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Espeon

Official artwork of Espeon, by Ken Sugimori; do unto Nintendo as you would have Nintendo do unto you, etc.In Red and Blue, Eevee was unique, the only Pokémon in the game with a branching evolution.  The introduction of some of Gold and Silver’s new Pokémon, like Slowking, changed that – several others could now evolve in multiple different ways.  Tyrogue even had a three-way split, into Hitmonchan, Hitmonlee and Hitmontop.  Clearly this would not do, so Gold and Silver also added two more members to Eevee’s family; if she couldn’t be the only Pokémon with multiple evolutions, she could still have more than anyone else.  Thus we have Espeon and Umbreon, the evolutions connected with the day and the night – and for today, it falls to us to look at Espeon.

Much as Vaporeon, Jolteon and Flareon each play to a different set of aesthetic preferences, Espeon tries for another still different look; with her aloof, alien countenance, forked tail and intense, flashing eyes, Espeon’s air is one of mysterious, otherworldly power – appropriately enough for a Psychic-type.  Espeon is unusual for a Psychic Pokémon in that her most famous ability doesn’t actually result from psychic power at all; she can predict the immediate future with an uncanny degree of accuracy – everything from weather patterns to an opponent’s movements – but does it by reading subtle changes in air currents with her fine, sensitive hairs.  I almost suspect this is meant to make us ask whether all psychic power in the Pokémon universe actually has a more mundane explanation… but, then, we’re also told explicitly that Espeon does use “psycho-power” and she has the standard set of telekinetic and telepathic abilities available to all Psychic-types, so maybe I’m giving Game Freak too much credit here.  Like many Psychic Pokémon, Espeon is particularly associated with loyalty towards and protection of worthy trainers, which makes sense given the way she evolves.  Oddly, she’s also connected with the sun and daylight – oddly, because she has few powers related to it.  I imagine this was intended to set her up as an opposite to Umbreon, who is strongly linked with the moon and the night, and I suppose Psychic is the closest thing Pokémon has to a ‘light’ or ‘holy’ type, but I can’t help but think that this could have been done better if Espeon had been created later in the series’ life.  She does have Morning Sun as a signature move, and she can learn Sunny Day (along with just about every Pokémon in the game except for Water-types) but doesn’t get much benefit from it; surely it would make sense for her to learn Solarbeam, at least?  I don’t know; if I were designing Espeon today I would probably do her totally differently to emphasise the solar aspect, but I guess given the tools that were available in Gold and Silver (no abilities, fewer weather-related effects) what we have is fine.

 Espeon leaping into action, by Mewkitty (http://mewkitty.deviantart.com/).

 Gold and Silver are the games that introduced the idea that Eevee’s branching evolution is a result of adaptation to multiple different environments, so it’s odd that the two evolutions introduced in that very generation, Espeon and Umbreon, are the hardest to connect with any particular ecosystem.  A possible clue, though, is the stimulus that triggers Espeon’s evolution – close friendship with a trainer – and the suggestion from Ruby and Sapphire that “this Pokémon developed its precognitive powers to protect its trainer from harm.”  I suspect that Espeon arose fairly recently (in terms of evolutionary biology), after humans and Pokémon first began working together, and represents the result of a strain of Eevee who became adapted to domestication, the eventual descendents of the first groups of Jolteon and Flareon who took human partners.  She has telepathic abilities to allow her to sense the orders of her human trainers, and can predict the future to intercept attacks before they happen.  Furthermore, unlike the raw elemental forces wielded by Flareon, Vaporeon and Jolteon, Espeon’s telekinetic attacks are very unlikely to cause ‘friendly fire’ problems; she’s not going to hurt anything she doesn’t fully intend to hurt, making it safer to use her strongest powers around groups of people.  Furthermore, I’d suggest that Espeon isn’t a hunter – early domesticated Pokémon, one assumes, would have been involved with hunting like the first domesticated dogs, but a more predatory type like Jolteon seems better suited to that.  I think Espeon may be a Pokémon dedicated to the defence of the settled communities that developed later in humanity’s history, which makes some thematic sense given the connection between Psychic-types and more ‘evolved’ or ‘civilised’ states of mind.  The other forms are older, and joined with humanity out of convenience; Espeon actually developed with us, changing as we did.Espeon stretching out at sunset, by Kellykatz (http://kellykatz.deviantart.com/ or http://kellykatz.tumblr.com/).

