wait, what Gen 5 design do you hate out of curiosity, and why?
genuinely curious
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Unpopular opinions
- Thread starter antemortem
- Start date
genuinely curious
Speaking of Gen 5, I have to say that I find a few of the character designs quite strange, if not creepy.
Musharna looking like a fetus, for one. The Reuniclus and Garbodor lines IMO aren't exactly creepy, but I honestly thought they were jelly bears and dust bunnies, respectively, in Pokemon form - I was surprised to learn I was wrong. Gen V definitely has something...odd going on with many/most of its designs. Some look quite forgettable (Samurott and Unfezant), some look weird (already mentioned), and some look like Digimon or Yu-Gi-Oh! characters (Hydreigon, Reshiram, and Genesect). Admittedly, many do look quite nice and/or memorable (Amoonguss, Mandibuzz, Braviary, and Haxorus). I actually have no real problem with the Vanilluxe and Klinklang lines, my only issue is that the latter could have been a little more memorable.
IMO, being memorable does not necessarily entail being complicated in design; Muk has a pretty simple design but is quite memorable, as is Magneton.
Musharna looking like a fetus, for one. The Reuniclus and Garbodor lines IMO aren't exactly creepy, but I honestly thought they were jelly bears and dust bunnies, respectively, in Pokemon form - I was surprised to learn I was wrong. Gen V definitely has something...odd going on with many/most of its designs. Some look quite forgettable (Samurott and Unfezant), some look weird (already mentioned), and some look like Digimon or Yu-Gi-Oh! characters (Hydreigon, Reshiram, and Genesect). Admittedly, many do look quite nice and/or memorable (Amoonguss, Mandibuzz, Braviary, and Haxorus). I actually have no real problem with the Vanilluxe and Klinklang lines, my only issue is that the latter could have been a little more memorable.
IMO, being memorable does not necessarily entail being complicated in design; Muk has a pretty simple design but is quite memorable, as is Magneton.
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I remember seeing "dust bunny" as an inspiration for Trubbish's design.
Also, I won't see Musharna the same way anymore.
I have a deep and seething hatred for Lechonk. They wanted their rando pig mon to be the next Bidoof so they gave it the dumbest possible name to appeal to meme culture.
I mean it worked, people worship the thing, I still hate it
I adore Smoliv because I’m a hypocrite
At this point 'hate' is a strong word because every design either grows on me over time or it just becomes so normalised through exposure that I end up indifferent towards it, but the answer is Conkeldurr! It looks like a buff kidney with an old man's head and a clown nose. It has those concrete pillars that it has to set aside to use 90% of its attacks and it looks like the designer spent all their time on the upper body and then only had 30 seconds to hastily draw the vague shape of legs and feet before the submission deadline.
Normally I can embrace the weirdness of a design but I've always struggled with Conk for whatever reason. With more widely despised stuff like Vanilluxe I kinda feed off the absurd hatred the fanbase has for it and end up loving it.
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for me the clown nose and weird old man face on Conkeldurr is odd, but the idea of something swinging concrete pillars around is so much more awesome than even Machamp, its clear inspiration. I respect your opinion though and totally understand why you'd feel that way
I think Gigalith is the cooler looking trade evo tho, perhaps
Vanilluxe is too goofy for me to actually dislike
I don't think any Legendary Pokemon will lose its status as Legendary, but I do think they can be organized into subcategories:
- Ascended: Legendary Birds, Legendary Beasts, Legendary Titans, Lake Guardians, Phione, Swords of Justice, Forces of Nature, Type: Null family, Island Guardians, Kubfu family, Wild Horses
- Exalted: Eon Duo, Cresselia, Heatran, Regigigas, Calyrex
- Revered: Mewtwo, Tower Duo, Weather Trio, Creation Trio, Tao Trio, Aura Trio, Cosmog family, Necrozma, Heroes of Many Battles, Eternatus
- Aloof: Mew, Celebi, Jirachi, Deoxys, Manaphy, Shaymin, Darkrai, Arceus, Victini, Meloetta, Keldeo, Genesect, Diancie, Hoopa, Volcanion, Magearna, Marshadow, Zeraora, Meltan family, Zarude
Though, if it were up to me, I would move the following Mythicals:
- Keldeo into "Ascended" (combined with the Swords of Justice)
- Deoxys, Darkrai, Genesect, Volcanion, & Zeraora into "Exalted" (I'd combine Cresselia and Darkrai into the "Lunar Duo")
- Arceus into "Revered" (combined with the Creation Trio)
Think a few of the groups which are just known as "Legendary (Thing)" could use some fancier nicknames:
Legendary Birds: Winged Mirages
Legendary Beasts: Rainbow Envoys
Legendary Titans: Gigas Titans
Bold are my guesses, pretty much went with the earliest "clear" example.
I imagine Ho-Oh is the rooster as it's based on the Fenghuang, the "Chinese Phoenix" which is a legendary creature in the Chinese-Japanese parts of Asia (it's often used as the counterpart to the Chinese Dragon). It's a composite creature of several animals, mostly of birds which usually includes parts of a rooster's head (due to the chicken's iconic wattle beaks).
NEW Unpopular Opinion: Not sure if this goes here cause I feel a lot will agree with me, well except for GF, but I'm kind of getting tired of the "giant Pokemon" gimmick.
- In Alola we had the Totem Pokemon. First time they made Pokemon big, fine.
- In Galar we had Dynamax & Gigantamax. Main gimmick of the gen, fine.
