No. 746: Wishiwashi

"It's your own fault, Charlie Brown. Because you're so wishy-washy."

We got another two-form Pokemon today, with a gimmick that ends up not actually mattering that much? Eh, better not get ahead of ourselves. Wishiwashi's solo form is pretty lame, with an ugly Popeye-ass mouth that looks like it's trying to escape off the side of its face. You may say "that's the point" and I'll agree, but you must also agree that it looks like something you'd scrape off the bottom of your shoe. About as useful in battle, too.

Solo Form: 2/10

But now we get to the guy we all came here for - School Form is a damn monster of stats in everything but speed. Though, while I like the idea of a school-of-fish Pokemon, I don't think Wishiwashi is pushing it as hard as it could be. You've got 3D models now! You can have detailed textures that show all the fish overlapping like scales! You can have the whole shape undulating as individual fish fall out and then back in to alignment. Instead, it's too perfect a formation. The fish making it up must be on some next-level hivemind coordination, like a German parade, Chinese opening ceremony, or high school cheer leaders.

School Form: 6/10


So the gimmick here is that Wishiwashi starts big, but when it gets to low health, all its friends leave and it's up the proverbial creek. Thing is, when you get to that low health anyway, since it moves so slow, you'd just be switching it out regardless of which form it was in. It's more like an arbitrary "your HP bar is only 3/4ths long" effect, in which case why not just give it even less HP? I dunno, I feel like maybe the whole thing's stats should scale with its HP, and its speed inversely? Or something else more interesting and useful. Because as it is, Wishiwashi is effectively a great Pokemon with a terrible ability that nerfs its effective HP. Yes yes I know you can heal when you're too low but shit, something with Wishiwashi's defenses, to get that low you must've just taken a serious blow, why wouldn't you be healing anyway, if you could?

Still, the School form is cool enough and what you see 95% of the time that I don't hold the intentionally-lame Solo form against it. Really, I'm just disappointed in the ability merely being a counterbalance to great stats, and the lazily "perfect" formation.


Overall: 5/10