When you want to fight with Espeon, many of the same issues arise as we encountered with Vaporeon, Jolteon and Flareon.  Espeon has extremely good special attack and speed, which ideally make her a sweeper of some kind, but her special movepool is less than stellar – in Gold and Silver, it was pretty much Psychic, Bite, and Zap Cannon.  Her signature move, Morning Sun, provides her with healing, but frankly Espeon is much too frail to be worrying about that.  I guess Charm might help her survive a hit or two.  Like her brothers and sisters, she can learn Baton Pass as an Eevee, but Gold and Silver didn’t really give her anything to do with it.  Ruby and Sapphire changed that.  Espeon only gained three things of value in Ruby and Sapphire: Reflect, Light Screen, and Calm Mind.  Reflect and Light Screen are great, but nothing to make a fuss about – Calm Mind, which increases both special attack and special defence, is what gives Espeon her niche.  Very few Pokémon could learn both Calm Mind and Baton Pass, and Espeon was (indeed, still is) the best of them; her own ability as a special attacker remained limited, but helping others to set up was another story.  Diamond and Pearl didn’t much change what Espeon was good at – like many Pokémon, she gained a lot of new attacks, notably Shadow Ball, Grass Knot and, in Platinum, Signal Beam, but, while useful, these new moves aren’t powerful enough to dramatically change her game.  Meanwhile, the conversion of Pursuit, along with every other existing Dark-type move, into a physical attack spelled disaster for many Psychic Pokémon whose defensive skills were far weaker on the physical side, including Espeon.  For a while there, things looked grim… until Black and White gave Espeon one last trick, the best of all.

 An Espeon wandering by a river at dawn, by Diaris (http://diaris.deviantart.com/).

The thing about Espeon’s ability, Synchronise, is that while it’s nice to have, it doesn’t really have great strategic implications.  If Espeon is poisoned, burned or paralysed by another Pokémon that is vulnerable to the same condition, she causes her attacker to suffer from the same effect.  This is a useful defence against a specific kind of attack, but it doesn’t help Espeon much; she’s still poisoned, paralysed or burned as well.  Her Dream World ability is something else.  Espeon’s Dream World ability is Magic Bounce, a truly absurd power shared only by Xatu, which effectively gives her a permanent Magic Coat – all incoming status moves (basically anything that harms a Pokémon without actually damaging it, from String Shot and Worry Seed to Stealth Rock and Dark Void) are reflected back upon their user.  This makes Espeon an utter nightmare for support Pokémon, since she can potentially ruin them just by switching in if you time it right; some moves, like Hypnosis, will potentially take a Pokémon out of the game if you reflect them back.  The fact that Magic Bounce also renders Espeon herself immune to all these techniques is nothing to sniff at either.  The other thing worth noting is that Espeon also gets a couple of new Psychic attacks for variety – Psyshock is a special attack that does physical damage, allowing Espeon and other Psychic Pokémon to break powerful special walls (i.e. Blissey), while Stored Power, an attack that does more damage for every buff affecting Espeon, synergises well with her normal role of Calm Mind passing.  Espeon doesn’t really ‘do’ sweeping – her stats look right for it, but her real talents lie elsewhere.  As support Pokémon go, she’s pretty top-notch; kept away from high-powered physical attackers and partnered with your own special sweepers who need a bit more oomph, Espeon is sure to reward you.

As I believe I’ve mentioned, Espeon is actually my favourite Eevee form.  This isn’t because of any particular excellence of design, though; it’s just personal preference.  I feel Espeon is, all around, reasonably well done, and Game Freak have actually built on her skillset over time to make up for her initial weaknesses – admittedly, this is probably by sheer coincidence, but don’t look a gift horse in the mouth (well… unless a Greek warlord is giving it to you).  Aside from the recent addition of that absurd Magic Bounce ability (which probably makes her the most powerful member of the family), there’s nothing about Espeon to get really excited over, either mechanically or thematically, but there’s nothing especially wrong with her either, and she has a solid, legitimate place of her own amongst Eevee’s varied evolutions.