- In Hisui we have Alpha Pokemon. They're just bigger because it's easy to make a Pokemon special by enlarging its model. Overall felt pointless.
- And now in Paldea we have Titan Pokemon, cause the Path of Legends storyline needed bosses and, like with Alpha Pokemon, its easy just to make a Pokemon bigger than giving it a unique model.
I don't really think replacing an already vague, poorly-defined, and unnecessary label that serves only to reinforce biases in bad players with an even more convoluted system is at all a good idea. If anything, it's a step in the wrong direction.
Hmm it's tricky. I don't think I want a catchable one-off design for a species, because I feel like that 'devalues' all the other members of its species with its specialness (especially since you know GF's designers would go extra hard for the one-off design to make it more appealing). On the other hand, I'm also not sure I want to have a special one-off boss design that I can't obtain for myself. Making it B E E G is just the most obvious way to convey significance and power without increasing your workload too much or creating issues like 'how different does a design have to be before it's a different species altogether?'
Shiny Pokemon are already a little philosophically dicey but at least they're 'just' a palette swap. Alpha Pokemon worked fine for me because PLA's gameplay makes it the only game where a Pokemon can truly feel physically imposing in the wild. The increased size actually made me feel different about them as I was playing, while also having practical benefits for gameplay.
I honestly don't really understand most of your categorization anyway.... But am I the only one who thought "legendary Pokemon" just meant "a Pokemon that has had legends told about it" instead of any nonsense about it being one of a kind/special/xyz level of power/etc. Like in our own world, the equivalent would be the okapi or manatee, or probably even cryptids. Where some legends there's probably only 1 member of the species (like mothman), but for others like bigfoot I mean who knows. So why does it matter if there are more than 1 or not?
This is how it should have been, and maybe what they originally intended for the label, but there are non-legendary/mythic Pokemon who have legends surrounding them, like Volcarona, Kadabra, and Bronzong, and there are legendary/mythical Pokemon who either don't seem to have any particular legend associated with them (such as Heatran and the Lati twins), or are so obscure and/or recently discovered that no legend seems to have developed around them (such as Deoxys).
There really isn't a consistent definition of legendary beyond just "this Pokemon is arbitrarily designated as important in the lore", and even then there are a lot of Pokemon where it doesn't make much sense why that is the case. Heatran was always the big one for me; I don't see any reason why Heatran should be considered a legendary and not just a powerful, rare Pokemon in the same vein as Volcarona.
I guess I forget that there are official guidebooks that have listings of legendary Pokemon, because in my head sure Volcarona can be a legendary by in game standards too. When I mentioned manatee, I was even thinking of Arcanine, how it's called legendary but can be relatively common in some places.
To be fair, Arcanine(and Dratini, Dragonair, and Dragonite) were listed as Legendary Pokemon in the 1996 Red and Green guidebook officially made by Game Freak, the same one that was translated relatively recently by Didyouknowgaming and showed that the game's canon in Gen I was significantly different then that of Gen II onwards(Kanto being the actual Kanto region of Japan, the world literally just being Earth, real-world animals/locations/history and everything, Pokemon were discovered in France in the 1800's, ect).
Honestly, the part about Pokémon being discovered in 1800s France is just as baffling as the people of Kanto not knowing about Pokémon that were right next door to them, considering that Pokémon came into being 2 million years ago in the original lore.
Not a particular fan of the name either, but Bulbapedia cites the (probably dialectical) Spanish word "lechón," apparently a term for some kind of wild pig/boar, as part of the name inspiration, which i think is pretty neat. I'm not a particularly fluent Spanish speaker (and I'm only really familiar with Latin American Spanish), so it's possible I'm getting some details wrong, though.
I've heard the word before as well, and I believe it does indeed refer to some variety of Pig, though I do not know the term or any Spanish culture well enough for the Specifics. I took it to be "Lechon" and "Oink" in a way that also let them make the meme name pun out of the combination.
I don't use reddit or consider myself an epic memer, and chonk is still in my lexicon. It's just a fun word to describe chubby cute animals.
Normally id say reconsider but I envy your bliss untouched by annoying meme culture
I think it's pretty cringe-y too, honestly (at least partially because "chonk" doesn't even describe the Pokemon it's attached to), but I respect the mixing of a Spanish term into the name. Smoliv doesn't bother me as much because it works off of the same spelling variations that Pokémon is known to use, and without the spelling variations its name is just composed of two normal words (and "Smallive" just doesn't look good).
Also someone who never uses Reddit btw
Sorry, but as French native speaker, I don't see the problem with the name Lechonk ... Could you explain ?
"Chonk" (presumably derived from "chunk", variants "chonky" and "chonker") is a recent word primarily used to affectionately describe chubby animals. For whatever reason some people think it's a meme (and a dead one at that) and exclusively used by some niche subculture, which is just... demonstrably untrue.
A few years ago a lot of people started describing chubby animals with the word 'chonk' (presumably a play on 'chunky', one of English's many words for 'fat'). People who spent too much time online (especially on Reddit) started making meme terms like 'chonk' their entire personality and then a bunch of other people made hating that first group of people their entire personality, even now that the meme element is dead and it's just a pretty widely known word that some people like to use.
'Lechonk' specifically reminds people of an even earlier collection of internet terms like 'le epic bacon' (*shudder*), and so they think the name is a cynical ploy to gain attention by referencing meme culture, which, even if true, is... uhh... not a big deal imo?
To be fair, you'll definitely still find some of that old 'cringe' meme culture in the comments on any post by TPC that features Lechonk, but it's pretty benign and contained.
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