I may as well throw my hat in the ring. My favorite pokémon is Anorith, but I can’t help but be a little disappointing with Armaldo. Now, Anorith is based on the anomalocaris, which was a voracious (& compared to the other species of the time) massive and speedy marine predator. So I was hoping it would have an evolution that showed those sort of traits off a bit better. But instead we get a bulky dino-thing. What are your thoughts on this, & would you consider an article on the fossil pokémon?

I’ve always liked Anorith and Armaldo.  The anomalocaris is such a weird and alien creature that you almost don’t need to do anything with it to create a cool Pokémon, and actually I think the Cambrian explosion in general would provide a fertile vein of inspiration for future designs.  I think the reason they took the design in the direction they did was to create a vision of evolution, sort of like what they did with Eevee, by showing the adaptation of marine species to life on land (although, in fact, Armaldo can still move and hunt underwater, and retains Swift Swim as his Dream World ability).  In fact, I rather like this progression, although, now that you mention it, perhaps a sleeker, faster form would have been better.  This might be a good place to introduce a branched evolution, actually, since it’s a place where you can use the choice to tell a story – one form focused on the land, and became the ancestor of such and such a Pokémon; the other form focused on the sea, and became the ancestor of some other Pokémon – which is the kind of thing that happens all the time (well, on a geological timescale) in reality.

An article on fossil Pokémon… you know, there’s rather a lot I could say about them in a one-off, and I am a great lover of the prehistoric beasties.  Yes… yes, I think I will.