No. 980: Clodsire

 act of clod

Clodsire is also quite similar to Quagsire, the main different (besides coloration) being that he's laying down, and his limbs are appropriately short. This is the most plush-able Pokemon of all time. I want a giant one that I can sleep on.

Also, it sprouts spikes from its back when it attacks? is that something salamanders do? seems painful.

like Paldean Wooper, I prefer the original Quagsire, but that doesn't mean Clodsire is bad. In fact, it's wonderful. I wish to achieve the same inner peace that Clodsire demonstrates with its vacant smile.

 

Overall: 10/10 

Paldean Wooper

 whoppity whoop

Wooper was already perfect, so how does the poisonous chocolate version compare? Pretty well! They didn't even feel the need to change its proportions, like they did for Alolan Vulpix and a few others.

Its new antennae sort of look like crossbones, and the pattern on its belly suggest more bones, which I think is supposed to be like how poison bottles have a skull and crossbones on it to let you know pirates are nearby?  let you know it's dangerous? That's neat, I guess.

I dunno, I'm just not sure we really needed a new Wooper - a Newper, if you will - and at the end of the day I kinda like the original one better just cuz it was there first. But there's certainly nothing wrong with Paldean Wooper, if anything it feels like a new Shiny.

 

Overall: 10/10 

No. 970: Glimmora

 Will the real glim shady please stand up?

Okay, this artwork doesn't do it justice. Dream World, you're up!

Now that's the stuff! I was spoiled on most of the pokedex before playing the game, but Glimmora was a complete surprise to me, and it was really cool to see this weird flower growing out of the rock and realizing it was a Pokemon.

Again, it might be based on any number of things (to me it resembles an agave) but I think it's also cool to just be a weird freak. It has Starmie or Claydol vibes, which I love. Rock/Poison is a wild typing, and it has a neat niche as the ultimate hazard setter/spinner. The colors are great, too! I just can't get enough of Glimmora's bizarre beauty.

 

Overall: 10/10 

No. 969: Glimmet

 reminds me of the flowers from Forever Forest in Paper Mario. In vibes, if not in looks.

Bulbapedia has a bunch of ideas on what could possibly be the inspiration behind Glimmet, but I think it's possible that Gamefreak wasn't considering any of that and just said "how about a poisonous crystal flower?" and I think that's awesome.

Well, Glimmet itself isn't exactly awesome, it's just kind of a little bulb. A necessary first step. I do enjoy how its eyes show through its snout as if it were a rendering error, but actually it's because the snout is clear.

 

Overall: 5/10 

No. 966: Revavroom

 Va-va-voom? You forgot one "va", and it was the most important one!

A confused Pokemon. Clearly it has a mouth, below the eye as most mouths are, but actually its mouth is up top and has a big floppy tongue. And I'm all for bringing back tongues in Pokemon, but the placement bothers me - either put the eyes up there, too, or don't put a false mouth down below!

Also, let's talk about the whole concept: It floats like a Ghost and has a body made of Rock, but it's Steel/Poison. Sure, a toxic engine would be Steel/Poison, but possessed objects tend to be ghostly (especially how Varoom floats around). And why's it got the rock wheels if it isn't going to be Rock? There's too much going on, here!

Like, any attempt to "ground Revavroom in reality" by going "well it can't literally be a car Pokemon, it has to be naturalistic, like it uses rocks as wheels" should have immediately gone out the window by realizing you're making a car engine Pokemon. Screw reality, just make a haunted car or whatever!

At least it has some semblance of a design, but I still think it's really weird. 

 

Overall: 2/10 

No. 965: Varoom

Parooooomba

What exactly am I looking at, here? An internal organ from some mechanical beast? Spare parts for Fred Flintstone's car? Some sort of AI-generated hallucination? Whatever it is, it sucks, and I want it to go away.

 

Overall: 1/10 

No. 945: Grafaiai

mf thinks hes banksy

it's actually cool when Pokemon completely change species when they evolve, as long as they're connected in some superficial way. Wingull evolving into Pelliper? Yeah sure, I'd believe that seagulls are just baby pelicans, whatever. Shroodle evolving into Grafaiai? Now that's a stretch, I've never once thought about shrews and aye-ayes even inhabiting the same continents before.

