Gen VII: Pokemon Sun and Moon Discussion MKII

[EJ190]

Turtonator sounds like an invention by Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz...
Stufful is adorable enough, and it's attack animation is hilarious enough to make me ignore the butt tag. Even if it doesn't make sense and the design certainly doesn't need it...
Sandygast is a little bland but it's cool.
The rotating shovel gives Pallosand some life(ironically), I like it.
Crabrawler is amazing and I like everything about it.

 

[Zowayix]

The Japanese are crazy for coconut crab.

Careful with the overbroad statements.

 

[Absolclaw]

I actually prefer the sand castle mons more than Vanilluxe.
At least sand castles are ghosts.
At least Klefki is fairy.
But Vanilluxe? Doesn't make any sense to me.

I'm talking design wise, I'd have been down with the concepts if their faces weren't so derpy looking. For me Vanilluxe is over the top silly and circles back to being likeable, whereas Palossade is just, meh.

Besides, you don't eat fairies, do you. I hope. o_O

 

[Bombkirby]

I actually prefer the sand castle mons more than Vanilluxe.
At least sand castles are ghosts.
At least Klefki is fairy.
But Vanilluxe? Doesn't make any sense to me.

Vanilluxe is just anthropomorphic icicles. Like these:

The snow on top is shaped like ice cream in typical whimsical Pokemon-fashion. (Think Pikachu's tail being shaped like Lightning, or Elekid's ears are shaped like a plug) Contrary to popular belief it is not actually MADE of ice cream. Remember that canonically the snow/ice cream is just snow that rests on top of the icicle-Pokemon and not part of it's body...

I love Vanilluxe, but the only thing that's weird is that they couldn't think of a way for it to move around so it randomly floats. It doesn't even hang like Burmy. It just levitates for no apparent reason. Most floating Pokemon have a reason (physic powers, Weezing's lighter-than-air gas, Magnemite's magnetic repulsion) but the Vanillas just do it because reasons. Other than that I find it's face far more likeable-looking than the sandcastles but I still like both designs to a degree.

 

[Norne]

I actually really like the vaniluxe line, early ice type a la cloyster but with decent level scaling.

Vanillish has a cute face and it looks like an ice cream shop mascot, the middle stage is so freaking derpy it's hard to dislike him yet he actually looks like a smiling icicle.

Then we have vaniluxe being ice weezing breathing frozen air and looking like the love child of an icicle and a double scoop.

Dude,why do people hate this thing? It's kinda genius.

 

[QuickBH]

I don't really care for any of the object Pokemon, minus Magnezone because his concept as a walking magnet is actually pretty sick. The rest...meh, they're not worthy of years of hate, but their isn't anything cool about them whatsoever. I just avoid them.

 

[Cresselia~~]

Vanilluxe is just anthropomorphic icicles. Like these:

The snow on top is shaped like ice cream in typical whimsical Pokemon-fashion. (Think Pikachu's tail being shaped like Lightning, or Elekid's ears are shaped like a plug) Contrary to popular belief it is not actually MADE of ice cream. Remember that canonically the snow/ice cream is just snow that rests on top of the icicle-Pokemon and not part of it's body...

I love Vanilluxe, but the only thing that's weird is that they couldn't think of a way for it to move around so it randomly floats. It doesn't even hang like Burmy. It just levitates for no apparent reason. Most floating Pokemon have a reason (physic powers, Weezing's lighter-than-air gas, Magnemite's magnetic repulsion) but the Vanillas just do it because reasons. Other than that I find it's face far more likeable-looking than the sandcastles but I still like both designs to a degree.

Ya, I know what it's from.
And I love Vanilluxe.
Just that nothing explains why this damn thing floats around.

 

[Karxrida]

I like Crabrawler, but the name is honestly pretty lazy. It's literally just the words "crab brawler" smooched together with a "b" dropped, and it honestly sounds like something I would come up with. Palossand at least kind of necessitates saying the name out loud to hear the pun.

Cool concept, though. GF can get really creative with their animal choices and I love its flavor text.

 

[pharaohcalvin]

I actually prefer the sand castle mons more than Vanilluxe.
At least sand castles are ghosts.
At least Klefki is fairy.
But Vanilluxe? Doesn't make any sense to me.

Agreeing with this, I love inanimate object pokemon if they makes sense to be that. (A ghost typing goes a long way in helping this) Klefki is also based on fairies that steal keys which makes it make sense. but Vanilluxe? Wut. That being said, I love the coconut crab another reallife animal I adore being made into a mon and it looks so goofy too!

