My Quest Concludes

On the last day of March this year, I set out to pass judgement on all one hundred and fifty-six of the new Pokémon of Black and White.  I have spent the intervening nine months whining constantly about the general incompetence of Game Freak’s designers and the total unworthiness of the name “Pokémon” of such creations as Unfezant, Emolga, and (shudder) Garbodor.  So, here’s the big question: what’s the final score?

Out of one hundred and fifty-six Pokémon, I have:

Condemned eighty,

Spared seventy-five,

And shaken my head in confusion and given up on one.

Wait, that can’t be right!  I’ve let almost half of them live!  I must have been far too nice!  Let me see those...

I let them keep Liepard?  What was I thinking?

Seriously, though, that’s sort of the point of this blog.  Everyone’s always saying that the ‘new’ Pokémon ruin everything (where ‘new’ is everything that was released after you personally stopped playing) – and, you know what?  A lot of them do!  A lot of them are utter tripe!  But, believe it or not, there are still some good ideas in this mess, and I’ve been putting myself through this because I wanted to prove it... at least, as far as you can prove something like that.  Before Black and White, when people were arguing about whether Pokémon had been Ruined Forever, they had to argue about the merits and failings of a couple of dozen different Pokémon from across multiple generations, which meant that everything was incredibly complex and very subjective.  Now, thanks to Game Freak, you can just trot out bloody Garbodor and the argument is over, which I don’t think is very fair.  This blog, and all of the entries within it in which I affirmed a Pokémon’s right to exist, are intended as a counterpoint to Garbodor.  It’s taken me nine months, but I think I’ve done enough that you can point at Pokémaniacal and say “there, see!  There are still good Pokémon!” and maybe, just maybe, you won’t be laughed out of the room and have to go and live under a rock for three years (as always, I am the very voice of optimism).

My quest is concluded, and my work here is done!

...so.  Hum.

...now what?

When I first started this blog it was basically for the amusement of my friends... and somehow I sort of imagined that working my way through the entire Unovan Pokédex would keep me busy basically forever, and then when forever was over, I’d be done.  This has gotten a little out of hand.  I have a blog now.  I used to think it might just drift away and leave me alone, but I’ve finished and it’s still here.  I have readers, for goodness’ sake; I had always quietly assumed that this would be a bit like having minions, but I am beginning to suspect that this is not the case.

I probably should have thought this through.

I’m certainly not going to commit to reviewing all four hundred and ninety-three other Pokémon; I think that might very well drive me mad...der.  Then again, I’m certainly not going to stop here; like I said, I have the blasted blog now and there’s a dreadful queasy feeling welling up in the pit of my stomach that I’m starting to think might be loyalty to my readers.  So... here’s what we’re going to do.  I am going to take a couple of weeks off and maybe go to the beach, because it’s Christmas and I’ve earned it, damnit.  In the mean time, you lot can use the comments section on this post to tell me what you would like me to write about.  I have a couple of ideas rattling around in my skull for small projects that I could probably stretch out to a month or two if I had to, but I'd like to hear what everyone else thinks would be fun to look at, and I offer my heartfelt promise that I will do at least some of what you tell me to.  Within reason.  Until I become distracted by something shiny.  Seriously, though, I'd love to hear where you think I should go with this.

I’d like to give a tremendously loud and appreciative thank you to my long-suffering proofreaders, Jim and Louise, for putting up with my rubbish, to Satoshi Tajiri and Game Freak for coming up with all this lunacy in the first place and for remaining oblivious to all the insults I sling their way, to Xous54 for letting me use his lovely artwork of Genesect, Meloetta and Keldeo, and, of course, to all the delightfully mad people out there who actually read this nonsense for indulging my delusions of grandeur.  You may not be my minions, but if I can make you smile now and again, that’s good enough for me.

I'll return some time in January, but until then, Merry Christmas from Pokémaniacal, and a suitably bizarre and eventful New Year to you all!

Kyurem

All right!  One hundred and fifty-five down, one to go!  I can do this!  Yeah!  Go me!  I’m awesome!  Now, let’s wrap this up, with Unova’s last remaining legendary Pokémon: the glacial Dragon-type Kyurem!

Kyurem is a mysterious and powerful Dragon Pokémon who lives hidden in a crater known as the Giant Chasm, near Lacunosa Town in north-eastern Unova.  The people of Lacunosa Town don’t know what lives in the Chasm, but they regard it as a place of ill omen and are afraid to go near it.  The town is surrounded by a wall to keep out whatever lives there, and the people of the town normally stay inside their homes at night, since old legends warn of a monster that fell from the sky long ago and takes away people and Pokémon at night to eat them.  Their fear is understandable; Kyurem’s hard, almost skeletal visage is not a welcoming sight.  As far as I can make out, though, he just wants to lurk in his dark cave at the back of his meteor crater and be left alone.  The information we have on Kyurem from the Pokédex seems to suggest that he’s unwell – maybe sick, injured, or just plain old – and can’t control his own ice powers properly anymore.  His own body has long since been frozen by his own chilling aura, leaving him a shadow of his former self.  So, what was his former self like?  The air is thick with speculation.  It is agreed, almost universally, that Kyurem completes a trio with the black and white dragons, Zekrom and Reshiram, and will probably be the mascot of the third game Nintendo will inevitably produce alongside Black and White in order to wring more money out of us.  Aside from the correspondence of their type combinations (Zekrom is Dragon/Electric, Reshiram is Dragon/Fire and Kyurem is Dragon/Ice), Kyurem learns many of the same attacks at the same levels as Zekrom and Reshiram, and, as you can see, is grey, halfway between black and white.  However, Kyurem is weaker overall than the other two dragons and doesn’t have a powerful signature move comparable to their Blue Flare and Bolt Strike attacks (no, Glaciate does not count).  If he is the final member of this hypothetical trio then there’s something wrong with him; like I said, he seems to be more than a little unwell.  If Kyurem does turn out to be the mascot of “Pokémon Grey Version,” his fans are hoping he’ll be upgraded somehow when that game is made, much as Giratina was when Platinum was released, and this seems more than likely (though how much more powerful he’ll become is very much up for debate).