What's more, Grafaiai looks like Darby Allin's fursona, but with huge gross drippy middle fingers. I know that's the aye-aye's calling card, but it looks even freakier here than it does in real life. I don't want to know where he sticks that finger to get it all goopy.

If I can be remotely positive, I think there's something going on with the hindquarters that I like, something about the shape of the legs, and use of stripes. And removing the pupils from the eyes was a good move. But I just can't get over the hoodie, and those disgusting fingers. If Grafaiai flipped me the bird I'd probably throw up.


Overall: 2/10

No. 944: Shroodle

oodles of shroodles

Now what am I looking at here, exactly

Shroodle looks like the head of some larger character, but they cut off the body and just stuck a few tiny feets to the bottom of it. And even if I accept this creature whose eyes are so preposterously large they could not each be contained within the same small body, what's going on with the nose situation? I guess those are buckteeth, dipped in purple venom, but they look like boogers hanging on the end of the nose.

And it's Poison/Normal at the end of all that hideousness? Get away from me with your tiny tuft of hair.


Overall: 2/10

No. 904: Overqwil

no I know where it was now, this is a Donkey Kong Country boss

Overqwil has a cool name, and that's the most positive thing I can say about it. I can't stop thinking about certain toys I would get as a kid, which never stood up because they were sculpted in an action pose, or designed with a weird bottom like this. Always pissed me off, when something only functions as a keychain. I want to stand it up with my other toys!

and in a similar vein, Overqwil pisses me off because of how ridiculous it looks out of the water. The idea of a big floating mine could work, but holy shit why did you have to make the top and bottom spikes so large?

Overall: 1/10

Hisuian Qwilfish

I swear I saw this in a New Super Mario Bros. game

Sometimes, they revisit iconic Pokemon and remix them into cool new regional forms. Other times, they pluck unpopular Pokemon from obscurity and try to rebrand them in the hopes of getting somebody, anybody, to care about them. Hisuian Qwilfish is the latter.

It's Dark/Poison now, and makes a big deal out of being Poisonous with its new signature move Barb Barrage, which is confusing because it was already Water/Poison. being Dark is the new part, but that's not where the emphasis lies?

The coolest thing about Hisuian Qwilfish is that it has the number 9 on its tail, representing the grand total of Qwilfish fans in the entire world.

Overall: 3/10

No. 903: Sneasler

Juri Han energy.

Whereas Weavile expanded upon the Sneasel theme horizontally, Sneasler takes the vertical approach. Fitting, because it's your mountain-climbing workhorse, as you ride in a silly little basket on its back. I didn't expect this to be a very useful mount, but the last few areas of the game are full of steep cliffs, designed with Sneasler in mind. I enjoyed getting my BotW on, clambering up and then jumping into flight with - ah, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Back to Sneasler. It took my advice, and adds a diabolical hot pink color to the mix of purple and grey. Truly the bad bitch of the Pokemon world, Sneasler looks a little bit silly with that massive noggin on that tiny little neck, but it's practically perfect besides that. While I still wouldn't trust one, I don't have a choice, hanging onto its back 600 feet in the air on the side of a mountain.

Overall: 9/10

Hisuian Sneasel

Here Comes Trouble™

Sneasel was an all-timer design. Hisuian Sneasel is also pretty good, mainly because it doesn't change much besides the paint job! And the new one does a better job selling the Poison aspect of its typing better than the old one did its Ice typing. (I'd say both are equally understood as Fighting and Dark)

if I'm allowed to nitpick, and that's literally my entire job at NAPACE, I think the feathers should have been another color besides Also Purple. Just to stand out more. But aside from that, excellent job. I wouldn't trust Hisuian Sneasel further than I could throw it, but I dig the design.

Overall: 9/10

Gigantamax no. 26: Venusaur

Yes, NOW I'm finally doing these guys.

Gigantamax Venusaur looks like he's being smothered by his own flower. Or maybe somebody stuck a cracked rice bowl on top of him, like trapping a toad so you can carry it outside. Perhaps it's a large pink bowl cut?

No matter how you slice it, this looks stupid.

