The Top Ten Worst Pokemon Ever, #9: Castform

Much as Delibird was (I believe) the best-designed Pokémon in my Top Ten, Castform is arguably the strongest (and if that doesn’t send shivers down your spine, nothing will).  Introduced in Ruby and Sapphire, Castform is a Pokémon created by Hoenn’s Weather Institute to serve a very specific purpose: predicting and manipulating the weather.  To this end, he possesses a unique ability that is his claim to fame: Forecast.  In calm, overcast weather, Castform is a wholly unremarkable Normal-type, but Forecast causes his form and element to change with the weather; he becomes a Water-type in heavy rain, an Ice-type in snow or hail and a Fire-type under clear skies.  His signature move, Weather Ball, changes too; giving him an excellent Water, Ice or Fire attack as appropriate (the Water and Fire versions of Weather Ball also get power boosts from the routine effects of rain and sun, respectively, becoming very strong indeed); it can also become a Rock attack in a sandstorm, but Castform himself lacks a form for that weather condition, so the attack itself will be weaker and Castform will have to expose himself to sandstorm damage in order to use it.  Weather Ball, Forecast and his wide selection of other special attacks make it relatively easy to tailor Castform for use on a rain, sun or hail team, but I don’t think he has the defensive bulk to pull off the set Game Freak probably had in mind when they created him: [Weather Ball – Sunny Day – Rain Dance – Hail], switching between weather conditions and forms as appropriate.  Probably better to stick with just one, and supplement Weather Ball with Thunder (if you’re using rain), Thunderbolt (if you aren’t), Solarbeam (if you’re using sun), Energy Ball (if you aren’t), Fire Blast, Scald, Ice Beam, or Shadow Ball.  Like I said, Castform has a lot of choice; he’s unlikely to get far as anything other than a special-attacking weather controller, but the diversity he can manage within that role is surprisingly impressive.



Castform's four different weather forms posing as a team,
by Tazsaints (http://tazsaints.deviantart.com/).



Now, don’t get me wrong; Castform is bad.  He’s fairly slow, relatively frail and, unless he can score a super-effective hit, unlikely to do much damage with anything besides a sun- or rain-boosted Weather Ball.  However, he’s only garden-variety bad, not gouge-out-your-own-eyeballs bad.  Unlike Delibird, you can actually use Castform in a variety of roles.  He’ll be outclassed in just about all of them, and by his very nature he’s actually more vulnerable to other Pokémon that like to mess with the weather, such as Politoed and Ninetales, but he’s also capable of putting on a respectable performance now and again.  Why, then, am I spending this entry talking about Castform instead of one of the many Pokémon out there who are even more horrible?  Well, truth be known, I have long regarded him as one of the blandest Pokémon in existence.  In order to be totally fair to Castform, I must point readers to the relevant instalment of George Hutcheon’s BulbaNews column, On the Origin of Species (http://bulbanews.bulbagarden.net/wiki/On_the_Origin_of_Species:_Castform – seriously, go read it; it’s not long), which traces the poufy, grey-white Castform we know to a traditional Japanese weather-charm called a teruteru bozu (‘sunshine monk’).  In principle this is a perfectly solid idea, but I’m still inclined to say that it’s been handled poorly.  Aside from the weather manipulation idea, which was the whole point, the only thing Castform takes from the teruteru bozu is the most boring thing about them: their physical appearance.  Why would you create a Pokémon in imitation of an entirely nondescript doll made of white tissue paper?  If it had been my work, I’d say that the dull appearance was a necessary evil to get at the interesting stuff – the folktales and customs behind these things.  However, not only does the traditional lore associated with teruteru bozu have no impact on Castform’s design whatsoever (the Pokédex just repeats “Castform’s appearance changes with the weather” ad nauseam), Game Freak have managed to lock themselves out of using those ideas in future by declaring that Castform was an artificial Pokémon created by the Weather Institute - a glorified barometer, not something that could ever have had any impact on Hoenn’s cultural development or mythology.  So, with respect to George Hutcheon, I still think Castform is a terrible idea!

All right, money where my mouth is and all that... if I’m so clever, how would I have changed Castform?  Well, as you may have guessed, my first move would be to retcon that idiocy about Castform being a creation of the Hoenn Weather Institute, because that doesn’t make sense anyway.  Why would a bunch of meteorologists have the expertise to create a new Pokémon?  Having a bunch of Castform in the Institute for research purposes I could buy, but creating them from scratch has got to be ridiculously high-level genetics.  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to read up on where teruteru bozu come from, culturally speaking, and try to rewrite Castform based on that...



Edface (http://edface.deviantart.com/) shows us that
even Castform can, in fact, be awesome.



...okay.  Got it.  So, Castform.  Castform have the ability to draw atmospheric water into themselves or expel water back into the air, allowing them to summon or banish clouds within a small area.  They can also break down pollutants and purify the water they absorb.  Castform use their powers to regulate weather patterns and encourage the plants they eat to grow tall and produce lots of berries.  Because they cannot create rain, only move it around, they normally travel a great deal to manage the climate of larger regions, drawing water away from places with too much rain and bringing it to drier areas.  Their passage is welcomed by humans, who offer Castform gifts and treats to entice them to return often, because villages in Castform’s territory nearly always enjoy successful harvests.  However, if Castform are attacked or insulted, they may strike back by causing droughts, or even by freezing rainclouds to create hailstorms.

Mechanically speaking, Castform is just about the only Pokémon on this list that I think could be made to work without evolving it; you could probably make him at least usable by tacking a couple of rider effects onto Forecast – I’d say first, that as long as Castform is actually on the field, he has absolute control of the weather and all other Pokémon attempting to change it will fail (so Tyranitar, Hippowdon and Politoed can no longer block Castform’s Solarbeam just by switching in), and second, that all of Castform’s weather effects are permanent until overridden, like the effects created by the Drought and Drizzle abilities.  Of course, you could also evolve Castform to rid us of his tissue-paper-doll blandness (bearing in mind that those changes to Forecast might well be too much if Castform actually had good stats to back them up; I might still make the first change, but I think I would leave the second).  Actually I’d be tempted to evolve him into a Dragon or pseudo-dragon, a la Gyarados, given the associations dragons have with rivers and water in Asian myth, and the appearance of dragons in Japanese weather stories.  Alternatively, he could shift further towards a humanoid design, to reflect the idea of itinerant weather-priests that made me suggest Castform should be a habitual wanderer; this also allows us to keep closer to the teruteru bozu that originally inspired Castform’s appearance (at the moment I’m thinking of an ethereal figure somewhat like Gardevoir).  Either of these ideas could be combined with an evolutionary split like Eevee’s, into forms that specialise in sun, rain and hail, carrying the Drought, Drizzle and Snow Warning abilities for automatic and permanent weather effects.  Part of me wants to keep Forecast on any evolution that Castform gains because it’s so much the core of his design, however, the split evolution would allow me to rewrite Forecast as I suggested without concern for making it overpowered, while his newfound “not fully evolved” status would give Castform himself the option to buff his meagre defences by holding an Eviolite.  Between Forecast and an Eviolite, Castform might actually be able to hold his own even against his more powerful evolutions (much as, for instance, Chansey can fulfil certain specialised roles more effectively than Blissey).

