Category: Not yet categorised

I’ve been introducing my friend to Pokemon and she has had many questions about the “backstory” of the world (as she put it) so I directed her here and she’s loved your stuff! However, she wanted to know what you thought about Shiny Pokemon in terms of how they work in the game’s universe. From what I’ve seen, the games and show only briefly mention the different colors some Pokemon have or can sometimes flat out ignore it. Do you think it’s just a uniform mutation? How does Red Gyrados fit in?

Hrmm.

My knowledge of the anime is actually somewhat limited; the only shiny Pokémon I know of other than the famous red Gyarados is Ash’s Noctowl, who is also notable for his small size and exceptional intelligence.  Except in Gold, Silver and Crystal, shiny Pokémon don’t have unusual stats, though; they’re just like any other Pokémon except for their colours.  I suppose I would say that the odd pigmentation is just the result of some rare recessive gene, like albinism, or Elizabeth Taylor’s famous violet eyes.  In some Pokémon, this unusual trait might guarantee them important leadership positions, in other species, it might make them pariahs, in still others it might be ignored completely.

I noticed what you thought of Krabby and Sandshrew, finding them kind of boring, so I wanted to ask about this topic… Take Dewgong for example, its an incredibly simple design but I really love it because its sleek and beautiful. I find myself liking Pokemon like that (Vulpix, Rapidash, Venemoth, Gengar…). More recent Pokemon seem to have overly bright colors and contrasts and cluttered patterns that aren’t terrible, just not as appealing to me. What do you take from that in your opinion?

I have mixed feelings about this.  I actually prefer the more complex designs that tend to prevail in the later generations, but there’s definitely something to be said for simplicity.  It’s not just the art that bugs me about Krabby and Sandshrew, though – pretty much everything noteworthy about Krabby and Kingler’s abilities and behaviour is true of fiddler crabs as well.  Sandshrew and Sandslash are at least changed a little, because the animals they’re based on, pangolins, aren’t desert creatures, but they have a very generic set of “desert creature” traits.  Honestly I think that in some ways real pangolins are more interesting.  You can’t really make a complaint like that about Vulpix or Gengar.  Rapidash, Venomoth and Dewgong are sort of borderline cases (although, as a question of personal taste, I do have a soft spot for Venomoth and Dewgong).

Short answer: the art is only part of the question for me.

Sylveon is the English name for the new Eevee Evolution who is pink with butterfly ribbons, feminine features and a name similar to the name Sylvia… Do you think its possible that Sylveon might be a Normal-Type female only evolution and that there will also be a Normal-Tyle male only eevee evolution seeing as we’re talking about Pokemon X and Y? *cough* chromosomes *cough*

Well, sylphs are air spirits, so it actually makes me lean in the direction of Flying…

White 2 Playthrough Journal, episode 10: City of Lights

Ingo and Emmet, the Nimbasa Subway... twins? Joy/Jenny-style identical cousins-in-law? Unrelated friends who like to dress the same? ...lovers? Whatever.

I hurry into Nimbasa City, and immediately run into Jim, who is standing outside the central subway station, deep in conversation with two official-looking men in ridiculous coats.  He seems surprised to see me, and remarks that he thought it would take me at least a day to run Join Avenue into the ground.  I shrug and suggest that maybe I’m just that good.  Jim rolls his eyes and introduces me to his friends the Subway Bosses, Ingo and Emmet (no, neither of us knows which is which, and we don’t care).  They run Nimbasa City’s subway system, which as public transport goes is pretty frightful… not because it’s expensive – it isn’t – or because the trains don’t run on time – they do – or because the subway network isn’t extensive enough – it is – but because you can only use the subway if you are a Pokémon trainer, and must win seven consecutive battles before reaching your destination.  If you fail, you are not permitted to get off the train at the other end, and in fact you are unceremoniously dumped back where you started.  Since every battle has a winner and a loser, not many people make it to seven consecutive wins and get where they’re going on the first try, but they keep it up anyway, bless them.  Rush hour is an absolute nightmare, and heaven help you if you have to take more than one train.  For less skilled trainers, getting from the outer suburbs to the central city is a four-day commute.  Jim is astonished.  In our city of Auckland, the same trip would take three weeks.  Ingo and Emmet have apparently agreed to share their secrets if he can defeat them in a double battle, and my arrival is thus rather fortuitous.  Jaime and Ulfric are able to deal quickly with the subway twins’ Boldore and Gurdurr, apparently the only Pokémon they deign to use in a casual match.  Unfortunately, they prove unwilling to make good on their promise, and instead vanish, cackling, into the subway tunnels.

