It feels like Fairy only resists Bug because they wanted to give Fairy more than two resistances.
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Unpopular opinions
- Thread starter antemortem
- Start date
Bug's my favorite type, and part of that is how much of an underdog it is. It makes the strong Bug Pokemon like Scizor and Volcarona stand out even more.
My issue with Tobias isn't his defeating Ash, but that his win over Ash felt very half-assed as a writing implementation, execution being the problem more than the concept.
Like, back in the Johto League, Ash got eliminated after his win over Gary by Harris, the guy showing off a couple of Hoenn Pokemon, including Blaziken taking down Ash's big Ace-in-the-hole Charizard in the end. The thing is, that was a full Battle between the two that managed to have an ebb and flow to who was winning throughout (not just the final match up, but all 6 mons): Ash and Harris kind of trade 1-for-1 for the first half, then after a reckless play costs Ash an advantage (his Snorlax getting KO'd by Hyper Beam being Countered), he goes for a strategic play with Bayleef rather that works on Houndoom but gets outplayed by Blaziken once the unorthodox tactics are out of the box. And a big thing in the aftermath is that Blaziken was so exhausted from the battle with Charizard that it wasn't ready for the next day's match and thus cost Harrison the tournament, emphasizing how hard the fight was on the winning side as well as Ash on the losing one.
What I'm trying to say for all this is that Harris felt like a trainer who could have had his own story with his team, a guy who exists in the world and had similar challenges to get over before reaching the point where we see him for the story. Tobias meanwhile just rolls up with Darkrai and then a surprise Latios and goes on to win the Tournament. They try to pay lip-service to Ash's performance by saying his Darkrai's never lost to another trainer, but this gets undercut when he just pulls another Legendary out, and a pretty random one all things considered (Latios being half of a duo that's not even native to Sinnoh AND had a major anime role before that suggested it was a very unique/rare species compared to other Legendaries we've implicitly seen multiples of). The idea of a sort of "giant tower boss" battle can be interesting to watch or fight, and I'd argue it was the entire basis behind Totem Pokemon and Max Raid battles being made major game features as well, but if that's the case I would not have had Tobias's remaining team include any other behemoths like that, especially because if right after his "I swept everything with this guy" Pokemon goes down he just pulls out another Uber, it undercuts even that victory because it makes his entire team a bunch of mountains to bulldoze through opposition rather than at least a squad with a headliner.
Heck I think there could have been something neat to having Darkrai go down and then the rest of Tobias's team is normal-level Pokemon who struggle to finish the exhausted team Ash has left. It'd be a sort of look/deconstruction at the trainer/player types who just throw Legendaries or funnel all their EXP into one big Mon on the team and then hit trouble if that mon can't solo the fight, the way some people interpret Paul as a look at harsher competitive/"stop-having-fun" players. Tobias could take away that he needs to train the rest of his team and support Darkrai rather than putting the entire burden of winning on it.
tl;dr Tobias beating Ash isn't a problem, but how Tobias beats Ash is lazy writing.
The bigger issue I have is that compared to something like Ice, I can't think of any good thematic buffs off-hand to give to the Bug typing. Compared to a lot of the others which encompass elements or broad concepts (Fighting, Fire/Water/Grass, Electric), Bug feels a lot more specific as an idea to make an entire class of Pokemon. I point to a large number of Pokemon who look like they could be bugs based on visual design but are not so in practice (Flygon based on an Antlion, Falinks takes after a Caterpillar or Centipede motif when its Segments are joined).
That said Bug could simply have done without a lot of the nerfs and additional negatives it has garnered, not being resisted by a few types such as Fairy for a start (frankly I'd have given Fairies a Normal resist since a lot of old depictions made them as abducting or messing with common folk using Magic just for the heck of it). Bug-at-large feels like the type-chart equivalent of a Dump Stat, the one the designers use when they need to improve something by virtue of match ups but don't want to nerf something more marketable like the cool Fire or Ghost types etc., or put a balancing act on a Mon they're trying something new with (Volcarona having a legitimate endgame statline with Quiver Dance, two of the Ultra Beasts having Beast Boost and hyper-specialized stat lines).
I personally feel that Bug's poor type advantages is balanced out by having very good effects attached to their moves. Sticky Web, Quiver Dance, and U-turn are all amazing, while moves like First Impression, Pollen Puff, and Leech Life also have strong use cases. Knock off and Scald are already overbearing for having good effects on good types, we really don't need to add an entire type of them.
