toadkemon-blog

[toadkemon-blog]

#010-012: Caterpie line

Finally we’re out of the starters and onto the actual, varied Pokemon! Well... kinda. In the next few updates we’ll be seeing some of the most common tropes that are carried to every new generation, including early-game bugs, early-game birds, early-game mammals, and electric rodents. Caterpie and friends, however, are the OG early game bugs, and some of my favorites of them all. Let’s find out why. 

Caterpie looks almost exactly like a real caterpillar - the eastern tiger swallowtail, to be exact. It’s got its nice little Pokemon-esque charm with the big eyes, and its sprite with it swaying back and forth is honestly pretty adorable. It’s sadly not worth much in battle, since it has garbage stats and barely learns anything, but you evolve it absurdly early (Level 7!) and so you don’t really get to spend much time with little Caterpie here. Very cute Pokemon, looks just like what I’d expect a cartoon caterpillar to look like.

Metapod is the first in the cocoon Pokemon archetype, and true to its form, it barely moves, is hard and stiff, and doesn’t learn any moves except Harden. Of course, as a result, it’s the butt of MANY dick jokes (I was guilty of naming all of my Metapods some slang term for penis for a good 10 years). There’s not much to write home about here with Metapod, but it’s a necessary evil to get to the next stage. I do have to say though that it’s probably one of the best cocoon Pokemon out there - almost all the others really do have ridiculously uninspiring designs.

So then of course Metapod blossoms, and we get Butterfree! Kind of a vast contrast color-wise compared to its prior two stages, but that’s exactly how caterpillar metamorphosis takes place in real life. Butterfree isn’t really good for much in-game, but it’s become one of the more iconic Pokemon in my life for better or for worse. I’m obviously talking about the anime episode “Bye Bye Butterfree” which was probably the first time I shed tears at a children’s cartoon. That shit was RAW, with Ash releasing his Butterfree into the wild, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen Butterfree come up in discussion without referring to that exact episode. I have to give it some credit too - it was able to be as sad as it was because Butterfree is a really cute and overall fun Pokemon. It’s got a really appealing and simple butterfly design (I had a small plush Butterfree when I was little) and it had a very cute voice in the anime. Even if it’s been outclassed by much cooler and more useful Bug-type Pokemon since its debut, even some in the same generation, I’ll always have a nostalgic love for it. In fact, Butterfree is probably my favorite Bug-type of the Kanto region.

These guys are great. They’re simple, but not overly so or boring, and they just have this apparent charm that’s to be expected in a Kanto line with such strong ties to the anime and so many people’s childhoods. Easy 9/10 here! 

[toadkemon-blog]

#007-009: Squirtle line

It’s been a few days. I wish I had a relevant excuse, but considering it’s a Saturday afternoon and I’m doing nothing, I might as well go all out and post three entries in a row today to make up for the ones I’ve been blowing off. Now here’s Squirtle and friends - the first in the Water-type starter tradition, a type that has often kind of been unfairly maligned by me because of my special affinity towards Fire-types. But are they cool, despite this? The short answer is yes.

Squirtle is a classic. The sunglasses-wearing Squirtle in the anime is one of the most memorable characters from the time I actually bothered to watch the anime, and it’s another one of those instantly iconic Pokemon designs. It’s a turtle with a curly tail (I always loved that conspiracy theory that Squirtle’s tail was a squirrel tail, hence the name SQUIRtle, even if it’s pretty obviously just “squirt” + “turtle”) and it has those classic Pokemon eyes. It actually looks a ton like Charmander face-wise, and they have basically the same expression and everything, but it was the first generation plus they have different enough personalities to make up for it. I’ve always been a fan of turtles though, and while another turtle starter later in the series kind of blows Squirtle out of the water (spoilers?) it’s a great first start, and an overall very solid cute Pokemon.

Wartortle is somewhere in between Ivysaur and Charmeleon in terms of how natural of a progression it is after Squirtle. A lot of details about Wartortle are pretty strange and honestly don’t make much sense - why did it randomly sprout two winged ears on its head? Why does it now have a giant furry tail? Why does its name suddenly incorporate the word “war” into it? Why does the Pokedex casually say it can live for 10,000 years? It only made sense to me that this would be a reference to some obscure Japanese creature, and sure enough, Bulbapedia confirms my suspicions - it’s a reference to a turtle yokai that lived for 10,000 years. Nice. Wartortle is aight, I kind of like its color scheme, but I never really got what they were trying to do here.

“I never really got what they were trying to do here” is also a good way to open up a discussion about Blastoise! Pretty much everything about Wartortle is discarded and Blastoise just becomes a giant, slightly Bowser-esque turtle with literal steel cannons poking out from its shell. This is one of the Pokemon anatomies that has always bothered me. I get that retconning Blastoise into Water/Steel would’ve been weird because it was a starter, but how did those cannons come to be? Is it a robot? Are they actually made out of bone or something and just look artificial? I like Blastoise on its own well enough, but I don’t get the connection here between it, Squirtle, and Wartortle. I’d probably say it’s my least favorite of the three Kanto starter final forms, but that’s only because it’s not all that impressive. Sure, I may say this as a Venusaur fan, but at least Venusaur’s design is pretty unorthodox and original. Blastoise is cool, but it’s never really clicked for me. 

