Dhelmise

Some Pokémon are just… weird. And frankly I kind of have a soft spot for them. Heatmor? Someone jammed a blast furnace through an anteater and thought it would make a cool Pokémon; I love it. Spoink? It’s a spring-loaded pig’s head that can’t ever stop moving or its heart will explode. Perfection. Gligar? I… I mean, I’m gonna be honest; it’s been eighteen years and I still don’t know what Gligar is, but clearly he’s great. Probopass? I… well, …okay, I draw the line at Probopass because that moustache is clearly just a crime against all that is natural; I have limits. But the point is that quirkiness is appealing to me. So, presented with a Pokémon who is apparently an undead clump of seaweed wrapped around a rusty ship’s wheel and anchor that it uses to hunt whales… well, colour me confused but intrigued.

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Mimikyu

Today’s Pokémon is something of a dark horse contender for most adorable Pokémon of generation VII. Sure, it’s so ugly that it turns the old cliché “if looks could kill” into a grim reality, but it just wants to be loved, and the well-meaning adage “be yourself” has led it to one too many tragedies. Horrifying as it is at first glance, it’s hard not to sympathise with it once you learn the trials and tribulations that plague Mimikyu: the Disguise Pokémon.

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Sandygast and Palossand

Before we begin, I want to point out, for the benefit of people who might not usually pay attention to this kind of thing, that Palossand has one of the best French names I’ve ever seen for a Pokémon: Trépassable. It’s a portmanteau of trépas, demise, and sable, sand, but it also sounds like très passable – “good enough,” which is a phrase that everyone who has ever built a sandcastle has uttered at least once.

Anyway. Haunted sandcastles!

Haunted castles make perfect sense to anyone with even a vague familiarity with 19^th century gothic horror or its 20^th century cinematic inheritors. Beginning with Horace Walpole’s 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto, any gothic horror worth the name has a menacing castle on a windswept crag in the middle of a dark forest in Molvania or some similarly dismal place, and said castle is regularly infested with a range of “local colour” including but not limited to bats, vampires, mad scientists, werewolves and, of course, ghosts. Ghosts and castles go hand in hand right down to contemporary fiction, with the entertaining spiritual population of Hogwarts in the Harry Potter series, and ghosts in the haunting business are commonly depicted as pursuing “unfinished business” or grudges left over from their lives. But a haunted sandcastle might be something of a new one… Continue reading “Sandygast and Palossand” →

Oricorio

I do not have a good record with anything capable of earning the title of “gimmick” Pokémon – Pokémon whose schtick is some unique move, ability or game mechanic that was so clever Game Freak felt they could stop there, and didn’t need to have the Pokémon be any good or the design make any sense. Today we decide whether Oricorio, the dancing honeycreeper Pokémon, fits that description. Four interchangeable and mostly cosmetic forms, a weird signature move, a weirder ability… the phrase “walks like a duck, quacks like a duck” comes to mind, but let’s take a closer look. Continue reading “Oricorio” →

Rowlet, Dartrix and Decidueye

Bloody hell, if I don’t hurry this up they’re going to announce another damn generation before I’m done with this one; we’re already expecting whatever this bull$#!t is supposed to be and I’ve got eighty whole Pokémon to evaluate in the next couple of months, as well as talking about Team Skull and the Aether Foundation, and Hau, and maybe Lillie too, and whoever I decide counts as the Champion, not to mention answering the neverending tide of ridiculous banal questions that keep pouring out of my goddamn inbox (obviously, gentle reader, I’m not talking about any questions you might have submitted, which are of course consistently insightful and thought provoking; it’s all those other bastards that are the problem).

I’M FINE

Let’s talk about Rowlet. Continue reading “Rowlet, Dartrix and Decidueye” →

Anonymous asks:

How do you reckon Ghost Pokémon feel (or would feel) about Ho-oh’s death-defying, life-bringing power, particularly those who are explicitly ghosts like Yamask, Phantump, and Gengar? How would Cubone feel if it knew there’s a Pokémon that might be able to bring its mother back? Would Ho-oh’s power turn Shedinja into a new Nincada, or Ninjask? How does it relate to Xerneas and Yveltal? There’s so much potential for Ho-oh’s revival power that I feel is greatly underexplored in the series…

Hmmmm…

Interesting. There’s probably a lot you can do with that. There’s a great deal we don’t know about Ho-oh’s resurrection power and its limits, which I would assume other Pokémon don’t know either. Continue reading “Anonymous asks:” →

Anonymous asks:

Why are Alolan Marowack, Sensu Oricorio,and Decidueye ghost types? They’re not dead!

Well, I don’t think being a Ghost-type necessarily means you are a literal ghost. Maybe half of them, tops, are said to be the spirits of the dead in legend and folklore (my rule here is “read the Pokédex because it’s really important, but for the love of Arceus, don’t trust it”), but most of the others have their type and abilities on the grounds of an affinity for death and the dead, or in some cases power over them. Pokémon like Dusknoir and Pumpkaboo, for instance, are known for leading spirits and people between the worlds of the living and the dead, while Chandelure and Jellicent are spiritual predators; I don’t think anyone ever claimed that any of them are the ghosts of dead people or Pokémon, but they can all interact with ghosts. Similarly, Decidueye is a sort of shaman with the ability to interact with souls as though they were physical things, and Alolan Marowak can summon the aid of spiritual powers through their ritual dances.