Author: pokemaniacchris

Pokémon Moon, Episode 11: In Which I Perform an Exorcism

With no other clear direction obvious to me, I leave Malie City and wander south.  The southeast coast of Ula’ula Island is dominated by extremely rough, rocky, arid scrubland.  Although the Z-Crystal that I earned in Sophocles’ trial gets me through the Island Challenge barricades on the southeast road, it doesn’t take long before the rocks become totally impassable.  Fortunately, Hapu (who is almost certainly very important, though I’m still not sure why) is on hand to offer me the solution: she allows me to freely summon her Mudsdale as a riding Pokémon.  Mudsdale is slow compared to the other Tauros and Stoutland, but can move effortlessly over rough terrain that would reduce them to uncoordinated stumbling.  Hapu points me in the direction of Tapu Village, at the base of Mount Lanakila, for my next trial, then bids me good luck and farewell.

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Pokémon Moon, Episode 10: In Which I Am Recruited To A Cultural Revolution

Among the major selling points of Malie City is its library, the best in Alola.  I mean, not that that’s saying much.  The Alolans still worship a cabal of fickle and wrathful Pokémon as deities, and their leading Pokémon researcher is secretly a part-time luchador; believe it or not, they aren’t exactly a global centre of knowledge and literature.  They are, however, the world’s leading experts on one field in particular: their own traditions and mythology; Alolan myth basically isn’t taught or studied at any university I’ve ever heard of outside the region itself.  Lillie, who arrived in Malie City ahead of me and Hau after coming directly from Heahea City, claims to have need of this esoteric knowledge in order to help Nebby.  She asks me to come to the library with her to check it out – so of course I brusquely refuse, send her scurrying away in terror, and then follow her anyway at an inconspicuous distance.  Gotta stay one step ahead of this crafty b!tch and her freaky living nebula-bomb, or the whole island chain could be a smoking ruin by Tuesday afternoon.  The moment I manage to get into a proper stalking rhythm, though, I run straight into… Professor Oak?

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Anonymous asks:

Any idea why Bug Bite doesn’t get a boost from Strong Jaw? Considering the multitude of real life bugs with devastating bites, it seems only natural that there should be Bug-types with Strong Jaw that uses Bug Bite as its primary attack… How cool would a Bug/Fire ant Pokémon with Strong Jaw-boosted Bug Bite and Fire Fang be?!

Well, I expect it’s for much the same reason as Sucker Punch isn’t boosted by Iron Fist – in Japanese the move’s name doesn’t literally refer to a bite.  Bulbapedia translates the move’s name – むしくい – as “Bug Bite,” but when I plug those characters into Google Translate it offers me either “Furious” or “Moth” so who knows.  What we call a bug “bite” in English is very often not a literal bite but more of a stinging or piercing action so I could very easily see this being one that doesn’t apply across languages (in French the move is called Piqûre – “Sting”).

EDIT: Of course it is true that the move’s effect (consuming an opponent’s berry) points to a literal “bite” of some description, but it would also be fair to note that a lot of insects don’t really have “jaws” in the vertebrate sense.

Ty asks:

Greetings fellow Pokémaniac. First of all id like to say i love the blog, your thoughts, ideas and stories can keep me reading and thinking for days on end. Keep up the good work. So I’ve played every Pokémon gen, unfortunately haven’t got round to playing black/white 2 yet, and im only part way through Moon as it hasn’t grabbed me like i thought it would. In my opinion though, X and Y have been the best games to come so far (I’dtellyouwhybutI’mrunningoutofcharacters) Your thoughts on this? Ty.

Glad you’re enjoying it!

So obviously I’m still not done with Moon, because my writing process makes me play so slowly, and not ready to offer a final assessment or ranking.  I really like everything I’ve seen so far though – the worldbuilding is excellent, the story is shaping up to be quite interesting, there are some cool characters, and although I still like generation VI’s Pokémon designs better, VII’s seem like they’re fine.  My official position – subject to change in weeks to come – is that V has the best story, but VI was better overall.  VII still has a shot at overthrowing either or both.

Anonymous asks:

Isn’t Corrosion such a neat ability?

It certainly is!  Odd that it belongs to Salandit and Salazzle, though; thematically it seems like it should go with a Pokémon like Grimer who has a toxic or corrosive body, whereas functionally it doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense on a Pokémon like Salazzle who seems to be very much more offence than support, from what I can tell so far.

chels202 asks:

What are your thoughts on the topic of man-made Pokémon?

What about them, exactly?

I think they’re an interesting thing to have.  There’s an obvious moral dimension to the creation of new living things, or to repurposing created life thousands of years later as we do with ancient Pokémon that may be artificial like Sigilyph and Golett – let alone whatever Spiritomb is.  Ecologically they’re curious since you wouldn’t expect an artificial life form to fit neatly into any preexisting ecosystem, although for some of them, like Grimer (if we can consider Grimer “man-made”; it is a byproduct of human civilisation, at any rate) there is a ready-made niche for them to fill as a result of the circumstances of their creation.  The technological level that must go into creating Pokémon – even by accident, as might have happened in Voltorb’s case – is interesting to think about, particularly in terms of whether the ancient ones were created by “technology” as we understand it or by some mystical practice.  And equally curious are the Pokémon who aren’t explicitly artificial but look like they should be, like Klink and Magneton – what’s their relationship with human science and engineering?  There’s a lot of different directions you could potentially go with them.

VikingBoyBilly asks:

Are there any unevolved pokémon that are so adorable you just don’t want to evolve it? My list is magby, teddiursa, munchlax, tirtouga, and phantump. (I am DETERMINED to make a kickass eviolite phantump. BTW, do you think phantump is a Tiyanak (Also see wikipedia)? Pretty disjointed comment but I can kill multiple questions in one stone with this)

Hmm.  Well, nothing really jumps to the forefront of my mind… I’m scrolling down Smogon’s Little Cup tier list (that being the only place I could think of that just lists all the unevolved Pokémon) looking for possibilities but I’m having difficulty.  I mean, I like the cute ones, don’t get me wrong, but in most cases I find that that’s outweighed by the sense of realisation of potential that comes with evolution.  I’m half with you on Magby, I suppose, in the sense that I do like Magmar but Magmortar looks pretty stupid.  Perhaps Glameow a little, because Purugly is just so grumpy and surly-looking.  Koffing, definitely, because it’s a shame that Koffing is so happy and Weezing so… lung-cancer-y.  Patrat, I guess, insofar as Watchog is that much more unspeakably nightmarish.  And… Ralts, but only to spare her from the ravages of Rule 34.  The internet is a dark and terrible place.

Regarding the tiyanak… hmm.  Well, the biggest objection I can see is that tiyanak normally do look like children.  In the absence of any strong, specific tip-off that this is what they mean (e.g. in the name), it seems plausible that there could be some other similar myth, closer to Japan, that I just plain don’t know about.  But it makes sense; I don’t think it can be ruled out.