Re: Bogleech's Poke-Critiques: G2
Mon lines from G1 that got expanded in later gens, probably won't be touched upon that much. Gen2 started development about halfway through G1's, and many G1 missingnos are cut G2 mons. I really loved the "traditional Japanese" aesthetic the Johto region had. The original mons got their images refined, and some players commented they felt "less mysterious, smaller, more understood", which was a mixed bag.
Save for Crystal (GBC & GBA only), Gold & Silver were playable on a 1989 Gameboy! I always have to point that out. They were just more courteous to less-rich people. People who aren't rich, get shafted so much.
Gen 02 Gold Silver Crystal
Chikorita - Bayleef - Meganium (Pears, Brontosauri)
-- Chikorita basically remained unchanged from its basic concept placeholder, to the Final. The other starter was some "fire bear" that looked more like Pikachu, and some bland seal thing.
-- Is it a "food mon"? Cuz many more foodmons came later.
-- Venosaur and Vileplume had "carrion flowers", but Meganium appears to have a hibiscus blossom.
Cyndaquil - Quilava - Typhlosion (Echidnas / Tenrec)
-- Typhlosion reminds me of that "Hamsterzilla" ep from Invader Zim... Guess it's the cute pet hamster shape, made into a fierce kaiju.
Totodile - Croconaw - Feraligatr
-- Middle one has a "caveman" aesthetic, that goes away in final form.
-- Feraligatr has a Gojira theme and water typing.
Sentret - Furret
-- 'Nother ambiguous mon that draws inspiration from meerkat behavior, and weasels. But it's a kite-shaped meerkat thing at first. Huh.
-- Furret seems to be based on the fuzzy dongle of the "Weasel Balls" motor-ball toys, and they're 6' long... Imagine meeting one.
Hoothoot - Noctowl
-- The G2 clock gimmick! (You had to saw out the batteries, they were WELDED DOWN)
-- Hoot's face calls to mind a clock face. The leg might be like a "clock pendulum".
-- Noctowl doesn't have Hoot's design elements, and looks like an owl that would appear in a Zelda game.
Ledyba - Ledian
-- These guys appeared in "morning hours", not "day hours".
-- Ledian is based on another Japanese VG character.
-- Missed opportunity to have Ladybug larvae. They'd really fit right in. Just black eerie things that go around eating stuff.
Spinarak - Ariados
-- Uhh mandela moment... I recall them being blue/purple...
-- Unicorn horn!!
-- Nightmons
- "Ariados actually doesn't look much like a spider at all, but more like some sort of Hymenopteran, like a velvet ant or some other flightless wasp. The fact that one pair of legs move to its back is quite strange, and from behind, it basically looks like some sort of weird bunny head with stripey ears."
Chinchou - Lantern (Anglerfish / Batfish)
-- Fishingrod mons
-- Walking Batfish inspiration
- "I just adore those giant, yellow eyes with the plus-shaped pupils. Those are the coolest eyes of any pokemon ever. They're adorable, they're snazzy, and they're just plain weird."
-- Lantern has a Lapras face. Also, there's been a theme of Johto earlymons having great, unique first stages, then really bland and generic second stages.
-- Good fix drawings!
Togepi - Togetic
-- Echoes Chansey's "egg + joy/luck" theme
-- The ONLY babymon I'll tolerate, besides Tyrogue. The babymons were a stupid gimmicky drag, were unnecessary for the mons that got them, and would have better been for big mons like Kanga or Onix. Misapplied, and the "happiness" gimmick was a colossal PITA. Babymons sucked, were a hassle to evo, and what were they thinking. ONLY Togepi makes sense, with its "joy" theme.
-- First appeared in the anime, as Misty's companion.
Slowking
-- the "next" link is broken, it leads back to... itself.
Natu - Xatu (Totem Pole birds)
-- I'm glad I had a blind playthrough of G2, these guys were a real treat! They appeared around the Ruins of Alph, an area I have mixed feelings about.
- "Its design and color scheme are obviously meant to look "Aztec," but it's pretty vague."
