Quick Crappy Pokemon Reviews: Generation 2 Part 7 - Teddiursa line to Delibird

I think Teddiursa and Ursaring are what I think of first when I think ‘Gen 2 Pokémon’ and that might be what’s clouded my judgement of the whole generation as ‘simple, plain, not exceptionally creative but still likeable’ which as we’ve seen and as we’ll see is quite unfair. Teddiursa is adorable in Pokémon form, it’s a living teddy bear that always looks a little nervous, Ursaring is a big-ass bear that always looks cross or, I suppose, like a bear with a sore head – but I think that might be giving Ursaring too much credit.

But ultimately a teddy bear that evolves into a big cartoon bear isn’t that creative is it? It’s about the most basic execution of ‘Pokémon Bears’ you could get, there’s nothing wrong with them, Teddiursa fits perfectly with Meowth and Diglett as another ‘made flesh’ design (something that Gen 3 will continue with and you certainly won’t get any complaints from me about that) and Ursaring is a satisfyingly awesome bear to get as an evolution of Teddiursa and I’m not saying every Pokémon has to do something wildly creative or unexpected, you need your basic ‘control’ mons to make things like Natu and Slugma stand out against, you need your Normal Types, what AM  I saying? ‘three balls’ I think.

Quick Crappy Pokemon Reviews: Generation 2 Part 6 - Gligar line to Sneasel line

The name ‘Gligar’ is apparently derived from ‘glide’ and ‘gargoyle’ so that means Gligar’s a gargoyle right? Or at least a grotesque which everyone calls a gargoyle right? Well, no, it means the English name is based on the word ‘gargoyle’, do I have to bring up Pidgey again? Pidgey is in no way a pigeon and it’s not alone, the English translation team has no idea what animals are what, even if they’re not (with apologies to the Manhattan Clan) real animals.

While I like the idea of it being a literal take on the scorpion fly (it’s a literal flying scorpion) I’m of the opinion that Gligar is just ‘a thing’, but what a wonderful thing it is and most importantly – IT LOOKS LIKE IT HAS LITTLE SHOES! LOOK AT IT’S LITTLE SHOOES! LIKE LITTLE SONIC SHOOOOES!

I hated Gliscor as much as Yanmega when it debuted but looking back at it now, I have no idea what I was thinking. It’s just a bigger, badder, scarier ‘a thing’ that looks and feels like Gligar grew up into its final form – a nightmare. I think it might have been the switch from cute to nightmarish again, Gligar looks mischievous but ultimately not monstrous (despite the fact that it clings to faces and stabs them) like a cartoon sidekick – the sort of thing Filmation, Disney or DiC would have given the main villain to take the edge off, the likes of Beastly, Imp or Bartok – or one of those loveable looser villains like Coconuts or Impmon. They’re a villain but they’re not THAT villainous. Gliscor is villainous, Gliscor is No Heart. Or maybe it’s just how Suigmori draws it, which is an odd thing to say given that I have a Suigmori shrine, he draws Gliscor very flat all the time and it doesn’t help the design, seeing it 3D (as you will in a tick when we get to the scores) does wonders for its face, tail and chest. All in all Gliscor is the type of evolution I’d wish they’d given Scyther instead of turning the lizardmantis into a Sentai show.

See how much better Gliscor looks in 3D?

Quick Crappy Pokemon Reviews: Generation 2 Part 5 - Unown to Dunsparce

Ok, I have no issue with Unown in concept or principle – I have no problem with Pokémon who are created primarily for world building like, say, the regional fish; in a game whose tagline was ‘gotta catch ‘em all’ I have no problem with introducing a Pokémon who plays up to the collecting aspect or collecting appeal; I have no problem with ‘gimmick’ Pokémon. I don’t have any problem with Unown as a design either, they’re supposed to represent each letter of the alphabet (plus two punctuation marks) but none of them (except maybe the ‘N’ Unown but that looks more like a ‘Z’) look explicitly like letter, the one up there is the F Unown for instance. If you took someone completely ignorant of Pokémon and showed them some Unown, there’s an excellent change they wouldn’t guess ‘they’re letters’, this is nice design work if you ask me: unobvious and un-tacky, a very satisfactory way to execute something that’s pretty kiddie and could, frankly, have come out looking like something from Sesame Street instead they look old and otherworldly, exactly what they should look.

I also like the concept of the Unown, these ancient things haunting the Ruins of Alph (or the Solaceon Ruins, or the Mirage Cave or the Tanoby Chambers…) that are quite probably the source of an ancient language. That’s cool shit.

My problem with Unown (you knew that was coming surely?) is their uses in game - or lack thereof. Yes they’re worthless in battle, knowing only the random move Hidden Power, a move they seem to have been included partly (or entirely?) to promote, but that’s not what I mean; what I mean is that no Pokémon game has never given a satisfactory reward for collecting all of its Unowns, Game Freak seem to be so pleased with their ooky letters that they seem to think simply having them all is reward enough. It isn’t. In real life completing a set is a good reason to collect, in a video game we expect a different outcome and Game Freak has never given us this, the biggest rewards we usually get are *gasp* the chance to catch two more of the poxy things (the aforementioned punctuation). With all 28 forms being the same type and knowing only 1 same move (and never learning any more) catching all 28 of ‘em is thus solely for it’s own sake and fuck that, there’s all kinds of ways they could have been used – for instance (just thought of this) they could have been used to open the locations for the Legendary Golems instead of those braille puzzles everyone detests, you could have had to have taken Unown spelling ‘Ice’ ‘Rock’ and ‘Steel’ there to open the doors to the Golems, which would have tied nicely into them being an ancient language. 