I don’t know, moves like Simple Beam, Reflect Type, Shell Smash, the abilities Scrappy, Tinted Lens, Klutz…

Sorry, when I said “more specific” I meant with regards to what I would actually talk about (should have been more clear there).  I honestly don’t think they’re all that interesting except with reference to the Pokémon that use them.  Again, it’s something I could easily devote one or two entries to, but I think I would very quickly run out of things to say if I tried to devote a whole series to it.

Hm, what about doing a little series on Moves/Abilities? I think it could be very interesing.

Discussing what, exactly?  Moves and abilities are interesting in the way they interact with specific Pokémon – how they reflect a Pokémon’s design, how they integrate into a Pokémon’s tactics, and so on – but I’m not convinced there’s much to say about the moves and abilities themselves, in isolation, other than “well, this one clearly sucks” and “this one is massively overpowered” and “yeah, this one is kinda meh.”  Having said that, I probably will have an entry or two on this whenever I finally get round to that series I keep meaning to do on how I would run Pokémon if I were in charge.

I mean, I’m not exactly saying ‘no,’ but you’re going to need to be more specific to sell me on this.

Flareon

Official art of Flareon, by Ken Sugimori; I hereby pledge allegiance to Nintendo, etc.Oh, Flareon… I am so, so sorry.

The sad thing about Flareon is that she’s so like Vaporeon and Jolteon in so many ways.  Her stats, of course, are just as good.  She has an analogous ability, Flash Fire (rather than converting Fire attacks to health, as Volt Absorb and Water Absorb do, it converts them into extra power for her own Fire attacks, but the practical strategic implications are similar).  She has many of the same supports moves, like Baton Pass and Wish.  Somehow, though, it all just completely fails to come together.

Well, no, not somehow.  I know exactly why, and it’s incredibly boneheaded.

 

Let’s back up a bit.  Way back in Red and Blue, when Flareon was first introduced, Fire-types got shafted pretty badly: there were no Steel-types around for them to bully, very few of them had any attacks types outside of Fire and Normal, and the importance of powerful Rock Pokémon like Golem and Rhydon ensured that most teams had a very simple, no-nonsense way of saying “no” to them.  I mention this so that, when I say that Flareon looks back on Red and Blue as her glory days, you will understand exactly how grim things have been for her since then.  Back then, most Fire Pokémon relied on a moveset something like [Flamethrower/Fire Blast – Body Slam – Hyper Beam – XXX], where XXX is whatever rubbishy little support move that Pokémon happens to favour (maybe Reflect or something in Flareon’s case), and Flareon was actually very good at this moveset, thanks to her obscene attack stat and excellent special stat.  She was worryingly slow, but packed more power than any other Fire Pokémon with the exception of Moltres, which was something of a niche.  Sure, it was a crappy niche that made her a sitting duck against Golem, Rhydon, Onix, Kabutops, Omastar, and goodness knows what else, but it was hers nonetheless.  Then Gold and Silver split special into special attack and special defence.  Vaporeon and Jolteon suffered hits to their special defence, which hurt Vaporeon, but not terribly.  Flareon took the loss to her special attack instead.  Her Fire attacks were still quite potent, but were no longer the force they had once been.  On the other hand, she expanded her physical movepool with the addition of Shadow Ball and Iron Tail.  You win some, you lose some.  Curse is also an option from here on out, if you want to try turning Flareon into a physical tank, but I’m not convinced she’s really tough enough for that.  After that… well, honestly, after that Game Freak seem to have forgotten about Flareon.  She was mediocre, and mediocre she stayed.  Like all Fire Pokémon, she enjoyed the introduction of Overheat in Ruby and Sapphire, but did so while sighing wistfully at the memory of her long-lost special stat.