So, if Zekrom and Reshiram represent yin and yang, calm and vibrant, night and day, how does Kyurem fit in?  Why is he weaker than they are?  Just what is his deal, anyway?  Well, the basic idea of the yin-yang concept is that opposites cannot exist in isolation (hills can’t exist without valleys, you need a source of light to cast a shadow, and so on) and bring each other into being simultaneously, or form a cycle.  Pretty much everything is created by the separation and interaction of opposites – which is actually similar to how many physicists think the universe really works; emptiness and nothingness represent a state of equilibrium, and all matter represents a deviation from that equilibrium which can only exist because it is balanced by an equal quantity of antimatter lurking somewhere beyond our perception (it’s not just matter that works like this; forces and energy are brought about by deviations from equilibria as well... but this is a Pokémon blog, and I’m an archaeologist, so let’s not get into that).  So, if Reshiram and Zekrom are yin and yang (or matter and antimatter, if you prefer), Kyurem represents wuji, the equilibrium state we’re left with when they cancel each other out.  What does this mean for Kyurem in terms of his existence as a Pokémon?  A popular theory is that, since we know Reshiram and Zekrom were once a single dragon until they were split apart by the strife between the two ancient heroes of Unova, the weakened, decrepit Kyurem we know might be the shattered corpse of the original being from which they were created.  A particularly tantalising extension of this theory is that the plot of the third game could culminate with Zekrom and Reshiram being absorbed into Kyurem, restoring the form and power of the original dragon.  This particular prediction seems, on balance, a little far-fetched to me, but we are still left with the fact that Kyurem is not a match for his counterparts.  Reshiram’s delicate, feminine and birdlike appearance is very deliberate and meant as a contrast to Zekrom’s powerful and dynamic build, so it seems likely to me that, if Kyurem is the completion of a trio, the impression we get from his physical appearance is no less carefully calculated, and that impression is of a fierce, savage, but ultimately diminished or even crippled Pokémon.  The conclusion I have arrived at in the course of my research for this entry is that, while Kyurem as we know him represents the nothingness when yin and yang cancel out, the widely-anticipated restored Kyurem will be symbolic of the potential inherent in wuji, the possibility of unbalancing the equation, the blank canvas of a world without yin and yang.  It’s all up in the air until Game Freak get around to making Grey, though, so do give the matter some thought for yourself – this is quite a fun topic for speculation.

Right, well, I’ve been nattering about Kyurem’s mysterious origin and nature for so long I’ve almost run out of time to talk about what he actually does, so I’ll be as brief as I can.  Dragon/Fire is a wonderful combination because those two elements together kill everything.  Dragon/Electric is less wonderful but still strong.  Dragon/Ice isn’t actually bad, those are both powerful elements, but one of the big draws of Ice attacks is that they beat Dragon-types, which is something Dragon attacks do anyway, while the only type that resists Dragon attacks is Steel, which resists Ice as well.  Defensively Ice is just about the only thing that’s bad enough to make Dragon lose its lustre in combination.  Compared to Reshiram and Zekrom, Kyurem pretty much got shafted with respect to his type as well as his slightly lower raw numbers.  His signature move, Glaciate, is situational; it’s far too weak to be his primary attack, but its side-effect of slowing down anything it hits can be useful.  The sad thing is that if Glaciate were maybe 25% stronger it would be an excellent technique.  There are two other attacks, Freeze Shock and Ice Burn, which exist in the game’s coding but which no Pokémon can learn (including Kyurem); these moves seem to be related to Zekrom and Reshiram, and may become Kyurem’s signature moves in Grey, but those have problems of their own that I won’t get into.  Of course, as you’re probably all tired of hearing me say by now, “Kyurem is still a legendary Pokémon.”  He’s fairly fast, very tough and ridiculously powerful.  He has access to the two Dragon-type staples, Draco Meteor and Outrage, and isn’t afraid to use them to inflict massive damage on just about anything.  He has Focus Blast to defeat Steel-types and powerful Ice attacks to deal with everything else.  It’s a shame Kyurem’s physical attacks are so much less varied than his special attacks (he basically has Dragon attacks and Stone Edge; apparently Ice Punch or Icicle Crash was out of the question), because he has the stats to use either well; still, with a unique type, a balance between physical and special attacks that is unusual amongst legendary Pokémon, and a signature move that’s depressingly situational but still a lot less dumb than Techno Blast, Kyurem is a lot of fun to use.

Well, at this point the million-dollar question has to be: what’s my verdict on the last Pokémon of the new generation?  As I’ve said time and again, I don’t care whether a legendary Pokémon is strong.  I know legendary Pokémon are strong; honestly, it takes a lot of work to screw one up (he says with a meaningful glare at Regigigas).  What I care about is their story and how that story fits in with the Pokémon world as a whole... and the thing about Kyurem is that his story hasn’t been written yet.  The nature of Kyurem’s relationship with Reshiram and Zekrom could be hugely interesting, and if it’s done cleverly it could make us see the original story of Black and White in a whole new light.  Alternatively it could be a massive cop-out.  I wouldn’t like to place a bet on this one (though I am quietly optimistic).  I like where I think they’re going with this, but until I actually see it...

I hereby scribble a wavy line and a question mark under this Pokémon’s right to exist!

(That... doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, does it?)