--- I was thinkin, more "general native North American", or drew inspiration from "Egyptian Heiroglyph" aesthetic. But what's important is, a mon is designed according to a kinda-sorta "specific-ish" cultural artstyle. That's rad!
- "Xatu takes on a more distinctive "South American" motif with aspects of a North American totem pole. _ I really like the eeriness of this line's eyes and especially the second, false face on Xatu's chest. It's one of those designs with oddly perfect geometry - a sphere for a head and a lot of straight lines and angles - but in this case, it's a stylistic choice to intentionally resemble a carved or crafted artifact. It's kind of a shame so many later Pokemon would have the same artificial looking geometry for just no reason at all."
--- Pokemon devalues its own things by overusing them. Psychic/Flying types are common by now, but there's Sigilyph which I adore.
Mareep - Flaafy - Ampharos (Electric Sheep)
-- Got a special appreciation for these guys! I was so shocked when my bigger, pink sheep turned into some kinda kangaroo type thing with inexplicable red orbs. How interesting!!
-- Excellent wordplay names here. "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, "Mary" "Lamb" "Ampere".
-- It superficially resembles a sheep, but it calls to mind a bird that has down feathers as a fledgeling, then drops them for its sleeker, adult plumage. When it's in its mid-stage, it's some ambiguous kaiju form. Ampharos has a "lighthouse / beacon" theme.
Marill - Azumarill
-- Pikablu. Also early appearance in anime. The zigzag tail might make it a "pikaclone". They might have designed it more to pay homage to the "Pikablu" rumors. Bit of respect to the fans!
-- Buoy theme.
Sudowoodo
-- Oh thiiiis freakin' guy. *blocks ur path*. Wordplay name. Some equivalent to Snorlax, as an overworld one-per-file mon, that you need a quest item to bypass.
-- Is a rock that looks like a tree. IRL, rocks are brutally difficult to destroy (not to mention, there's different kinds of "rocks"... if you notice some all look like red livers, or red hearts, or white globs of the same shape with holes in the same areas, red kidney rocks...) But, we view rocks as nigh-indestructable. But in Pokey World, Oddishes eat Geodudes as a light snack. Lv6 Onix will get gobbled up by a Bulbasaur.
- "
I love, love the concept of a pokemon looking like it belongs in a different type as a protective camouflage, and it's especially clever in Sudowoodo's case; all of a grass pokemon's weaknesses are either neutral or outright resisted by a rock type, and vice versa. Actually mistake Sudowoodo for grass, and you might waste a fire, flying or poison move instead of the grass, ground or water attack that would really seal its doom. Rock type movies even do double damage to bug types, which would be the most common "predators" of a grass pokemon, wouldn't they? Brilliant. You ever wonder if that might be a lure? What does Sudowoodo eat? I can find no mention in the pokedex, so I'm just gonna assume it eats insects who try to munch its phony foliage. Its phoniage."
Hoppip - Skiploom - Jumpluff (Cotton)
-- First one gets to be a pink kitty helicopter. The others don't get to be helicopters.
-- Middle stage has the blossom and funny expression. Looks like a dandelion-type flower.
-- Final stage is floating along with levitating hot-air-balloonish cotton poofs. Happy retirement.
--- See, it's not the "seed, flower" thing that's the focus, it's the core of the plantimal, that's the focus. The blue-bodied cat-faced critter is going to regrow flowers and seed puffs over and over, like an arctic animal changing their seasonal coat.
Wild POISON TYPE IDEAS appeared!
Pure Poison:
- leech resembling a vacuum cleaner. Actually eats other poison types.
- cloud of flying one-eyed bacteria, associated with decomposition.
- Trio of more unrealistic gremlin-like "germs," ala Dr. Mario.
Poison/Psychic:
- crawling brain creature with a spinal cord like a scorpion's tail.
- parasitic worm you can attach to another pokemon, altering its typing and moves.
Poison/Fire:
- gooey toadlike beast that drips with flammable oil, igniting itself with its matchstick fingers.
- fever-themed counterpart to the earlier cold-virus monster.
Poison/Rock:
- rock-plated komodo dragon "basilisk," its venom causes petrification.