Things don’t really change much here for Mega Blastoise. At least it’s not on the level of Mega Charizard X. Basically its face just gets more menacing, it gets an EVEN BIGGER CANNON, and then TWO MORE CANNONZ sprouting out from its arms. Rule of cool factor here seems to be what’s basically dictating Mega Blastoise’s design, and I don’t really dislike it but it’s eh. One of the more middle-of-the-road megas indeed.

I like Squirtle’s line, but they’ve always been my least favorite of the Kanto starters. That’s of course barely even an insult since they’re all wonderful and provide tons of nostalgia, but these three have come across as more disjointed than a lizard that turns into a dragon, and that’s saying a lot. Squirtle is adorable, if I were just ranking Squirtle I’d give it an easy 10, but I haven’t really felt any passion towards the other two so I’m gonna go with a 7.5/10. Extra .5 added because they ARE objectively good Pokemon, just not my personal absolute faves.

[toadkemon-blog]

#004-006: Charmander line

I actually stayed true to my word and updated two days in a row! We’ll see how long that lasts but I’m feeling pretty nice and solid right now. Anyway, Charmander and friends are the first Fire-type starters -- even though I’ve almost always picked Fire at the beginning of the game, and it’s one of my favorite types, I’ve come to realize that I can really only say I genuinely love 2 of the Fire-type starter lines. Will Charmander be one of them? There’s only one way to find out.

Charmander is adorable, there’s no getting around it. One thing you’ll soon come to see is that I love the color orange, and so any orange Pokemon pretty much already gets props for me just because of that. In addition Charmander has giant eyes and cute little fangs. Awww! While I said Venusaur is my favorite of the Kanto final forms, Charmander is easily my favorite of the first stages. It’s easily recognizable as a real animal (a lizard or salamander) but also has enough charm, for instance the flaming tail, to make it look recognizable as a Pokemon. I also had what feels like multiple little plastic Charmander toys when I was really young, and of course baby geargetaway was even more enthralled by Charmander’s orange. Overall, Charmander gets a 10/10 - it’s got a really cute design, it was a star on Ash’s team in the anime, and it’s a Fire-type. All very good things.

Charmeleon is a bit of a contrast. Unlike Bulbasaur and its buddies, who stay the same almost the whole way through, Charmander’s line is a bit of a jumbled mess, which is why you’ll see all three of these getting different ratings (and that’s not even getting started on the megas). It’s kind of a bummer that Charmeleon is so much less cuter than Charmander - it has a darker, more harsh red color scheme, a menacing expression on its face like it’s about ready to throw some punches or something, and it’s crouching like it’s ready to battle. Even its Pokedex entries talk about how it “mercilessly destroys its foes” to which I say chill out, Charmeleon. It’s also, contrary to its name, not chameleon-esque in the slightest, which I have to say is some false advertising. Charmeleon gets a 7/10 - I mean, it’s still good by association, but it doesn’t light my world on fire (which is especially upsetting considering it literally has a tail made of fire). This will be the first of many forgettable middle evolutions.

...and then here we have Charizard, the original favorite Pokemon of edgy preteens everywhere. I was definitely a MASSIVE Charizard fan for a while, which I’m pretty sure coincided with its debut in Super Smash Bros, something I was obviously ecstatic about. Charizard gets a lot of love and a lot of hate from two very different sides, and I can honestly kinda understand both. For one, it’s a giant, orange, flaming dragon. That design just instantly screams cool, even if it’s really only cool to a specific demographic. It seems to be on an entirely different level than Venusaur and Blastoise, just based on objective coolness, which hardly seems fair. I guess it’s a good thing that Charizard isn’t Fire/Dragon (or at least regular Charizard isn’t) because it would be wiping the floor with the other two. 

So Charizard’s design obviously instantly screams cool to a lot of people, and it’s overall a pretty solid design. Where does the hate come from? I mean, it’s obvious that something this ridiculously popular would get called overrated by a bunch of hipsters on the internet (and just like my “Charizard is better than sliced bread” phase, I also had a “Charizard is an overrated piece of turd” phase), but I don’t know. GameFreak kind of started to buy into the hype when they took Squirtle and Ivysaur out of Smash but kept Charizard in, and that’s not even to mention what we’re getting into next. But I do like Charizard a lot. Even if it’s not one of my all-time favorites, I have to give it an 8/10 just because of how much I loved it once upon a time. 