 

[Codraroll]

Dude,why do people hate this thing?

Let's go!

- Unnecessary derpy look. Blank, expressionless eyes, and a mouth that does nothing but smile.
- Absolutely no mobility or flexibility, which makes it uncanny. No limbs, no joints, no nothing, those things can't move any part of their body. And they float in the air for no explained reason. Ask any stage actor, a certain flexibility is required to create expression and character. With no flexibility and mobility, the Vanilite line cannot convey any character outside "immobile object, just floating there". I guess that works if the Pokémon is supposed to be immobile and lifeless, like the dead shell Shedinja or the statue Nosepass, but Vanilite and its ilk gain nothing from it.
- The smiley faces look tacked on. They are flat surfaces somebody drew eyes and mouths on. The faces have no supplementary features, no apparent jaws, no eye sockets, cheeks, mouth interiors, nasal ridges, lips, eyebrows or facial muscles. The purpose of Vanillish and Vanilluxe's eyes and mouths are to add eyes and mouths to the design, nothing more. You might as well have put googly eyes on a regular ice cream.
- Their designs resemble man-made objects, without no apparent explanation. Ghost Pokémon get away with this because of possession. Electric and Steel 'mons get away because they are machines. Fairies because whimsy. Poison types because of chemical/biological mutations. But there is no reason for a pure Ice type to be an ice cream.
- Too much focus on the "ice cream" part of the design, too little on the "icicle" part. I could like an icicle Pokémon with a passing resemblance to an ice cream. But an ice cream Pokémon with a passing resemblance to an icicle? It just looks far too unnatural. It makes sense for a creature to evolve to resemble a natural feature, but a feature so decidedly man-made as the double-scoop ice cream is... far from ideal, without a good explanation (see the previous point).

And, I guess:

- No competitive or in-game merit of note. A lot of design whimsy can be forgiven if the Pokémon is powerful or useful, see Rotom-Wash, for instance. Vanilluxe has only average stats, and is cursed with one of the worst typings in the game. It also evolves rather late, so it will only appear on players' teams if they invest a lot in it, or make late-game changes to their team composition (the Mandatory Ice Area tends to come very late in most games).

 

[Norne]

The derpy look is justified, it's cartoony in a ugly cute way. Japan loves this stuff, just look at the unholy amount of love stunfisk has.

The flat face surface, again you absolutely know nothing on animation, the vani line actually has some of the most endearing reactions when animated, given that it's basically a huge face all emotions are portrayed through it and this gives the head part huge mobility on attack animations and even emotions. I recommend you to watch episodes with the vani line in the Anime, this thing actually has a stellar amount of dynamism when animated right and has an epic angry and pout face.

Finally, it's an early pure ice type. It has a great impact in the BW games by that virtue alone, it's movepool isn't entirely swallow as it gets small perks that can be abused from its relatively decent base speed.

You never used the vani on an ingame run have you? I used them in 3 different runs and they manage to carry their weight and be a decent pick from that point on.

Point and case unlike weezing, doduo or duoblade vaniluxe actually gets to use its twin heads to attack and has both displaying emotions with its two flat faces.

This is an A+ in versatility and emotion while keeping it whimsy.

 

[pharaohcalvin]

Let's go!
- Their designs resemble man-made objects, without no apparent explanation. Ghost Pokémon get away with this because of possession. Electric and Steel 'mons get away because they are machines. Fairies because whimsy. Poison types because of chemical/biological mutations. But there is no reason for a pure Ice type to be an ice cream.
- Too much focus on the "ice cream" part of the design, too little on the "icicle" part. I could like an icicle Pokémon with a passing resemblance to an ice cream. But an ice cream Pokémon with a passing resemblance to an icicle? It just looks far too unnatural. It makes sense for a creature to evolve to resemble a natural feature, but a feature so decidedly man-made as the double-scoop ice cream is... far from ideal, without a good explanation (see the previous point).

This this sooooooooo much! This is why these three are my least favorite pokemon by far, this thinking about how in bloody hell this thing would work out hurts my head.

And, umm what? Doduo totally can attack with both heads, Weezing can totally breath gas out of both mouths..doublade could totally swing both swords. No idea what you are going on about. Also, I find nothing whimsy about that card card, the only thing I get out of that is it is pissed because it is constipated.

 

[Cresselia92]

I don't see why people are so obsessed in finding a logic in a Pokémon's design. I mean, this is the same world in which creatures spew infinite amounts of water from a tiny body, or birds can have draconic blood in their veins. You should try to think outside of the box while speculating about some Pokémon things.