Poison/Ground
- venom-fanged giant shrew, invokes a shark swimming through the soil.
- perfectly flat camouflaged creature, stinging spines resembling grass.
- biting worm imitating a beautiful flower, the rest of it concealed underground.
- humanoid skull controlled by a colony of earthworm-like pokemon, acting as tentacles.
Poison/Flying:
- gelatinous atmospheric jellyfish, feeds on air pollution
- menacing umbrella-like monster that produces acid rain
- bird with a beak invoking a toilet, filled with a toxic sludge.
- creepy plane shaped monster, spreads toxic powder like a crop duster.
- aerial stingray resembling a children's kite.
Poison/Water:
- cone snail modeled like a tank.
- colorful, clown or harlequin themed sea anemone.
- Wailord skull covered in bone-eating worms, forming more of a body.
- one long, thin ribbon worm, coiled into a mummylike humanoid shape.
Poison/Electric:
- monster resembling a haz-mat suit, generates a toxic energy aura.
- infectious "nanobot," a circuit bug represented in battle by one multiplying pixel.
- corrupted digital pokemon, like a glitching porygon or "canonized" missingno.
- monster resembling walking radio tower, emits sickening energy waves
- acidic flatwoods monster with "skirt" of batteries.
- electrical phage virus, uses hosts to generate the energy it feeds on
Poison/Steel:
- rusty car-like monster. Corrodes and eats metal, excretes smog.
- oil snail with a steel drum shell; ability changes it to fire/steel when hit by fire moves.
- predator of bug types with a head like an organic pesticide sprayer.
- mercury pokemon, has different forms roughly shaped like different animal types.
Poison/Fighting:
- humanoid whose "arms" are a pair of symbiotic snake pokemon.
- creepy hand creature with poisonous claws.
- small creature generating a humanoid body from its gaseous breath.
Poison/Fairy:
- false, carnivorous Chansey with a poisonous egg.
- poisonous pinata-like creature, luring prey with a sweet odor.
Poison/Dark:
- colorful porcupine with a stinging needle mohawk.
- anglerfish-like forest monster with a "poison apple" lure.
- monster with clownish color scheme, laughing gas breath.
- slightly motorcycle-like armored beast, leaves a smog trail.
Poison/Dragon:
- twin serpents coiled together. One poisons, the other heals.
- froglike dragon whose colorful tongue branches into many smaller, biting mouths.
- wasplike, also not a real arthropod but uses pheromones to command bug types.
Poison/Ghost:
- plague doctor dodo bird. The ghosts of a whole species that succumbed to a virus.
- skeleton lounging in a pool of acid, as if it were a hot tub.
- squad of cracked, dirty teeth, cavities forming creepy faces.
- glowing green figure with a visible black skeleton, a radioactive x-ray pokemon.
- pink floating stomach with a winding digestive tract tail.
- allergy-triggering dust ghost, maybe even forms a tattered body from dirty cloth.
- mushroom mummy pokemon splotched with yellow, fuzzy mold.
Poison/Grass:
- slime mold forming a partial body from winding veins of yellow goo.
- moldy, rotten giant banana that's also a banana slug.
Poison/Bug:
- an impish little black fly. Its bite "brainwashes" prey to obey it.
- whole swarm of black fleas forming a cartoonish dog-shaped body.
- assassin bug with a giant syringe motif.
- cockroach modeled after an exterminator, with a face like a gas mask.
- giant hair-eating louse with scissor hands.
- stinkbug partially resembling an aerosol can.
Poison/Normal:
- "plague rat" pokemon, also sort of resembling and acting like one big flea.
- tentacled monster that "steals" poison from poison types, like a nudibranch.
Poison Legendary:
-Mew-like pure poison legendary themed around the greenhouse effect, a cute little fairy whose head is structured like a single carbon dioxide molecule.
-- I just picked out the most badass / interesting / unique / unlikely ones. There's a LOT of great ideas on the page, but many of them do seem like basic candidates that will very likely be used. Snake ones especially, or simple concepts.
--- I picked out the most interesting ones of the likely ones.
-- You can tell I love object mons and uncannymons (the ones that freak players out).
