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inikavulpixelreviews · 6 years

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Let’s Talk About Pokemon - Halloween Special

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Boys and girls of every age Wouldn't you like to see something strange?

Come with us and you will see This, our town of Halloween

This is Halloween, this is Halloween! Pumpkins scream in the dead of night

This is Halloween, everybody make a scene! Trick or treat till the neighbors gonna die of fright

It's our town, everybody scream! In this town of Halloween

I am the one hiding under your bed Teeth ground sharp and eyes glowing red

I am the one hiding under your stairs Fingers like snakes and spiders in my hair

This is Halloween, this is Halloween!

Halloween! Halloween!

In this town we call home Everyone hail to the pumpkin song

In this town, don't we love it now? Everybody's waiting for the next surprise

'Round that corner, man hiding in the trash can Something's waiting now to pounce, and how you'll

Scream!

This is Halloween Red 'n' black, and slimy green

Aren't you scared?

Well, that's just fine Say it once, say it twice Take a chance and roll the dice Ride with the moon in the dead of night

Everybody scream, everybody scream!

In our town of Halloween!

I am the clown with the tear-away face Here in a flash and gone without a trace

I am the "who" in the call, "Who's there?" I am the wind blowing in your hair

I am the shadow on the moon at night Filling your dreams to the brim with fright

This is Halloween, this is Halloween! Halloween! Halloween! Halloween! Halloween!

Tender lumplings everywhere Life's no fun without a good scare

That's our job, but we're not mean In our town of Halloween

In this town Don't we love it now?

Everybody's waiting for the next surprise

Skeleton Jack might catch you in the back And scream like a banshee Make you jump out of your skin

This is Halloween, everybody scream Won't ya please make way for a very special guy

Our man Jack is King of the Pumpkin patch Everyone hail to the Pumpkin King, now!

This is Halloween, this is Halloween Halloween! Halloween! Halloween! Halloween!

In this town we call home Everyone hail to the pumpkin song

La la la la la la la la la la (Halloween! Halloween!) La la la la la la la la la la (Halloween! Halloween!)

Ohhhh yes, today is a special day indeed! We're about to dive into not only what I'd call the four most definitively “Halloween” Pokemon in the entire series, but a group of some of my top faves in the entire franchise's history. I've never stopped appreciating Halloween, even long past growing too old to be trick-or-treating. I'm already big into Autumn as my favorite season but Halloween only escalates that aesthetic appeal.

Nothing gets me quite like that child-like spooky look. The Jack-o-lanterns, black cats, ghosts, gargoyles, and slimy critters. (And the PUMPKIN REESE'S CUPS) Obviously I'm quite into more adult-oriented horror like Silent Hill, Creepypastas, and DOOM. But nothing beats some wholesome all-ages Halloween creepy monster creation for me. And Pokemon's of course had no shortage of that. Especially in these later Generations.

In fact, between these four I'm about to cover, Klefki, Sliggoo, Malamar, Spritzee, Honedge, Espurr, and Braixen/Delphox, Gen 6 feels like arguably the most Halloweeny Generation out there so far. Probably part-way why I'd call this my third closest to favorite Generation.

But in any case, let's get to covering these four. Yes, just as a little Halloween treat for y'all I'll cover two lines today!

708: Phantump

And right off the haunted mansion gates, we're getting treated to some James Turnery goodness! I've not brought him up in a while so I don't sound like a broken record, but for whatever it's worth, he's the designer that's made gold like Golurk and Mandibuzz as well. Sadly this and Trevenant are his only additions this time around, but I'll definitely not complain!

Phantump is just an absolutely precious little ghost kid! And that's not even an exaggeration, this thing is literally the ghost of children that got lost and died in the woods. Which of course is arguably one of the most dire-sounding Pokedex entry tidbits ever. Just something to keep in mind when you go around catching these or beating them up for experience.

