Pokémaniacal

The time has come (largely because I’m running out of anything else) to think about some more legendary Pokémon, namely the so-called “legendary musketeers,” Cobalion, Terrakion, Virizion and Keldeo.  These Fighting-type Pokémon have that name because, according to the designers, they are based on the eponymous French warriors of Alexandre Dumas’ classic novel, the Three Musketeers, though personally I think it would be more appropriate to say that they are, if anything, parallel to the musketeers.  You might be forgiven for not thinking that the connection is immediately obvious (in fact, I’m not convinced anyone could work it out without being told or simply getting very lucky with a wild guess) – both groups have (in brief) an old one, a fat one, and a gay one (Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, respectively), plus an annoying kid who hangs around with them because he wants to join their club (d’Artagnan).  They are also both renowned for swordsmanship – the Pokémon versions only in a figurative sense, in that they all learn Swords Dance and share a signature move called Sacred Sword; despite the name, they fight mainly by goring enemies with their horns.   Cobalion, Terrakion, Virizion and Keldeo are, furthermore, motivated by their ideals of duty and justice, which likewise sounds like a reference.  All four of these Pokémon are Fighting-types, probably because that’s the element that’s normally given to Pokémon based on human warriors or martial artists, but these equine Pokémon have been shifted so far from what they’re actually ‘based on’ (like I said, ‘parallel to’ would be a more accurate description) that they have very little in common with all the other Fighting-types.  Every other Fighting Pokémon has a vaguely humanoid or at least bipedal form, with two arms and two legs (Machamp and Heracross are the greatest deviations you get from this pattern), many Fighting attacks require arms and hands and most of them are martial arts or wrestling moves.  I can appreciate the effort at creating a Fighting attack that works for a horned quadruped, but the fact is, it’s not a very good one; horns are for stabbing, not cutting, and the image of these Pokémon trying to toss their heads in such a way as to slash an opponent standing in front of them is ludicrous (and yes, I believe Sacred Sword is supposed to be like a slashing sword, not a stabbing one – notice, for instance, that the Bug attack available to these Pokémon is X-Scissor, not Megahorn, which would also be appropriate).  That’s all I have to say about Cobalion, Terrakion, Virizion and Keldeo as a group: now, let’s tackle ‘em one by one.

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Hydreigon, on the other hand, is utterly, completely, irredeemably, certifiably, three-eggs-short-of-an-Exeggcute WHACKO.

Deino, Zweilous, and Hydreigon, whose names come from the German ein, zwei, drei, in reference to the number of heads they each have, are the only Dark/Dragon dual-type Pokémon.  Dragon-types are (Druddigon and Altaria notwithstanding) among the strongest of all Pokémon, while Dark-types tend to be pathological liars, brooding loners, manipulative jerks, creepy stalkers or outright psychopaths.  This is a recipe for disaster.  I love recipes for disaster.  Being cave Pokémon, Deino and Zweilous are blind, and use their sense of touch to explore the world around them.  How do they do this without hands or long tails or other suitable appendages?  Simple: they bite everything.  Then, whenever something doesn’t bite them back (and often even if it does) they eat it.  Then they move on to find something else to bite, because these Pokémon are always hungry and eat voraciously.  In Zweilous’ case, both heads are always hungry and squabble constantly over food – and, for that matter, over just about everything.  Hydreigon doesn’t actually have this problem because two of Hydreigon’s heads aren’t really ‘heads’ at all; they don’t have brains and I think they’re really decoys to draw attention away from his central head during fights.  However, consider this for a moment.  Zweilous has two heads, with independent minds and personalities, which hate each other and are always hungry.  Zweilous evolves into Hydreigon, who has only one true head.

Yeah.

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Okay, you remember how I said last time that I thought I was just about done with all the genuinely bad Pokémon?
 

I was lying.