 The thing to remember about Flareon, as this piece by Viskamiro (http://viskamiro.deviantart.com/) attests, is that she will explode at the slightest provocation.

Diamond and Pearl, by all rights, should have revitalised Flareon, as they did so many other Pokémon whose stats and movepools were so sadly mismatched.  With physical Fire attacks on the scene at last, Flareon should finally have regained much of her former power… but she didn’t.  While Rapidash, Charizard and Arcanine paraded around showing off their shiny new Flare Blitz attack, Flareon sat in the corner with Fire Fang, wondering what she had done to deserve this.  Platinum gave her Superpower, which helped, and Lava Plume, which just rubbed salt in the wound, but Game Freak have never yet seen fit to let Flareon have a physical Fire attack that doesn’t suck.  Arguably, it might not help even if they did – Flareon’s offensive movepool suffers from the same narrowness that characterises her brothers and sisters, but with her weaker special attack, she can’t even rely on Shadow Ball as Jolteon can.  Superpower is great, and Fire and Fighting go well together, but it can only do so much, it makes Flareon’s physical stats weaker after she uses it, and it’s really all she’s got.  Jolteon and Vaporeon work around their restrictive movepools by adopting support roles, but Flareon is too fragile for Wish and too slow for Baton Pass – she has the weaknesses of both, and the strengths of neither.  Her stats seem to mark her out for some sort of Machamp- or Ursaring-like all-offensive approach, but she has nothing to attack with.  I… guess you could use Flareon as a special tank, since she does still have excellent special defence and good special attack, but it’s not like she’s good at that either; she doesn’t have a lot of hit points and her special movepool is even more limited than Jolteon’s (she doesn’t even get Signal Beam, for goodness’ sake).  Even her Dream World ability taunts her; Guts, which boosts a Pokémon’s attack in response to poison, paralysis, and so on, is an awesome ability for a physical attacker to have, but Flareon doesn’t actually learn any damned physical attacks.  In short, Flareon is terrible.  She really doesn’t deserve to be terrible, and there’s no real reason she should be terrible, but she is, and she will likely remain so until the end of time because, let’s face it, if Game Freak had any intention of fixing her, they would have done it by now.

Right; now that that unpleasantness is out of the way…

Flareon is a Fire Pokémon, and because she is a Fire Pokémon, the Pokédex feels a pressing need to explain to us, repeatedly and insistently, just how hot she is (just a hair under 900 degrees Celsius, her resting body temperature is hot enough to vaporise sulphur).  Her fluffy fur, apparently, is supposed to radiate heat to help regulate her body temperature, which… is not really how fur works; animals lose the most heat from regions that get a lot of blood flow, and fur doesn’t have blood in it, but I suppose we can guess that her hairs have some kind of dense heat-conducting core or something.  In terms of physical appearance, she’s the most like Eevee, and retains a similar aesthetic angle, aiming to be simply adorable where Vaporeon tries to achieve more of an untouchable beauty.  In fact, apart from her fiery colour scheme, Flareon barely changes at all from Eevee!  It’s not a bad thing, per se, that Flareon shares aesthetic goals with her juvenile form, and of Eevee’s seven evolutions, one of them had to be the one who was least altered.  It’s just something of a shame that it happened to be the perfectly generic Fire-type whose main distinguishing feature is just a little bit nonsensical, and even more of a shame that it happened to be the one who’s so very severely handicapped in battle.  I don’t dislike Flareon, and she fills an important place on the spectrum of Eevee’s evolved forms – two, actually, with both cuteness and firepower – but she’s one of those Pokémon that, in my opinion, have never been given the kind of attention they should have had.

 Kirree (http://kirree.deviantart.com/) has put Flareon in a very different, but rather more intuitive, environment to the one I have in mind.