-- There's a mercury mon now, but he looks kinda... Unfinished...
-- Pokemon series keeps alluding to a "sound/audio" type, as a subtype of Normal. What if there was a "radioactive" subtype of poison or electric?
-- Special love for the computer virus ones! Those are genius!
-- Titan Arum... Uh, this might be a hoaxplant...
Aipom
-- This guy's one of those little oddballs, who feel oddly "jarring" in a way. Like they're transplants from another franchise. They just seem outside of the usual designs. A very mild "otherworldy" feel to them in the context of their games.
Sunkern - Sunflora
-- I LOVE!! these clumsy but defined, flower kaiju! They look so clumsy, and they're thick stocky flower plants, and they know they look good. Look at how confident they are.
-"I thought for sure it used the leaves on its head to fly, _ but the pokedex just says it "suddenly plummets from the sky in the morning" and then tries to move as little as possible. How does it get up there?"
- "Sunflora, its face resembling a cartoon sun even moreso than the real-world plant. _ much more unusual the grass types were in the first generation."
- "Most of the second-gen pokemon definitely have a sort of B-list feel. Not bad, but definitely concepts a little safer to leave on the cutting room floor for a first release. The result is that Generation II has an abundance of more down-to-earth, conventional designs"
-- Imagine Sunflora with orange, purple, brown, and red color variations.
Yanma
-- Finally, a straightforward dragonfly!
-- Was one of those "phone mons", where you befriend an NPC and there was a cell phone gimmick. Certain phone NPCs would call you up to tell you about mons "swarming" an area. IDK if there was a flag for that or not, like would there be a swarm regardless of the NPC being in your contacts, or does befriending the NPC raise the flag to allow swarms of certain mons to happen?
- "_ Yanma could have used a flightless, bug/water prevolution, like a real dragonfly. _ I always kinda took Yanma's little eyes as more "symbolic," like the whole green part of its head are its real eyes."
--- Like the dark spots on mantis eyes!
-- Yanmega (G4) is badass. Looks "military".
Wooper - Quagsire (Japanese Giant Salamander)
-- Quagsire gives me vibes like it's an alternate version of Lickitung and Slowpoke.
Murkrow ("Murder" of Crows)
-- Corvids got such a bad rap. They're not "spooky nighttime eerie graveyard birds", they're diurnal, urban birds, and brillaint ones at that.
- "a gloomy, ragged looking corvid whose feathers evoke a broom and a witch's hat _ he awkwardness of Murkrow's little pencil neck, oversized head, crooked schnozz, scrappy looking feathers and that look of morose weariness in its eyes, excellently capturing our image of crows as unscrupulous, scheming pests."
- "Murkrow looks like a gangly, sarcastic dork. The Daria of flying-type pokemon. I related to Murkrow. Murkrow felt like an underdog.
Misdreavus (Banshee)
-- Is it a floating severed head? Is it one of those "head & neck" mannequins?
-- They have sweet little mischievous, but seldom-malicious vibes to them.
Unown (Alphabet Characters)
-- SIIIIGGGGHHHH
-- ... Ruins of Alph made such a good first impression, as childish and basic as it was. The radio feature really, really added a layer of that special something, a sense of mystery, exploration, discovery. It gave us MUCH better ideas in our own heads, than what could realistically be put in a basic game made for mass consumption by 7 year olds.
-- Those "only shiny I & V" ones, that's pretty... what a coincidence. How bout that. Interesting.
-- Hidden Power used some math thingy, to calculate what "element" their weak attack will be.
- "Learning only the move Hidden Power, these little psychic-type sweethearts are all but useless in battle and seldom exist as little more than a collectable gimmick, but the whole idea of these mysterious, ancient creatures who happen to resemble floating, one-eyed runes is just cool as heck."
- "It's interesting to have pokemon that strictly exist to be sort of a weird presence rather than viable fighters, but I obviously wouldn't mind if you could bring an Unown to a pokemon battle without getting laughed at."