Genesect

Okay, guys, today we’re looking at the last Pokémon that has yet to be officially revealed by Nintendo: a killing machine of unfathomable power, created from the genetic material of an ancient Pokémon by an evil mastermind in order to create the most powerful of all-

...oh, they wouldn’t dare.

...I can’t believe this; they did it.  They actually did it.  They actually recycled Mewtwo’s backstory!  The fiends!

Okay, sure, there are differences.  Genesect was the brainchild of Team Plasma (and presumably of their de facto leader, Ghetsis), the villains of Black and White, who enhanced the deadly prehistoric insect with metal armour and a devastating portable photon cannon, while Mewtwo, who was commissioned by Team Rocket’s shadowy master Giovanni, gained his incredible psychic abilities courtesy of a truly frightening amount of gene splicing (although, in the TV show, Giovanni does also equip him with a suit of armour designed to focus and augment his powers).  Also, it seems pretty clear that Genesect was always a vicious hunter even before Team Plasma got to it, whereas Mewtwo’s predecessor, Mew, is one of the most peaceful and carefree Pokémon you’ll ever find.  As I alluded earlier, though, the similarities are striking, to say the least.  The Genesect project was actually shut down, since Team Plasma’s spiritual leader, N, held a very different attitude towards Pokémon to Giovanni’s; specifically, N believes that Pokémon are perfect beings, and came to the conclusion that the technological enhancements made to Genesect by his scientists were a corruption of its natural purity.  The lab where Genesect was developed was not abandoned, though; a couple of scientists continued to haunt the place and eventually brought their creation to a state resembling completion.  Thus we have Genesect, and... well, I know this is a cheap shot and even thinking something so blatantly subjective makes me feel dirty inside, but it doesn’t look like a Pokémon, damnit!  The robotic enhancements made to Genesect have taken over it so completely that it almost has more in common with the mecha subgenre of anime than with the rest of Pokémon; even the more robotic-looking Steel-types like Magneton have a very stylized appearance that helps them to fit in with the organic crowd.  And really, Game Freak... you gave it a photon cannon?  Really?  I mean, okay, Blastoise’s water cannons are a precedent of sorts, but the whole thing is so outrageously science fiction that it becomes jarring.  Come to think of it, since when did Team Plasma have that kind of technology anyway?  Why wouldn’t they use it themselves; why graft it onto a Pokémon?  Why haven’t we heard that humans have directed energy weapons and why doesn’t that come up more often?  What happens to the noble discipline of Pokémon training when science has created weapons that can emulate a Pokémon’s strongest attacks?  I’m sure the answers to all of these questions would be really interesting if the designers actually intended for us to be asking them!

Just as you might expect from a unique Pokémon augmented by all kinds of wonderfully absurd cybernetics, Genesect is pretty damn strong.  As a Bug/Steel dual-type, it has only one weakness (Fire) and a bucketload of resistances.  For a legendary Pokémon its defences are disappointing, although it’s no pushover, and it’s fast but not amazingly so.  Genesect’s big draw is its combination of powerful physical attacks with powerful energy attacks – plenty of Pokémon can do more damage with one or the other, but very few can match Genesect with both, and just as few defensive Pokémon are comfortable with standing up to both (the classic examples are Blissey and Skarmory; Blissey hates all physical attacks but ignores special attacks, while Skarmory loathes special attacks but doesn’t mind most physical attacks – Genesect can crush both of them).  Its Download ability synergises perfectly with this kind of role, giving it a boost to either physical or energy damage when it switches in based on what will work best against its opponent (so, switch it into Blissey and its physical attacks will be strengthened).  The sad thing is that Genesect has few noteworthy physical attacks; besides its Bug techniques, X-Scissor and U-Turn, all it’s really got are Shadow Claw, which is a bit weak and doesn’t score many super-effective hits, and Explosion, which is not exactly the most practical move in the game (but still definitely worth consideration; if you find yourself in a position where you wouldn’t mind losing your Genesect, Explosion could be a lifesaver).  Just one good attack is enough, though, to take out the Pokémon that only invest in their special defence and have to rely on resistances to take physical damage.  What’s more, its elemental techniques are absurdly varied, including Bug Buzz and Flash Cannon from its own types (I wouldn’t use either of these, incidentally; X-Scissor means that you already have a good source of Bug-type damage, and Steel is a notoriously bad attacking type – Genesect’s other options are more interesting), as well as Flamethrower, Thunderbolt, Ice Beam, Energy Ball, Tri-Attack... and Techno Blast.

Techno Blast is Genesect’s signature move.  Game Freak clearly put a great deal of thought into it, and it is therefore unbelievably stupid.  It works as follows: Genesect can be given one of four items to hold, little compact disks to be slotted into his photon cannon, known as the Douse Drive, Chill Drive, Burn Drive and Shock Drive (you can see which one it’s using by looking at the colour of the little light on the side of the cannon).  Giving it a disk will change the element of Techno Blast from Normal to Water, Ice, Fire or Electric.  In theory, this is a pretty cool and interesting idea.  In practice, Flamethrower, Thunderbolt, Ice Beam and Tri-Attack completely outclass the Fire, Electric, Ice, and Normal versions of Techno Blast; they do more damage, you can use them more often, and they will occasionally burn, paralyze or freeze their targets in addition to doing damage.  What’s more, since TMs are reusable in Black and White, switching between Flamethrower, Thunderbolt and Ice Beam is just as easy as switching between the different varieties of Techno Blast.  As a result, the only one you should even consider using, ever, is the Water one, because Genesect can’t learn any Water attacks.  Water is useful because it’s difficult to resist, so it’s really good on defensive Pokémon that want to get by on just one or two attacks.  On an all-offensive Pokémon with a wide variety of powerful techniques to choose from, the possibility of a Water attack is much less intriguing.  It certainly isn’t worth having to give Genesect a Douse Drive in place of a more useful item like a Life Orb or Choice Scarf.  Techno Blast was clearly supposed to be a clever and useful toy to make Genesect stronger and more fun.  It’s not; it’s a highly impractical gimmick that exposes the designers’ total lack of comprehension of their own game system.