Since it seems to be a theme I’ve talked myself into discussing, I should really look at Flareon’s environment.  What kind of ecosystem is she adapted for?  Well, first of all, we know that radiating body heat is a concern for her; that suggests that, contrary to the stereotype that Fire-types like to live in hot places, Flareon actually prefers a temperate climate.  A wet environment would cause problems for her since she relies on fire, but at the same time she probably wouldn’t live in a very dry place either; she’d risk causing perpetual wildfires.  We’re probably looking at somewhere with moderate temperature and humidity, then – somewhere like temperate grassland.  I imagine Flareon lying down for a nap in whatever shade she can find during the hottest part of the day, the way lions do, and letting her internal fire slowly burn down, burning just hot enough to keep going.  She hunts in the mornings and evenings, loosing sheets of fire to scorch patches of grass and flush out prey.  Flareon’s hunting practices actually serve an important ecological purpose too; by regularly engaging in controlled burning of small areas, she constructs natural firebreaks that prevent uncontrolled fires from getting out of hand.  Flareon’s own flames are so hot that they reduce the grass to ashes in moments, burning themselves out and exhausting all the available oxygen before they can spread.  That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.  In summary, then, Vaporeon is a coastal or aquatic Eevee, Jolteon is a desert Eevee, and Flareon is a grassland or savannah Eevee.  More on what all this means later.

I don’t want to be too harsh on Flareon, because she’s likeable enough, but I honestly think they did her wrong.  She’s far from irredeemable; you could fix her mechanical problems by just, y’know, giving her attacks that don’t suck, and you could fix her flavour problems just by coming up with some way for her to be different from every other Fire Pokémon with a core temperature of 900 degrees.  Her art is fine; she’s maybe not as interesting as Vaporeon and Jolteon, but she still has, and achieves, clear aesthetic goals that distinguish her from the other two, so it’s not all bad news.  The good news for me is that Flareon is something of a low point – she has some of the trickiest problems of the family.  Not to say that her newer brothers and sisters don’t have their problems too… but we’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.

I’d like to read your take on how stats work. Like, the characteristics (“strong willed”, “somewhat vain”, etc) match with a Pokémon IVs, that is, their natural strenghts and weaknesses, as well as natures. How do you think a naturally aggressive species like, say, Nidoking, is able to have a “Jolly” nature? Also, regarding evolution stones, how do you think they work (speciallly the Dawn stone, which is closely related to gender, taking your own “Pokémon & Genders” theory in consideration)?

Stats first: Well, I’ve always assumed that a ‘Jolly’ nature meant jolly by the standards of that species.  A ‘Quiet’ Ludicolo, for instance, is noticeably less outrageous and excitable than the average Ludicolo, but still much louder and crazier than, say, a Jolly Yamask (basically a Yamask who occasionally manages to display a certain black sense of humour about being trapped in a perpetual living hell on the wrong side of the great beyond).  You might actually be able to use this to perform a rudimentary psychological comparison of two closely related types of Pokémon – Nidoking and Nidoqueen, for instance, are physically very similar, so Nidoking’s higher offensive stats and lower defensive stats might indicate a universal predisposition towards personality traits like loneliness, rashness, hastiness, and so on (which, of course, would tie in nicely with my ‘theory’ of Pokémon gender – link for new readers).

And stones: The exact physiological mechanism is quite beyond me, I’m afraid, but I did make a suggestion in this post that attempts to explain why some Pokémon use stones to evolve.  The conjecture, in brief, is that the forms triggered by the stones used to be natural evolutions of the Pokémon that have them, but have become vestigial because they’re no longer suited to changing environmental conditions – maybe achieving those forms has become too energy-intensive to be practical, or the species has come to benefit more from small size and agility than from power or intelligence.  They still have all the genes that code for the evolved form itself, but they no longer possess the regulatory genes that actually trigger the evolution, which now requires some outside stimulus (again, I unfortunately have no idea what exactly this stimulus is or how the stones provide it).  I imagine the split evolution patterns of Snorunt and Kirlia indicate something similar: those species used to evolve differently depending on gender (so, millions of years ago, all masculine Kirlia became Gallade and all feminine Snorunt became Froslass, without the need for a Dawn Stone) but, for whatever reason, Gallade and Froslass became unnecessary to the survival of the species, so that male Gardevoir and female Glalie gradually replaced the alternate forms.  This is, incidentally, a much easier account to imagine if you accept my belief that Pokémon don’t have biologically differentiated sexes, since there’s no need to explain how on earth Gardevoir started to develop male reproductive organs – in theory, a ‘masculine’ Gardevoir could always have existed and would have been able to reproduce normally, but they would originally have been weird anomalies, whereas now they’re perfectly ordinary.