Charizard got TWO mega evolutions in X and Y, which is the other example of GameFreak buying into Charizard’s hype to an absurd level. I mean, look at this design, was this really needed? The gratuitous spikes, wispy blue fire, and black color scheme all seem to be spawned from the DeviantArt of some 13-year-old wannabe Fakemon designer who’s just now going through their emo phase. It also gets retyped to DRAGON, fulfilling everyone’s wildest dreams but also making it super OP. I’m not a big fan of Mega Charizard X and it’s honestly one of the reasons I chose Y over X (although I didn’t even end up picking Charmander anyway...). 3/10. Just wasn’t needed.

#PrayForMegaCharizardY indeed. This one was kind of swept under the rug, which is unfair since even though I don’t love it, it’s leagues better than X. It’s got its own cool ability, a design that’s a good callback to the original Charizard, and... also a gratuitous amount of edgy spikes (look at those tattered looking wings too), but overall it’s not awful. Drought is a cool ability, it’s just a pity that it has a piddly defense of 78 because I’ve tried to use one of these things in Pokemon Showdown and it dies to a single Rock Tomb. Gotta love Charizard being 4x weak to Rock. Anyway, Mega Charizard Y is aight. 6/10. 

Overall, Charmander is a line of high highs and low lows. I don’t really know how to rate them all, but since I do love Fire-types a lot (this IS in fact one of the two lines I can safely say I enjoy without reservations) and since Charmander is so cute, I’ll give them all a 9/10. Would they be a perfect 10 without Mega Charizard X fucking things up? We may never know. 

[toadkemon-blog]

#001-003: Bulbasaur line

So we’re kicking things off with the first Pokemon ever (at least in terms of National Dex listings) - Bulbasaur. I love all three Kanto starters for various reasons, one of them obviously being nostalgia, but I’ve always had a soft spot for Bulbasaur. Also here’s how this is going to work - I’m going to go through each Pokemon in the line, discuss their designs and maaaaybe their in-game use if I care enough, and then give them either an overall rating or a different rating for each Pokemon in the line, depending on how consistent the quality is. Let’s start.

So poor Bulbasaur always feels like the most neglected of the three Kanto starters. Its design isn’t quite as instantly appealing as a cute orange lizard or a cute blue turtle, instead being a weird frog dinosaur thing with a bulb on its back. But honestly that’s where I feel most of the appeal comes from! Bulbasaur is cute, and it’s also unique in that it’s the first dual-typed starter, being Grass/Poison. Kanto LOVES Poison-types and likes to tack it onto random shit to the point where more Poison-types were introduced in Gen I than any other gen, and I don’t really know why/how it fits for this line, but it works in a way. Bulbasaur’s design is simple but unique, and I’ve grown to love it more over the years.

Ivysaur is a slightly bigger, slightly bluer, more souped-up looking Bulbasaur with a flower on its back! Once again, it doesn’t really look like much of anything in the real world (a lot of Kanto Pokemon have this quirk to them, they really put the “monsters” in “Pocket Monsters”) except if I had to guess, they look kind of like those weird “mammal-like reptiles” (or dicynodonts) from before the dinosaurs were around. Google tells me that one of the recently discovered ones is named “Bulbasaurus,” which scientists insist is a coincidence, but that sounds sketchy to me. Anyway, back to Ivysaur. It’s the quintessential starter middle evolution, but it was also playable in Super Smash Bros. Brawl where it kicked all sorts of ass. I actually kinda loved using it and I’d put it above Charmeleon and Wartortle just for that reason, probably. 

Venusaur is also not nearly as instantly alluring as a giant flaming dragon or a turtle with cannons coming out of its shell, but it has a charm to it, and for that reason I’m going to come out and say that Venusaur is my favorite Kanto starter final form. It just looks fucking cool. Not cool in a “WHOA GIANT ORANGE FIRE DRAGON” kind of way, but cool in a “this is a giant prehistoric creature with a goddamn pink flower sprouting out of its back and it somehow manages to look menacing” way. In addition, I have a bit of nostalgia bias here because one of my first Pokemon cards ever, when I was REALLY young, was a Venusaur. It’s kind of the underdog here, and while I personally used Charizard when picking a starter just due to my Fire-type love, I have to say that Venusaur’s design is a bit better. The flower has bloomed and become a really cool feature on it, and it looks like a perfect natural progression from Bulbasaur, which is something I feel like the other two aren’t quite as good at.

Of course, Venusaur got a Mega Evolution in Gen VI, and it actually happens to be one of my favorite megas! It barely looks any different except for the fact that it’s grown more greenery on its back and now has a giant pink flower on its head, and I kind of like that. Not every mega has to have tons of spikes or an edgy new color scheme or morbid Pokedex entries to prove how badass it is. Just like this whole line, it’s simple but effective.

So overall, I’m a big fan of Bulbasaur and kin. They’re the Kanto starters that change the least from start to finish, and while that may make them look a little more boring at first glance, they also look much less disjointed. That + nostalgia goggles for Venusaur make these three an easy 10/10.