Nimbasa City, like Castelia, is much as we remember it.  The great and small stadia are open for business as usual, the Pokémon Musical theatre still stands, despite the fact that no one ever actually goes there by choice, and the Battle Institute remains open, though it seems to have developed a snobbish streak and is no longer admitting anyone who cannot boast of a Pokémon League victory.  We, however, are drawn only by the amusement park – the site of the Nimbasa City Gym.  Jim and I make a beeline for the great rollercoaster, only to find that the Leader, Elesa, being even more ADHD than all the other Unova Leaders, was not satisfied with mere renovations and has instead constructed a whole new building in which to hold court.  Apparently she’s at the rollercoaster right now, though, doing… something.  Presumably something important.  One hopes.  We obediently fight our way through the rollercoaster, which has maintained a complement of Pokémon trainers despite no longer being a Gym, only to find – surprise! – Elesa has finished whatever she was doing and gone home.  With a resigned sigh, we turn around and head for the new Nimbasa Gym, which is also in the theme park.  We enter, and…

 ...oh, good grief.

Okay, well, we knew Elesa was a model, but really?  The Gym is her own personal catwalk?  Good lord; the place is a monument to her own ludicrous self-absorption.  Well, there’s only one thing to be done: take her down a peg or three.  Clyde the guide, as usual, appears at the entrance to advise us of the weaknesses of the Gym’s specialty type, in this case, Ground,  but he manages this time to add a very important corollary which he forgot on Black and White: don’t try it on Emolga.  In fairness, on Black and White most of the trainers in the Gym used Emolga, so if you hadn’t clued up by the time you reached Elesa you were really asking for it, but it’s still a bit of a rotten trick to play on anyone new to the game.  Anyway, that’s fixed; whoo.  Jim and I make our way up Elesa’s catwalk, knocking her three underlings aside as we go.  I note, with amused approval, their names: Nikola, Fleming, and Ampère, doubtless named for Nikola Tesla, John Fleming, and André-Marie Ampère, pioneers in the study and manipulation of electricity.  Elesa herself is perched at the far end of the catwalk.  She welcomes us warmly, and-

“What, no puzzles?”

Elesa looks at Jim in confusion.  He challenges her to explain what kind of half-assed Gym doesn’t have puzzles, or at least some sort of maze.  Elesa mutters something about the price of the new construction and all the stage lights.  Jim glares at her imperiously and demands a puzzle.  Elesa, quite flustered now, thinks to herself for a moment and tries a riddle.

“I am, in truth, a yellow fork, from tables in the sky by inadvertent fingers dropped, the awful cutlery of-”

“Is it a bolt of lightning?”  Elesa hangs her head.

“…take the damn badge and get out.”

I step up as Jim heads back along the catwalk.  “Can I have a rid-”

“No.”

I call out my secret weapon, Daenerys the Trapinch, whose Rock Slide quickly does in Elesa’s Emolga.  Her Zebstrika proves a more difficult customer, but is seriously debilitated by Daenerys’s Bulldoze and Barristan’s Intimidate, leaving it easy prey for the bold Growlithe.  Finally, her Flaaffy manages valiantly to overcome Barristan, but has too little strength left at the end to go toe-to-toe with Tyrion, and barely manages to paralyse him with Thunder Wave before succumbing to his attacks.  Elesa decides to make the best of her situation and hands me my Bolt Badge with all the ceremony she can muster, before leading me in triumph down the catwalk as fans scream with delight.

Good grief; I hope no one from Pokéstar Studios is watching.

 Elesa seems to have undergone a costume change since Black and White, which I suppose is in character for her, if nothing else.

Elesa’s Gym is lovely and flashy, and she certainly knows how to put on a spectacle, but when it gets right down to it, all you’re doing is walking through the Gym in a straight line, defeating the trainers in your way.  I like the way the fifth generation games have tried to personalise their Gyms a bit more, making them appropriate to the personalities of their Leaders – Lenora’s library quiz in Black and White, for instance, or even the purely decorative addition of Burgh’s artist’s loft in the new Castelia Gym – and in that respect it is nice that, since Elesa is supposed to be a famous model, she gets a catwalk (I suppose Roxie’s Gym is similar, in that way).  Part of the fun of a Gym challenge, though, is that (well, in most cases) you actually have to navigate some sort of obstacle other than the purely combative ones provided by the trainers, obstacles which have tended to become more elaborate and interesting as the series has progressed.   I would almost suggest that Elesa’s Gym should have been integrated with the Pokémon Musical system, if not for the fact that the Pokémon Musical is such an irritating and gimmicky little sideshow in its own right.  In short, the new Nimbasa Gym is all flash and no substance – unsurprisingly, I suppose, for an Electric-type Gym.

