Now that it’s been a while since Black and White came out, have you realized that Garbodor is, in fact, lovable and awesome in every single way? I spend about a dozen paragraphs explaining why, point-by-point, over on Bogleech, if you haven’t been there. Also, did you know that your hated Kricketune isn’t even modeled on a cricket? It’s a violin beetle!

You know, funnily enough, someone sent me a link to that article just a few days ago.

For the benefit of readers, here is Bogleech’s take on Garbodor

http://bogleech.com/pokemon/trash.html

and my (admittedly over-the-top) article from last year.

http://pokemaniacal.tumblr.com/post/17760677860/trubbish-and-garbodor

I still think Garbodor is absurd and horrific.  What didn’t occur to me at the time was the point you make in your article that some people might actually like things that are absurd and horrific.  Honestly I still kinda have trouble wrapping my head around that one, but I suppose it is a valid position to take.  I do really like the point you make about Garbodor forming a land/water/air triad with Muk and Weezing, because that does alleviate my concern that Garbodor is just Muk 2.0 (personally I’m still not sure I give the designers that much credit, but it’s difficult to make an argument from that kind of assessment).  I guess the thing to take from this is that, as much as I try to be objective about things and excise my own personal taste from my assessments, I can never really get rid of it.

As for Kricketune…
Go go gadget Google images…
Huh.  That is now a thing that I know.
It doesn’t make me think Kricketune is any less dumb, ‘cause all the things I hate about Kricketune are still things that they’ve changed from the violin beetle, not copied from it.  Also, from what five minutes’ of Googling can determine, violin beetles don’t actually ‘sing’ the way Kricketune and some other insects do, so crickets are still important for the idea (hence the name).

EDIT: Bogleech’s response on Kricketune:
Yeah, while I like him well enough, I’m just adding that in addition to other criticisms, Kricketune lives a shameful taxonomic lie. Technically, we still have no cricket pokemon, or even a grasshopper or other true Orthopteran. Kricketune wouldn’t even be able to jump with those nub-feet, and jumping is even more integral to being a cricket than singing. There are mute crickets, but if any can’t jump, I haven’t heard of them, and a cricket I haven’t heard of is hardly a cricket at all.