You know I haven’t really
talked about methods of evolution very much, this is genuinely because I rarely
find how a Pokémon evolves to be a factor in my opinion of them; you should
hopefully know that most Pokémon evolve by levelling their EXP up to a certain
number, which is usually done through battling (or battling AND catching in
Pokémon Let’s Go), but a percentage require you to do something else; use an
item on, increase their friendship stat, trade them (sometimes holding an
item); evolve them in a certain place or occasionally something completely
unique like with Feebas or Inkay. But I’ve never found most of these to be a
problem – stones and other items are easy enough to come by and I’ve usually
had at least one other Pokémon playing friend to trade with (or an Action
Replay to just skip the whole process and go straight to Machamp, I ain’t
proud) and as these are the most common ‘other ways to evolve’ having a
different method of evolution is rarely something I take into consideration
here.
But we need to go into it
now because what makes these two lines connected – and so cool – is their new
twist on one of the games methods of evolution, specifically trade evolution. Making
some Pokémon evolve only when traded was a great way of achieving the goal it
was meant to achieve – to promote the interconnectivity and social aspects of
Pokémon Red & Green by basically forcing the player to connect with someone
else (and this be social) if they wanted top notch ‘mons like Golem, Alakazam,
Machamp and Gengar, No-one likes being forced to do something but the rewards
in this case were worth the effort (and perhaps the cost of a link cable). In
gens 2, 3 and 4 trade evolution was more used to explain away why Pokémon who
could now evolve couldn’t before - you simply hadn’t had the necessary item to
trade with them to make them evolve, but Gen 5 is back to basics kinda thing so
we have Pokémon that again evolve when traded just ‘cos; luckily they put a new
spin on this idea and it was pretty damn cleverly done: Karrablast and Shelmet
only evolve when traded for each other, that’s not the clever part in fact it’s
such an obvious idea that it’s pretty shocking it took five generations of
video games to do it, the clever bit is the execution – the two pocket monsters
picked for this gimmick was a little Carabid beetle (Karrablast) and a little
snail (Shelmet) (the former being a predator of the former) and when they’re
traded, Karrablast not only takes Shelmet’s shell but it’s entire visual style
to become the armoured beetle Escavalier leaving Shelmet as a shell-less snail
(that’s basically a slug isn’t it/) that has in-turn inherited Karrablast’s
visual style and, free from it’s extra weight, become incredible fast and, of
course, has used its new incredible speed to become a fucking super sentai
ninja. Everything about that it is just so fitting, but done so well, the art
style swapping it what really does it for me, these two look like the other has
influenced their entire evolution while still retaining enough remnants of
their past form (look past Escavalier and Shelmet’s armour and you’ll see what
I mean) to feel like they came from those forms. It’s just so well done.
As for the individual
Pokémon? Honestly Karrablast is the only let-down of the four. Shelmet looks like
a gravy boat or a sauce pot to me but I don’t believe for a minute that this is
unintentional, of course it looks like silverware as well as a knight and a
snail, a snail’s shell is basically a gravy boat’s handle in animal form,
right? Escavalier and Accelgor are just
flat out badass, Generation 5 is THE bug generation and those two just keep the
level of quality high, Escavalier is especially wicked, a floating heavily
armoured bug with lances for hands and a face of seething hate. But Karrablast
is honestly a bit boring, it’s a fine abstraction of a Carabid beetle standing
on its back legs and it’s certainly cute in it’s own way, but compared to two
bug knights and a bug ninja, a standard Pokémon Bug Type is a little
underwhelming, but I don’t’ think that ‘being about as good as Venonat’ is much
of a criticism, it just feels lesser due to everything else in it’s line, sorry
mate.
While the Vanillite, Trubbish
and Klink lines tend to be the best-known punching bags from this generation,
and some of the best known ‘worst Pokémon ever’ in the whole franchise, people really
seemed to shit on this line, has that stopped? Has the fandom moved on and I
missed it? I hope so because I’ve never really seen why Foongus and Amoongus
(yes, really, ‘fungus among us’, people get paid to think up these English
names remember) should cause such a strong reaction in anything. Is it because
they’re so obviously derivative of Voltorb and Electrode? I mean they ARE Gen
5’s equivalentmonts for Voltorb and Electrode but take the idea and go a
different way with it, Voltorb is the ultimate mimic, a living version of
something you want and you pay for you stupidity with Explosion or
Self-Destruction, it’s a very RPG kind of thing; Foongus and Amoongus take a
more nature approach to the idea of being fake pokeballs and you pay for your
stupidity with poison in the face and, if you’re a Pokémon, being eaten and
Amoongus is far better at it’s fucking job than Electrode (and yet it’s said to
be not that convincing, I don’t buy it).
I mean they’re far from my
favourite Pokémon but they’re harmless and a twist on an old idea rather than
the same idea with a new design (see Roggenrolla, Bouffalant, Tympole, Woobat,
Audino etc etc). it is a shame that Game Freak felt they couldn’t go one
generation without having Voltorb around though - guys, it was one generation,
you could have had a few years without Zubat, Geodude and Voltorb - and they
could easily be considered a poster-child for what a let-down the ‘entirely new
Pokedex’ idea was because of the sheer amount of equivalents in it, but that
could be said for several other lines that didn’t get anywhere near as much
hate (again: Roggenrolla, Tympole, Audino and Woobat) despite them lacking that
twist while still filling the exact same niche as the ‘mons they were standing
in for. Weird.