I’m doing Heatmor and Durant together because, although they aren’t part of a single evolutionary family, they do in a sense ‘go together.’  Heatmor is a bloody great anteater that some delightfully mad person has decided to splice together with a blast furnace or something, and Durant is an angry giant ant plated from head to abdomen in steel, and Heatmor’s favourite food.  Durant, the Pokédex insists, covers itself in steel plating specifically to protect itself from Heatmor, which makes absolutely no sense in a world of elemental ‘types’ with distinct strengths and weaknesses relative to one another.  Why does this make no sense?  Because Heatmor is a Fire Pokémon, and relying on metal armour to protect yourself from a Fire-type is tantamount to suicide according to everything we have ever seen about the way this world works.  Now, evolution (in the real-world biological sense, not the Poké-world pseudozoological whacko sense) is an insanely complicated phenomenon, this I will grant you, but no-one and nothing is going to convince me that natural selection would actually push a species to become more vulnerable to its own major natural predator.  Just to be clear here, I agree that it makes perfect sense for an anteater to be really good at eating ants.  For example, it would make a degree of sense to be told that Heatmor evolved their fire abilities as an adaptation for preying on Durant, since Durant were protected by this steel plating that they had evolved to keep themselves safe from the other crazy wildlife of Unova’s Victory Road.  It would make less sense, but still some, to be told that the Heatmor had come from elsewhere originally and had simply done what was natural by exploiting a local prey animal that was vulnerable to their powers.  All of this, of course, is assuming that Durant’s armour is a biological trait that it’s evolved, but the language of the Pokédex is surprisingly vague: “covering themselves in steel armour to protect themselves from Heatmor” could well mean that they dig up the metal and somehow beat it into shape.  This wouldn’t require turning natural selection completely on its head; it would just require that Durant really are that stupid.

I guess I can live with that.

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I think I’m just about through the Pokémon that are genuinely bad now.  A lot of what’s left is, for want of a better term, so-so – like the female counterparts to Rufflet and Braviary, the vulture Pokémon Vullaby and Mandibuzz.  I see some initial sensible choices here.  Vultures are a nice choice for a starting point; their associations are specific and evocative, and Dark/Flying makes sense and isn’t overdone; there’s only one other Pokémon of that type, Honchkrow, who’s sufficiently different from Mandibuzz that it doesn’t bother me.  Honchkrow is into plots and schemes, while Mandibuzz is a far more straightforward opportunistic predator.  She also has a macabre fashion sense: Vullaby and Mandibuzz ornament themselves with bones and even build their nests out of bones.  This was Cubone and Marowak’s thing, of course, but that’s not such a problem; they wore skulls as (I think) some kind of creepy honour thing, whereas for Vullaby and Mandibuzz it’s mostly about protection and decoration.  No, the thing that bothers me about Vullaby and Mandibuzz is how silly their bones make them look.  Vullaby is known as the “diapered” Pokémon, so yes, that eggshell-shape around her lower body (which is actually made of plates of bone) is indeed meant to look like a nappy.  I don’t know whether Mandibuzz is supposed to look like she’s wearing an apron but that’s certainly what I think of, and the domestic imagery of Vullaby’s nappy makes me think this is exactly what’s meant to be conveyed here.  Perhaps it’s just me, but this sounds incredibly ridiculous when applied to Dark-type Pokémon who, in keeping with the usual stereotypes of that element, habitually pursue injured and vulnerable prey (not carcasses as real vultures do, incidentally) and use the bones of their victims as armour and building material.  There are ways this could make sense.  “Pokémon that seem savage to us, but that’s just how nature works; actually they have a caring and maternal streak” is a concept I could really get behind if Vullaby and Mandibuzz were actually portrayed that way.  The Pokédex just dwells on the things I’ve mentioned already: Vullaby and Mandibuzz like bones and prefer to fight weaker opponents.  This way, if you take out the annoying parts, they’re really just stereotypical cartoonish portrayals of vultures, which isn’t very interesting.

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It was, of course, a statistical inevitability that we would eventually get a set of chess-themed Pokémon – and here they are, the sword-wielding Dark/Steel Pokémon, Pawniard and Bisharp.  In fact, not content with merely using bladed weapons, these Pokémon are literally made of interlocking blades, just to make absolutely sure that they can cut you to ribbons just by running into you.  As always, the first question is: what were Game Freak thinking here?  I don’t mean that rhetorically or sarcastically, I’m genuinely curious.  This design seems to be going in a couple of different directions and I’m not sure which one they started from or where they’re trying to take them or how they’re supposed to fit together.  Their vicious and aggressive personalities seem to follow sensibly from the blade theme, which seems to be Pawniard’s main schtick (or alternatively, simply from the fact that he’s a Dark-type; the vast majority of them are born to be jerks).  Then, on a completely different tack, we have the chess idea, with their names referencing the pawns and bishops of European chess.  Pawniard’s body shape, particularly the rounded head, seems intended to mimic the shape of a pawn, and Bisharp could likewise be seen as fairly similar in appearance to a bishop, although that one’s a bit of a grey area.  I’m not sure what to make of the chess motif since it doesn’t seem to extend beyond that.  Pawniard hunt in groups led by a single Bisharp, which might be taken to imply that Bisharp have an aptitude for strategy, but that’s all I can find (also, if chess is what the designers had in mind there, one would expect to find two Bisharp in a band, since there are two bishops to a side in chess).  Honestly, that seems to me like a really weird design choice – naming a pair of Pokémon Pawniard and Bisharp hits some very specific and very obvious notes, and I don’t understand why you’d want to hit them unless you intended to go somewhere with them.  From what I’ve been able to find out, the chess pun isn’t as strong in their original names, Komatana and Kirikizan – koma is the word for a piece (any piece, not a pawn specifically) in Japanese chess, and Kirikizan doesn’t seem to be a chess pun at all (there are bishops in Japanese chess, which work in exactly the same way as European bishops, but the word for them is kakugyo) – or in the names they have in other languages.  I’m left wondering whether the translated names are just inappropriate.  If not chess references, though, what is the point of these two?

