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.
How do you think a Cherubi would feel if you fed it a cherry?
Unclear. On the one hand it seems likely that the resemblance between the two is mostly superficial, but on the other hand, do they know that? I would think they’d be pretty creeped out… but then, there are parts of the world where people eat monkeys. Possibly a Cherubi would just feel insulted that we even thought it was similar enough to a cherry to be worth the comparison.
Would you like to see a Mega Vileplume?
Yes and no… I mean, Vileplume is my favourite Pokémon so, like, if you want to give her cool stuff, go right ahead, but I don’t know if the pile of extra stats associated with mega evolution necessarily solves the problems that she has. With the exception of Slowbro, Sableye and Aggron, most top-tier mega Pokémon are offensive powerhouses, and that’s not really what Vileplume is trying to do anyway. I think her real problem is that her hidden ability (Effect Spore) is just bloody useless, and her regular ability (Chlorophyll) is amazing but completely mismatched to her role. You could use mega evolution to cheat in a replacement ability, I suppose, but honestly I would much rather just add a second regular ability; most Pokémon have two, and giving Vileplume something a) really strong and b) different from what other Grass-type supporters have would, I think, just about do it.
How would you make a Mega Luxray. Like stat changes, extra moves for Luxray next generation, ability change, type change, etc.
I’ve also received this question:
“How would you feel about a Mega Luxray that was an Electric/Dark type with Strong Jaw as an ability? To fit in with its ability, give it Poison Fang through breeding or move tutor, and Volt Tackle because there’s no reason for it to not have Volt Tackle. Then for its stats, lower its Special Attack and pour most of the stats into Attack with some going into Speed.”
I just realized Paras is based on H.P. Lovecraft’s Mi-Go. The Mi-go are crab-shaped fungi from pluto! (and what is Mt. Moon, but an allusion to Pluto?) It’s so cool that Ken Sugimori and Satoshi Tajiri were reading lovecraft.
…yes. Clearly.
I noticed that Tyranitar’s the only pseudo-legendary to not be used by a final boss in its introductory games; any guesses as to why they didn’t give Lance one in GSC/HGSS? It’s reasonably draconic-looking (hey, they made Tyrantrum a Dragon!) and it’s quite powerful and God knows Lance could do without one of his blasted cheating Dragonite and get some variety in his team! Similarly, any thoughts as to why they didn’t give Steven a Magneton, a strong Steel Pokémon that was available in RSE/ORAS?
You know, I’ve never thought about it… I think there are several plausible reasons, though. First, in most generations, there’s someone new who fills that role, whereas Lance was an established character already and Dragonite was firmly set as his signature Pokémon before Gold and Silver happened. And this was only the second generation, so it’s not like this was already a rule or convention by that point; in Red and Blue the final final boss was the rival character, not the guy with the Dragonite. And maybe the very fact that they didn’t give Lance a Tyranitar, in contrast to the way they’ve behaved more recently, says something about what they think Tyranitar is supposed to be – that is, maybe there’s something about him that strikes Game Freak as particularly not draconic, possibly because he’s basically a dinosaur and therefore needs to be a Rock-type (yes, you can compare Tyrantrum, but that’s fifteen years later, and I don’t know if I’d expect 100% consistency over such a long period on something as vague as what the Dragon type is; they may have different ideas about it now). I also kinda think maybe they had in mind for Larvitar and its evolutions to be almost like a “secret” Pokémon – Larvitar doesn’t show up until the very end of the game, at Mount Silver, and neither it nor its evolutions are ever used by any trainer prior to that. Misdreavus is the same. I think that’s part of a deliberate choice, meant to emphasise the remoteness of Mount Silver – there are Pokémon there that you won’t even have heard of during a playthrough of Gold or Silver, and Larvitar, Pupitar and Tyranitar are part of creating that aesthetic.
Continue reading “Anonymous asks:”Do you think there’s any relationship between Pokémon like the Magnemite line, the Beldum line, and the Klink line? If so, what might that be?