As I keep saying, I think that legendary Pokémon are here to provide material for interesting stories, and that this is the light in which we should view them.  Genesect... well, Genesect is Mewtwo Two, or Mewthree, if you will; the most important point of difference is that Mewtwo could understand what he was and how he came to exist, while Genesect (probably) can’t.  I don’t see what new potential this opens up.  Add to that my general irritation at Genesect’s cyborg features and the blatant lack of thought that went into the abject stupidity that is Techno Blast, and I just want someone to be punished for the creation of this thing, and since both Team Plasma and Nintendo are out of my reach, I’ll just have to take it out on poor Genesect itself.

I hereby deny this Pokémon’s right to exist!  Let it be mounted on a pedestal outside Nintendo’s headquarters as a monument to the glory of Science!

Meloetta

I’m back from Italy and on the home stretch, with only three more Pokémon to go, so let’s check out today’s, the second of three Pokémon that still don’t officially exist according to Nintendo (and therefore have no official art; the pictures I’m using here are by Xous54 and are closely based on the in-game sprites): the enigmatic Meloetta.

Meloetta is a dainty humanoid Pokémon with powers related to music.  Her arms and hands, as well as part of her headdress, are shaped like musical notes, and her wavy hair is reminiscent of a musical score.  She can influence the emotions of people with her song, helping them to achieve the right state of mind for composing music, and could well be based on the Muses, the ancient Greek goddesses of inspiration, or possibly on less ancient interpretations of the same concept.  There were traditionally supposed to be nine Muses, but Meloetta has only two forms (I’m not particularly bothered by this, incidentally; nine forms would be interesting but it would have been difficult to achieve enough differentiation between them to make it worthwhile), which are related to the two main ways humans can participate in music: song and dance.  In her “Aria” form, Meloetta’s hair is green and flows out behind her, while in her “Pirouette” form, her orange hair is wrapped up around the top of her head like a turban and her skirt blows up around her like a ballerina’s tutu.  Meloetta can switch from her Aria form, in which she is a Normal/Psychic dual-type, to her Pirouette form, in which she is a Normal/Fighting dual-type, by using an attack called Relic Song, a technique she forgot long ago but which she can remember with the help of a musician in Castelia City who will also tell you Meloetta’s story.  Her songs and dances were both known for inspiring joy in days gone by, but at some point Meloetta became depressed by all the sorrow in the world and forgot the tune of her Relic Song, probably quite recently in historical terms (the mother of the musician seems to have heard it first-hand, so probably within the last fifty to one hundred years – could be a veiled reference to the second world war, but let’s not get too speculative here).  She also forgot how to dance, since she can’t switch to Pirouette form without knowing Relic Song.

The odd part of this story is the mention of the disappearance of a pair red shoes from somewhere in the world at the same time as Meloetta forgot her Relic Song.  The musician doesn’t actually say that the shoes belonged to Meloetta, but since he doesn’t say who they did belong to or where they were lost, we’re left with assumptions.  Meloetta doesn’t have red shoes in the game (presumably because she never found them again), they aren’t mentioned in her Pokédex entries, the musician doesn’t offer any further explanation of the shoes’ significance, and it’s hard to see what red shoes have to do with... well, anything.  I’ve heard suggestions that it’s a Wizard of Oz reference, which... raises more questions than it answers.  More sensible is the idea that the shoes are from Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tale, The Red Shoes, which is about shoes that force their wearer to dance, but it’s also about the vanity and selfishness of a spoiled young girl and how she eventually learns humility, so any connection to Meloetta’s story is at best vague and superficial.  I suppose it will make more sense after Nintendo stops trying to pretend that Meloetta doesn’t exist, which will probably coincide with the release of another one of those godawful movies that I’m going to have to watch someday.  Red shoes aside, the idea that certain species of Pokémon have, whether by chance or by intent, been guiding the development of human culture, possibly for a very long time, is an interesting one and it’s nice to see a concept that embraces the idea as wholeheartedly as Meloetta does.  I’ve mentioned in the past that Pokémon who look particularly human annoy me, and I stand by that position with regard to Meloetta; she’s too human-looking for me to think of her as a cute Pokémon.  The musical notes are a nice touch but her art isn’t otherwise very interesting.  The concept is still fun, though – so let’s look at the in-game execution.