Next time, we’ll be exploring the environs of Nimbasa City… and checking up on dear, sweet Hugh…

Okay, i know what you’re like, so i know your answer to begin with. But i was hoping you could explain WHY everyone is so negative to the idea of “light” type. I mean, it’s not asif it’s too similar to a type already and everyone saying it might ‘break’ the type chat more seem to be basing that on no logic whatsoever. The only other time they added more types (dark and steel) as to fix the thpe chart (abit)

Do you mean ‘negative’ or ‘skeptical’?  Those are two very different things, and there are people going both ways.

I’m not sure I can answer why people might be negative about it, because personally I’m not.  I might have said before that, if I were going to add a new type, I’d go with Light or Holy, although I don’t think the game needs it.  If they are going to add a new type, that’s fine by me.  I can only pray that it does a better job of creating balance than Steel did.

I’m skeptical that this is what they’re doing because I simply don’t think we have sufficient evidence to conclude something like that.  I’ve seen people’s arguments that Ninfia and Xerneas are Light-types, and they do not convince me.  I still think Ninfia is a Bug-type, and I have no clue what Xerneas is, but really, that means little.  How many people picked Palkia as a Water-type before Diamond and Pearl were released?  How many people were convinced Reshiram was going to be a Light-type?

Of course, I don’t think we have sufficient evidence to conclude that they’re not adding Light as an element either.  Since we’re all going to find out sooner or later, I’m not sure what all the fuss is about.  I am the very soul of apathy on this matter.

What’s your view on human-shape pokemon? I’ve always found the Mr. Mimes and Sawks of this world kind of odd, because they awkwardly are made to look human-but-not-quite. There’s always been a lot of lambasting of Jynx and Mime from the beginning, but Gamefreak seem happy to churn out a new human every generation (see Hitmons, Ralts line and Gothitelle). Why would it be beneficial for a pokemon to look like a person? And if they’re psychically/mentally superior why haven’t they taken over?

Well, Jynx gets flak because someone pointed out that she resembles an actor in blackface, and could therefore be interpreted as a racist caricature (personally I don’t think this is what they intended at all, but they could have been a little more careful with what they were doing), not necessarily because of the humanoid thing.  I think there is a degree of ‘uncanny valley’ in it, but then, people love Gardevoir (personally I think Gardevoir looks markedly less human than Jynx or Gothitelle, but whatever).  Personally, I get annoyed when they build Pokémon around elements of contemporary culture, like Gothitelle and Scrafty, because I think the ones that work with traditional culture and mythology are just more interesting and can also work more effectively with the idea of the massive cultural debt humans have to Pokémon in this universe, but I suppose maybe that’s just my personal taste.

I actually think “why would it be beneficial for a Pokemon to look like a person?” is a backwards way of looking at it, because the Pokémon may well have come first.  And we have that in the real world, actually; humans are just one of four surviving genera of great ape (the others being chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans), all of which bear marked physical similarities to us.  In this case, it’s because we share a common ancestor with them – is this true in the Pokémon world too?  Are humans related to Pokémon of the humanshape group?  Possibly; who knows?  And as for why they haven’t taken over – well, this applies equally to all Pokémon, and it links in with one of the most important questions of the setting: there are clearly a lot of things Pokémon do better than humans, so what is there that humans do better than Pokémon?  Personally I think the answer is related to creativity and leadership, but that’s a tricky one indeed.  You also have to question what is meant by “taking over” in this context – humans have a civilisation characterised by agriculture, industrialisation, art, education, and so on… but I have to wonder whether Pokémon would necessarily view any of these things as benchmarks of success.  If they simply didn’t want any of that, would that be enough to ‘prevent’ them from ‘taking over’?

Yay?

Image ganked from serebii.net.

Still not listening to me, Game Freak?  No?

Yeah, okay, I thought not.  Nice of you to remind me once in a while, though.

Since I know someone is going to ask me: I think it’s a Bug-type.  Butterfly ribbons, big glassy alien eyes, and I am led to understand that its name (Ninfia in Japanese) may very well translate into Nympheon in English (nymphs, in biology, being the water-borne larvae of a number of insect families).  Least buggy Bug-type I’ve ever seen, but hey, whatevs.

Not that I have any interest in arguing predictions with anyone.  Like, seriously, if you think Ninfia is a Rock-type based on opals or whatever, that’s fine by me.