It could be argued that I’m inherently prejudiced against Castform because of my flagrant ignorance of Japanese culture, and that would probably be fair.  The thing is, though... nothing about Castform suggests that that’s where his origins lie; it’s almost like the designers wanted it to be an inside joke, or something, and once he’s stripped of those cultural associations, there’s nothing left.  He’s just a greyish-white blob that can turn into a cartoon sun, a raindrop, or a snowcloud.  Given the sheer prominence of weather-manipulation in Ruby and Sapphire, with the advent of Groudon and Kyogre, I would have thought that putting slightly more effort into making Castform interesting was a no-brainer; this little guy should by all rights be one of the flagship Pokémon of those games, not the barely-used gimmick he is.

The Top Ten Worst Pokémon Ever, #10: Delibird

Alone of all the Pokémon on my Top Ten list, Delibird makes me feel a little guilty about putting him on here, which is why I’ve shunted him all the way down to #10, of course.  Why?  Well, on my very first play-through of Silver version, all those years ago, I had a Delibird.  He was absolutely useless, bless his little heart, but he tried his best and I loved him for it (I was young and naïve, and still believed the Nintendo propaganda that any Pokémon could be powerful if you worked hard enough at it).  A rare Ice Pokémon found in the coldest part of Johto, Delibird is a cute if somewhat awkward-looking red-and-white bird with a long, wide tail that he wraps around himself to serve as a sack for carrying food.  He looks a little like a penguin, and some aspects of his design make me think of puffins and similar seabirds, nesting on rocky cliff-faces and carrying food to their chicks all day.  Delibird aren’t actually marine Pokémon; they live in high mountains, although I suspect that the specialised tail is an indicator that they naturally have a very wide foraging range, possibly covering many terrain types.  They seem to be an inherently altruistic species, as they have a reputation for sharing the food they’ve gathered with lost travellers.  In various contexts outside of the main series of games, Delibird are often employed by humans as messengers and couriers because of their natural delivery habits and unusual intelligence.  The associations with delivery make clear the real inspiration for Delibird’s design: with his red-and-white colour scheme, his sack of goods, and even a white feathery ‘beard,’ this is nothing other than the Pokémon Santa Claus.  It’s a strange idea, to be sure, but it hasn’t been pushed beyond the boundaries of good taste; Delibird’s dedication to collection and delivering food to his offspring is a sensible way of translating the gift-giving idea onto an animal, especially since it exaggerates the habits of many real birds rather than coming completely out of nowhere.  Physically, Delibird looks a bit odd, and you have to wonder how he manages to fly with those penguin flippers (I suppose it doesn’t require that much more suspension of disbelief than, say, Dragonite with his dinky little wings), but the bright scarlet of his body and the white of his downy tufts make him look cheerful, cute, and most importantly different from all the other innumerable bird Pokémon.  What I’m saying, in short, is that my guilt about putting Delibird in the Top Ten Worst Pokémon Ever, even at number ten, isn’t just about my own fond memories of the little guy; I genuinely think this is a well-executed concept.  If that’s the case, you may well ask, then what on earth did he do to deserve this treatment?



Artwork of the Delibird card from the Heart Gold and Soul
Silver set of the Pokémon trading card game.



To be blunt, although I may have a soft spot for Delibird, he is undeniably one of the most useless Pokémon ever created.  To start with, his stats are terrible; in fact, Delibird has the worst stats of any adult Pokémon (discounting Ditto, Smeargle and Shedinja, and tied with... one of the other Pokémon on my Top Ten list).  His speed is barely average, his attack and special attack scores are worse, and his defences are nothing short of appalling.  To add insult to injury, left to his own devices Delibird will only ever learn one attack: his phenomenally bad signature move, Present, a Normal-type attack with variable power; sometimes it’ll be terrible, sometimes it’ll be decent and occasionally it will do a great deal of damage... but, then again, sometimes it will actually heal its target.  Needless to say, if you’re brave enough ever to use Delibird, you should avoid Present at all costs and teach him something worthwhile.  The trouble is, there’s very little you can teach him.  Since we’ve established that Delibird is marginally less terrible offensively than defensively, you might look at his available special attacks... and learn that he can only manage Ice attacks, plus Future Sight (a Psychic attack which is admittedly powerful, but doesn’t hit until two turns after being used).  His physical movepool is arguably better; Ice Punch is weaker than Ice Beam, but if you’re importing Delibird from an earlier game, old TMs and move tutors give him access to Focus Punch for punishing Steel-types, Seed Bomb for Water-types, and Body Slam to spread paralysis (as well as Signal Beam and, if you’re desperate, Water Pulse on the special side), none of which make me jump up and down with excitement, but Delibird needs everything he can find.  Even though Delibird himself is even more inept with physical attacks than special attacks, his Hustle trait compensates by letting him trade accuracy for power on all of his physical moves (and since Aerial Ace can never miss anyway, that’s win-win for Delibird).  The sad thing is that even with Hustle, Delibird’s attacks are fairly impressive but not game-changing, especially considering that Brick Break, Ice Punch and Aerial Ace are quite low-power anyway, and that missing even once will probably doom Delibird thanks to his papery defence stats.  The two alternative abilities to Hustle, Insomnia and Vital Spirit, do exactly the same thing, just to troll the poor bird – they grant Delibird immunity to sleep, which is useful, don’t get me wrong, but only a minor benefit, and it’s hard to forego Hustle for that since it represents the closest thing to a niche Delibird can ever hope to attain.  Delibird’s support movepool is, if that’s possible, even worse, with but a single gem: Rapid Spin.  Rapid Spin clears away the nasty pointed things scattered by the very popular Stealth Rock, Spikes and Toxic Spikes techniques, which would otherwise cause damage to your Pokémon every time you switched one in.  There are perhaps a dozen Rapid Spinners in the entire game, and Delibird bears the dubious honour of being the worst one, since he’s the only one afflicted with a double-weakness to Stealth Rock, and therefore loses a full 50% of his health just from switching in while the move is in effect.

Delibird portrayed in a more realistic style by Luckybaka
(http://luckybaka.deviantart.com/).  I sort of wanted a
picture of a fake Delibird evolution, but I couldn't find any
that I liked; this is very well done, though.