Meloetta’s Pirouette form differs from her Aria form in preferring physical attacks to special attacks, being faster and more physically resilient than the Aria form, and being far less resistant to special attacks.  This is all straightforward enough.  Meloetta suffers from some of the same issues as Darmanitan does – namely, you can train a Meloetta who prefers to fight in her Aria form, and you can train one who prefers to fight in her Pirouette form, but it’s very difficult to train one who can do both effectively, and downright impossible to come up with a set of four attacks that works effectively in both states, especially since one of those attacks has to be Relic Song.  It doesn’t help that Relic Song is not an exceptional attack anyway – it’s not too weak to be usable, and it will sometimes put its targets to sleep (10% of the time, increased to 20% by Meloetta’s Serene Grace power, which doubles the chance of triggering an attack’s secondary effects) but this is still hardly top-tier stuff.  Moreover, although Meloetta’s special attack stat is excellent, if you’re using Relic Song at all, you probably will have trained your Meloetta for physical attacks, not special ones, so Relic Song will be even weaker than it otherwise might be.  Finally, if your opponent happens to switch in a Ghost-type, it will fail completely since Relic Song is a Normal-type attack, and your Meloetta will be stuck in Aria form.  The advantage is that your opponent won’t know what kind of Meloetta you’ll be using until after your first attack, and might switch in the wrong Pokémon to deal with it.  The corresponding disadvantage is that, since Meloetta changes back to Aria form if she switches out, you may need to use Relic Song more than once in a battle, and after the first time your opponent will know what you’re up to and will effectively have a free turn every time Meloetta comes out.  All that said, Pirouette Meloetta has some strong points – no other Fighting Pokémon is as fast as she is, and only four are stronger.  Her Close Combat attack is a thing to be feared, and she has powerful secondary attacks to back it up in the form of Return, Stone Edge and Acrobatics.  Shadow Claw is weak, but Ghost attacks combine well with Fighting attacks, so it’s worth a thought, and U-Turn is normally useful for its side effect (switching you out after the damage is done) and it would make a decent alternative to Relic Song on Meloetta’s first turn, but remember that Pirouette Meloetta hates having to switch out.  Aria Meloetta doesn’t have to deal with all that, and she can throw together worthwhile special attacking sets with Psychic, Hyper Voice, Calm Mind, Thunderbolt, Focus Blast, Energy Ball or Charge Beam (those last two are particularly effective with Serene Grace).  The problem is that Aria Meloetta doesn’t stand out amongst Psychic-types nearly as much as Pirouette Meloetta does amongst Fighting-types; she’s not fast enough to have a clear advantage over Pokémon like Alakazam, Azelf and Starmie in the offensive stakes, and she doesn’t have the support movepool to beat out the more defensive ones like Sigilyph and Gardevoir.  Relic Song is what makes Meloetta unique, and frankly it doesn’t do a very good job of it.

If anyone remembers why I decided Darmanitan didn’t deserve to exist, you will have figured out what’s coming and why – in Meloetta, Game Freak have presented us with a Pokémon that has a unique and mechanically interesting ability, but implemented it in such a way that you’re really better off ignoring it.  If you do choose to ignore it... well, I’ve made a lot of Meloetta not really standing out amongst Psychic-types, but she is still a legendary Pokémon (and, as a Normal-type, immune to Ghost attacks), so don’t be afraid to go nuts with her once she’s released if you happen to like her; her raw stats are too powerful for her to fail completely.  I know I don’t normally judge legendary Pokémon on their mechanical traits, but this isn’t really actual weakness so much as bad design... besides which, again like Darmanitan, Meloetta has fairly interesting flavour but nothing (yet) which makes me think that she was just too exciting to leave out.

I hereby deny this Pokémon’s right to exist!  Let it be swept up by a tornado in Kansas and dropped on a witch’s head!

Tornadus, Thundurus and Landorus

Today I’m looking at the second of Black and White’s legendary trios, the ogre-like genies Tornadus, Thundurus and Landorus.  Why do these games have so many legendary Pokémon, anyway?  Every set of games always introduces more of the things than the last (compare five in Red and Blue to thirteen in Black and White), and at some point you have to wonder how many we actually need... but I should judge them all on their merits, shouldn’t I?  So, without further ado: the legendary genies, Tornadus, Thundurus and Landorus.

As their astonishingly inventive names attest, Tornadus, Thundurus and Landorus are spirits of wind, lightning and earth; Landorus is a Ground/Flying dual-type, Thundurus an Electric/Flying dual-type, and Tornadus the only single-typed Flying Pokémon in the entire game.  Tornadus and Thundurus are chaotic and sometimes destructive storm spirits who zip around frying people, blowing them away, playing tricks, ransacking things at random, and occasionally beating the hell out of each other and laying waste to a few neighbourhoods in the process.  Landorus, in stark contrast, is a benevolent figure associated with protection and fertility, whose role is to keep the other two in line and to encourage crops to grow healthily.  When Tornadus or Thundurus (or both) makes trouble for the villages of Unova, Landorus shows up to settle things.  Indeed, in order to summon Landorus to fight him in the game, you need to bring both Tornadus (who only appears on Black) and Thundurus (who only appears on White) to Landorus’ shrine, which will provoke him into descending to fight.  This is actually a similar pattern to one we’ve seen before – that of Kyogre, Groudon and Rayquaza.  Groudon is the embodiment of the earth and constantly surrounded by parching sunshine, while Kyogre is the embodiment of the sea and brings rainstorms with him wherever he goes.  The two of them sleep forever, deep beneath the earth but in ancient times they battled ferociously, raising continents and sinking oceans in the process.  In the storyline of Emerald, they are woken up and have to be calmed down by Rayquaza, the embodiment of the sky, before they cause any permanent damage to the planet... so we have two quarrelling weather guardians who have to be controlled by a third, slightly more powerful, one to protect humanity from the fallout of their feud.  And you know what?  I think Tornadus, Thundurus and Landorus do it better.  Well, ‘better’ is a very strong word; the genies do it differently, and I think that their smaller scale and the mischievous personalities of Thundurus and Tornadus are a better fit for the setting than the world-changing powers of Groudon and Kyogre, who really belong in an epic – and that is not something I would discourage at all, but it’s something that Pokémon keeps gingerly dipping one toe into, and epic is not something that can be done by halves.  Thundurus, Tornadus and Landorus have more of a folktale feel to them, which I think is a better fit for the general atmosphere of the Pokémon world as the games present it (although I should take a moment to mention that this is one of those designs where my deep ignorance of Japanese culture is probably interfering with my ability to comment properly on the influences at work here).