The ‘mechanical’ Pokémon, that is? Honestly I think it’s impossible to say, although Magearna might shed some light on all of that, once we learn more about her. Voltorb are supposed to have appeared suddenly around the time of the invention of mass-produced Pokéballs, and Professor Juniper discovers that Klink appeared in Chargestone Cave about a hundred years ago, so I wouldn’t rule out their creation having something to do with human influence. I doubt they were deliberately made by humans, because they mostly seem to be thought of as mysterious Pokémon and no one seems to know exactly where they came from, but they might be the result of human activity in much the same way as Grimer (i.e. the waste products of human technology, stimulated by “X-rays from the moon”).
Reaction to Magiana?
Certainly very curious… presumably she’s the vanguard of generation VII, and of course that’s exciting, but the really interesting part is that this is a legendary Pokémon who was explicitly built by humans – and not thousands of years ago by mysterious forgotten magic like Golurk, nor genetically engineered from an existing template like Mewtwo, but in the 16th century with mechanics and clockwork, with the same kind of principles that modern engineering still functions on. I think there’s a lot Magearna might tell us about the history of Pokémon training, and how it changed at the dawn of the modern world. What really catches my eye is that she seems to have Pokéball emblems built into her design, and given that Pokéballs as we know them are supposed to be quite recent inventions, that makes me wonder what the connection is. Did the symbol mean something different five hundred years ago, or was the design of the first Pokéballs based on Magearna’s body?
I was reminded that things like Delibird, Wobuffet, and Girafarig looked weird when they were introduced, and that was just in generation 2. Then by the time the next generation comes, the ones that looked weird in the last gen are comparitively normal. The oddest thing about delibird was that the bag is actually its tail, and it’s hollow. Does anybody remember that?
Is it actually hollow? I sort of assumed that the tail was flat and broad, and Delibird kind of rolled it up into a bundle. Honestly I thought it was kind of a creative way of giving Delibird a sack when Pokémon aren’t really ‘supposed’ to use manufactured items.
Good news, I found an explanation for Pawniard and Bisharp! Pawniard is an ashigaru, a japanese foot soldier that serves under a samurai characterized by their rounded helmets, while Bisharp is the samurai itself. It would explain why Bisharp are described as commanding armies of them. The chess puns in the English names are probably just an attempt to localize them, but it does make some sense since pawns can be promoted into bishops. What do you think?
Well, there is a chess pun in the Japanese too, because Pawniard’s Japanese name references the word for a game piece (koma), so it still seems likely to me that they were influenced by the appearance of pawns in European chess. But it does make a lot of sense – maybe someone at Game Freak thought that pawns in Shogi could be imagined as ashigaru, and then made a connection with the shape of European pawns?
What do you think of Pokemon obviously designed to be sexualized like Lopunny? I think it’s really creepy myself, and can’t stand playing with them in Pokemon amie because they keep giving me giggles, hip shakes, hair/ear flips, and generally acting like they’re trying to flirt with me. Not to mention in their first sprites, their elbows were deliberatly placed to make it look like they have breasts. It’s really screwed up, and feels like a desperate attempt to pander to “adult” demographics.
To be honest it’s not something that’s ever bothered me a great deal. I mean, I think it’s silly, and doesn’t make for interesting designs, but I’ve never had the kind of visceral discomfort with it that you seem to. Nor do I quite see what you mean about Lopunny’s fourth-generation sprites, although I suppose they could be taken that way. I will say it seems like a very odd choice to me, given the ‘family-friendly’ image that Nintendo has always tried to cultivate, and Game Freak’s obvious discomfort with saying anything explicit about how ‘breeding’ works. The disconnect leads me to suspect that there’s some level of cultural nuance here that that the Western audience just isn’t quite getting, and I don’t really know enough about the Japanese to probe the matter any further.
Pokémaniacal 