What do you think on the apparant rule of “There is no such thing as an evil Pokémon”? There are clearly Pokémon who do things that can be considered evil (like Litwick and Lampent stealing souls in one animé episode) and there are Pokémon who look (and really should be) evil like Darkrai and Houndoom. Also, said “rule” was mentioned in a season full of Early Installment Weirdness, so what do you think? Can an evil (through no influence) Pokémon exist?

Oy vey.

I presume you’re referring to the dialogue between Pikachu and Ekans in Island of the Giant Pokémon?  Personally I give quite a lot of weight to that episode because it’s the only one where we directly hear what they think.  There are only a couple of other episodes I can think of that seem to address this question; the other one that I looked at in depth was the Case of the K-9 Caper.

I think the important thing to recognise about what Ekans is saying is that she’s not just saying “hey, don’t look at me."  She actually does understand that she does evil things as Jessie’s partner; she is aware of good and evil as concepts.  She just doesn’t care, because her master is more important.  Furthermore, Pikachu takes this as a totally legitimate excuse.

What I’m getting at is that the vast majority of Pokémon aren’t simply ‘not evil’ but completely amoral, like real animals.  Litwick devour souls because it’s just what they do, same as a lion will kill a human if it’s provoked, or stalk and kill a zebra.  The difference is that Pokémon do understand morality; they just think it only applies to humans.  The Litwick understand that their actions would be considered evil, which arguably means that they are evil, but it’s also how they survive, which arguably means it’s excusable – and I think Pikachu would probably agree, if you asked him about it while he wasn’t currently fighting for his soul.

Morality gets very confusing when you have to accommodate multiple intelligent species, all with different ways of surviving.

Jolteon

Official art of Jolteon, by Ken Sugimori; for Nintendo's is the kingdom and the power and the glory, yada yada yada.Of Eevee’s original three evolutions, Jolteon is the tough guy, the cool kid, the badass.  He appeals to a very different kind of player and a very different style of play to Vaporeon, emphasising speed and power in both his design and his skills.  This kind of variation on the basic form of the Eevee evolutions is part of Eevee’s strength – there’s something for everyone.  In Jolteon’s case, if you need a blazing-fast special attacker with serious attitude, look no further.

Like most Electric Pokémon, Jolteon’s thing is that he can hurl massive blasts of lightning at people.  He is often ill-tempered, prone to volatile swings of emotion, and his electrical charge builds rapidly when he is agitated.  His power is drawn from a rather unlikely source – his fur.  Jolteon’s fur is made up of innumerable rigid bristles that rub together to create static electricity as he moves, charging him up for electrical attacks.  The bristles also help him defend himself – they’re sharp and stiff, and stand out from his body because of the static charge, like a porcupine’s quills.  He can even launch bunches of them at his enemies to skewer them – an ability represented in-game by the sadly useless Pin Missile attack.  As Electric Pokémon go, Jolteon is a little generic, although the static fur is a nice touch to explain the source of his power while giving him a touch of character and some interesting abilities.  It’s just a shame those interesting abilities are so useless.  I’m pretty sure there’s no serious reason ever to use Pin Missile, which is a shame because, like Vaporeon’s Acid Armour, it was almost a signature move once (shared only with Beedrill).  Anyway, the really nice thing about Jolteon’s prickly fur is that the spiky starburst profile it gives him is pleasingly evocative of a jagged lightning bolt, or the crash of thunder – a neat way of working his element into the design without actually scribbling lightning bolts all over him.  Overall, I’m not terribly excited about Jolteon’s visual design, but it’s appropriate, it works, and it plays to a very different aesthetic to Vaporeon’s – sinuous and dynamic, harsh rather than elegant.