But nope, getting those exclamation point and question mark Unown is a far better reward.

Quick Crappy Pokemon Reviews: Generation 2 Part 4 - Aipom line to Misdreavus line

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!

God these two creep me out - Aipom was bad enough with that weird face, staring eyes boring into you and it’s balloony alien tail hand (and it’s so common ‘round here in Pokémon Go!, it already looks like it masturbates watching you sleep, now it can actually do that, yeesh).  Them Ambipom came along, certainly Aipom needed an evolution to make it viable in any way and so it was a fairly good choice to be one 40 million ‘mons who got another evolutionary stage in Gen 4 but it’s even creepier! Now it has a skeletal variant of the same horrifying face and TWO big balloony tail hands that now look either like udders or like it’s wearing nail polish and neither of those things make me feel settled around it.

And it was going to look so cute!

The Space World proto-Aipom looks like it came straight out of an Osmau Tezuka manga, look at how cute that little bugger is, that could pal around with Kimba the White Lion. I will concede that Aipom is a far more original execution of the idea of ‘thing with hand on it’s tail’ but it’s also a lot damn creepier with it.

Honesty even if I wasn’t irrationally grossed out by them – and it bugs me that they don’t have fingers, I guess you don’t need them if you’ve got a huge hand on your tail to do all the hand work but I imagine them as having hand-like tentacles (like Shuckle) and that creeps me out too – Ambipom is one of Gen 4’s least attractive and least imaginative evolutions, they just picked bits on the original to make bigger and went with that plus a funny nose and some unnecessary bits, very Gen 4 one might say. 

Quick Crappy Pokemon Reviews: Generation 2 Part 3 - Natu line to Hoppip line

“Gen 2 introduced a lot of single stage evolutionary lines, a lot of plainer designs and a lot of simpler (and way less nutty) concepts – at least that’s how I remember it and think of it” I think I’m going to paste this every time I was completely WRONG.  Because there is nothing plain or uncreative about a mind-reading neon purple and green living totem pole is there?

I think we can safely say that Xatu was designed first and Natu was created to evolve into it, but it works lovely, in fact the ‘evolutionary flow’ as it were of Natu to Xatus is pretty much perfect, with both clearly being their own thing design-wise (ball bird, totem poll bird) but one clearly coming from the other. This is true for a lot of Gen 2 ‘mons, half of it is almost certainly because they were all designed together rather than placed into evolutionary lines at some point during a long-ass development like Gen 1, but the other half, the not just asking a slightly bigger or small version but multiple things that are clearly connected but retain a unique feeling? I dunno, I guess we’ll just have to chalk that up to the designers having a ‘good week’ for the entire development period of Gen 2.

HOWEVER Natu most reminds me of the prizes you used to get in Frufoo, like these:

Or these:

It’s basically a living Frufoo prize, which completely fits with its evolution! Xatu is the next in a long line of ‘made flesh’ Pokémon designs that Meowth and Diglett started and the likes of Teddyursa will continue into a very ‘made flesh’ Generation 3. In this case we get a living piece of Native American art, that can read your mind.

Natu and Xatu are pretty damn cool aren’t they? I’m sure someone from Tumblr will no come along and use the term ‘cultural appropriation’ and how they are in fact not cool.

Quick Crappy Pokemon Reviews: Generation 2 Part 2 - Sentret line to Togepi line

By comparison, Gen 2 has easily my favourite com mons, as much as I heart Bidoof it just can’t measure up to my beloved Sentret. Otachi as a I STILL fucking call it to the confusion of just about everyone is just such a super-cute little raccoon thing with a surprisingly expressive little face considering it’s two lines and two dots. Look at it’s little ‘UNACCEPTABLE!’ face up there, now look how happy it can look with minimal effort:

Expressive AND cute, good design work that. Also no I don’t think it’s a flying squirrel, I’ve always seen a raccoon but what people see as glider-like arms I think are just odd-shaped arms, I’ve never seen one glide in the anime either (though I didn’t watch it so much in the Gold & Silver era, Google turned up nothing), what I see it doing rather than ‘gliding’ is, well this:

It’s just making itself look big!

And then it becomes Furret, who’s really kind of boring compared to the random mix of mammalian things thrown together to make Sentret but it only marginally less cute, in fact it has the same face, just with bigger eyes. But do you wanna know that I like about Furret – well obviously you do because otherwise why would you be reading this shit? – I like how it still has lemur/racoon/red panda style rings up its tail but because of it’s very ferret like body, it’s really up a lot of its body, that seems to me like how that would work if a racoon-bodied thing switched to a ferret-bodied thing when it evolved at level 15, does that make sense? No? well Furret’s markings make sense to me.