In terms of their physical appearance as well, I think the inspirations for some of the genies’ traits go over my head a little.  Their ugly fanged ogre faces are definitely the faces of monsters from Japanese folklore, although I’m not sure about Landorus’ ludicrous hair, which reminds me of nothing so much as a huge mallet.  I suspect that the tentacle-things arcing around their bodies are actually tails, because their Pokédex entries reference releasing energy from their tails and there’s nothing else in their designs that fits the bill, but they look quite odd.  Odd isn’t necessarily bad though and this doesn’t make the genies look ridiculous.  Also, it’s a small detail, but it amuses me somewhat that they each have a different number of horns – Thundurus has one, Tornadus has two and Landorus has three.  Overall, I like the effect they produce; the grotesque visages are in line with their folklore origins, the cloud bodies and tails keep them from looking too human for my liking, the spots and swirls on their skin break up the design a little and make them less monotonous, and they manage to cut a fairly imposing figure... Landorus’ quirky afro aside.

Like all legendary Pokémon (well, almost all... excuse me for a moment while I chuckle condescendingly at Phione), Tornadus, Thundurus and Landorus are very powerful and effective.  All three are very fast; Landorus less so than the other two, but he makes up for it by being tougher all around (Tornadus and Thundurus are quite fragile for legendary Pokémon).  They also have very powerful attacks at their disposal; Tornadus and Thundurus prefer special attacks while Landorus prefers physical attacks, but all three have wide enough movepools and high enough stats to throw together good movesets using either.  They all excel at fast damage-dealing – Thundurus, in particular, is very dangerous because he can use Nasty Plot to raise his already excellent special attack stat to absurd levels and Landorus can do the same for his physical attacks with Swords Dance.  Tornadus and Thundurus are both especially dangerous during rain storms because their Hurricane and Thunder attacks (respectively), which are normally annoyingly unreliable, become perfectly accurate in heavy rain, while Landorus is absolutely devastating in sandstorms, where his Sand Force ability powers up his Ground- and Rock-type attacks.  All three are capable of great mobility with U-Turn, doing damage and switching out in the same turn while also delaying your switch until after you’ve seen whether your opponent is switching or not.  As far as uniqueness goes, Thundurus steals Zapdos’ thunder a bit (no pun intended) by being stronger and faster, but Zapdos can still pull off defensive movesets much more effectively with his superior defences and Roost for healing, Landorus is geared very differently to Gliscor, the other Ground/Flying-type, who is also defensively oriented, and Tornadus has a special place as the only pure Flying-type (as well as having, I think, just about the most powerful Hurricane in the game).

I wasn’t initially very fond of the genies but they are growing on me.  I like their character, their designs strike me as a bit odd but I think they’re in keeping with their initial inspiration, and I think that their role in the world is a good example of where legendary Pokémon ought to sit in the grand scheme of things.  I’m actually struggling now to think of anything I particularly dislike about them... other than, once again, Landorus’ hair.  These are well thought out legendary Pokémon that make sense and add to the atmosphere of the Unova region; a good addition to the pantheon.

I hereby affirm this Pokémon’s right to exist!

Zorua and Zoroark

I should probably begin this entry with a disclaimer: for various reasons, I don’t actually have a Zorua or a Zoroark.  In theory I know everything about them I need to know to write the entry, but their powers are rather complicated, as I’ll explain later, and I’m not sure I can really do justice to their impacts on the flow of battle.  Then again, I’ll probably just do exactly the same thing as I always do: stare at their numbers for a while, research what everyone else says about them on the internet and then make dozens of wildly unsubstantiated assertions laced with bizarre and confusing metaphors before declaring victory and passing out on the sofa.

What, you mean you didn’t know?

Anyway.  Zorua and Zoroark are clever and elusive fox Pokémon, not actually malicious but fond of deception and mischief.  Their main power is their ability to create flawless illusions; they normally use their powers to disguise themselves as other Pokémon, but they can also take human form or even create false images of landscapes.  So far, this is giving me flashbacks to Ninetales – another highly intelligent fox Pokémon with magical abilities related to trickery – probably because she shares a common inspiration with Zorua and Zoroark: the kitsune fox spirits of Japanese legend.  The newer Pokémon focus on a far more specific aspect of kitsune in mythology, though – I think Ninetales can actually shapeshift as well, but Ninetales has been around so long that just about every kind of magic has been attributed to her one way or another by now, while Zorua and Zoroark’s whole personality is based around it; they seem to enjoy fooling people and Pokémon with their illusions just for their own sake (the Pokédex is indirect about this, but Zorua at least seems to be portrayed that way in the TV show).  Ninetales fights through confusion and distraction, but when she wants you dead she can be refreshingly direct about it.  The other point is that, while Ninetales seems to keep to herself for the most part, Zorua and Zoroark have very strong communal ties and are utterly dedicated to protecting members of their packs.  The idea that they’re sociable creatures seems to be backed up by the fact that the only wild Zorua in Black and White is actually hanging out in Castelia City, the largest town in Unova, disguised as a human.  They can’t mimic human speech, so it’s strange that one would choose to stay in the city in human form, so I suppose it must enjoy being around humans.  The only wild Zoroark in the games (also in human form), oddly enough, is hiding out in a broken-down RV in the middle of a dingy forest with a sign at the entrance saying “abandon all hope, ye who enter here,” which seems like a fairly solid indication that she doesn’t want to be bothered by anyone, ever.  I’m not going to try to probe that too much, though, since I think this is supposed to be the same Zoroark as the one from the thirteenth movie, which I sincerely hope I will never see.