For example, who says that Vanillite is a ripoff of ice creams or is a Ghost-less possessed ice cream? What if it wasn't Vanillite that took inspiration from ice cream, but instead people took inspiration from Vanillite to create ice creams? After all, they already created language by drawing some inspiration from the Unown and learned how to prepare concrete from Conkeldurr, so they could very well have observed wild Vanillite, Vanillish and Vanilluxe to create ice cream cones and ice cream itself. You know, kind of like how in real life we take inspiration from animals to invent machines or to produce medicines, like studying the physics of seagulls' bodies to create more efficient planes. This Vanillite thing could just be a more extreme case of people imitating nature, in a sense.

 

[WaffleTitan]

lol, we're talking about vanilluxe here like it's the unpopular opinions thread. Should probs just move the convo there...

 

[Magcargo]

As a huge fan of crab / lobster pokemon like Crawduant, Kingler, and Clauncher, I'm really happy that Crabrawler was revealed. It also has one of my favorite abilities, Iron Fist, which is a huge plus (I like my punching moves to actually be decently powerful rather than pathetically weak). Being a pure Fighting-type instead of Fighting / Water is really intriguing, however; really hoping that its evolution gets this typing so it gets STAB on Crabhammer and other water attacks.

Turtonator looks really dope too. It has an awesome design and typing, though its ability and signature move look underwhelming. For some reason, its design reminds me a lot of heatmor, most likely due to both being bipedal fire types with similar eyes and arms. Definitely looking forward to using this mon.

With the reveal of these new Pokemon, building a in-game team looks like a real challenge. There are already about ten completely brand new Pokemon I want to use in my in-game team from Alola alone and thats not counting Alola forms or potential returning Pokemon. Most of these mons look like they have a lot of personality and a specific style, which is something I really commend the designers on.

As for manmade Pokemon, I generally like most of them a fair bit and Vanilluxe is no exception. The main reason why I feel that Vanilluxe (and a lot of Unova Pokemon in general) gets a lot of hate compared to older Pokemon with similar concepts like Duduo and Weezing is that despite its stats being decent, its movepool is absolutely terrible, with it relying solely on Ice-type moves and Flash Cannon for coverage if Hidden Power isn't counted. Having a bad defensive typing only adds insult to injury.

 

[Cresselia92]

But speaking of the new Pokémon, there is something that intrigued me about Crabrawler's description.

Its punches are powerful enough to split tree trunks! Crabrawler’s pincers are sometimes torn off during its bouts—and they are said to be delicious.

This reminded me something about the Florida stone crab, a crab capable to molt its limbs through a process known as "autotomy". This is essentially the same thing that enables lizards to detach their tails to escape from predators, and the stone crab can do the same with their limbs and claws. Also, just like the lizards, their limbs and claws regrow, and the latter can actually be harvested as a sustainable food resource. In fact, in specific times, some populations actually harvest and remove one or both claws from said crabs before returning them to the sea, so that they can regenerate them.

As such, I wonder if Crabrawler takes some vague inspiration from those stone crabs, and their claws are normally harvested by the population as a source of food. If this is true, it would be quite interesting if it got moves like Autotomize and Recover, as well as maybe Regenerator as its Hidden Ability.

 

[Wishy]

After some time, I've realized that Turtonator looks fine/good, and they did a good job of bringing out the mata mata influence (I like when you can link what a Pokemon is based off of) but its colour scheme is simply atrocious. It would look much better if it was darker red, and had no yellow. Or if it just wasn't that particular shade of Heinz mustard yellow, it's really awful. Reminds me of Ronald McDonald/Ketchup and mustard.

 

[Kiga]

Moving on with something that may be more on topic: I've heard mention that there might be some NX news coming soon, but I can't find anything to support this claim beyond a handful of days old NX videos that I can't watch from a preliminary Youtube search. Was something mentioned about it? I know that it's been said that Game Freak plans to release a Pokémon title within a launch window of six months of the initial release of the NX, so news may hint to us where Pokémon is going.

Also, weren't we expecting some kind of island guide from CoroCoro this month? Whatever happened with that?

 

[Norne]

I thought the island guide was a hoax.

Or something left to coro coro. I mean we have images of Syndrome, I mean Lysadre holding Ash team in a suspension crucifixion pose and Lysadre I mean Syndrome is doing something there, so I don't know for real, if it was in Coro Coro or a magazine main thing I guess it is missing or for next month.

