Lt. Surge of Vermillion City

please, imagine Guile's theme playing in your head as you read this.


Actually, this one pretty much gets it all right on the first try. Spiky yellow hair, because he uses Electric-types, muscles, cocky grin, military commando uniform, it's all here.

I don't really like this on as much, even thought its like exactly the same design. I think it's his stance, reminds me of Giovanni or something. Can't see his muscles, looks more like a crafty battle tactician than the dude who will lead the charge jumping out of helicopters. But like I said, that's all in the pose. The design itself is still good, and the lightning badge on his arm is a nice touch.

Okay, if you weren't humming Guile's theme in your head, you should probably start now. Because as George Washington is my witness, this is literally just Guile with slightly different hair. The cockiness is back, and he definitely looks a lot less formal while still being a badass who is in control, but really... I can't look at it and NOT just see Guile with a haircut.


His gym is the start of interesting gyms, though. The electric wall "puzzle" is certainly more complex than just walking past a few assholes and battling the leader. And his badge looks kickass.

I think I actually liked his gen 1 design the best, thought 3 is good, too (just copycat). But he exudes a definite persona, which is a good thing. He still isn't as flashy as some of the leaders that will come later, but simple works just as well.


Overall: 7/10

Misty of Cerulean City

Now, Misty was a cute little spitfire who dressed like a less-well-endowed Tifa Lockheart in the anime, but again, none of that matters now.


Fortunately, she's still a hottie in the games. though one of her legs appears to be melded into the shadow realm. She looks like a swimmer, which makes sense, but not much of a "leader" honestly...


Notice that Misty has much more dynamic poses that convey personality than Brock? this is partially because Brock has the personality of, well, a rock, but also because Misty is clearly a energetic young lass, who at least in the games is devoid of that acidic tongue.

A few years later, and she's grown up a bit, changed her hairstyle, and in general looks a lore more... mom-ish. Still the same bright smile, though. And I like how this time around she actually looks in charge of things. For some reason swim instructors wear jackets over their swimsuits, because I guess they don't get in the water themselves? but it's working.


Misty's gym is alright, it's guys and gals in the water, what you'd expect. But as easy as she is on the eyes, she really doesn't look like one of the Top 8 Trainers in the country. She looks like a different version of the regular Swimmer trainers. Though if you see her as just a competent girl who somehow got handed control of the whole gym for some reason, she makes more sense. I don't know, I just feel bad giving Misty a bad score, but... she's really not that good.

urgh... see, here's a little secret: while I disapprove of sexualizing Pokemon, I definitely have no problem thinking the trainers themselves are babes. which makes it hard to view their designs in an objective way, you dig? anyway, I'll try to keep it on the down-low, but I'm really acting like the wolf in that Tex Avery cartoon over here. so, keep that in mind and forgive me if I'm mysteriously lenient with my scores for all the ladies.

With that said, here's where I'm putting my foot down - Misty is too generic, even if she does have a nice midriff.


Overall: 4/10

Brock of Pewter City

let's kick this gym leader thing off in the only way that makes any sense, the beginning.


Man, Brock looked like a little punk back in the day. Super generic, just a no-fun-allowed sort of asshole. Moving right the hell along.

In the remakes, Brock apparently decided to spruce up his wardrobe a little. Look how reinforced those knees are, that's a man who knows he's going to be kneeling in the gravel looking for rocks and shit all day. way to plan ahead. Nice grey/brown/orange color scheme, looks solid. Nothing exciting, but he's the freaking ROCK trainer, what do you expect?

But for the remakes of Gold/Silver, Brock again changed it up. Now he's sporting more of a "wise college Junior" sort of look, as opposed to the "I hike in mountains" look. maybe he even lost some weight? kept the colors, though, that's good. I think I kinda liked the other one better, though. This is almost TOO plain.


Now, our friend Brock is a fan of Rocks. Which means he can get beat down by 2/3rd of your potential starters without much hurry, especially since he lives in Kanto, which means he is also a fan of Ground by default. Because every Rock-type in Kanto was also Rock/Ground, which means 4x weakness to getting splashed or throwing leaves at it.

makes him a minimal challenge, appropriate for the first boss. Even his big Pokemon, Onix, looks cool but has sucky stats. maybe Brock's just such a nice guy he goes easy on all the little tykes, who knows.


That gen III design is the sweet spot of subdued design yet sticks with his theme and placement in the game, but the first is just awful and the latest falls a bit short as well. Also his gym is as boring as, well, a rock. I'm gonna go ahead and give him a baseline score to set the standards. Anyone who is cooler than Brock will score higher, and anyone who doesn't even match up to Brock will score lower. I think that makes a lot of sense.

Overall: 5/10

ps - I guess he's in the anime too but I don't even want to open that kettle of fish with this. The anime is pretty much fanfiction for the games in my opinion, and I'd only be able to use it as argument points for like 5 characters anyway. I'm just not going to even bring it up, okay?

What Next?

Now that my life has calmed down, I've taken some time to think about what to do with this blog for the next few months. As you are no doubt aware, the next generation of Pokemon will hit NA and Japanese shores this October, in a simultaneous release. This is super exciting, not only because they are new pokymanz in threeDEEEEEEE, but because for perhaps the first time since RBY, we won't have any spoilers from Japan.

You can go into this game fresh as a newborn babe, with no idea who's lurking in that grass, who will be a cool dude, and who will be ugly and lame. it's a neat idea, and it'll be a lot of fun.

but, that still leaves us with June, July, August, September, and probably half of October. and I'm out of Pokemon. So, after asking a few times and reading comments and such, I have a few ideas:

1. Review the gym leaders and elite 4 members - with 40 gym leaders, and around 25 elite 4 members, that should keep me busy for a while.

2. re-review controversial pokemon - sometimes, the people, they don't like the things I say and do online. if anyone feels strongly that I unjustly harpooned their favorite, or maybe that I overlooked the grievous flaws in their least-favorite, let me know! maybe I'll give them another look-over.

3. sit around and bide my time - this is going to happen at some point, no matter what. updates will hopefully happen more often than they have in the past month, but I'm certainly not aimed for update-a-day. I just won't have enough content.

4. romhack - I'm working on a romhack for Emerald. I might post some stuff about that, I don't know, it depends on how good I end up feeling about the thing.

5. something else? - or is there anything else you peeps would like to see me do with the site? I'd like to keep it Pokemon-related, please.


remember, wherever you post a comment, I get notified. so if you ask me something on a post that was a year ago, I will still see it, and might reply! I've replied to quite a few such comments, so go ahead and check back if you honestly were expecting a response.

The Worst Gen 5 Pokemon

have no fear, I'm not dead. I just moved to a new apartment, took a week to get internet hooked up again, and had a little thing called "final exams" going on.

but enough about my fantastic life, let's talk about some utterly shit-tastic Pokemon. My list here is going to look a little different from most other people's, because I didn't get offended at the brazen concept of Pokemon inspire by ice-cream cones. But with over 150 Pokemon, there were bound to be more than a few bad apples. and here they are:

10. Pidove
9. Tranquil
8. Alomomola
7. Klingklang
6. Palpitoad
5. Druddigon
4. Sigilyph
3. Unfeazant
2. Kyurem
1. Garbodor

If you'll notice, Trubbish barely escaped the list. That's because I really, truly thought about it, and I realized that I hate generic birds more than I hate literal bags of poop. It doesn't mean Trubbish isn't awful, it just means I have a severe problem with avian creatures and should probably seek professional help.

Now how about you, out there in reader-land - what are your despised ones of Unova?