Now, then: how do we fix this?  With the right attacks or abilities, you can go a long way on surprisingly little, but I think Delibird’s stats are just too far gone, barring some sort of absurd custom item or ability, which means we have little choice but to evolve him.  I am loathe to do so, since much of the appeal of Delibird’s art is in its neatness and simplicity, and I’m not sure where evolution could take the design; in particular I am worried about the risk of inflating the Santa Claus influences, which would quickly make the whole thing irredeemably tacky.  Again, though, there is little choice; Delibird needs a boost to all of his stats.  The second thing to do is repair that dreadful signature move.  Delibird is the Delivery Pokémon, and Present signifies an attack using the eclectic contents of his delivery sack.  There’s already an attack that lets a Pokémon throw its held item – Fling, a Dark attack – and Delibird actually learns it; he just doesn’t want to use it because the only item that does enough damage to make a single-shot Dark attack worthwhile is an Iron Ball, the weight of which strips Delibird of the solitary advantage his Ice/Flying typing gives him (immunity to Ground attacks) until after he’s thrown it.  Flinging a Flame Orb or Toxic Orb does only minor damage but provides a reliable, accurate burning or poisoning attack; again though, those items will make Delibird suffer as long as he holds them.  Now, we’ve established that Delibird’s Dream World ability, Insomnia, is completely redundant to one of his regular abilities, Vital Spirit (do you see where I’m going with this yet?).  So, when he evolves, let’s have Insomnia change to Klutz, Lopunny’s ability, which renders a Pokémon both unable to use items and immune to their negative effects.  Then, let’s rewrite Present into a version of Fling that can be used multiple times; Delibird doesn’t have just one Iron Ball, he’s got a whole bag of them (also, change the dumb rule that says a Pokémon with Klutz can’t use Fling).  Lopunny takes advantage of Klutz by using the Switcheroo technique to swap harmful items onto her opponents while stripping them of their beneficial items; Delibird is going to take advantage of it by simply bombarding targets with whatever dangerous cargo he’s carrying.  Fighting with items is exactly what Delibird’s flavour and signature move suggest he should be good at doing; this would allow him to do it properly.  He’s going to need some more attacks as well (I’d suggest U-Turn, Acrobatics, Air Slash, Light Screen, Stockpile, Endeavour, Baton Pass and Agility, for starters) but that’s the substance of what I’d want to change.

Unlike most of the Pokémon in my Top Ten, I really genuinely want to see Delibird succeed... I just know in my heart it’s never going to happen.  So I’m going to have to take out my frustrations on the other nine!

Next time on Pokémaniacal: The Top Ten Worst Pokémon Ever

All right, let’s lay some ground rules here.  Like I always did when I was working through the Unova Pokédex, I’ll do my best to examine all aspects of a Pokémon before assigning it a place in the Top Ten: I’m not putting anything on this list unless it is both a terrible concept and irredeemably pathetic – which automatically disqualifies pretty much everything from Black and White, because even though some of them were shockers, all of them, except for maybe Watchog, are an order of magnitude more useful than everything on this list.  Think about that for a moment.  Think back to some of my most vitriolic entries – Unfezant, Maractus, Emolga, Garbodor, for goodness’ sake – and let that sink in.  In terms of blinding stupidity, many of them rival or even surpass some of the wastes of oxygen on my list, but none of them are anywhere near as blitheringly incompetent.  Let that sink in.  Conversely, a few legitimately terrible Pokémon have escaped inclusion on this list by being more quirky and interesting than the ones I’ll be covering over the next month; they are the Pokémon that belong on my wish list for future evolutions, while the ones you’ll find here just need to die in a fire.

My other big rule is that anything that evolves doesn’t count.  I could spend an entry wittering about how useless Magikarp is, but the fact is, one day that Magikarp might evolve into Gyarados and come after me for revenge, and I don’t want that to happen.  More to the point, the suckiness that is Magikarp was deliberately intended as a counterweight to the awesomeness that is Gyarados, so it’s not even as if Magikarp is weak because of incompetence on the designers’ part; that was done on purpose, and there was a valid reason for it.  A few Pokémon would once have been absolute shoe-ins for this list until Game Freak, apparently realising the sins they had committed against the poor things, granted them evolutions in later generations.  Nosepass gets an honourable mention here for taunting me by evolving into Probopass in Diamond and Pearl, becoming far too strong for me to consider him seriously for the Top Ten while at the same time becoming the stupidest Pokémon of the generation for two generations running, which I hadn’t even thought possible.

Why am I doing this?  Well, as I’ve explained in the past, I consider myself to be on Game Freak’s side in that I want Pokémon to keep getting better and still genuinely believe that they’re the best people for the job... more or less.  The fact is, though, writing about stuff I like gets repetitive after a while, and writing about stuff that’s merely average is boring from the start... but being able to work up a really good bit of bile against something is far more interesting.

I think it’s time for a good old-fashioned holy war...

Champions of the Pokémon League, Part 6: Alder

...y’know, after the scale of my last project, finishing this one just doesn’t have the same inherent drama.  Then again, I’m a little scared to try for something bigger, for fear I may rope myself into reviewing every Pokémon ever and die before I finish.  Hrm.  Anyway, on with the show!

The Champion of the Unova region, the New York-inspired setting of Black and White, is an exuberant, light-hearted giant of a man named Alder, who is the Pokémon universe’s equivalent to Bear Grylls.  The man jumps off a cliff, for heaven’s sake, quite casually, without comment, and apparently for no other reason than that it was faster than walking.  Not content with sitting in his palace at the Pokémon League waiting for challengers, Alder prefers to spend his time exploring Unova, and claims to know “every corner” of the region; it is on just such a trip that he first meets you and Cheren, one of the two rival characters of Black and White.  Cheren is... well, I wouldn’t call him a jerk, to be fair; compared to Blue he’s an absolute saint, but he tends to look down on people who don’t take life as seriously as he does, and he’s extremely focussed on becoming a more powerful trainer, to the exclusion of all else.  Cheren’s great ambition in life is to become the Champion, and he’s not impressed when he meets the current Champion, in his words, “goofing off” at a festival outside Nimbasa City, feeling that such frivolity is beneath the dignity of this noble office.  Alder responds by questioning why Cheren wants to become Champion in the first place and what he thinks the whole point is, something Cheren doesn’t seem to have ever thought about.  Another day, after Alder watches you defeat Cheren in a battle, Cheren is disturbed and annoyed that Alder described it as “a fine battle,” assuming that Alder was pleased he had lost (because, after all, what about a battle could possibly matter besides who won and who lost?).  You later learn that Alder is interested in Cheren’s motives because he sees something of himself in Cheren; when Alder was younger, he was equally obsessed with becoming stronger, an obsession shared by his Pokémon partner.  In time, though, Alder’s Pokémon (whose species is never mentioned, though it could conceivably have been one of Unova’s three starter Pokémon) became sick and died, causing Alder’s outlook to change.  He now views strength for its own sake as transient and ultimately pointless, and focuses more on enjoying life.