 

[mido_128]

All Gen 7 pokemon with the exception of Vikavolt and what I hope is the final grass starter look bloody awful so far. Terrible designs although the fire dragon is a step in the right direction. It's like gamefreak is emptying it's reject basket. I didn't think anything could look crappier than Vanilluxe. With the reveal of the sand castle mon, I was wrong. Lot's of other cutesy/fancy looking mons. Where's the badass pokemon? Where's haxorus, bisharp, mienshao, conkeldurr, terrakion, landorus-t and genies, machamp, arcanine, nido's, aiegis, talonflame, pangoro, scizor, mega's in general and way too many other cool mons to list. Where are those gamefreak? Looks like their targeting even younger children this gen. Huge let down so far.

 

[Lady Vader]

All Gen 7 pokemon with the exception of Vikavolt and what I hope is the final grass starter look bloody awful so far. Terrible designs although the fire dragon is a step in the right direction. It's like gamefreak is emptying it's reject basket. I didn't think anything could look crappier than Vanilluxe. With the reveal of the sand castle mon, I was wrong. Lot's of other cutesy/gay/fancy looking mons. Where's the badass pokemon? Where's haxorus, bisharp, mienshao, conkeldurr, terrakion, landorus-t and genies, machamp, arcanine, nido's, aiegis, talonflame, pangoro, scizor, mega's in general and way too many other cool mons to list. Where are those gamefreak? Looks like their targeting even younger children this gen. Huge let down so far.

There's nothing wrong with cute 'mons. And I so completely disagree with you as I find that Generation VII has some of the best designed 'mons ever and only a very small number of official reveals have been anything less than awesome to me.
Also, the shift key is your friend. And when you pluralize "Nidos", you don't use an apostrophe.

 

[D_what]

~snip~

Was this adverb really necessary for you to make your point【・ヘ・?】

That aside, I can understand some of those frustrations. All the Pokemon we've got so far have been more or less on the goofy, fun, friendly, cute, or flavour side, we really haven't had anything on the Bisharp/garchomp/haxorus/metagross side outside of maybe Tapu Koko. Which TBH is a relief because it tells me GF haven't already spoiled most of the 'dex yet. I share Kurona's fears of having the entire thing (or near that) "officially" leaked before release. Is it wrong that I want to catch a sassy meowth and be really excited when it's evolving because I don't already know what Dark Persian brings to the table? /rhetorical question

 

[Axelsaurus]

Was this adverb really necessary for you to make your point【・ヘ・?】

That aside, I can understand some of those frustrations. All the Pokemon we've got so far have been more or less on the goofy, fun, friendly, cute, or flavour side, we really haven't had anything on the Bisharp/garchomp/haxorus/metagross side outside of maybe Tapu Koko. Which TBH is a relief because it tells me GF haven't already spoiled most of the 'dex yet. I share Kurona's fears of having the entire thing (or near that) "officially" leaked before release. Is it wrong that I want to catch a sassy meowth and be really excited when it's evolving because I don't already know what Dark Persian brings to the table? /rhetorical question

Agree. Thinking GF will not do any "badass designs" 'cause they're getting more childish, when children like badass designs as much or even more than adults... I'm actually relieved we're no more in the gens when everything had to look forcedly badass (as much as I appreciate them, gen 4/5 were going in that direction, with their exceptions of course).
Other than that, I'd like seeing people saying things more in a subjective perspective rather than "this is shit 'cause reasons", but I guess that's asking too much. I'm finding 7th gen one of the most satisfying generations so far, and I'll patiently wait for "badass" pokémons 'cause I do love them indeed, but not actually really hurt if there'll be fewer than in gen 5 or so (Goodra is one of my favorite pseudo-legendary, I didn't miss a "badass" one last gen).

 

[Tyranitar.armaldo]

I know the discussion of unconfirmed leaks is rather "here and there"...but something interesting seems to have happened.

Ok so a Meowth is being distributed around the time of worlds, didn't one of the leaks say this would happen? One of the recent ones? (I am not sure which batch of rumors it was, but I believe it was the one that contained the details on "Ash Greninja")

 

[yourDeadGrandad]

Aw, do people get insecure about playing their kids' game of collecting cartoon monsters if there aren't enough "badass" designs? :D

For what it's worth, I like the new designs, and I don't care one bit if they all turn out to be cute or silly.

Mainly because Tyranitar will still exist.

And probably lose to Bewear. See, this is why I can't take these things too seriously. ;)