Zorua’s art is brilliant; he’s cute without being obnoxious about it, that lovely little smirk gives him some attitude, and the little red-tipped tuft of hair on his head, while it does seem a little out of  place on a fox Pokémon, nicely recalls the white tip of a fox’s tail and isn’t trying to grab too much attention.  Zoroark’s hair, on the other hand, is utterly ridiculous.  In fact I honestly think his hair is bigger than him (and possibly just as dangerous; watch out for the spiky bits).  Without it he’d look rather weedy, to be honest.  What’s more, he actually seems to wear a tie in it, which raises all kinds of questions better not raised.  He’s depicted as a biped but looks like he should be a quadruped – he just doesn’t wear his physical form very well, with his long forelegs and hunched posture (seriously, try to imagine Zoroark standing erect), which is somewhat jarring.  I’m rather inclined to regard Zoroark as a disappointing evolution to Zorua; he hasn’t come out of the dramatic shift in body type very well and I cannot think why the designers decided to make that absurd hairdo his brightest and most obvious feature.  I think in this case it would have been better to stick with something a little more foxlike.

If, unlike me, you have a Zoroark, and if you want to use it in battle, you have many options.  Zoroark is as frail as a used napkin and will die instantly if you try to switch him in at the wrong moment but he’s very fast, hits extremely hard with special attacks, and can pump himself up even more with Nasty Plot.  He doesn’t learn all that many special attacks, but he has enough for a perfectly threatening set: Dark Pulse, Flamethrower, Grass Knot and Focus Blast are all sensible choices.  His physical attacks are strong too (and he gets Swords Dance) but he doesn’t learn many good ones; U-Turn, Sucker Punch and Pursuit are always useful for their side-effects though.  None of this is what’s interesting about Zoroark, though.  Zorua and Zoroark are all about illusions, and have a passive ability called, fittingly enough, Illusion, which causes them to take on the appearance of the Pokémon in the last slot of your current party list.  Taking damage from direct attacks breaks the illusion and restores their normal appearance.  Unlike Ditto, they won’t take on the other Pokémon’s type or any of its traits or powers – Zoroark is, for all intents and purposes, still Zoroark.  But your opponent doesn’t know that.  Now, unlike previous games, Black and White will show you your opponent’s entire team at the beginning of any battle, so you’ll know in advance whether your opponent has a Zoroark, which (thankfully) limits the shenanigans the wily little bastard can pull off.  There are a few Pokémon Zoroark can’t properly imitate – some abilities, like Mold Breaker, will display a message like “the foe’s [Pokémon] has Mold Breaker!” as soon as the Pokémon in question is sent out, and Zoroark won’t trigger those.  Moreover, once either Zoroark or the Pokémon he’s mimicking has taken damage it should be fairly easy to tell them apart if you’re paying attention.    The trouble is, early on in the battle you can never really be sure whether the Pokémon you’re facing is really what it claims to be, or a Zoroark in disguise, which means you can never be sure what you need to switch in to stop it.  Send in a bulky Psychic-type to scare off a big Fighting Pokémon, for instance, and you might just take a Dark Pulse to the face for your trouble and get killed.  On the other hand, if that Kingdra really is a Kingdra and you’ve just spent your turn switching in something to stop a Zoroark, Kingdra gets a free turn or two to pump herself up with Dragon Dance and you’re stuffed like a turkey dinner.  It doesn’t help that Zoroark himself can take advantage of exactly that kind of confusion with Nasty Plot.  Just having Zoroark around opens up a whole new level of mind-games that will probably drive many experienced players utterly bonkers.  There is one last thing I should mention about Zoroark, and that is that he has a signature move, Night Daze, a Dark-type special attack that sometimes reduces its target’s accuracy.  Normally I say that this game should have more signature moves to emphasise the uniqueness of certain Pokémon, but here’s the thing... only Zoroark can learn Night Daze, and Zoroark’s tactics revolve around the opponent not knowing that he’s Zoroark.  This isn’t quite a “why, Game Freak, why?” moment, but I really have to question the wisdom of this one.  Just use Dark Pulse; Night Daze is only slightly stronger anyway.

Illusion may be a maddening ability to deal with, but it’s also a fascinating mechanic that makes Zoroark an entirely unique game piece, which is a major point in his favour.  I don’t like his artwork much and have serious reservations about many aspects of that design, but it’s not so blatantly dumb that I want to toss the baby out with the bathwater – the baby, in this case, being Zorua.  Their flavour is entertaining enough, not especially intriguing but perfectly solid, and their unusual powers have been translated quite well into useful, interesting in-game abilities.  They’re badass, they’re clever, and they’re different – what more can I ask for?

I hereby affirm this Pokémon’s right to exist!

Victini

...oh, Victini, what did you do to deserve this?  I know there are people who like Victini; I know they exist.  Those people would be best served by turning around, sticking their fingers in their ears and chanting “la la la, I can’t hear you” for the duration of this entry.

Let’s have some background.  Victini is the latest in a long line of “cute” legendary Pokémon.  The Psychic cat Pokémon Mew is the fabled ancestor of all Pokémon.  Celebi is a forest spirit who exists beyond time.  Jirachi is a celestial fairy Pokémon who is only awake for one week in every thousand years, but can supposedly grant any wish in that time.  Manaphy, the so-called prince of the sea, possesses unmatched empathic abilities and can touch the heart of any living thing.  Last but not least, Shaymin, the guardian of meadows, is the personification of gratitude and has the power to harmlessly absorb any poison.  Victini, the newest addition to the group, is the embodiment of victory.  Victini is said to be a source of boundless energy, which he can share with anyone who touches his body.  As such, possessing Victini is supposedly an absolute guarantee of victory.  I don’t just mean victory in battle either; Victini is victory itself and can bring success in any kind of situation with any possible outcome that might be considered ‘winning’.  The obvious problems with this are almost unfair to point out – clearly having Victini doesn’t mean that a player will win every time in Black and White, and he’d be a really silly and pointless addition to the game if it did – so I’ll explain why I think this is a bad idea on a more conceptual level.  The inspiration for Victini is fairly easy to see – dollars to donuts, he’s based on figures like the ancient Greek goddess Nike (yes, like the shoe), the winged human figure who later became the inspiration for Christian iconography of angels.  Now, nike is literally the Greek word for victory; the goddess Nike is part divine being and part abstract concept – you simply don’t win with Nike opposing you because having Nike’s favour is what winning is.  Once a Greek city had her favour they would try to keep it with monuments and temples and things, but it was all but inevitable that she’d fly off somewhere else in the end.  Victory figures in other cultures tend to work in a similar way.  Do you see where I’m going with this?  Pokémon are loyal to their trainers, even when it’s not a very good idea.  Victory, by its nature, is capricious and disloyal.  I wouldn’t necessarily mind having Victini exist in the Pokémon universe, but since the point of the game is still (in theory) to finish the damn Pokédex, anything that exists must somehow be catchable, which means you can befriend it.  Catching Dialga and Palkia, the rulers of time and space, in Diamond and Pearl was a similar sort of blow to suspension of disbelief but I actually think this is worse, just because of what Victini represents and how vastly incompatible it is with what Pokémon is about.

