You'd Better Shape Up

The song from Grease is now playing in your head, no? You're welcome. Anyway, this is just a word about some themes I noticed in the new pokemon. Some of them might mean something. Some don't.

First, as I've said, there's a lot of this kinda brown-and-black-mixed-with-brights colouring about, enough that I think it's fair to say it'll be a theme among the new pokemon. That's really cool. It looks great. That's all I'm gonna say on that.

The other one is more complicated. The other one is on geometry. Look through the pictures I've posted of the new pokemon. Almost all of them feature some sort of out-of-place geometric shape, and there are a huge variety of shapes shown. Circles, squares, triangles, rectangles, parallelograms, ellipses, diamonds, arrows and even a parabola. Hold that thought. We'll get there.

Let's look at Helioptile. Yes, that giant picture of him up there.There are triangles between its eyes and on its ears and ellipses in its eyes. In 3 dimensions its head is very round, its tail is very pointed and its entire body is shaped a bit like a parabola. Heck, even its signature move is Parabola Charge. A parabola, stop me if I'm going too fast, is a graph of the function fx=ax^2n. It's a quadratic graph, and in its simplest form it looks like this...

Yes, it thoroughly confuses me how much Helioptile, as well as pokemon like Spewpa, Noivern, Fletchling (look by its eyes) are so full of geometric shapes they look like half-finished Mickey-Mouse drawings. What does it all mean?

PS, if you can find all the shapes I mentioned then you're as big a geek as me.

Starters for Nintendo

The other pokemon that were revealed before Corocoro in May were the starters. They're kinda cool. I could go in Pokedex order, or alphabetical order, but since they're both the same, who cares? We're starting with...

Chespin

Chespin is the grass-type starter. It's actually one of my favourite grass-type starters ever in terms of looks. It's actually kinda nice not to just see the same-old same-old. Venusaur, Meganium and Torterra are all big mammals with plants growing on them. Sceptile and Serperior are both big snake/lizards. I can't guarantee that it won't evolve into a big plant but it shouldn't. It's also REALLY cute, like as in seriously cute. It's one of only two starter pokemon that has ever made me shout "I want one!" with the other being Cyndaquil. It has been confirmed as pure grass-type, making Bulbasaur the only unevolved starter to boast two types. But obviously it will evolve, and hopefully when it does it will have a second type. There have only been two so far that have, and they've been grass/poison Venusaur and grass/ground Torterra, neither of which is especially good typing. Give grass half a chance, and give it a useful second type. Steel works really well in Ferrothorn but I can't see Chespin becoming a steel type. What I can see happening is grass/rock, like with Cradily. With the exception of Ferrothorn and other grass/steels, all grass-type pokemon and possible new grass type pokemon have at least 3 type weaknesses, and as many as 7. Rock has 4, with 2 resistances, but importantly it's not weak to fire type moves. And offensively it can take on a wide variety of types. It also looks vaguely rock-type. So yes, I think Chespin may be grass/rock type, and I like it.

Vulpix Fennekin

Ok, yes, to address the elephant in the room, it is another fire-type fox. But I've thought about it, and I don't have a problem with that. All starter pokemon have a kind of approachability, almost as if you might see one in real life. That is to say, they're all to a greater or lesser degree based on real animals, and none of them is too left-field. They are, with, one would guess, around 800 pokemon, running out of ideas and having to return to old designs. And foxes are probably the most fire-looking of all pokemon. So as long as Fennekin's evolutions don't look like Ninetails and there's a second type that works and ISN'T fighting, I really don't mind. Anyway, Vulpix gets the cutesy side of fox and Fennekin is more snooty looking. Fire type starters tend to start off cute (again I'm gonna cite Cyndaquil, but also Torchic, Emboar, Charmander and Chimchar) and end up looking kinda tough and really cool. Fingers crossed. Now, having seen Talonflame I doubt very much it'll be fire/flying. Also, it's a fox. If they do a flying-fox pokemon that's actually a fox that flies I'm done with the games. The snooty look almost makes me think dark. That'd be cool, because the first time I do a post about past generations I'll mention Houndoom as one I love. But it could also be ground.Fire/ground is fox-appropriate and great typing, although it will have to deal with a 4x water weakness. But we'll have to see.

Poliwag Froakie

Yes, it IS still funny the second time. But again it's distinctive enough to satisfy me as long as its evolutions are unique. Water starters more than any other type run the gamut of animals, from turtle to crocodile to penguin, two I'm struggling to identify and now a frog. But yeah it's kinda cool and almost a little nerdy-looking. In this case I am pretty sure its evolutions will be water-fighting, unfortunately the same as Poliwrath. If any of them are fairy type, it'll be Froakie I imagine. But I doubt it.

 

Verdict

Yeah, this really does have the potential to be a really good set of starters. If they go exactly with my suggestions (which I highly doubt) I think I'd like Fennekin. But I'll have to see what else comes out before the game.  I never like to make my decisions before I know all the facts.