- "I think you should be able to build a pokemon from Unown. Each one could offer a different move, allowing you to put any four together _ to function as a single, powerful psychic type with those four different moves. By default, this could be a balanced defensively-oriented pokemon, but the addition of the question mark Unown could make it specially offensive, while the exclamation mark would pour more stats into physical attack."
- "Another possibility? The moveset, ability, stats and even typing of your Unown could all be determined by the actual word they spell out, with a long, secret list of possible combinations for players to discover on their own..."
--- Making an index of "words and associated moves", yeah the programmers are just gonna laugh that one out.
Wobbuffet (Comedian / Punching Bag)
-- This one's based on a Japanese TV comedian. A jokemon, like Farfetch'd.
-- thetailisthemastermind
- "Known as Sonansu _ "that's right!" in Japan, Wobbuffet is a bright blue, rubbery bag-like psychic type with an adorably pained expression not unlike a ghost about to go down Pac-Man's throat. _ it debuted as one of the only known pokemon limited to exactly four possible moves, _ This means that every single Wobbuffet once had a strict, pre-determined battle strategy,"
- "_ capable only of either defending itself or deflecting damage, rather than making a first strike of its own. _ It's a punching bag!"
--- Gen3 made it so, Wobbuffet's opponents can't switch out.
- "The "punching bag" certainly must contain some or even most of its other organs, since that's the part that eats, but the creature apparently considers most of its body expendable."
Girafarig
-- This one started out as "pisces ghosts concept", then was a mirrored duality giraffe.
-- I think it's also based on a mythological creature.
-- The tail has a little brain, that's cute!
- "I guess what's going on with Girafarig is that its front half is a normal type and its rear head is psychic? _ It doesn't even look like it should be psychic so much as dark, which even thematically fits a nasty, bitey little secondary head."
- "Some fans believe Girafarig references the _ hypothesis that some dinosaurs, _ had secondary brains in their tails, and Girafarig certainly has rather saurian-looking spikes down its back."
- "It comes immediately after Wobbuffet, both are psychic types, and both have small, black tails with eyes on them. Naturally, many people assumed there was some sort of relationship here, _ both of them come immediately ever the Unown, which are also psychic types, and also just small, black shapes with eyes...what might be going on there?"
Pineco - Forretress (Bagworm / Jumping Beans / Grenades)
-- More Bagworm mons come later.
-- Notes that Bagworms are popular in Japan, ignored seemingly everywhere else.
-- Yeah these guys EXPLODE. Also, there's a gunfish and tanktopus.
-- Forretress seems to be inspired by Jumping Beans.
- "In its first anime appearance, Misty even remarks that Pineco creeps her out because it looks like a grenade, and Brock counters that it's exactly why he finds it cool. _ this is one of the only times _ characters in the anime _ discussing the design elements and aesthetics of a pokemon, _"
- Forretress: "It no longer resembles any sort of bagworm, or any sort of insect at all so much as much as some sort of bivalve mollusc, with eerie eyes and multiple soft, fleshy tubes protruding from a shell _ doesn't look like bark, _ and this thing also happens to be part steel type."
- "also a carnivore, and pulls prey into its shell so quickly that nobody has ever seen what its true body looks like. _ it's an exploding arthropod. _ also the first pokemon to ever know the move spikes? It's a move that actually scatters little barbs around the battlefield. _ organic caltrops!"
Dunsparce (Bee Snake / tsuchinoko)
-- So it's like Ninetails, Ho-oh, Drowzee, etc.
- "the tsuchinoko's whole claim to fame - that it's a creature simply so elusive, nobody can be sure it exists. All anyone knows for sure is that a tsuchinoko is some kind of short, fat snake. Some say it can talk. _ leap. _ completely harmless _ has deadly venom."
- "If Dunsparce ever did evolve, _ the nozuchi, a creature sometimes even considered interchangeable with the tsuchinoko, _ an even stranger, eyeless, caterpillar-like worm-snake."
- "_ do my five-ball mons have a tendency to come in waves? It's like Gamefreak itself clusters their weirdest and most unique pokemon all together."
Gligar
-- This guy has the same vibes as Aipom. He feels so peculiar, he stands out in such an odd way... Reminds me a lot of Zubat, but this guy didn't get tarnished and overspammed to the point of resentment.