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Today on Pokémaniacal I’m looking at Tony Stark, better known as Iron Man, a Marvel Comics superhero who made his debut appearance in 1963 and has since-

…I’m sorry, I seem to have wandered into the wrong blog.  Normally I do Pokémon stuff.

Oh, really?  Huh.

*Ahem*  Today on Pokémaniacal I’m looking at Golett and Golurk, the automaton Pokémon.  These two are based on golems (as distinct from Golem, the evolved form of Graveler), humanoid guardian creatures from Jewish folklore originally associated with the city of Prague, which have since worked their way into a number of high fantasy settings as the magical equivalent to robots.  Nowadays golems can be constructed from just about any material you care to name, the more outlandish the better, but as Ground-types Golett and Golurk seem to follow the original in being made primarily out of clay.  They are likewise believed to have been created by ancient people to act as protectors (goodness knows how the things are still around after all this time).  So far, so good. 

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What do most people think of when they hear the word “dragon”?  Reptilian traits are practically a given, and you can usually expect flight, but there’s a lot of room for interpretation.  You might think of an ancient, majestic and fiercely intelligent creature, possibly with magical powers, or you might think of a terrifying fire-breathing predator that ravages the countryside while snacking on maidens (or possibly the other way around).  You might think of both at once.  You might also think of a grumpy old jerk who sits in a cave all day muttering darkly to himself and snapping at strangers.

Well, you might.

This big ugly git is Druddigon, the cave dragon Pokémon.  He doesn’t have Dragonite’s serene wisdom, Salamence’s terrible power, Altaria’s preternatural grace or Flygon’s aura of mystery, and it drives him absolutely nuts.  Druddigon is technically a Dragon-type, largely because there’s nowhere else to put him, but he’s very much the (literally) red-headed stepchild of the group.  He has wings, but I don’t think he can fly (okay, he learns Aerial Ace, but that means nothing; take a look some time at the list of Pokémon that get Aerial Ace and you’ll see what I mean); the wings just provide a nice big surface area for taking in sunlight, which Druddigon needs to stay active since he’s cold-blooded.  If his body temperature drops too low, he becomes sluggish and eventually immobile.  In winter, Druddigon seem to retreat into deeper caves and other places where they can stay warm, and no longer appear outside; personally, I suspect they hibernate.  While active, Druddigon are vicious predators that chase prey with surprising agility through rough mountain terrain and narrow cave passages.  This is all in stark contrast with older Dragon-types, who tend to be characterised by their limitless vitality and power over natural phenomena.  In a number of places, but most notably in Blackthorn City, Dragon Pokémon are revered as holy beings.  Druddigon and the other new pure Dragon-type, Haxorus, as well as Garchomp from Diamond and Pearl, are powerful, sure, but they’re much more down-to-earth.  I’m not sure whether I like this or not.  On the one hand, variety is always better.  On the other, I personally feel that it’s their mythical status that holds Dragon Pokémon together as a type; after all, Kingdra isn’t much of a dragon when you think about it, and Altaria certainly isn’t.  Back in Gold and Silver, I remember that one of Clair’s gym trainers essentially defined Dragon-types as Pokémon that are filled with life energy, which doesn’t seem to fit Druddigon at all.  At some point you have to start asking yourself what all these Pokémon actually have in common.  I admit, though, I’m probably complaining about something that doesn’t bother most people.  Druddigon certainly looks the part; more so than Altaria at any rate, and something about an ill-tempered, not especially mythical dragon that lurks in a cave waiting to bite your head off has a certain appeal.  It’s a lot closer to what a dragon is like in European cultures than, for instance, Dragonite.