The nail in the coffin for me is that I honestly don’t think Victini is all that cute.  He’s obviously supposed to be, and Game Freak always try to give us at least one of these “cute legendary Pokémon” in each generation, but I think they’ve failed this time.  Victini’s weird little fangs and exaggerated ears remind me of a vampire bat, the fact that he has wings on his thighs is just strange, and those eyes... those huge, glassy eyes... Victini’s eyes bother me intensely.  I don’t know that I’d say he looks evil, but he’s definitely not something I’d want to pick up and hug, put it that way.  Finally, his lower body and legs are disproportionate, which wouldn’t bother me on its own, I think – after all, a lot of Pokémon have odd anatomy – but together with everything else wrong with Victini, it’s the straw that breaks my camel’s back.  My one last minor grievance against Victini is the fourteenth movie, in which he plays a major role, and the reason this is a minor grievance is that I must concede the fourteenth movie is not Victini’s fault, as such; it’s more that he’s tarnished in my eyes by association.  I may actually be obliged to watch the godawful thing at some point just so I can complain about it, but I don’t think a Pokémon movie has had a theatrical release in New Zealand since Spell of the Unown (and justly so; I saw Jewel of Life on Cartoon Network at some point last year and it was utter drivel), so don’t hold your breath.

So, as a Pokémon who supposedly brings victory to all who possess him, how does Victini stack up?  Well... poorly.  Victini’s type is Psychic/Fire, which in principle is not terrible; he has more resistances than weaknesses and some of them are quite good, but two of his weaknesses are to Rock and Dark – Stealth Rock and Pursuit, respectively – which means that (in the worst-case-scenario) Victini is vulnerable to moderate damage every time he switches in or out.  Victini follows the precedent of all the other “cute” legendary Pokémon by having balanced, high scores in all of his stats.  This distribution causes most of them to excel in a support role – taking hits for your team and hitting hard in return, often while using various techniques to help their allies like Reflect or Heal Bell.  They don’t really have the power or speed for a full-offense approach.  Unfortunately, that’s all Victini really knows how to do.  He doesn’t learn any boosting techniques like Calm Mind or healing techniques like Recover.  He doesn’t have Mew’s legendary versatility, Celebi’s staying power, Jirachi’s wonderful defensive typing or Manaphy’s two great blessings, Tail Glow and Hydration.  Victini just hits things... and, while he isn’t extremely powerful, he does have an excellent list of attacks to choose from, both physical and special: Flare Blitz, Fire Blast, Zen Headbutt, Psychic, Thunderbolt, Shadow Ball, Focus Blast, Grass Knot, Wild Charge, U-Turn, Energy Ball – all nice options.  Still, Victini is surprisingly lacklustre for a legendary Pokémon; there are better choices out there for most things you might want him to do.  There is exactly one big reason to use Victini: V-Create.  This is Victini’s signature move, which not all Victini know: the one that could be downloaded shortly after the release of Black and White couldn’t use it, but the one that’s available right now to celebrate the release of the fourteenth movie can, along with Reshiram and Zekrom’s signature moves, Fusion Flare and Fusion Bolt (the latter of which, incidentally, is actually very useful).  V-Create (just about the silliest name for an attack ever) is an insanely powerful Fire attack, a full 50% stronger than Fire Blast, but it comes at a cost: using V-Create cuts Victini’s speed, defence and special defence, leaving him wide open for a counterattack.  You should use V-Create anyway because it’s so ridiculously powerful that it remains his strongest option even against some Pokémon that resist it, and it is, as I said, the one real reason to pick Victini as your partner.  Victini is not as much of a one-trick pony as a lot of Pokémon are, but as legendary Pokémon go, he’s not exactly top shelf.

As I’ve said in the past, I’m not really bothered by how strong a legendary Pokémon is, since most of them are fairly powerful by sheer weight of numbers – only the very worst ones would be terrible enough to earn my displeasure on those grounds (I’m looking at you, Regigigas).  Victini is disappointing for a legendary Pokémon, but still strong (I really wouldn’t recommend using him without V-Create though).  What I really care about when judging legendary Pokémon is what they add to the games’ mythology, and in that respect I’m really unhappy with Victini.  The idea of a Pokémon that embodies victory in all its forms is just a bad idea as far as I’m concerned.  It’s not a concept that makes sense given the premise of the games and what we’ve always known about how trainers relate to Pokémon, and personally I think it’s an even worse fit with those ideas than all the other legendary Pokémon, some of which suffer from major issues of scale.

I hereby deny this Pokémon’s right to exist!  Pull off its wings, and let it be tossed off the top of the Celestial Tower!