Celever
i am town
It’s odd to me to think that if Butterfree had been created 2 years later in the release of Gold & Silver we would all be incredibly hyped by its reveal, but because it’s a member of the original 151 it’s being fairly widely slammed. Butterfree was a terrible Pokémon in battle who needed a buff, and now it got a buff. It’s a fairly obscure Pokémon at this stage who deserved to get back into the limelight. And to top it off, its gigantamax form is far and away the best we’ve seen yet. I don’t see why this gen 1 vs everything else factionalism detracts from Butterfree specifically.
And all of the other new gigantamax forms are not only reasonable but fairly necessary simply due to the nature of franchises. Pikachu and Meowth are the main Pokémon characters of the anime and every now and again will have flashy gigantamax battles against each other, which will be awesome to watch. Eevee is a new series mascot and with the route they chose to take receiving the special Pikachu (save file detection), Eevee necessarily also had to get one so that one version of LGPE wasn’t made objectively better than the other one a year after its release. Charizard is also a significant series mascot, and now that megas have been removed it needs a gimmick to keep it battleworthy.
It’s simply the nature of franchises that the oldest characters become the most famous, not because of pandering but because they’ve had the most time to gain icon status. Pikachu was an icon overnight, but it’s taken decades for Eevee and Charizard to get to the same level in the mainstream where a pretty large percentage of the population could at least name them. Even though Lucario, Greninja and Incineroar are all cooler than Charizard and are on their way to becoming fairly iconic, they’re not there yet, so it’s simply less smart to pander to them in the short term.
Would I like to see a Corsola gigantamax into a full coral reef with Wishiwashi swimming in it, or Meowstic complete its imagery and receive a gigantamax with a scratching post wand and a broomstick? Absolutely, but they’re not gonna give the gimmick to every Pokémon we want every time, and right now they’re focussing on Gen I. That’s fine, and eventually they’ll have done something for just about all of the niche Gen I picks and essentially be forced to move on to other Pokémon. I don’t mind waiting until that time comes.
Also, its flawed to characterise GameFreak as a single, Gen I pandering entity. Most of the staff working on the games now didn’t work on Gen I or even FRLG, so where’s the emotional attachment?
Only gripe I have so far is that the champion uses a non-native Pokémon as his ace. All it says, to me, is they didn’t have confidence that they could design another Garchomp or Metagross, another Pokémon worthy of being used by a champion. Which also makes me wonder in some ways which Pokémon we’re receiving as the newcomer in the next smash bros, since no new Pokémon revealed so far is deserving of getting in. It will probably just be another starter again which would be annoying, because we need more Lucario-style mascots in the series.
And all of the other new gigantamax forms are not only reasonable but fairly necessary simply due to the nature of franchises. Pikachu and Meowth are the main Pokémon characters of the anime and every now and again will have flashy gigantamax battles against each other, which will be awesome to watch. Eevee is a new series mascot and with the route they chose to take receiving the special Pikachu (save file detection), Eevee necessarily also had to get one so that one version of LGPE wasn’t made objectively better than the other one a year after its release. Charizard is also a significant series mascot, and now that megas have been removed it needs a gimmick to keep it battleworthy.
It’s simply the nature of franchises that the oldest characters become the most famous, not because of pandering but because they’ve had the most time to gain icon status. Pikachu was an icon overnight, but it’s taken decades for Eevee and Charizard to get to the same level in the mainstream where a pretty large percentage of the population could at least name them. Even though Lucario, Greninja and Incineroar are all cooler than Charizard and are on their way to becoming fairly iconic, they’re not there yet, so it’s simply less smart to pander to them in the short term.
Would I like to see a Corsola gigantamax into a full coral reef with Wishiwashi swimming in it, or Meowstic complete its imagery and receive a gigantamax with a scratching post wand and a broomstick? Absolutely, but they’re not gonna give the gimmick to every Pokémon we want every time, and right now they’re focussing on Gen I. That’s fine, and eventually they’ll have done something for just about all of the niche Gen I picks and essentially be forced to move on to other Pokémon. I don’t mind waiting until that time comes.
Also, its flawed to characterise GameFreak as a single, Gen I pandering entity. Most of the staff working on the games now didn’t work on Gen I or even FRLG, so where’s the emotional attachment?
Only gripe I have so far is that the champion uses a non-native Pokémon as his ace. All it says, to me, is they didn’t have confidence that they could design another Garchomp or Metagross, another Pokémon worthy of being used by a champion. Which also makes me wonder in some ways which Pokémon we’re receiving as the newcomer in the next smash bros, since no new Pokémon revealed so far is deserving of getting in. It will probably just be another starter again which would be annoying, because we need more Lucario-style mascots in the series.