One lunatic's love-hate relationship with the Pokémon franchise, and his addled musings on its rights, wrongs, ins and outs. Come one, come all, and indulge my delusions of grandeur as I inflict my opinions on anyone within shouting distance.
I saw *Pokémon: Detective Pikachu* a week ago, and I would kill to know what you thought of the movie. Can you confirm whether or not you’re going to write up a piece on it after you’ve seen it?
I’m working on it now! I’m postponing Blacephalon and making it my next major article. Should be up on Friday.
Continue reading “Analytic Mareep asks:”Guilty confession time:
I’m warming up to Greninja’s battle bond ability, and think that the concept is something Pokemon should continue to explore.
Hear me out. I know Ash-Greninja specifically is pure pandering to anime fans. But the implementation of the concept is, in my opinion, mega evolution done right. Mega Evolution was supposed to be about a strong bond between Pokemon and trainers making the Pokemon stronger, which would strengthen the franchise’s partnership concept. But of course, mega stones simply became an OP held item that you could use as soon as you obtained them. Battle Bond, on the other hand, really emphasizes the participation of the trainer (I think Ash feels pain when his Greninja does or something?) and occurs in the heat of the battle, once the Pokemon has already started taking out foes. What if in a future generation, all the starters’ final evolutions had battle bond as an ability? It might need some adjustments, like needing to be at a certain level to activate, and maybe a friendship or affection requirement as well. But overall, I think Game Freak could really work with this.
We’re down to our last two Ultra Beasts: Stakataka and Blacephalon, who were added to the roster only in Ultra Moon and Ultra Sun (respectively). We don’t know as much about them as we do about all the others, because we never see their homeworlds. All the original Ultra Beasts, whom we first met in Alola in Sun and Moon, are encountered in Ultra Smoon by travelling through Ultra Space to their own worlds (while Poipole is involved in the story of the Ultra Recon Squad, and gets a major supporting role in the anime). These two, we only ever meet in Alola, and we also get no information about them from Wicke, who is otherwise a fount of interesting (if occasionally dubious) intelligence. As a result, there’s more I’d like to know about Stakataka that I just don’t, like what kind of ecosystem produces a creature like this, and how it behaves in its natural habitat – things that, for normal Pokémon, we tend to learn as a matter of course. But we have the Pokédex, we have the design, we have Stakataka’s in-game types, stats and mechanics, and we have the anime episode it stars in, so let’s take a look and see what we can do.
Continue reading “Stakataka”Hi Chris,
Quick question: Looking at Vulpix’s pokedex entry from X, it mentions that vulpix are born with ‘just one snow-white tail’. Do you think this was foreshadowing for Alolan vulpix and do you think there is anything more you can make of this?
Hmmmmmmmm…
If that line were new in the X Pokédex I’d say yes, but it actually appeared previously in Leaf Green, and the idea of Vulpix being born with a white tail goes all the way back to at least the original Pokémon Stadium (Red and Blue specify one tail at birth, but not the colour). It could be deliberate foreshadowing that they chose to recycle that particular line in generation VI, but X and Y reuse a lot of Pokédex lines from Fire Red and Leaf Green for the Pokémon that were around in generation III, so I think it’s more a nice coincidence than anything else.
Vulpix is a kitsune fox spirit, which grow more tails as they become older and more powerful, and turn white or gold when they get to nine tails, which is why Ninetales is a pale gold colour. I don’t think their first tail is supposed to be white, though. Nor are real foxes born with white tails that later turn red, as far as I know. A lot of animals have special juvenile colouration that provides them with better camouflage while they’re young and vulnerable, but I don’t think white would help with that (unless you lived in a snowy area, which… well, Alolan Vulpix says hi). It could just be meant as foreshadowing of the evolution to Ninetales, I suppose.
If you could pick an animal to base the next pika-clone on, what would it be?
can I pick something that doesn’t exist so it doesn’t get made
uggggghhhhh fine
obviously there is only one animal in all the infinite cosmos that is worthy of this… dubious honour
and that is its majestic lordship the capybara
Pros:
Cons:
EDIT: I will it so, and it is done! Here’s reader voltorb1993’s take on “Zapybara”!
Who would win in a fight? Your vastly superior intellect, or all the Gen V Pokemon sentenced to cruel, horrible deaths all those years ago?
Oh, I would get destroyed. This brain of mine? This is an ideas brain; moreover, this is a humanities brain. I’m not going to go all Home Alone on this $#!t; I’m just going to stand there, pompously explaining to them that criticism is part of the network of social relationships that give art its meaning, that a thorough understanding of a work’s flaws can actually deepen a sincere appreciation of it, and that we all have a responsibility to be critical of the media we consume, while they… y’know, variously incinerate, lacerate, electrify, putrefy, pulverise, exorcise, freeze and disembowel me.