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This one is tricky; I’m not sure whether to love it or hate it… Today I’m looking at Stunfisk, the trap Pokémon, a flat-bodied bottom-dweller with a penchant for frying anything unlucky enough to step on him.  My first thought was that Stunfisk is pretty clearly based on a perfectly ordinary flatfish like a flounder or plaice, but with added lightning because everything is better with lightning (kind of arbitrary, but also fun).  I have since learned, however, that there are actually fish, called stargazers (so named because their eyes, like a flounder’s, are on the tops of their heads), which behave in more or less the same way as flounders – they spend most of their time half-buried on the seafloor, waiting for prey to stumble across them – but can also produce electrical current in much the same way as an electric eel.  I’m not sure whether that counts for Stunfisk or against him; on the one hand it suggests there’s less actual invention going on in the design, on the other hand stargazers are a comparatively obscure family, and an interesting one at that.  I shall seize the opportunity, as I did in Alomomola’s entry, to point out gleefully that Stunfisk supports what I said way back in June when I was whining about Basculin – that there’s no need to design Pokémon using boring, generic fish when there are so many wonderfully bizarre ones out there.  At any rate, although stargazers behave like flatfish their bodies aren’t actually flat, so they can’t be the sole inspiration for the design; there’s a bit of flounder mixed in.  The name, I am convinced, is derived from that of the most diabolical fish in the world, the stonefish, which shares Stunfisk’s fondness for murdering anything that steps on it, albeit with poisonous spines rather than by electricity.  So far I’m at least amused by Stunfisk, but not yet satisfied.  I do love the implied sadism of the wicked grin he gives whenever he shocks someone (which is exactly the expression we all know stonefish wear at the moment they stab you) partly because it brings some expressiveness to that otherwise bland face of his.  However, it also highlights that very blandness.  This is my real problem with Stunfisk; he’s… well, flat, if I may be forgiven the pun.  His art is overly stylized, almost ‘cartoonish’ (if I can even say that when talking about Pokémon); the only visually striking element, for instance, is the exclamation mark on his back.  Pokémon designs don’t have to be completely naturalistic, no, but that one detail annoys me.  All that said, Stunfisk is not a terrible Pokémon; he doesn’t offend me in the way that some past designs have.  To try to put my finger on exactly what I feel is wrong with Stunfisk, I would have to say that he feels unfinished, and in every possible sense; he feels almost like he’s waiting for an evolution.  He wouldn’t bother me nearly so much if he were just the juvenile form of a two-stage sequence.

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Ice is one of the more underrepresented elements in Pokémon: the original games had only five Ice-types (Articuno, Jynx, Dewgong, Lapras and Cloyster), single-typed Ice Pokémon didn’t exist until Snorunt, Glalie and Regice in Ruby and Sapphire, and even now, with more than six hundred Pokémon in the game, fewer than thirty of them are Ice-types.  Black and White have made two valiant efforts already to expand the number of pure Ice-types but have failed to impress me, producing Beartic and Vanilluxe.  Well, third time’s the charm, so they say, so let’s have a look at Cryogonal, the crystallising Pokémon.

Enigmatic Pokémon that form in high snow clouds, Cryogonal are difficult to track down because of the unusual properties of their icy bodies: when the temperature rises above a certain point, a Cryogonal literally vaporises, becoming invisible and insubstantial until its surroundings grow cold enough for it to recrystallise.  This is a unique and fascinating trait which is unfortunately very difficult to represent in-game; the designers have tried their best by giving Cryogonal the Acid Armour technique, which normally denotes the ability to melt into water or otherwise liquefy one’s own body structure, but it’s not really what Cryogonal does and unfortunately the move’s effects don’t really play to its strengths (more on that later).  Cryogonal’s other notable power is its ability to ensnare targets in chains of ice crystals.  It can do this in-game by using Bind, which (to be fair) is not the worst move in the game but comes a close third to Splash and Constrict.  This is another of those things I keep harping on about: Cryogonal isn’t actually good at the things which make it interesting and which it’s supposed to be good at.  To its credit, the snowflake design is appropriate and the symmetry is pleasing, but the face is odd.  What Sugimori’s official art doesn’t show is the ‘moustache’ of icy bubbles trailing from Cryogonal’s face, which you can see in the in-game sprite (they look just like the four bubbles you can see in its ‘mouth’, so imagine six more of those styled like a Fu Manchu).  I guess these are the “chains” that Cryogonal uses to bind its prey but they just come across as an annoyingly human facial feature on a blatantly inhuman Pokémon.  The anger in its eyes seems bizarre for the same reason.  What we have before us is a genderless Pokémon, composed entirely of ice, with an utterly alien biology, that spends half of its waking life as an evanescent vapour.  There is no reason in this world to make it look human.  None.  It simply undermines the strengths the design actually does achieve.

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