 This beautiful sparkling Jolteon is brought to us by Shiropanda (http://shiropanda.deviantart.com/).

I mentioned last time, in relation to Vaporeon, that one of Eevee’s alleged themes is adaptation to the environment – her plethora of evolved forms supposedly reflects the development of features to cope with or exploit particular aspects of a variety of habitats.  It’s a fitting enough theme to build around Eevee, since she’s supposed to be inspired by the workings of real-world evolution, which is really all about adapting to different environmental conditions; some organisms work well in one habitat, some in another, but it’s meaningless to talk about one being ‘better’ or ‘more evolved’ than another – just like Eevee’s evolutions.  The adaptation thing was written into the Pokédex in Gold and Silver, and probably wasn’t actually on the designers’ minds when they originally created Vaporeon, Jolteon, and Flareon.  This is probably why Jolteon and Flareon, quite clearly, aren’t associated with any specific habitat at all.  I can’t blame them for this, naturally, but I can make some suggestions for fixing this and bringing them in line with what seems to be Eevee’s theme now.  What kind of environment would suit Jolteon best?  Well, he can run extremely quickly, so it would make sense if he were adapted for wide open spaces; that rules out forests, hills and mountains.  Eevee and all of her evolutions sport long, broad ears which make me think of a jackrabbit or a fennec fox, who use their large ears to help dissipate excess heat and cope with life in desert climates; none of them (except, for obvious reasons, Glaceon) would look out of place in a tropical or subtropical climate, and Jolteon in particular, with his stiff, straight, bristly fur, doesn’t seem to be particularly concerned with heat retention.  Perhaps most importantly, Jolteon’s primary means of attack, his lightning, is charged by the build-up of static electricity, which is much slower and weaker in humid conditions.  Jolteon seems to be a Pokémon adapted for a hot, dry and relatively flat climate, somewhere like central Australia, or the Mojave desert in North America.  Given that this is supposed to be a theme for Eevee, I’m going to look at all her other evolved forms in the same way when we come to them, and figure out which environments they seem to match.  For now, though, let’s talk about Jolteon’s in-battle abilities.

 A pair of young Eevee trying to keep up with their Jolteon parent; a little slice of adorableness by Sapphireluna (http://sapphireluna.deviantart.com/).

Jolteon’s greatest asset, the thing that sets him apart, is his speed.  Most Electric Pokémon are fast, but Jolteon is a blur of motion; in Red and Blue, he drew even with Mewtwo and Aerodactyl, outrun only by Electrode.  Even today, only a few more Pokémon can claim to be faster: Accelgor, Ninjask, and Deoxys, with Crobat just managing to keep up with him.  His excellent speed makes him rather good at sniping opposing Pokémon with his spectacular Thunderbolts, and also makes him one of the better choices for taking advantage of a rare move that all of Eevee’s evolutions have in common: Baton Pass.  This has given Jolteon a nice little niche since Baton Pass was introduced in Gold and Silver, and remains one of his most useful skills today.  He doesn’t have a whole lot of buffs to pass – Agility, Charge Beam, Substitute and maybe Work Up are pretty much the extent of it – but his Thunderbolts are frightening enough that he can usually get the free turn he needs to pull it off, and his absurd speed ensures that he doesn’t stay in play any longer than he absolutely has to.  Jolteon’s main weakness is that, like most of his siblings, he suffers from a rather small offensive movepool, which is what keeps him from being a really top-class sweeper despite having perfect stats for it.  Any Ground-type with halfway decent special defence will stop him in his tracks unless, heaven help you, you have time to breed a Jolteon with the right Hidden Power element (and even then it’s not exactly airtight; Swampert, Gastrodon and their ilk murder you if you pick Ice, Landorus and Gliscor if you pick Grass).  If you’re going to rely mainly on a single attack type, though, Electric is one of the better ones to be stuck with, and, thanks to Platinum, Jolteon can learn Signal Beam and doesn’t have to worry about Grass-types either.  Shadow Ball is Shadow Ball, but it helps with a few Pokémon, mainly Ghost-types and Ground-types.  Jolteon is relatively frail, and shouldn’t be expected to take much abuse, especially not from physical attacks, but with a bit of judicious switching and Baton Passing to keep him out of harm’s way, you should be able to nail a good few Pokémon with some Thunderbolts.