To be fair about Lati@s, the Japanese version of the movie starring them outright shows there are multiples of both, the ending shows 2 Latias and 1 Latios in the sky, but 4kids airbrushed out the 2nd Latias to imply that the Latios that was part of the plot of the movie was still alive and everything is all happy in the end with no deaths whatsoever.
As someone who doesn't really keep up with or care for the anime, Tobias is such a fascinating character. I really can't think of another series that pulled put a deus ex machina against the main protagonist, at least not this explicitly and brazenly. Add in pika pal's dissection of how Tobias doesn't feel like an actual trainer who could exist and the fact he was never seen again and you got a downright surreal footnote in the history of the Pokemon franchise.
In fact, going back to my inexperience, I remember hearing the horror stories from anime watchers through Pokefandom cultural osmosis. This asspull monster trainer who mauled Ash's team with a Darkrai before cleaning up with Latios. Y'know what I thought from this description? Do you really wanna know?
"Well, that's pretty stupid, but I don't get why people were caught so off-guard. Obviously this had to have been set up in Rise of Darkrai!"
Yup. I took for granted that either Tobias was a major character in that movie (his outfit does look pretty "anime movie secondary protagonist-y" in the vein of Sir Aaron) or that there was some scene near the end where after his arc Darkrai expressed a desire to get with a strong enough trainer. Oh how naive I evidently was.
Thankfully they learned their lesson and did the set-up work for XY's resident cool strongman in Alain. Unfortunately the Kalos League finale is still a narrative abomination, but hey silver linings are silver linings!
In fact, going back to my inexperience, I remember hearing the horror stories from anime watchers through Pokefandom cultural osmosis. This asspull monster trainer who mauled Ash's team with a Darkrai before cleaning up with Latios. Y'know what I thought from this description? Do you really wanna know?
"Well, that's pretty stupid, but I don't get why people were caught so off-guard. Obviously this had to have been set up in Rise of Darkrai!"
Yup. I took for granted that either Tobias was a major character in that movie (his outfit does look pretty "anime movie secondary protagonist-y" in the vein of Sir Aaron) or that there was some scene near the end where after his arc Darkrai expressed a desire to get with a strong enough trainer. Oh how naive I evidently was.
Thankfully they learned their lesson and did the set-up work for XY's resident cool strongman in Alain. Unfortunately the Kalos League finale is still a narrative abomination, but hey silver linings are silver linings!
I don't know is Ash really all that popular a character who's difficult to move on from? I don't know but others, but I never watched the Pokémon anime because of him. I just rooted for him because he was the protagonist. But he's equal parts hype at his best and maddeningly frustrating at his worst.
I don't see wiping the slate clean for a new protagonist to take up the mantle, as all that difficult a task to execute. Ash to me was never such a beloved figure in the community that it would be, like, difficult to move on without him.
Most people who are only passingly aware of Pokemon think Ash is the main character of the whole franchise, so he's probably too popular to drop.
Though I think even more than Ash, it's Pikachu that's preventing them from starting fresh. Sure, they could theoretically give their new human protagonist another Pikachu that just happens to have the same charismatic spunk of Ash's Pikachu, but that seems like it'd be even more contrived than BW's reboot.
I would like to second this so strongly
People act like Bug needs to be buffed offensively, but that implies Pokémon don't use Bug moves by choice all the time
The best example is the case of U-turn vs Volt Switch - even though Electric is superficially a better attacking type and Volt Switch comes pretty close to being available to every single Electric-type (it's not fully universal, but there were very few exceptions before the last two Generations), U-turn is such a vastly superior move that it's even preferred by many of the Electric-types that have both, even though Bug ought to be a "bad" type and Electric is what they have STAB on
In a particularly extreme example, Tapu Koko's sample set in current-Gen OU recommends U-turn over Volt Switch despite having Electric STAB, the boost from Electric Surge, maximum Special Attack EVs and a Timid nature, factors that mean that exact set using Volt Switch instead would do just over 2.35 times as much raw damage on a neutral target
This is not an accident - U-turn is still a better move than Volt Switch
When a Pokémon uses Volt Switch, it commits to doing damage and switching out if the opponent doesn't send in a Ground-type but staying in and doing nothing if the opponent sends in a Ground-type (one of the type's expected losing matchups), which is the exact opposite of what most Pokémon want out of a pivoting move
Conversely, U-turn can't be blocked by anything, and it takes a lot for a Pokémon to give that up if it has the option at all
That's the thing: U-turn isn't used primarily for damage or good matchups - it borders on being one of the "safest" moves in the entire game, and it's appreciated and readily utilized by nearly everything that has it, Bug-type or not (and physically offensive or not!)