On the legendaries

Among the first pokemon to be announced for X and Y were the legendaries, Xerneas and Yvetal. As a pair of legendaries I think they are probably the coolest looking other that the sleek, gorgeous, sexy monochrome designs of Zekrom and Reshiram. Even then, they're maybe more unique looking. Yvetal in particular is exactly what I love a pokemon to look like. Xerneas is cool but it looks a bit too much like a gay deer. This also makes it difficult to guess at its typing. But I wondered, and now I suspect, that it's part fairy type. It could be entirely fairy type. But I'm not sure if that'll be the case. For the last two generations, and a lesser part of the one before, the main legendaries have been dual-type dragons. Mind you, Xerneas doesn't look like a dragon at all. Even Shelgon looks more like a dragon than this. And Shelgon doesn't look like a dragon.Edited to add-Had an "of course!" moment last night when I was talking to a friend last night about fairy types. I mentioned Xerneas and he said steel/fairy. I think he's right. Thanks dude!  Yvetal could be a dragon. It really could. In fact, now that I think that Xerneas is probably a fairy, Yvetal is more likely than ever to be a dragon, maybe paired with dark or flying. or it could be dark-flying, a combination I like but feel hasn't been used very well by Honchcrow or Vullaby Someone whose opinion I respect and often agree with pointed out on Youtube that when Yvetal flexes its wings it almost looks like a tuning fork. And? That's just what would happen as it moved. Sound type? I really doubt it, especially with a new normal-type sound move, battle cry, announced today for Shishiko.  If it's not flying type it will have Levitate as its ability. I'd like that. I don't like Pressure as a legend's ability. I'm usually focussed on fast, hot battles that end in 3 turns, so Pressure does nothing for me. I'll say more about sky battles later, but for now I'll just say it's odd that it looks like Yvetal can take part in sky battles, while Xerneas cannot. And finally, on this subject, the concepts. The main legends usually seem to have a corresponding pair of concepts they represent: land and sea; time and space;truth and ideals(?.) In this case I half-think it's masculine and feminine, with X-chromosomes and Y-chromosomes being for girls and guys respectively. They do look it as well, with Xerneas being more pretty and cute but still tough looking and Yvetal being strong, sharp and dangerous looking.
Then there's that Mewtwo thing. Corocoro confirmed it as a new Mewtwo forme, calling it the eclair forme. I don't believe for a moment that's its real name. Either way, it's cool and looks a lot like a new mutation of Mewtwo. I'm imagining this means Mewtwo will be catchable in Kalos, and then my best guess would be that there'll be some kind of research lab you can take it to to mutate, or maybe that there'll be another evil team (actually I'm pretty sure of that one) and that they'll try to strengthen Mewtwo leaving you as the player to clean up the mess. I suspect it's still Psychic type. It looks very similar to Mewtwo. But I kinda hope it's not. It would be cool for it to be more than just a slightly-different looking Mewtwo with different stats. Also, I kinda think they're never likely to have another pokemon with 700 base stats, since Arceus is god and all, but as I said in my last post, Mewtwo was absolutely undisputed king of Gen I, and I kinda think it's a shame for that not to be true again in Gen VI. But it's kind of a big deal that the Vatican supports pokemon, and the last thing Gamefreak want to do is end that, so I suspect it'll be high-ish stats, and maybe another interesting twist, like a new ability. They've been very secretive about it, so I think something big's happening.

Just the one new type?

Well E3 11/6/13 confirmed that the fairy type is entering the game. I had hoped it would be light type representing goodness, in the same way as dark type represents evil, but fairy probably works better. Among those pokemon to be incorporated into the fairy type are Gardevoir, Jigglypuff and Marill. I'm not even gonna suggest Clefairy might be another, but surely Blissey will. Anyway, they're sensible and useful pokemon to have as fairy type, especially Gardevoir, who once had a niche until Gallade came along. It's also been confirmed that Sylveon will be fairy type. Who didn't see that coming. I've been pretty sure for weeks either the light type or the fairy type was coming because of Sylveon. I think, even though I tend to prefer cool, masculine-looking pokemon, who specialise in attack (which I doubt fairy will,)  I'll like the fairy type as a type. My other suspicion, which was confirmed , was that fairy would be super-effective against dragons. It was looking back at what happened between Gen I and Gen II that made me suspicious. Psychic types were absolutely deadly, almost uncounterable with the lack of a dark type, immunity to the ghost type and the general awfulness of bug types, and Mewtwo, the best pokemon in terms of stats, was pure psychic-type. Gen II (and indeed Gens III, IV and V) radically improved the bug type, made the ghost-type immunity into a weakness and introduced the dark type. Psychic went from being a defensive nightmare to, in my head, although I know a lot of people disagree with me, one of the weaker types. Gen II also introduced the steel type, which remains at least until Gen V the only type to resist dragon-type moves, which compromised the dragon-type's usefulness as an all-round sweeper. Unlike psychic though, dragon remined at the absolute front of the pack, able to hit 16 types for a huge chunk of damage, owner of incredibly powerful moves, and perhaps most of all defensively killer, resistant to 4 common types and only weak to itself and ice (which people only really use to counter dragon anyway.) Like psychic, it is dragon's turn to fall from grace, although not as far I don't think. My other question concerns the fate of two of my other favourite types, ghost and dark. They are both defensively very solid, and would both make sense as targets for fairy attacks. There may be other types. But I have no evidence there will or won't be.There is still a lot to be confirmed.....