So, if Alder isn’t still the Champion because he wants to keep getting stronger, why does he have the job, anyway?  Alder is the first Champion who is explicitly identified as such before you challenge him, so his involvement in the story of Black and White gives us a closer look at the responsibilities of a Champion and the significance of the position.  Alder is important to the plot because Team Plasma’s spiritual leader N, a strange teenager who wants to free all Pokémon from human oppression, thinks he can convince Unova’s people to side with him by defeating the greatest champion of the opposite set of beliefs (that humans and Pokémon are both stronger together) – I think N’s desire to prove the validity of his beliefs to himself plays into this too.  Alder is the Champion, and the Champion is supposed to be the most powerful trainer as well as the most committed to the philosophies of Pokémon training, so defeating Alder (as N eventually does, with the help of one of the legendary dragons, Reshiram and Zekrom) should represent a decisive symbolic victory in Team Plasma’s campaign to separate humans and Pokémon.  Alder, for his part, recognises the importance of this challenge to the wider ideological conflict, and meets it with all of the considerable vigour he can muster.  The trouble is that Alder isn’t as dedicated to his beliefs as N is.  Ghetsis, Team Plasma’s ‘power behind the throne,’ taunts him at one point by suggesting that Alder hasn’t fought a real battle since his partner Pokémon died, and that he’s avoiding his responsibilities by spending his time travelling Unova and leaving the Elite Four to take care of things at the Pokémon League.  What’s more, he seems to strike a nerve by suggesting that Alder, of all people, should agree with them, because of his memories of the pain of losing his first Pokémon.  My suspicion is that the death of his partner, although it taught Alder to enjoy life with his Pokémon, also shook his faith in the idea of Pokémon training.  Alder ‘believes’ that people and Pokémon should stay together, but N has an absolute conviction burnt into his very soul that they should be separated – and this is why Alder loses when N challenges him.  It takes your subsequent defeat of N, with your own legendary dragon at your side, to restore Alder’s conviction and turn him back into the trainer he used to be – the trainer you face when you return to the Pokémon League for the second time.



Okay, I found this on the internet and it's brilliant but I cannot for the life of me figure out who the artist is.  This piece of fanart shows Alder in the company of his his entire team.  Clockwise from the top right: Volcarona, Vanilluxe (who seems to be wilting under Volcarona's radiance), Accelgor, Bouffalant, Escavalier and Druddigon.



Alder is like Blue and Cynthia in that he has no avowed preference for any given element, but when you actually fight him it seems that, like Steven, he actually does like to use mainly Pokémon from a single type, and it’s just about the last one you’d expect: Alder trains Bug-types.  None of this namby-pamby Beautifly-and-Dustox nonsense for him either; Alder is a Real Man and his three Bug-types are a ninja, an armoured knight, and a sun god.  Accelgor makes a frustrating lead to face, being faster than everything and capable of stealing the attacks you’re about to use with Me First (Alder isn’t that good at predicting attacks, though, so Accelgor will often mimic an attack that would be weaker than one of his own anyway), while Escavalier is simply a pain to kill, with only one weakness (Fire), good defences, and some powerful attacks.  Volcarona is Alder’s signature Pokémon, and he seems to have styled his hair in imitation of it.  Volcarona are always tricky Pokémon to deal with because of Quiver Dance, which can buff their special attack, special defence and speed all at once, but Alder’s Volcarona has a tendency to burn itself out with Overheat, so it will normally become a much less significant threat if you can just string it along until it’s incinerated most of its own special attack score.  You’ll also get a free turn now and then courtesy of the recharge time for Volcarona’s Hyper Beam, a move that was a brilliant finisher in Red and Blue but has become a complete trap since Gold and Silver because of mechanical changes (a trap that every Champion since then has fallen into with gusto).  Volcarona’s terrible moveset notwithstanding, these are Pokémon I can respect.  The rest of Alder’s team... not so much.  If you remember my entry on Bouffalant, you’ll know I didn’t like it much, but I actually think Bouffalant was a strikingly appropriate choice for Alder: like its trainer, Bouffalant is big, loud, and has ridiculous hair.  Heck, Bouffalant could practically have been his signature Pokémon (and I must grudgingly admit that it can be problematic if you’re not ready for it).  Druddigon is the sort of Pokémon that I like to describe as “not unusable” in order to spare its feelings; Alder has exacerbated Druddigon’s many issues by giving it two Dark attacks (Payback and Night Slash), the kind of redundancy you quickly learn to avoid in the real world.  Alder’s final Pokémon is Vanilluxe, whom I can scarcely bear to dignify with a mention.  I think its presence on Alder’s team proves that the designers really did think it was a good Pokémon simply because of its high stats, but all it really does is throw into harsh relief what a terrible Pokémon Vanilluxe actually is.

Remember how I thought that Steven had an excellent team but was terribly portrayed as a character?  Well, Alder is just the opposite; he’s a great character who fits into the story of Black and White extremely well and is probably the most interesting Champion of the lot in terms of characterisation, but his team is full of holes!  He utterly fails to use most of his Pokémon to their full potential, and when he succeeds, it’s only because the Pokémon in question have so little potential to begin with!  Luckily, this is a much easier problem to fix than a boring character; I’ve got my fingers crossed for a slightly less poorly-designed team for Alder in the inevitable Grey Version.

So, that’s the Champions!  As always, I hope my rants have amused you; check back in a couple of days, when I will begin the month-long course of self-flagellation that is my list of the Top Ten Worst Pokémon Ever...

Champions of the Pokémon League, Part 5: Cynthia

Just to prove that the Pokémon League is an equal-opportunity employer, here’s the series’ only female Champion to date: Cynthia, master of the Sinnoh League.  Of all the Champions across all the different versions of the game, Cynthia is dearest to my heart, because, as of her debut in Diamond and Pearl, she was quite possibly the only halfway legitimate archaeologist in the entire Pokémon universe.  She seems to think of herself as a Pokémon trainer first and a historian second, but her research is clearly important to her and she spends every free moment studying the history and mythology of ancient ruins around Sinnoh, like the Spear Pillar.  If Cynthia’s glorious trench coat and its luxuriant fur trim represent what qualifies as casual attire for her, she has probably not spent a full day on a dig site in a very long time.  Nonetheless, I can scarcely put into words how refreshing it was to meet someone in these games who was genuinely interested in the Pokémon world’s ruins for their historical significance and not because of the obsession with ancient treasure that drove the Ruin Maniacs of Ruby and Sapphire.  Cynthia’s function in the plot is mainly to provide hints and exposition about the ruins you encounter, but she also has an inexplicable tendency to give you things at random for her own impenetrable reasons, like the HM for Cut when you first meet her in Eterna City, along with (only on Platinum) a Togepi egg, which is a remarkably silly thing for a Pokémon master to give to a total stranger (then again, it’s well-established that Pokémon masters can recognise, or think they can recognise, talented trainers by sight).  Later she turns up again and gives you a few doses of Secretpotion to allow you to clear one of the most absurd obstacles in video game history: a blockade of Psyduck whose chronic headaches have rooted them to the spot on the road to Celestic Town.  These headaches are not going to get better on their own, there is no other way to move the Psyduck, and Cynthia definitely isn’t going to give them the medicine herself; her research is far too important for her to waste time with such trivialities.  This is doubly inexplicable because as soon as you give them the Secretpotion, Cynthia shows up to congratulate you and gives you your next assignment: to return a necklace (some kind of artefact she’s been studying) to her grandmother in Celestic Town.  Wouldn’t this sequence have made far more sense if she’d given you the Secretpotion and the necklace at the same time?  As far as Diamond and Pearl go, Cynthia fades into the background after that – almost to the point that meeting her again at the Pokémon League creates the same reaction as Steven does; you remember that you used to know who she was, but you’re not sure why you ever cared.