Because we couldn’t have a generation
without Tentacool and Tentacruel could we!?! I sometimes think that Game Freak
are completely out of touch with their audience.
I kid, Frillish are nowhere
near as omnipresent as Tentacool and come with a far less irritating move pool and
while clearly a set of equivalentmons they are beyond different to Gen 1’s
krakens. Instead we get our first Water/Ghost line themed around…royalty, or I
guess the ghosts of royalty. This isn’t as batshit as it may seem, the yokai Nurarihyon
is a jellyfish like creature that appears as a wealthy or regal old man which
would explain a lot and there is such a thing as a ‘king jellyfish’ of a sort,
a type of Box jellyfish is called malo kingi (Common Kingslayer) named after
their victim Robert King so if you throw those together, ghostly highly deadly
jellyfish that look like bobbleheads of fairy tale royalty is actually a fairy
sensible thing to come out of Game Freak, who’s design team might as well have
the motto ‘we combine everything possibly connected together to make you the
best Pokémon’.
I like these guys; because
we’re doing royalty we have to have a prince and princess and king and queen
and this is achieved by sexual
dimorphism or ‘gender differences’, a common thing for Pokémon at this point,
this is just an extreme version of it (which I guess makes these Gen 5’s
Nidoran line too?). The female line I like slightly less simply because I think
queen Jellicent looks a bit off, I know they’re supposed to be unsettling, but
just design wise she looks a little bit more awkward than unsettling, I get
what they were going for and it makes sense when viewed next to king Jellicent
but they just didn’t quite pull it off, everything’s just a little ‘wrong’ proportions
and placement wise, it could probably had done without the mouth too. It’s
not enough to make me dislike it, just enough to make me like it less than king
Jellicent, the only ‘mon with a more GLORIOUS moustache than Stoutland. That is
one regal motherfucker right there, even though it kills ships and murders
humans (but then what king didn’t?) I still want one.
Did we really need two
single-stage local fish in this ‘dex? Well I have a conspiracy theory that
might explain it. Alomomola looks a shitload like Luvdisc, everyone thought it
was going to be a cross-gen evolution until the ‘whole new Pokdex’ thing was
announced. My conspiracy theory is that Alomomola was intended to be just that,
my theory is that the game wasn’t developed with the ‘whole new ‘dex’ thing in
place and this was added later-on as a gimmick from somewhere other than the
Pokémon design team. That’s why the Pokémon in the game so readily divide into
all new Pokémon that could have been introduced regardless of the whole new
‘dex gimmick and Pokémon that were clearly designed to fill roles other Pokémon
now couldn’t. In my theory Alomomola was the intended evolution for
Luvdisc but never got to be that due to the completely new ‘dex decision. Now
it IS based on a fish (the mola mola) that does look like a big luvdisc with
fins, but mola mola aren’t pink (they’re white or brown), now yes I now rats
aren’t purple and deer aren’t green either but I find, in this instance the
change in colour to be suspicious - the
change of colour from it’s real world source to make it look just like another
Pokémon, a well-known weak single stage Pokémon.
Of course it could all just
be a coincidence and they might just have thought that the design looked good
in pink, and it does doesn’t it? it’s a very pink-suitable design, but I like
my conspiracy theory and as I had almost nothing else to say here because it’s
a big fish and little else I thought I’d share.
Joltik is small, like
palm-sized, it’s one of very few Bug types that are actually close to being
bug-sized. The fact that it’s so small, and so cute and can one-hit KO a Lapras
pretty much makes it impossible to argue with, Joltik is popular in the Pokémon
fandom because it’s impossible for something like Joltik to not be popular and
I’m completely on board with that. Joltik is a darling little cartoon fuzzy bug
with absolutely nothing to complain about design wise. This sadly means that
Galvantula is kind of surplus to requirements for me, there’s nothing wrong
with Galvantula, it’s a great big bad hairy spider with a fuzzy blue butt, but
it doesn’t do enough for me to make loosing Joltik worth my while.
“Let’s do a Grass/Steel
Type”
“Yeah! We haven’t done one
them before, what shall we do?”
“Y’know burrs, right? Those
seed things that stick to you?”
“Yeah…”
“I’m thinking we’ll make
one into a mace”
“Ok, ok, that’s not a bad
idea”
“Yeah it’ll look cool too, we’ll give it these cool robot eyes and make it look
like an easter egg of doom”
“Yeah, I can see the
connection, I like robot eyes, what’ll it evolve into?”
“I’m thinking a Beyblade
with three mace tentacles that it’ll us as suckers to drop down on unsuspecting
fools and bring death from above”
“….”
Bulbpedia has a whole bunch
of possible ‘origins’ for Ferrothorn, amongst them a brier plant, durian
plants, a Tribulus, and a caltrops but I’m sticking my first interpretation
it’s a killer Beyblade with mace suckers. Either way it’s pretty nifty innit?
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