Phantump is simply too cute for words though. It's trying to spook you but in a way only a child would know how, going up to you and making a little stereotypical “oooooooo!!!” ghost face and scream. It's the perfect blend of spooky and ADORABLE. I even like how the bark marks on the side of its eyes look like sleep-deprived/stressed out little eye bags. Such a tiny detail as an itty bitty little line just adds so much more personality to this thing.

Another reason I'm so excited about these four. Like Bug/Water, Grass/Ghost up until now has been something I was yearning for hardcore since like, Gen 3. There's so much potential in the type between haunted trees, jack-o-lanterns, and just generally spooky-looking woodland monsters that it pained me to see both Gen 4 and 5 go by with nothing. Ohoho, but then I got to Route 16 in my first playthrough of X to lay eyes on a wild Phantump for the first time ever and to find it's A HAUNTED STUMP! FINALLY, MY PRAYERS ANSWERED!!

Personal Score: 10/10

This literally has eaten up one page on a word document so far and we're still only on the FIRST POKEMON HERE...

709: Trevenant

Things only get spookier as we move on down to Trevenant, and god yes. I've wanted a haunted tree Pokemon for so long. It's just such a staple to Halloween, and Ents are a high-fantasy monster that have been missing from Pokemon anyways. And I'm so glad they meshed the two ideas into one here. It's even better by not just being a bipedal tree so much as a literal tree that uprooted itself and uses its hunking roots as legs. Hell yes.

Trevenant in general is just one of the coolest spooky Pokemon in the whole series. And even one of the conceptually more frightening in the entire game as well. This child spirit has grown so angry to those that want to harm the forest, that this thing can root itself to bend a whole forest to its will, forcing anyone polluting or chopping down trees in its forest to get lost and never be able to leave. But to other wild Pokemon and those that respect the forests, it is kind to.

In fact, this Pokemon has one of the spookier moves in the whole game. Its signature move, Forest’s Curse, changes the opponent’s type to Grass. Seems simple and innocent enough on the surface. But there’s a ridiculous amount of implications with this move. Forest’s Curse. Ever so somewhat implying that Trevenant may turn its human victims into trees themselves, permanent fixtures in Trevenant’s forest. That and there’s a ridiculous amount of existential dread in the thought of being polymorphed into an inanimate object. Becoming just another tree in the forst, which no other person would be able to distinguish you from any other tree.

Trevenant is just a nearly-perfect tree ghost. The decrepit barely-alive tree look, the cool, somewhat pale color scheme. The rad branch-antlers. The aforementioned root legs. The piercing red cycloptic eye. How the breaks in the bark for an unhinged-jaw kind of mouth look. This is a Pokemon clearly designed by Halloween lovers and for Halloween lovers.

Personal Score: 10/10

This Pokemon was MADE FOR ME.

710: Pumpkaboo

Oh, but the Halloween goodness doesn't stop there. Imagine my delight when I continued exploring around the routes I found Phantump on only to encounter THIS THING. THIS CUTIE. THIS BLACK-CAT-JACK-O-LANTERN MONSTER. I've wanted a pumpkin critter in Pokemon for about as long as I can remember. Ever since I’ve become so obsessed with Halloween. Things like Cacnea, Spiritomb, and maybe even Lampent/Chandelure have given us fairly close approximations but nothing to exactly hit the specifically, undoubtedly, undeniably Halloween mark that is a clear as horrid night Jack-o-lantern. And the wait has more than paid off.

The one sole flaw I can think of with Pumpkaboo is that it'll probably the peak of Halloween creatures we'll get in Pokemon PROBABLY for good. Like, I don't know if we'll ever get more Halloweeny than a thing that is half black cat, half bat (and pretty much half vampire), half pumpkin. It's impossible. You can't out-Halloween that in a single cohesive creature. You just merged three to four of Halloween's biggest icons into ONE creature so seamlessly. It even comes with a signature move Trick-or-Treat!! Which does what else but turn its opponents into fellow GHOST TYPES. GHHHH.