Cynthia is similar to Steven, in some ways; although a tremendously adept and unfailingly noble Pokémon trainer, she’s almost more concerned with her own studies and interests, in contrast to characters like Lance and Alder, for whom Pokémon are very much the centre of their personal worldviews.  Again like Steven, Cynthia isn’t a notably vibrant or excitable person either.  The difference is that in Cynthia’s case (in Platinum, anyway; Diamond and Pearl do nearly as bad a job with her as Ruby and Sapphire do with Steven) it actually works because her personal research is directly related to what’s going on in the plot – Dialga and Palkia, the legendary Pokémon summoned by Cyrus to end the world, feature in the myths Cynthia studies, as do Uxie, Mesprit and Azelf, the spirit Pokémon that try to stop him.  She’s the one who figures out what’s going on when Giratina appears on Mount Coronet and drags Cyrus into hell, the one who explains why you need to follow them (the portal into Giratina’s freaky chaos dimension is apparently destabilising the real world, and needs to be closed), and the one who goes through the portal with you.  Finally, she manages to understand something of the nature of the other dimension where Cyrus fails; Cyrus believes that defeating Giratina will destroy its world, which, as our world’s twin, was the only thing keeping it stable as Dialga and Palkia attempted to dissolve it.  After you defeat him, he encourages you to go on and fight Giratina, which was what he’d planned to do anyway.  Cynthia also encourages you to fight Giratina, believing that if you can master it, you will calm it down and repair the damage done to the connection between the worlds (why she doesn’t deal with it herself will have to remain a mystery for the ages); she turns out to be right.  In short, she does a heck of a lot more than Steven (again, at least she does in Platinum).  There’s also an interesting scene with her in the Celestic Ruins if you return there after the epilogue, in which Cynthia discusses her theories on the meaning of the designs in the ruins, and how the appearance of Giratina at the Spear Pillar has altered her interpretation, hinting at the existence of Arceus, the Original One.  I would be concerned that all of this makes Cynthia less a character and more a vehicle for exposition, if not for one thing: she doesn’t actually know anything.  She’s speculating, just like we do all the time when we think about the nature and role of legendary Pokémon; Cynthia presumably has the benefit of a great deal of background knowledge on the beliefs and worldview of the ancients of Sinnoh, but in the end, her interpretations are just that – interpretations – and that’s a lot more interesting than just being told how something is and expected to go along with it.

Aonik (http://aonik.deviantart.com/) has here shown Cynthia with her partner Pokémon, Garchomp,
taking some time out to watch the sunset from a beach.

In a return to tradition Cynthia, like Blue (and Red), has no specialty element, which makes her that much more difficult to fight.  She doesn’t seem to have a particularly pronounced theme either, but she tends to like Pokémon that belong to the game’s élite, particularly ones that are hard to hit for super-effective damage.  For instance, in all of Cynthia’s appearances, she begins the match with her Spiritomb, an extremely rare and ancient Ghost Pokémon that is best known for having no weaknesses at all and being harder to kill than a cockroach in a bomb shelter.  Spiritomb can only be found at an ancient ruined shrine in Sinnoh by using an item called an Odd Keystone after talking to other players in the Sinnoh Underground thirty-two times; similarly, her Lucario is a Pokémon that doesn’t exist in the wild and has to be hatched from an egg as a Riolu, while Milotic’s juvenile form, Feebas, can only be caught on four randomly-assigned squares of a large pool inside Mount Coronet, comprising several hundred squares.  As a Steel-type and a Water-type, respectively, Lucario and Milotic also have relatively few weaknesses.  The sea slug Gastrodon and the flower sprite Roserade are the least outlandish of her Pokémon, but they’re both powerful and have a wide variety of attacks at their disposal, and Gastrodon has only one weakness (Grass attacks).  On Platinum, Cynthia replaces her Gastrodon with a Togekiss, the final evolution of Togepi, another fantastically rare upper-echelon Pokémon, while in her appearance on Black and White, both Togekiss and Roserade go in favour of Eelektross and Braviary – again, Pokémon that are hard to find and naturally quite powerful (and Eelektross, like Spiritomb, has no weaknesses).  Then, of course, there’s her signature Pokémon: Garchomp.  Garchomp is commonly held to be Diamond and Pearl’s answer to Dragonite, but this is a malicious lie put about by Nintendo; he is in fact Diamond and Pearl’s answer to the entire damn Pokédex, being arguably the most powerful Pokémon Game Freak have ever created, outside of the high-tier legendary beasties like Mewtwo.  Then again, he is a cross between nature’s most perfectly-evolved hunter, the shark, and the most feared creature of high fantasy, the dragon, so when you think about it, he’s exactly the sort of thing you would come up with if you wanted to murder the universe and had a over-developed sense of flair.  With the exception of Spiritomb, none of Cynthia’s Pokémon have any connection to the particulars of her character; for this one, the designers seem to have been mostly interested in giving you a fight to remember – which is precisely what Cynthia does.

Cynthia’s extra characterisation is one of those little things that get added to the third game of each set that really, if we’re being honest, should have been in the first two.  Cynthia as Champion is not that interesting (although she does, one must admit, look pretty badass in that trench coat); Cynthia as a companion to Giratina’s world makes the whole experience a lot more fascinating, precisely because she finds it so fascinating – that, incidentally, is one thing that Platinum needed more of, because the Distortion World as it stands is more a vehicle for fancy 3D graphics than anything else.  She’s just a really good person to have around, and it’s a shame she doesn’t do anything in Black and White, where she likes to spend Spring and Summer at Caitlin’s villa in Undella Town checking out the Abyssal Ruins and sunbathing... mostly sunbathing... then again, she is on holiday.  Speaking of Black and White, I’m up to the last one now: the series’ newest Champion, Alder of Unova.  How does he compare?

The suspense is killing me.

Champions of the Pokemon League, Part 4: Wallace

I suppose some people just aren’t cut out for the life of a League Champion.  Like Red before him, Steven decides he has better things to do than defend his title in Ever Grande City and vanishes into the mountains so he can spend more time with his rocks, who miss him dreadfully while he’s training.  In Emerald version, the job is, again, taken by someone more suited to a life in the spotlight: Hoenn’s most powerful Gym Leader, Wallace, a Water Pokémon master from Sootopolis City.

A flamboyant trainer who describes himself as an artist, Wallace is interested not just in winning but in doing so with style.  He regards Pokémon battles as a form of artistic expression, promising you “a performance of illusions in water” before your gym battle in Ruby and Sapphire, and commending you first of all on your elegance when you defeat him in Emerald.  He also has a tendency to prefer poetic descriptions over more mundane turns of phrase.  He wears a beret and, in Emerald, extends his outfit with a long, flowing cape, evidently taking his fashion advice from Lance.  In short, like Lance, Wallace is in many ways a little bit over-the-top... and, like Lance, that’s what makes him fun.  Sadly Wallace doesn’t have nearly as much screen-time as Steven – he’s introduced in Sootopolis City at the game’s climax, later than any other Champion – but he does at least get an extra scene or two in Emerald that don’t appear in Ruby and Sapphire, where his entire function, story-wise, is to use his authority as Gym Leader of Sootopolis City to get you into the Cave of Origin, where Groudon (on Ruby) or Kyogre (on Sapphire) has set up its den and is preparing to take over the world, or something (I don’t know; I wasn’t really paying attention).  The Cave of Origin is a weird place.  It’s a deep, dark cavern in the middle of Sootopolis City, festooned with red and blue crystals, which appears to serve no function whatsoever.  The mouth of the cave is guarded and it’s normally forbidden to enter, except for the Gym Leaders (and former Gym Leaders) of Sootopolis City, who seem to have some kind of ceremonial role as the cave’s protectors.  According to legend, the Cave of Origin is opposite to Mount Pyre, the mountain where (apparently) everyone in Hoenn goes to bury their dead Pokémon; Mount Pyre is where life ends, while the Cave of Origin is where life begins.  I think they believe that Pokémon (and humans?) are reincarnated there – but, of course, Pokémon of every species don’t constantly spill out of the Cave of Origin, so maybe it’s supposed to be where their souls return to the world of the living?  Alternatively, maybe ‘Origin’ is to be taken literally, and it’s the place where life on Earth began?  That might explain why Groudon and Kyogre are attracted there.

