried, unlike with
Gurdurr the clown-faced construction Nostradamus.
It’s the Karate Gi, the
fact that they’re clearly wearing a Karate Gi when it’s supposed to just be
their body and more so the fact that the only attempt to cover this up is
putting some crossed lines on it. That’s just shit design. It’s not the first
time Pokémon haven’t quite manged to blend clothes and body parts, not every Pokémon
can be Shiftry, but it’s the pathetic attempts at integration, the pathetic
fucking crossed lines, I’d prefer no attempt (like say Hitmonchan’s gloves)
than having my intelligence insulted.
And thank fuck! All those
stand-ins, all in a row, and now all done. Well the bugs are still to come but
every generation has bugs to review.
These are a really well-designed
set of leafy bugs, they’re not particular favourites of mine despite being
Grass/Bug which is two types I do like to have on my team if possible,
especially early on, I have no idea why, I just never boned to them, but they’re just so, well, designed.
They’re actually based on a
real animal, the ‘leaf insect’, a type of stick insect called Phylliidae that,
well, look a lot like Leavanny without the charm or vague similarities to
Cooking Mama, which funnily enough don’t’ have a larvae or pupal stage but when
you can make something this good, who gives a shit about the real-world
inspiration, these are monsters from another reality, they can do whatever the
hell they like. What makes them so good as designs as we’ve got the life-cycle
of a bug (just not Philliidae) – caterpillar, cocoon, bug, lined up perfectly
with (a very Japanese) human lifecyle – baby, hikikomori, adult, and then mixed
with a wonderful integration of it’s element (grass) that is actually based on
a real-world source to elevate it above ‘animal with grass btis stuck on’, too!
That’s a lot to put together and pull off seamlessly and goddamn do these three
pull it off.
As magnificently cute as
Sewaddle is (god it’s adorable isn’t it?) and as fun and delightfully well
worked out (as in, planned out as a design, not that it’s been to the gym) as
Levanny is, I like midvolution Swadloon the best, the idea of combining a
cocoon form, the ultimate in becoming insular, with the ultimate shut-in (it’s
actually a disorder you know) and having it evolve via friendship into its
friendly, bright, sunny, adult form is just flat-out perfect.
Another line where the
midvolution is the real star, and it’s another cocoon. Whirlipede is a cocoon
form for a centipede like-‘mon that’s a wheel Whirlipede is still a cocoon, far
more cocoon-like than Swadloon (who just looks like a sad bug), it’s a solid,
single-piece with no moving parts, but it also has a way of defending itself
and moving, this is clever design AND it just seems so…likely for the Pokémon
world where all the animals and 80% of the people who own the animals are
always fighting, that a cocoon would develop a way of attacking while still
being a cocoon.
Either side of Whirlipede
are just to cool looking bugs, Venepide is cool and another one of those cases
where ‘complex’ doesn’t equal ‘busy’ in fact there’s nothing really wrong with
it at all except that I’ve never really ‘got into it’ and Scolipede, the
hypothetical answer to the question ‘what if centipedes got really big and
really badass’ is just neat all ‘round and looks like what I imagine the
Cheshire Cat would saw if it took LSD, Scolipede is officially trippy.
I don’t trust Venipide
though, it looks shifty.
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