This matters so much more than people seem to realize - being weak to U-turn is rare, but it also borders on crippling, because Pokémon are afraid to invite U-turn or to be threatened and forced out by the possibility of U-turn
Conversely, being resistant to U-turn may be common, but it is also coveted
People often complain in particular about Fairy being given a resistance to Bug (even in this same thread, people have suggested it was some kind of stock resistance to "pad out" its defensive profile without hurting a more popular type or one that was meant to have minimal implication), but that's another thing that needs to be looked at more closely: Fairy's resistances were openly designed from the ground up to make it "the anti-meta type," with particular focus on the types that were most prominent in Gen V VGC and probably with Gen VI's Dark buff in mind as well
It resists Bug because Bug-type moves are meta, and it's actually considered one of the most relevant and useful resistances Fairy has to offer: it means they don't take excessive damage from it every time something they intend to counter tries to pivot out of them, and they can also switch in safely to resist stray U-turns aimed at other Pokémon
Essentially, Bug is the type that's "allowed" a crazy-strong tool like this only because it is one of the worst in offensive matchups alone - these are not unrelated!
The thing is that Pokémon care about their defensive Bug matchup because of the universal utility of the most relevant Bug move
and you can't simply give a tool like this to just any attacking type without a harsh drawback (like making Volt Switch fail on the Pokémon its users would most want to escape)
Even the more recent Flip Turn on the more "powerful" Water type had extremely careful distribution compared to past pivoting moves and a power decrease to match + also Water Absorb and Storm Drain may be relevant depending on the format (I think Storm Drain is quite common in the official competitive format, VGC, and it also happens to block Flip Turn from anywhere on the field!); conversely, no Bug immunity exists even with any Ability, because it's a major part of the the identity of the type to be "offensively weak but perfectly reliable"
The type chart is a lot more carefully considered than people give it credit for, and it's incredibly rare that I see someone ask to "fix" it and actually agree with their suggestion
The "problem" is when people look at matchups like they exist in a vacuum and every type needs to be perfectly balanced before any moves or Pokémon are made, when moves and Pokémon belong to specific types because of what those types can do for them and what part of those types they represent
"Weak" types on paper are usually the ones with the strongest assets or the strongest Pokémon - moves and Pokémon that rely on having constraining matchups to be kept in check - and there are Pokémon of every type that see in-game and competitive success when they work with the type correctly instead of trying to shape it into something it's not, so obviously this is working!
If you want to buff Bug-types, you should absolutely not do it offensively, because Bug's most defining move and its entire mechanical identity leans heavily on the offensive matchups that it already has and it would be very easy to bring about some pretty stupid consequences if you make it better
On the other hand, Bug is a pretty fine defensive type anyway - when specific weaknesses are patched up by the right secondary type, held item or partner, it is usually more than workable and you can really see the type's distinctive toolkit shine through
A lot of Bug-types' identities come from their moves most of all, many of the best of which are rarely distributed to other types
None of this is stuff you could get just by looking at their matchups on a chart - you need to look at the Pokémon that have the Bug type and what they do, as well as the Pokémon that run Bug-type moves and the Pokémon that match up well against Bug-type moves and how much that is valued, before you can write off the type as flawed or in need of saving
Basically, I don't think you need to "fix" the type; I think a lot of people just look at the type chart in an incomplete way that doesn't reflect how well it's really designed (my unpopular opinion: the type chart, in its current state, is one of the coolest things about the series and is the underlying factor between almost all of the other mechanics and design choices I like the most; I wouldn't change a thing about it), and I wish more people would focus on understanding it before they try to correct it, because uuusually the latter means making it worse
ooooooh I don't really have strong feelings about my post (as I said I don't really have any counterarguments to people who felt it was an unsatisfying narrative beat) but I strongly dislike this hypothetical haha. The idea that the rest of Tobias' team is secretly weak is a fun thing to meme about, but I think it creates more problems and raises more questions than if his whole team is stacked.
For one, I think it'd do more to validate the solo mon strategy, the same way the games do, than to deconstruct it. After all, making it to the semi-finals of a regional league conference is a very impressive result whichever way you slice it. Plus, it'd be a little weird to imply that people irl who focus all their attention on a single mon are Playing The Game Wrong.