Anyway, the Cave of Origin is where Wallace presides over what is probably the most bizarre scene in the entire game.  On Emerald, Groudon and Kyogre aren’t in the Cave of Origin; they’re busy settling their old grudges with a competition to see who can level the most of Sootopolis City in the shortest time.  Instead, Wallace is down there meditating.  He’s trying to figure out how to stop the two legendary Pokémon in the city above, and he thinks he knows how – summon a third, even stronger one, Rayquaza, who’s supposed to have calmed them down the last time they fought.  The trouble is that he has no clue where Rayquaza is... so he does the logical thing and questions the first poor bastard to disturb him, which happens to be you.  You have no idea where the blasted thing is either, but Wallace will keep asking even if you admit your ignorance, and you can give one of three answers.  If you say “Rayquaza’s at Mount Pyre,” Wallace responds “no, that doesn’t make any sense; if it lived there, the old people would know about it,” and, okay, I guess a bloody great sky dragon would probably get their attention.  If you try “um, wait, no, it’s inside the Cave of Origin!” he says something like “of course it isn’t, you nincompoop; that’s where we are now!” All right, maybe he doesn’t say ‘nincompoop’ but he’s thinking it.  Eventually, you throw your arms up in exasperation and say “all right; it’s at the top of the damn Sky Pillar!”  Now, at this point in the game, you have never been to the Sky Pillar.  You have probably never heard of the Sky Pillar and don’t know where it is.  You almost certainly have no reason to think that Rayquaza might be there (your rival would have told you in a phone call earlier that he/she saw a large green Flying Pokémon near Pacifidlog Town, a place you could have visited but probably didn’t, but since you don’t know that Rayquaza is a large green Flying Pokémon, that doesn’t help).  Despite all of this, the words ‘Sky Pillar’ immediately make a light-bulb start flashing in Wallace’s head and he shouts “of course!  It’s so obvious!  Quickly, to the Wallacemobile!” and bolts out of the Cave of Origin with unreasonable haste, leaving you wondering “...where the hell did I just tell him to go?”  Then, when you actually find the Sky Pillar and Wallace is there waiting, he immediately turns around and leaves because the crazy weather caused by Groudon and Kyogre is getting worse and he wants to protect Sootopolis.  It’s nice that he has such a strong sense of responsibility, I guess, but either he has much less confidence in Rayquaza than he seems to, or he really needs to give some serious thought to his priorities.



This watercolour by Boolsajo shows
Wallace in his (far more sensible)
Ruby/Sapphire outfit and accompanied
by his Milotic.  If you like it, take a look at
http://boolsajo.deviantart.com/.



...and that’s just about all Wallace does until you meet him again in Ever Grande City and battle him for the Championship.  As a master Water Pokémon trainer, Wallace does his best to exploit the enormous variety of Water-types in the game and thus protect himself from the Grass and Electric attacks that plague Water specialists, using a Tentacruel to frighten away Grass Pokémon with its Sludge Bomb and a Whiscash to neutralise Electric attacks and make short work of the Pokémon behind them.  If there’s a unifying characteristic to Wallace’s team (other than element, of course), it’s that they’re difficult to squash, taking the age-old ‘bulky water’ stereotype and running with it.  Wailord, his opener, has ludicrous HP but does tend to burn through it rather quickly with lacklustre defences and Double Edge.  His job isn’t really to stick around, though; it’s to set up Rain Dance for the others and get out of the way.  Tentacruel can shrug off most special attacks fairly easily, Whiscash has only one weakness and likes to pump up his special defence with Amnesia, Gyarados also has excellent special defence and can Intimidate opponents to weaken their physical moves, and Ludicolo is just plain annoying, healing himself constantly with Leech Seed and Giga Drain while dodging attacks with the most obnoxious move in the game, Double Team.  Wallace’s signature Pokémon, fittingly enough, is Milotic, a powerful and beautiful serpentine Water Pokémon that actually evolves by feeling pretty.  She appears on his team as both Gym Leader and Champion, and she is the worst of the lot, thanks to her ability to Recover.  As a pure Water-type, she’s only weak to Grass and Electric attacks, and since those elements had no physical attacks back in the day, Milotic’s absurd special defence allows her to sit there and Recover off even super-effective damage, unless it comes from something with really crazily powerful attacks like a Magneton.  All in all, Wallace is everything a Water Pokémon master ought to be: elegant, sophisticated, and absolutely, utterly infuriating.  Not to mention, I have to give him bonus points for actually daring to use Luvdisc in his Gym Leader incarnation, and managing to use his only (miniscule) good points – speed and natural access to Attract and Sweet Kiss – to make him, if not exactly useful, at least horribly annoying.

Wallace suffers a lot from being given much less time in the spotlight than any other Champion.  I maintain that he still manages to be more interesting than Steven despite having only half as long to make his case though.  It’d be nice to have seen more of him, but that would have required actually thinking of something for him to do earlier in the game, and that was plainly too much effort.  Nonetheless, Wallace makes a fine showing as Hoenn’s ‘other’ Champion.  Even if that scene in the Cave of Origin is unbelievably stupid.

Champions of the Pokémon League, Part 3: Steven

Steven, Steven, Steven.  What is there to say about Steven?

Well... he likes rocks.