-- OP compares Gligar to Chupacabras.
- "When we first saw this thing in a leak _, we all jumped to the presumption that it was a Golbat evolution, _ for the flying/poison bat to evolve scorpion characteristics. _ the bugabat here turned out to be a flying/ground type."
-"The very idea of a gliding scorpion-bat hybrid is amazingly unique among Pokemon. Rarely has the franchise simply hybridized two totally unrelated animals in such a blunt, straightforward fashion, a chimeric mashup straight out of some medieval bestiary, and it's a combo that works so well. Bats and scorpions haven't a single thing in common, yet their fusion here feels weirdly natural, and its aesthetic execution is just terrific. The lovely shade of blue and purple, the huge pointed ears and the razzing tongue make for such a stylish, immediately recognizable design that I can't help thinking of Gligar as one of the "core" pokemon, _"
- "_ dex, Gligar's preferred mode of attack is to latch on to an opponent's face while it stabs them with its venomous tail."
- "chupacabra has only been around since 1995 and has never been given any scorpion-like characteristics, but it's certainly a desert predator commonly portrayed with bat-like features, sometimes just a full-fledged Chiropteran, and early depictions even gave it gliding membranes. Sometimes it was even said to have both protruding fangs and a long tongue"
--- Is Chupacabra the western version of the Bee Snake, in that sense? There's the other theory that chupacabras are just some cover monster idea, that hides people sneaking out at night to harvest certain glands from cows.
Snubbull - Granbull
-- Like Clefairy, another "fairy" mon with a frilly pink exterior, and a rugged, solid, down to earth build.
-- Also an "early look" mon, like Togepi and Phanphy.
-- Cute how it's a bulldog's head on some generic "lamp post" body.
-- Continuing the tradition of 2-stagers, where the first stage is the most unique, and the second stage is kinda bland.
- "there was even a sort of meme going around where somebody would swear they had access to even more leaked names, and they just named every single Gold & Silver pokemon Snubbull."
Quilfish
-- This was a PO'd lookin, rare fishingrodmon.
-- "Fugu" is prepared pufferfish, where you gotta get it just right, or it's poisonous.
-- Qwilfish got neglected and overlooked in G4, so OP made a fix drawing.
Shuckle
Ye Olde Shuckle
-- Thiiissss guuuyyy. You got him from some jittery NPC that was being bullied by the dumb edgy kid known as ???, who calls you a wimp after you curb-stomp him.
-- This was a really ambiguous mon for us USA 8 year olds, but apparently "snake wine" is a thing in Southeast Asia. Shuckle's "thing" was he'd turn berries into "berry juice"... However, he never did that for me. I would give him a berry and see no berry juice.
-- He's "Simpsons Yellow", exactly, and has the downtrodden expression of a Simpsons minor character.
-- It's "mold" thing, might be a mistranslation of "fermentation".
- " _ a tiny, humble critter with such enormous defensive stats and an infuriatingly obnoxious movepool. With its incredible resilience, the strange little bug can liesurely set up hazards like stealth rock and sticky web or even simply outlast an opponent's very patience."
- "the scale insects _ isn't just that they're squishy, shell-dwelling bugs, but their constant production of honeydew, a sugary ooze many other organisms find irresistible,"
- "barnacles _ weird arthropods have a soft interior and long, serpentine legs hidden in a compact, notoriously tough, cement-like shell, _ In Japanese, a barnacle is even referred to as Fujitsubo, while Shuckle is Tsubotsubo _"
- "Shuckle's Japanese name is literally Jar-jar."
- "Shuckle is traditionally found by smashing rocks near the seashore."
- "Shuckle's soft, yellow appendages certainly look a little like fungal hyphae, and it's fungi such as yeasts which drive fermentation, _ There are even fungi capable of wearing down rock. _ the shell. _ be a rock the fungus carved into a home? Or is it more like an armored spore?"
- "why on Earth a giant Foraminiferan would make wine out of fruit."
- Slime molds
- "pple rusts are a group of fungi parasitic on a variety of trees, some of which produce a large, potato-like gall and exude slimy, bright yellow "tentacles" laden with spores."