Also, how did Tobias even catch a legendary Pokemon if he's not otherwise a strong and competent trainer? Presumably he didn't defeat it or receive it as a gift in this version of the story, so I assume they'd do the classic 'he found it injured and nursed it back to health and in exchange it agreed to join his team' thing, which 1) L A M E and 2) would require a distracting amount of flashback backstory to satisfactorily explain how it all went down and how he then went from being a nurturing trainer to a neglectful one.
This. It's like how all those trainers in the Battle Frontier/Maison/Subway/Tree/whatever have Latis, legendary beasts, and Heatran/Cresselia on their team. I know a lot of people see that and think "well it can't be canon, the player character is the only one skilled enough to meet/capture legendaries." But I think of it as... just the opposite. It might seem otherwise, but the player character really is a small fish in a massive pond. These Ace Trainers and Experts and all the rest really are powerful and skilled enough to meet (multiple) legendaries and capture them, just like you.
I've been playing the Battle Subway a lot recently and I really love that you actually get to meet the NPCs on the platform, who talk about how tough it is to make it 40+ battles in. Most of them have the sprites of Veterans and Ace Trainers, who are the type of trainers that use legendaries most often. So I absolutely believe that these are the sorts of people who've been catching legendaries all over the world. There's one, at the 28th battle, who dismissively calls you weak (even though you literally have to be the Champion to make it to that point) and says that she'd just get bored if she battled you. I love that. There's even an NPC at the World Tournament in B2W2 who mentions that one of her favourite moves to use is Lunar Dance, basically confirming that she has a Cresselia on her team (yes, I know she could use it via other means but I think it's pretty clear in context what's intended).
So in that sense it wasn't at all surprising that Tobias had another legendary on his team (and probably several more); he's simply that good. In the anime those types of trainers seem fewer, but that's probably due to the way the story is told in that canon. Yes he's a deus ex machina, but his existence isn't that incongruous.
I think the main difference between Anime and games is that in the Anime, actual legendary catchers / users are extremely rare, usually legendaries are either befriended, or just happen to fight along / against you as their own thing due to being awakened / angered / something by the villain of a given arc.
I havent really followed the anime in ages but I'm moderately confident that between both and it, you can still count actually caught / trained legendaries with less than 2 hands worth of fingers.
On that note, I'd just say that I think that it's just better to consider "anime" and "games" as 2 separate canons really. Outside of Kanto/Jotho due to gen 1-2 shenenigans, I don't think there's any actual "continuity recognition" in games, the feats of "previous MCs" are barely ever mentioned or aknowledged, same for the events of other legendaries, to this degree it's almost like every game is its own canon which just happen to share the same universe (also, multiverse basically being canonized with ORAS/USUM didn't exactly help).
It's very possible that "in the anime" catching legendaries is borderline impossible, there's only a very small amount of trainers who actually managed to, and legendaries themselves are extremely rare to the point they are considered uniques, while "in the games" the MC is actually just a fish in a bigger pond, and catching legendaries isn't exactly THAT rare and any trainer that puts enough effort in it is able to acquire one or more. Ultimately, even some of the rivals in, say, BW and SwSh show that it's very possible for them to befriend and/or catch a legendary and use them as regular pokemon even during official tournaments (shoutout to Hop casually flinging most broken legendary designed so far at your face if you are on Shield)
Now I'm wondering if the anime is to blame for the "thou shalt not give the protagonist a legendary" mindset among fanfic writers, since that seems to be where the idea of legendaries being gods originated. Compare the Birds' barebones lore in-game to being the subjects of a cataclysm in Pokémon 2000.
Yeah the different continuities very much have their own rules. In the Adventures manga for instance nearly all the legendaries are unique, so when Anabel shows up with a Raikou in the Emerald chapter it's the same one Gold and co met before.
And I'd say that the feats of previous players very much are referenced and recognised in the MSG, albeit not always explicitly - BW references Team Rocket and Galactic being foiled, Cynthia mentions the battle against Giratina, and Steven alludes to having fought May/Brendan in HGSS when he confuses Lyra/Ethan with them. The antics of the various legendary crises don't, but that might be because few people were around to see most of them.
I actually think that you can broadly reconcile the anime's view with other canons. Part of me thinks that when legendaries allow themselves to be caught it's more of a "lending-power" situation, where the legendary agrees to help the human but isn't completely submitting to being entirely theirs. That's certainly the case in the manga, in which legendaries generally only join humans in times of crisis and often (though not always) leave once the crisis has passed. It's not a thing in the MSG for gameplay reasons, but I think there's no reason that the same logic wouldn't hold true there. Hop staying with Zacian or Zamazenta forever seems implausible, much as Nebby eventually leaves Lillie. Like with Suicune and Goh and Nolan and Articuno, where their partnership is much more like a loose friendship rather than concrete partnerships as most human/Pokemon unions are. It's only a theory, but it makes sense to me so it's what I've often chosen to think.