In Ruby and Sapphire, Steven is the Champion of Ever Grande City in Hoenn and the son of Mr. Stone, president of the Rustboro-based Devon Corporation, but lives in Mossdeep City, on an island in Hoenn’s northeast.  He wears neat, formal clothing, enjoys talking to other Pokémon trainers about their training style, and likes rocks.  Honestly, that’s pretty much it.  In comparison to the other Champions, Steven is really quite bland.  He seems to be a fairly quiet, analytical sort of person, and he often comes across as rather distant, particularly when he shows up near the end of Heart Gold and Soul Silver.  He’s plainly quite adventurous, but he travels alone and doesn’t seem to spend much time around people.  In fact, he steps down from his position at some point, so that Wallace becomes the Champion instead in Emerald version, possibly because he dislikes the attention and would prefer to spend his time looking for interesting rocks.   This is all absolutely fine in its own way, and there’s something appealing about the idea of an unassuming Champion – you can see Lance coming a mile off, whereas this guy isn’t nearly as blatant.  You’re not exactly surprised when you walk into the Champion’s room and find Steven there, since he was involved with saving the world during the game’s climax (albeit in an extremely vague advisory capacity); it’s more that there’s a moment of “oh, hey, it’s this guy!  Um... what was his name again?” ...which is the problem, of course.  Steven is an incredibly forgettable character.  Heck, I barely remember him and this is my schtick.  His involvement in the story in Ruby and Sapphire is minimal.  You first meet him when you bring him a letter from his father while he’s in the Granite Cave on Dewford Island looking for cool rocks.  At one point you run into him on the road and exchange small talk before he wanders off.  When you reach Mossdeep City, you have another dull and pointless conversation and he gives you an item that you just happen to need to continue the story (not because he knows you need it; he just... kinda has one lying around that he doesn’t want).  Finally, when Groudon/Kyogre is awakened is begins playing havoc with Hoenn’s climate, he... talks for a while, tells you some things you knew already, and introduces you to Wallace, who actually matters.  If Ghetsis, the principal villain of Black and White, has unwittingly stumbled into Pokémon from a high fantasy story, then Steven has wandered over from an informative but ultimately rather tedious geology textbook.

Again, there’s nothing inherently wrong with the character Game Freak seem to have been trying to build with Steven.  However, the thing about quiet, aloof, intellectual loners is that, in real life, they’re not usually the most memorable people in a room unless you spend a bit of time with them, and this holds true here as well.  You have to be careful with your characterisation if you want to portray someone like this as anything other than hopelessly dull and, let’s face it, deep characterisation is not Pokémon’s strength (larger-than-life characters who can make a big impression in a short space of time, like Alder from Black and White, tend to fare better).  Ideally, for Steven to make a proper impact and not be boring and forgettable, we would need to work with him on something important to him, or see him become emotional about something (or, alternatively, not become emotional about something we’d expect him to), or at the very least get some dialogue out of him that isn’t the hopelessly generic “so, since we’re both trainers, why don’t you tell me what you like about Pokémon?” drivel he produces when you meet him on the road.  One of the little extra bits you get in Emerald that Ruby and Sapphire don’t have is a battle with Team Magma in the Mossdeep Space Centre, in which Steven fights at your side; you’d think the extra screen time would help, and... well, I guess it does reinforce that he’s not a big talker; considering how much dialogue the Team Magma leader, Maxie, has in that scene, Steven says remarkably little in response.  Honestly, the impression I get is that such a trivial thing as the plot is of relatively little significance to him, and he’s just annoyed that it’s happening on his island (come to think of it, since Mossdeep would’ve been one of the first places to be hit by the weather disturbances caused by Groudon and Kyogre during the climactic sequence, that could easily be his motivation for everything plot-related he ever does).  Left to his own devices... well, in Emerald, he just wanders off to the top of Meteor Falls to look for more rocks after the story’s over, where he becomes a ‘bonus boss’ along the lines of Red from Gold, Silver and Crystal.  His words to you when you speak to him?  “Do you maybe... think of me as just a rock maniac?”

Yes, Steven.  Yes, we do.

In this piece of fanart by Wildragon, Steven, his hair a little ruffled but his clothing immaculate as always, takes a break from rock-hunting in Meteor Falls with his strongest Pokémon, the steel behemoth Metagross, at his side.  If you like what you see, check out Wildragon's DeviantArt page, http://wildragon.deviantart.com/.

Contrary to what his obsession with rare stones might lead you to expect, Steven is not actually a Rock Pokémon trainer; he describes himself as a Steel-type specialist, although only three of his six Pokémon are Steel-types: Skarmory, Aggron, and his signature Pokémon, Metagross (who hits like a truck and, if you’ve never seen one before, has weaknesses that aren’t all that easy to figure out).  With Forretress, Steelix and Scizor unavailable in Ruby and Sapphire, there aren’t actually enough Steel Pokémon to assemble a full team of them.  He could conceivably have used Magneton, and a second Aggron wouldn’t have been too big a stretch, but the only other Steel-type around at this point is Mawile, and I think on some level Game Freak recognised that Mawile is not a Pokémon anyone should be forced to use, ever.  The composition of the rest of his team, therefore, comes down to what I was saying last time about choosing Pokémon that are ‘thematically appropriate,’ even if they aren’t necessarily from the right element.  Armaldo and Cradily are Rock-types, of course, but even among Rock Pokémon they are peculiarly suited to Steven since, as extinct Fossil Pokémon, Steven’s Cradily and Armaldo would have been resurrected for him from rocks – one imagines he found their fossils on one of his geological excursions and brought them to the scientist who studies that very technology for his father’s company.  Claydol is harder to place (Lunatone or Solrock might have been a better fit given their association with meteorites; on the other hand they’re much weaker than Claydol and perhaps not appropriate for a Champion) but again has shades of something he could conceivably have simply collected while exploring – Claydol and its juvenile form, Baltoy, are ancient ceramic figurines brought to life by mysterious forces; a dormant Baltoy is just the sort of thing Steven might decide to pick up whether he recognized it as a Pokémon or not.  The practical result of all this is that Steven has a team that not only makes sense for him personally but is far more diverse than anything his subordinate Elite Four have managed to put together – each of them has not one but two weaknesses shared by their entire teams (with the exception of the Kingdra Drake uses on Emerald, who has only one weakness, and Phoebe’s Sableye, who has no... well, no specific weaknesses).  You’d be hard-pressed to find such a magic bullet for Steven, which, in part, is testament to how difficult it is to inflict meaningful harm on Steel-types anyway, but still a point in favour of his team composition.

I always talk, quite deliberately, about two sides to everything: on the one hand, you have design, portrayal, character and story, and on the other, you have abilities, strengths and weaknesses, and how something is put together in terms of game mechanics.  With Steven, I think Game Freak have done a fairly depressing job on the former, and a surprisingly good one on the latter (his Aggron notwithstanding – I mean, yes, I know it looks cool, but you just don’t teach Dragon Claw, Thunder and Solarbeam to a Pokémon with a base special attack stat of sixty).  Despite my deep-seated conviction that he’s frightfully boring as he stands, having given Steven a closer look in the course of writing this entry, I’ve come to believe that he would be a very interesting character in a game that was actually character-driven, but, as I said, Pokémon tends to do a better job with eccentric, over-the-top people... who return in force when Wallace becomes Champion in Emerald...

Champions of the Pokémon League, Part 2: Lance

At some point after Blue loses the title of Champion to Red, the player character of the original games, Red buggers off to spend the next few years sitting at the top of a godforsaken mountain in the middle of nowhere gazing into the distance as the snow gradually piles up around his ankles.  Blue has evidently lost interest in the Championship by this point, which leaves the top spot open.  Eventually – whether this happens by election, or contest, or promotion is unclear – the position falls to the most senior member of the Pokémon League’s peerless death squad, the Elite Four: an eccentric dragon master from Johto by the name of Lance.