- "_ Shuckle is just Shuckle. _ a weird little vase-like invertebrate with a sad, pathetic little face who just wants to be left alone with its stinking, rotting collection of fruit."
- "Shuckle came about before Pokemon were almost always direct references to something in the real world, and represents a completely fanciful monster that just happens to be a bug type"
Heracross (Heracles Beetle)
-- Seems to be associated with Scyther and Pinsir.
-- Bug fight theme
- "hercules beetles and stag beetles are widely regarded as rivals in Japanese culture."
- "such lovely shapes, capturing all the most pleasant features of its inspiration including a rather shy and gentle-looking face despite its formidable claws and horn."
Sneasel (Kamaitachi)
-- Folklore mon
-- Got evo in G4.
-- Does seem related to Meowth.
- "Sneasel's inspiration seems to be Kamaitachi, the "sickle weasel," a youkai that's supposed to wound people with its claws before it's ever actually seen. "Sneasel" is thus derived from sneak and weasel."
- "Kamaitachi was also said to travel on freezing winds, _ the entire concept of the youkai is just a dramatization of the frostbite a cold, mountain wind can inflict"
- "its asymmetry is interesting. I'm not sure what the single larger, red ear represents, _ it gives Sneasel a sort of scrappy feel to it, like maybe the other one got sliced off."
Teddiursa - Ursaring (Ursa constellations)
-- Funny how the depictions of the "Ursas", give the "bears" digitgrade feet and long tails... Uh, those are wolf features, not bear features... But that's Greek mythology, these mons are straightforward bears with a mild star theme.
Slugma - Magcargo
-- Am I having another mandela moment, I swear these are G3 mons. They FEEL so G3...
- "How wild is it that the first pokemon slug is a fire/rock type made of lava? _ Wacky, unexpected elemental animals."
- Magcargo: "some of Slugma's lava begins to cool down, and slowly forms a shell out of hardened rock. _ Magcargo's always seen with a bit of flame spurting out of the shell's cracked surface"
Swinub - Piloswine (Mammoth Pigs)
-- Got evo in G4.
-- IRL Pigs and Elephants are definitely connected, and Mammoths seem oddly plausible to me, somehow...
-- In Asian folklore, one dragon hybrid is the Elephant. Pig + Dragon. Hmmmm...
Corsola
-- Jigglypuff mutated into a piece of coral, somehow. Don't step on it.
-- A much later gen, with polluted water, has the dead "ghost" variant.
- "the more you think about actual coral, the stranger this thing gets. The hard, external part of a coral is just the skeleton secreted by a colony of anemone-like polyps. Does Corsola have polyps? Maybe just one big one, like a mushroom coral? Is that what its face is? Or is the pokemon basically a coral skeleton with a face? Apparently Corsola can even form reefs. Does that mean they'll just grow together in fused, stationary piles like actual coral? Non-pokemon coral would also have to exist in this setting for its marine ecosystems to function, and I'm pretty sure we've seen it fairly often, the one exception to the franchise's "no normal animals" rule."
- "Corsola just needs a nice evolution into a big multi-faced coral colony."
Remoraid - Octillery (Firearms)
-- A little gray gun fish that turns into a big red octapus tank/cannon.
- "a neat little grey fishy which also rather subtly resembles a gun. _ Its learnset focuses on beam and projectile moves _"
- "Octillery has a completely unique move, OCTAZOOKA"
- "both animals are known for their suckers, and both pokemon function like firearms. It's an evolution that prioritizes *theme* over biology"
- "the outline of the eyelid runs into the seam above the siphon"
Delibird (Santa Claus Penguin)
-- Nother joke character, probably pals with Farfetch'd. Gimmick is "presents", that could heal, or explode.
Mantine
-- Always packin' heat.
-- Concealed Carry in later gens.
- "Mantine received a baby pokemon in Diamond and Pearl, Mantyke, which only evolves into Mantine if you have a Remoraid in your party. They decided to incorporate the Remoraid symbiosis into actual game mechanics, at the same time they decided to stop actually portraying it in-game."