Finally, we’ve dealt with ALL the Ultra Beasts. Nihilego, Buzzwole, Pheromosa, Xurkitree, Celesteela, Kartana, Guzzlord, all seven of them have been reviewed.
…
…what do you mean, they added more!?
Okay, so… 802 Pokémon was not enough, it’s never enough, it will never be enough until I’m dead, so Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon added another five Pokémon that weren’t in the original Sun and Moon, and can’t be traded back to those games either. Four of those were additional Ultra Beasts, and for the sake of thematic unity I’m going to cover them before returning to the legendary Pokémon of Alola. Our subjects for today are the first two, the only Ultra Beasts to evolve: Poipole and Naganadel, the Poison Pin Pokémon (the same species name as Nidoran!).
Continue reading “Poipole and Naganadel”What would be the biggest culture shocks for someone that comes from the world of Pokémon to ours?
listen if you’re thinking of making the move I don’t recommend it
but… well, I’m gonna guess the absence of Pokémon would be the big one, to be honest.
People in the Pokémon world rely on their Pokémon for all kinds of things, and it often seems like it’s kind of unusual to be a person who doesn’t care about Pokémon and isn’t in any capacity involved with Pokémon. Like, in the real world, telling someone you don’t have pets is not a big deal. In the Pokémon world, sure, not everyone is a trainer exactly, but almost everyone has Pokémon in their lives in some capacity, maybe as pets or co-workers or even spiritual advisors. How big a change this is might depend on when and where you landed – people in real rural societies do “live with animals” in a fairly meaningful sense, while urbanites tend to be largely oblivious of even the animals we eat (and actually, this is a total tangent but my IRL friend Flint Dibble, who is a zooarchaeologist, talks a lot about this stuff on Twitter and is very good at making compelling stories of his work). Of course, maybe then the culture shock is “you eat your animals!?” (but then, are we so sure they don’t eat Pokémon too?). They would probably be confused at how far animals, other than pets, are kept at arms’ length in their involvement in modern society – and might think that we must be very disconnected from nature on account of that.
The dependence of children on their parents is probably the other big thing. In the Pokémon world, it’s generally seen as pretty safe for kids to travel on their own if they have Pokémon, who can provide both protection and emotional support. Adults are not necessarily better trainers than children either, so Pokémon are a big equalising factor in the face of any dangers you might face. In the absence of that security and freedom, modern childhood (even modern life in general) in the real world would probably seem stifling.
Do you ever do play-throughs where you have to stick to particular rules? Like the Nuzlocke challenge? If so, what are your favourites and what are the ones you vow never to do again?
I’ve done a few Nuzlockes. They have… ended poorly. One of them featured an Illumise spontaneously exploding. Sometimes Jim the Editor will pick teams of terrible Pokémon for me (honestly, though, I don’t think I’ve yet had a Pokémon challenge experience that made me really firmly swear “never again”). Once I even wrote a Nuzlocke story, which I never finished, and honestly I don’t know if I’m ever going to have time to finish it (maybe I should just tell everyone what I had in mind for the rest of the story, I don’t know). But anyway, if you don’t mind that it cuts off about 3/4 of the way through the story, or think you might want to start bugging me to finish it instead of the other things I have in mind to do, you can read it here.
Continue reading “Rebecca Panks asks:”Hello,
I don’t recall if you ever did a post on your thoughts on Z moves as a whole, or particularly how you reacted to their extreme animations. Would you share your thoughts on each one in a few words?
I haven’t, but I might have promised that I would later. Let me check.
…
[Also, just while we’re here, I feel I should note (just to completely weird out the Americans in the audience) that, as I think most New Zealanders would, I have always instinctively pronounced it “zed-move” (not “zee-move”) and this should be the way you imagine me saying it whenever you read my words on the subject.]
…
damn it Past Chris, get your $#!t together
Y’know, in the past I have definitely made noises about it, but I was never sure what I should commit to, because I thought I might end up talking about them in the context of my review of Necrozma, since the power of Z-moves comes from Necrozma’s light. That’s something I’m now less optimistic about, since there’s a buttload of lore to study and clarify surrounding Necrozma. I think I’m going to have to beg to defer this, because it probably does deserve a full article (I did one on mega evolution, after all; I mean, it was completely bat$#!t but I did write it) but I don’t think I can properly tackle the subject with my customary brilliance until I get my facts straight on Necrozma and the cosmic light.
Pokémaniacal 