Never without his trademark cape (of which, rumour has it, he owns several), Lance is a proud, confident young man with absolute faith in his Pokémon – and justly so, since his “virtually indestructible” Dragon-types are among the most powerful Pokémon in the world.  In Red and Blue, where Lance appears as the leader of the Elite Four, that’s pretty much all we learn about him, but he gets more characterisation along with his more important role in Gold and Silver, and extra titbits of information pop up in the remakes of both sets of games.  The cape isn’t just an affectation; Lance is basically the closest thing in Johto to a superhero, flying around the region on his Dragonite, investigating suspect activity, righting wrongs, fighting for justice and being a general all-around good guy, if a somewhat overly dramatic one.  When Team Rocket shows up in Mahogany Town and causes trouble by forcing all the Magikarp in the nearby Lake of Rage to evolve into Gyarados, Lance follows along to sort them out, revealing the entrance to their hideout for you and figuring out what they’re up to.  Once he’s conscripted you as his partner in the investigation he gets surprisingly lazy about everything and leaves you to do most of the fighting, in spite of his vastly greater power and experience, although he comes through for you in the end when you’re attacked by the hideout’s commanders.  Based on what he has to say on the subject, this could be out of a desire either to test your potential or to let you have your share of the glory.  Alternatively he might have snuck back to the Lake of Rage while you weren’t looking to see whether there was another red Gyarados in the area.  You know he totally wanted it for himself.  After his intervention in Mahogany Town, it’s striking that Lance doesn’t make an appearance in the far more dramatic crisis of Team Rocket’s later takeover of Goldenrod City.  In fact, it’s striking that no-one at all bothers to do anything when they put the entire city under lockdown and start broadcasting their plans on national radio.  I can understand the local police being overwhelmed, and the Goldenrod Gym seems to have been barricaded with the Gym Leader, Whitney, and all her minions inside, but I would have thought that the repeated and insistent public radio announcements might draw a little attention from outside the city.  Did Lance really have better things to do that evening than liberate a city from a villainous organization planning to take over the whole damn country?  Was he ironing his cape?  Dyeing his hair?  Doing naked bloody cartwheels in the flipping moonlight for a pagan fertility ceremony?

Sorry.  I’m allergic to plot holes; they set off my cerebral haemorrhaging.  Anyway.  Lance.

Various characters across various games can tell us a few more things about Lance.  He’s a member of the ancient family of Dragon Pokémon trainers who rule Blackthorn City, and the cousin of the Gym Leader, Clair (who has all of Lance’s pride and elitism with none of his compassion or honour).  He apparently commands a great deal of respect there and seems to be by far the strongest trainer his clan has produced in a generation; the very suggestion of his displeasure is enough to shut Clair up when she refuses to hand over the Rising Badge after being defeated.  Lance’s clan regard Dragon Pokémon as sacred, treating them with reverence because of their boundless life energy, and only allow their members to train dragons once they have proven themselves “worthy.”  Given this background, Lance’s utter conviction in the supremacy of Dragon-types makes a great deal of sense.  The dragon-user characters of Blackthorn City are an interesting bunch, and one of the many things in this world I’d rather like to see developed more – where did their beliefs originally come from, and what is it that makes Dragon Pokémon so special?



A scene from the Pokémon Adventures manga, with colour and
additional details by Djinnjo (http://djinnjo.deviantart.com/).
Lance is here accompanied by his team from Red and Blue, and
appears markedly more youthful than in his later incarnations.



Those of you who’ve fought Lance in Gold, Silver or Crystal (or the remakes) probably remember one thing about him more clearly than anything else: Lance is a cheating bastard.  As any truly dedicated Pokémaniac knows, Lance’s signature Pokémon, Dragonite, evolves from Dragonair at level 55.  Lance’s strongest Pokémon in those games is only level 50, yet he has not one but three of the damn things, two of them as low as level 47.  You could probably handwave this by saying that Lance’s heritage and upbringing give him special insight into training Dragon Pokémon, but I prefer to say that he’s a cheating bastard.  Fudging the numbers like that really was necessary, though – by this point, you’ve already fought Clair, who uses a trio of Dragonair (two Dragonair and a Gyarados on Heart Gold and Soul Silver), so more of them would get repetitive, not to mention a bit easy, since Dragonair starts to get quite lacklustre in the high 40s and early 50s compared to the other Pokémon that have reached their final forms already.  Funnily enough, however, this is not the only reason Lance is a cheating bastard, just the most obvious.  He also has a history of teaching his Pokémon attacks that they can’t actually learn.  In Gold, Silver and Crystal, Lance’s Aerodactyl knows Rock Slide, which Aerodactyl doesn’t get in those games (he can learn it from Ruby and Sapphire onward, but in Red and Blue this made him profoundly useless because he had no decent attacks from his own types).   There’s absolutely no reason, thematically speaking, that Aerodactyl shouldn’t learn Rock Slide, and I think what happened is that the designers thought he could learn it and didn’t bother to check, which just goes to show that some of Game Freak’s decisions regarding which Pokémon should learn which attacks make so little sense that even they don’t understand them (see also: Aerial Ace).  In this case, Lance’s cheating bastardry is merely correcting an unfortunate oversight anyway.  In the case of his Dragonite from Red and Blue inexplicably knowing Barrier, which has never been a TM, which Dragonite has never been able to learn by any means, and which isn’t a markedly appropriate move for Dragonite to have anyway, especially considering that Dragonite, compared to Aerodactyl, has a vast movepool... yeah, I’ve got nothing on that one.

The vaguely interesting thing about Lance’s line-up is that, for a Dragon master, he doesn’t actually use all that many Dragon-types – principally because there weren’t all that many in Gold and Silver.  Other than Dratini, Dragonair and Dragonite, the only true Dragon available was Kingdra – and Kingdra is already Clair’s signature Pokémon, so Lance can’t easily get away with using her.  As a result, Lance fills out his team with Pokémon that aren’t really Dragons but look like they should be: Gyarados, Aerodactyl, and Charizard.  Oddly enough, I like this – choosing Pokémon that are thematically appropriate to a given trainer rather than necessarily being restricted to ones of that character’s favoured element – because it adds a bit of depth to team composition and makes trainers a bit more interesting, but it’s something that Game Freak generally avoid, and they seem to have gotten worse at it lately.  Compensating for the small number of Dark-types in Gold and Silver by giving Karen a Vileplume and a Gengar, two Pokémon strongly associated with night, made sense.  Compensating for the miniscule number of Fire-types in Diamond and Pearl by giving Flint a Steelix, a Drifblim and a Lopunny, three Pokémon that... randomly happen to learn one Fire attack each... didn’t.  I really think Game Freak would have benefitted from taking a close look at some of the line-ups used trainers from the first two sets of games (Lance is just one example) and giving some serious thought to which choices made sense and which ones didn’t, because often the most obvious answer isn’t the only one.

That’s all I think there is for me to say about Lance, really.  He’s the first ‘sitting’ Champion we get to see, and therefore our first introduction to the responsibilities of the position, a theme that comes up a fair bit in Black and White.  Together with Clair, he also did a lot of the work of defining what the Dragon type means in the world of Pokémon, which is kind of important, given how vague a type it really is, when you think about it.  And... okay, I guess I have to admit it, even the cape does grow on you after a while.  He’s a bit over-the-top, but that’s what makes him fun... in stark contrast to the next Champion in the series...