There’s gross… and then there’s gross.
By which I mean, some things are disgusting and others are just nasty.
On the one hand, you have Pokémon like Muk, who is literally made of toxic waste, Weezing, who can cause lung cancer at fifty paces, Gloom, who is constantly surrounded by the stench of rotting meat, and Lickitung, who… well, I think we can all agree; the less said about Lickitung, the better.
On the other hand, you have Pokémon that wear their own cast-off skin as trousers and hoodies.
Ladies and gentlemen, meet Scraggy and Scrafty. Continue reading “Scraggy and Scrafty”
Yes, I’ve finally gotten around to the second of Unova’s three starters, the Fire-type Tepig… and so far it doesn’t look so bad. Tepig is pretty cute, I have to admit, and while it’s not the first time we’ve had a pig Pokémon, it is very different from the previous one – Grumpig is a manipulative Psychic-type that specialises in soaking up elemental attacks, while Tepig is intended as a physically-inclined heavy hitter with a bit of survivability. The only major gripe I have with Tepig is that his name is a little bit daft. I don’t know whether Tepig had a fan nickname before the English release of Black and White came out like Snivy and Oshawott (a.k.a. Smugleaf and Wotter) did, but if he had one it has to have been better than Tepig. I understand Game Freak must be running out of fire puns by now – they’ve already used char, magma, flare, molten, cinder, lava, explosion, torch, combust, blaze, erupt, coal and heat – but was tepid really the best word they had left? It makes me think of warm water – not even hot or boiling water, because tepid is basically a synonym for lukewarm. I’ll let Tepig pass on that, though, because he’s cute, generally nicely put together, and actually almost convinced me, for the first time ever, not to pick the Grass-type starter for my first play-through. So, let’s see what he evolves int-
So, after I had such great fun last week with the unconventional Fighting-types Mienfoo and Mienshao, Game Freak now greets me with a rather spectacular return to normal by presenting these two: Sawk and Throh. These two aren’t an evolutionary family; in fact, they aren’t related at all, but they seem to be intended to be taken as a pair – they have similar designs and similar Japanese names (Dageki and Nageki), and are found in the same places, with Sawk being more common on Black and Throh on White – so that’s how I’m going to look at them. These two represent two different styles of combat: Throh practices judo, focussing on grappling and, well, throws, while Sawk practices karate, focussing mainly on strikes. Hmm. An opposed pair of Fighting-type Pokémon that dedicate their lives to two different types of martial art… I swear I’ve seen this before but I can’t for the life of me remember where. Oh well. I’m sure it will come to me. 
Today’s Pokémon are the expert martial artists Mienfoo and Mienshao. They- um. Wait, are we sure these Pokémon are even related? I mean… I know the names make it seem obvious, and I guess they both have features like a weasel or a mink, but I get the feeling that we’ve missed a second stage in the middle somehow; the evolution just seems like such a dramatic change, which isn’t normally something that happens without a reason (use of an evolutionary stone, or a Magikarp-to-Gyarados-style apotheosis). Between the two, I actually much prefer Mienfoo; she looks cute but determined, while Mienshao strikes me as arrogant and smug. It’s also undeniably weird that the Pokédex claims she fights by using the long fur on her arms like whips, which must be one of the most bizarre attack types ever, even by Pokémon’s standards (and remember that this is the franchise that gave us Lickitung, who licks things to death). Moreover, Mienshao learns few, if any, attacks that are related to these weird arm-whip things; her strongest techniques are typical Fighting-type stuff like Drain Punch and Hi Jump Kick. I guess you could interpret maybe Fake Out and Knock Off that way, but I just don’t think it adds to the design at all. 
If you’ve been following my rantings thus far, you’ll know I take an extraordinarily dim view of anything that could be described as “[Pokémon] 2.0” and would have much preferred it if Nintendo had just used the Pokémon that existed already and told the creature design guys to come back when they had something interesting. This is why I was initially quite excited when I met Timburr, an impish-looking little Fighting-type whose combat style involves bitch-slapping you with a plank. I cannot help but think that this is awesome. Honestly, I can’t find very much to fault with Timburr; he’s a cool little Pokémon with a lot of attitude. The only problem I have is that his ‘thing’ seems to be helping out construction workers, which is already what Machop have always been for. Making it more blatant by giving him construction materials to carry around just seems… pointless. Now, the Black version Pokédex entry doesn’t mention this, so I missed the whole construction theme and actually got something of a “mischievous forest spirit” vibe from Timburr and thought it would be really cool if he evolved into a Grass/Fighting dual-type and graduated to bitch-slapping you with an entire tree. I mention this to make it known that my disappointment that this is not the case will surely colour my opinions of Timburr’s evolved forms. Thankfully, however, I don’t think there is a great deal of room for bias on these Pokémon… 
Pokémaniacal 