Ah, but again you could reconcile that by saying that it's only those three specific individuals, which are part of that region's specific ecosystem.
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It's possible.
There's always a huge misconception about legendaries (and people obsessed by their presence in competitive alike) being this sort of absurd entity, in reality outside of specific case like literally god or the dominator of space time they are just more powerful living being but in same way you'd think a Gyarados is stronger than a Squirtle.
Even some of the legendaries abilities aren't exactly not shared by other "regular" pokemon, like many electric and water type pokemon can summon rain and storms (Rain Dance is literally that), that wasnt exactly something unique of Zapdos or Lugia.
From what I know, the whole "lore" behind "i must beat the shit out of a pokemon without killing it in order to catch him" is that a pokemon is meant to recognize your strenght and will as trainer before they become willing to become your
The whole "recognize your strenght and will" doesn't necessarly have to involve the "beating the shit out of you" part, thus legendaries deciding that a given person is worthy of their company is a perfectly reasonable option.
I'll crosspost my previous observation with "minor' legendaries.
Imagine bringing a legendary Pokemon only to be overshadowed by a butthat with two legendaries.
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You are correct. That is why Tobias made such a stir at the time. Very few trainers were shown with legendaries (compared to now in the anime). To have Tobias show up, beat Ash, and not explain where he obtained his legendaries angered the fan base.
He raised a lot of questions that were never answered.
Worldie Not to mention, the idea of legendaries being akin to gods wasn't really a thing until Gen 3? Like, Ho-oh has resurrection powers, but phoenixes aren't usually thought of as god-like, whereas Groudon and Kyogre have the power to end the world by accident whenever they get angry.
Imperial Magala That Makuhita is huge.
Imperial Magala That Makuhita is huge.
Even of the most recent legendaries and restricted introduced, they have kinda ditched the whole "god" idea.
The closest we have got to it is Calyrex (which however is still supposed to be an ancient king that happened to gain insane power and still nothing like a god). All the gen 7 and 8 legendaries / mythical introduced are "at best" natural spirits that happen to have a connection with the local land, and at worse kung fu panda but on a diet.
Feels like by the end of gen 6 they did realize that they were running out of stuff pokemon could reign over and it was probably time to change the way they designed legendaries.
Yeah, nowadays "legendary" feels more like a marketing term than something with a concrete definition. Let's see... the Gen 7 legendaries are an evolution of a man-made Pokémon, aliens that happen to look like the sun and moon, and an angry crystal. The Gen 8 legendaries are King Arthur's fursonas, giant space dragon, two members of a pre-existing group, regional variants of a pre-existing group, a top-heavy deer king, and two horses of the apocalypse.
Also, interesting that you mentioned Gen 6, because that's when Dragon-type legendaries started to be phased out.
Also, interesting that you mentioned Gen 6, because that's when Dragon-type legendaries started to be phased out.
Hint, fairy happened :P
Gen 5's a weird case. The main group is just a strong dragon that split into three dragons, and one of the secondary groups is just some deer that beat up humans. The other secondary group are nature spirits with dedicated worship sites, but then also there's Volcarona, who was worshiped as a sun god and even has a unique encounter in an old worship site but isn't legendary for some reason.
At this point Legendary feels more like just a way to indicate a specific type of pokemon, that share the trait of being
- Unique (can only catch one in a given save file)
- Cannot breed (with the only real exception being Manaphy)
- Optional, generally true but there's a few exception: High BST / strong abilities
Gen 7 introduced legendaries that Evolve and also has the interesting edge case of UltraBeasts that are basically legendaries (even though you could POTENTIALLY catch infinite of them in USUM) but are still classified as regular pokemon by GameFreaks (even though iirc their pokedex border in the games was the legendary border).
Assumingly, the reason for them not being classified as legendaries is the fact that they are meant to be "regular pokemon, but just from other dimensions". But by that point, Deoxys, Lunala and Solgaleo should also be regular pokemon...
Considering we got 5 new Dragon Legendaries from Gen 6 onward (Zygarde, Ultra Necromza, Guzzlord, Naganadel, and Eternatus), I think the focus was changed to more non-Dragon Legendary pairs after two consecutive regions with Dragon pairs/trios (Sinnoh and Unova), although third members are still overwhelmingly Dragon.