Skarmory
-- This one kinda blew my mind. A metal bird that fights, get scars, and the scars are also metal. Huh. It's such a peculiar, oddly specific mon...
-- Aerodactyl connection? What if it was once "Aero with Metal Coat"?
-- Toho monster influence.
- "_ wings made of knives and a head that's more like some deep-sea shark than a bird. _ pokedex entries informing us that Skarmory nests only in thorny brambles, protected by its metallic plating."
Houndour - Houndoom (Hell Hounds)
-- Strikingly badass mons! They look like they got a "DOOM" influence.
-- Notably found in Kanto in G2. Some speculate that G2 mons that appear in G2 Kanto, are the ones that were cut from G1.
-- Soo, we have a Ninetails, Fu Dogs, and these guys... Public Domain fire canids.
-- Shiny is blue, not red.
-- Hot Topic dogs, (c) donut steel
- "_ pokedex, a burn caused by Houndoom never heals and never stops hurting. It's as if it really does breathe the flames of hell."
Phanphy - Donphan (Tire Elephants)
-- Portable, rolling, rubber tire elephants!
-- ... There's those thick, one-digit feet again... Huh. Lots of mons have single toes with big nails... Hmmm.
Stantler
-- A normal-type elk, that uses his weird antlers to do weird magical things to the wind, and do woowoo wind magic.
-- Related to Girafarig, for sure.
-- Associated with Delibird?
Smeargle
-- An interesting normal-type mon, found around Ruins of Alph. Gimmick is its "sketch" move, that allows it to copy the last move used against it.
-- "French Painter" theme
-- Cutest vandals ever!
- "The only move Smeargle can learn is sketch, which when used, permanently changes into the last move used by the opponent. Smeargle learns sketch exactly ten times, every ten levels, giving the player ten chances to toy with Smeargle's moveset. It can literally have any four pokemon moves in the entire game, no matter how powerful, no matter how unfair in combination, which makes its fairly low stats and lack of an evolution rather merciful, more than anything. What's actually happening remains a mystery; it just seems Smeargle is a pokemon capable of learning any other ability after it paints a nice picture of it with its super-special reserve paint."
--- Sooo, is it like that "build your own mon" with its moveset?
Miltank (used ROLLOUT!)
-- Counterpart to Taurus, but even more of a murder machine.
-- Hijab?
-- Chansey analogue
-- OP raises a solid point about the udders and furry face thing...
Raikou - Entei - Suicune (Raiju)
-- What are they? Best guess is resurrected and improved Jolteon, Flareon, and Vaporeon, but it remains ambiguous.
-- Raikou seems to be a smilodon/tiger
-- Entei "barks", but seems lionish
-- Suicune is the odd one out, but it has a cheetah-ish pattern, despite being the slow one.
-- Ho-Oh resurrected them from a building fire, and their gimmick is running around, teleporting, and using "Roar" to end battles.
Larvitar - Pupitar - Tyranitar
-- Really unique, pseudolegendary dark/rock kaiju with arthropod influence.
-- like the Dratini line, but done properly. And mountain drakes, instead of water dragons.
Lugia - Ho-Oh (Phoenix)
-- Ho-Oh is just "Hoho", a straight-up Chinese Phoenix.
-- Lugia may have been a creation for the anime, by a writer for the anime, who had some alcoholism issues. Lugia probably went from the anime, to the games.
-- Ho-oh's like the sun, Lugia's like the moon.
-- Ho-Oh made Ash immortal
Celebi
-- A "Mew clone"? This mon feels odd and like it's a bit... out of place? Like Aipom, it just seems a little bit like maybe it was meant to be somewhere else? Not saying that in a bad way. It's just a "vibe" it has, like it's foreign to its settings.
-- The Ilex Shrine and GS ball were connected to it, but North America never got anything out of this.
-- Bug-fairy theme.
Don't serve the devil!
... Okay I guess I'm done reminiscing about mons, I guess we were after the weird imaginative stuff, and imagining what environments mons would be in. And ideas of harnessing their powers and abilities to do more than just battle for pokeyen.