Pumpkaboo is just a brilliantly unexpected twist on the usual jack-o-lantern monster. There's a countless number of em that have the pumpkin as the head with the usual face carved out of the front. And as much as those never get old for me, Pumpkaboo is just such a fun and unique take on it! The pumpkin is more like a body; still with little eyespots carved into it, but the head is poofing out of the top of the pumpkin, looking like a merging between a black cat and a vampire bat. Like I've been saying, you've fused so much Halloween into one adorably poutty and yet clean and coherent critter than I can't handle it. I'm gonna be reduced to a dribbling MESS over here.

And as a fun bonus, it even comes in different sizes! And with slight stat changes to go with those sizes. You can use the smaller and less durable but faster tiny Pumpkaboos or the huge, bulky, but slow ones.

This is just ENTIRELY Halloween goodness. And I'm being spoiled by Gamefreak over here. Wanted a Grass/Ghost for years and years? Here, have TWO LINES OF TWO EACH. Jack-o-lantern a hard want on your Pokemon wishlist? Here's a little bcatkin to absolutely ERADICATE my expectations. This is so perfect for me I would almost half suspect Junichi Masuda himself to come to my doorstep and tell me to never ask them for anything ever again.

Personal Score: 10/10

hhhhhhhhhhhhhhHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

HAMBOLEEN!!!

HANDBAMBOWEEN!!!!!!!!!!

711: Gourgeist

We’re finally at our final addition on this spooky parade. Sadly Gourgeist doesn't make a bumbling buffoon out of me quite like Pumpkaboo does, but I still love the thing a lot. It's still a different and cool flavor of squash monster, just fairly different from Pumpkaboo's. It's a little LESS genius of a mish-mash too but oh well.

This like we're looking at something of a creature I liked to look at as more of a giant melty candlestick hanging out of a gourd. May or may not be the intention, but y'know.

Gourgeist is still a very lovable Halloween monster in its own merits! It's more or less got the same face, and I love me tiny little fangs. (Even if they only show with its mouth open) The hair-hands are also really neat, and generally are a monster feature that doesn't get used enough. And the fringe covering one eye too. It's like a Hot Topic brand of Halloween!

And it does get a much more traditional pumpkin carving face too. It's just different ENOUGH to not be a bit odd how Pumpkaboo looks one way with Gourgeist totally another. You could somewhat even see it as a face-marking adaptation, like how many moths adapt a pattern on their wings that look like a giant face to scare off predators. It would've been nice to see the cat-bat parts played up in a Pumpkaboo evolution, but Gourgeist has enough goodness going on its own where I'm not upset of course.

I just generally love its shape too. A real odd body shape between the arms being on its head and the pear-shaped silhouette to it. It's easily one of the Pokemon I have the most fun drawing when I find the mood to. It's just so. Drawable. And pretty. Oh hey, that's another thing! We don't have that many pretty-creeps in the Pokedex yet. So there's another niche Gourgeist can fill!

Personal Score: 10/10

Everyone! Everyone wins!

Oh and one more thing! I don't talk about shinies a lot in these reviews obviously but I wanna highlight these just because on top of being some of my top favorite Pokemon in the whole series, they even have some of my top favorite shinies in the whole series!! Phantump and Trevenant not only rock the absolutely beautiful white with red accents color scheme, but that's actually based on a real tree! White aspens are indeed white-bark trees that have leaves that grow red in the fall. So PRETTY.

And while Pumpkaboo and Gourgeist's aren't seemingly based on anything in particular other than some alternative jack-o-lantern decoration colors, you just can't go wrong with black, purple, and yellow. So good.

So that's only BONUS POINTS for some already glorious Pokemon.

Happy Halloween everybody! Stay spooky!

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#Pokemon Reviews #Phantump #Trevenant #Pumpkaboo #Gourgeist #Pokemon #Pokemon Halloween #708 Phantump #709 Trevenant #710 Pumpkaboo #711 Gourgeist

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