 I love this one. This is by Chaoslavawolf (http://chaoslavawolf.deviantart.com/); I think it really captures Jolteon's energy and dynamism.

This is basically the core of Jolteon’s skillset, but he has a few other moves worth mentioning.  Volt Switch, Black and White’s great gift to Electric-types, lets a Pokémon attack and then immediately switch out, avoiding the opponent’s counterattack, and is especially effective on a fast Pokémon like Jolteon, but many Jolteon are likely to have Baton Pass anyway, and you don’t really need both; they serve a similar purpose.  Fake Tears might be interesting – catch one of those big Ground-types switching in to wreck their special defence, and they might feel less confident about eating a Shadow Ball and have to switch right back out again.  Jolteon learns Thunder Wave, but doesn’t benefit much from it since he outruns everything important already, and isn’t tough enough to pull team support duty.  Wish, likewise, is an excellent move but ill-suited to Jolteon’s capabilities.  The final nice thing about Jolteon is his ability, Volt Absorb.  In much the same way as Vaporeon’s Water Absorb, Volt Absorb negates Electric attacks and converts their energy into health, healing Jolteon by 25% of his maximum HP every time he takes one.  This is significantly less useful for Jolteon because, unlike Vaporeon, he can’t take many hits anyway and may not survive long enough to heal up, but it does still let him switch into Electric attacks with impunity, which is very useful for a frail attacker.  His Dream World ability, Quick Feet, is interesting but ultimately not worth much.  It gives him a speed boost whenever he’s paralysed or poisoned or what have you – but, being Jolteon, he’s already so fast that this isn’t likely to do much for him.  The biggest advantage to it is that it negates the massive speed penalty connected with paralysis, which makes Jolteon all but useless.  However, a Jolteon with Volt Absorb is immune to the most common and effective paralysing attack anyway (Thunder Wave) so in the end Quick Feet is a dubious choice.

As you may have gathered, what I like best about Jolteon is how very differently he handles compared to Vaporeon.  This is another of those themes I’m going to keep harping on throughout this series, and will probably talk about in some detail in the final entry on Eevee, so keep it in mind.  For now, I’ll just say that Jolteon works.  He’s not really my style, but he’s a very fun Pokémon to use, and won’t disappoint you – and, you have to admit, he’s pretty badass.

I imagine there are quite a few unique typings Game Freak have yet to try. Which one would you most like to see adapted into a pokemon (personally, I’m angling for a Fire/Grass.)

I’m going to answer this going on what would be thematically interesting, since in my opinion the best possible type combinations from a strategic perspective exist already (Dragon/Fire offensively and Steel/Psychic with Levitate defensively).

I have many favourites.  I think the one I’m most hoping for is Water/Fire, just because I think there are a lot of clever things that could be done with it.  The combination of elements is interesting, because normally we’re used to thinking of their relationship as “water douses fire,” but then again, combining water and fire gives you steam, something new and powerful.

Normal/Ghost would be interesting for something that, thematically, exists between life and death, maybe stressing the idea that ‘death is part of life.’

Bug/Dragon would be either crazy awesome or incredibly stupid.  Sometimes these things are too close to call.

Ghost/Steel would be a b#$t#rd to kill because you just know it would get Levitate, but it could potentially go interesting places by shoving together the spiritual nature of the Ghost element and the technology associated with the Steel element (something Steel/Psychic hasn’t really explored, for whatever reason).

I think Bug/Water deserves an honourable mention because, yes, there is Surskit, but come on (I sort of find myself wishing Masquerain had just kept his original typing, because sticking the poor thing with Bug/Flying is just  a tragic waste of a design that was actually quite fun).  Dragon/Ice, too, might be fun to look at outside of a legendary context.

A correspondent of mine has hinted that he may be starting an art blog dedicated to exploring these unused type combinations in months to come; I’ll be sure to plug that if it happens.