Overall: 300/1000

Gigantamax no. 19: Toxtricity

Merry Christmas! Your present this year - THRASH METAL

looking like a monster from a Studio Trigger anime, Gigantamax Toxtricity has some big shoes to fill. Toxtricity was one of my favorite from the generation, and its kaiju form kinda fumbles the bag. I don't like it when they go back to quadrupedal, and while I understand that its tail is meant to look like a radio tower I don't think emphasizing the diaper is the element you should still be carrying from Toxel.

The wild eyes and tongue are fun, and it does a good job incorporating the yellow and blue from both forms of Toxtricity. It's not bad. Just not as awesome as it could be.

Many of these Gigantamax have another piece of artwork, depicting them in action, and I've ignored them because I don't think Gigantamax as a concept deserves that amount of respect. But I'll make an exception for this, because Gigantamax Toxtricity smashing shit with its electric guitar is so radical that it kinda redeems the whole thing for me.

Overall: 700/1000

Gigantamax no. 11: Garbodor

Eight turds a-stinking

There's a precedent for gigantic trash monsters, look no further than Hedorah. Gigantamax Garbodor, though, confuses me. It's gigantic, but how come the things its sucked up are all toys? I can see the Substitute doll in there, even. But that makes the scale weird, because it's not actually big enough to have real buildings and cruise ships in it, but it's clearly too big for those to be toy-sized items. That ship has to be the size of a Subaru Outback. What's going on here?

They had an idea, but got too cutesy with it, and then forgot about how it would actually look in practice. Plus I still hate Garbodor, in general.

Overall: 200/1000

Gigantamax no. 6: Gengar

scary shit yo

What is it with these supplemental Gengar forms and clipping into the floor? Was that a key element in the original Gengar's charm that escaped my notice? I mean sure he's a ghost and floats through floors, but I always saw him as more "solid" and "bouncing around".

Gigantamax Gengar looks like an evil funhouse, where you walk through the mouth/door and enter a nightmarish mirror world of headless clowns. Or at least, that's my recurring childhood nightmare. Not sure about the rest of y'all.

but wait - if this form is already so tall, what about the rest of him? Does it work like an iceberg, is there more under the floor? We could be looking at the largest Gigantamax Pokemon ever, if his true size could be confirmed.

Overall: 600/1000

Galarian Slowking

oh he EVIL evil

goddamn I love this. the Shellder has assumed control of Slowking, and turned him into a 70s anime villain. You can just imagine this guy commanding his legions of mooks to attack the heroes as he plots to steal the moon or blow up North America.

I even like how he's not fully purple, to show that this is a poison infecting the body, which is left as a puppet. If you remove the cursed helmet, maybe Slowpoke can be saved. But likely, even after learning his tragic backstory, he'll have to die when his flying gunship explodes.

See, this is just the right amount of goofiness for me. He's a badass evil mastermind, even though he's still sort of a dumpy pink hippo-thing.

Overall: 10/10

Galarian Slowbro

Metroid Dread was mad good btw

I like how Slowbro is looking at the Shellder on his arm like "this can't be good"

except it IS good! Arm cannons rock. And since we already have a split evolution if Slowpoke gets bit on its tail or head, makes sense that biting other parts leads to other evolutions. Curiously, though it only got bit on one hand, the poison appears to be spreading to its other hand as well, not to mention its head and tail. But those were already discolored before, so whatever.

Pokedex tells me it's causing a "chemical reaction" with the "natural spices" inside Galarian Slowbro's body, and that sounds like as good an explanation as anything that happens in these games.

Overall: 8/10

Galarian Weezing

and an epic bacon mustache waffle to you too, good sir! *tips hat*

Gamefreak has this idea that when you make something really tall, it gets really funny. Except I'm not laughing. It was dumb as hell for Alolan Executor, and Galarian Weezing is dumb as hell, too.

I don't appreciate this Doug Dimmadome (owner of the Dimsdale Dimmadome) looking bastard and his smoggy mustache, which you must realize is just putrid gas hanging around his face. Think about that. Euugh.

I think the literal stovepipe hats don't have to be a silly concept, and you could probably design a whole Pokemon line around that. Some sort of Poison/Steel factory robot mech? instead, we have British Cosplay Weezing, who is part Fairy because who knows anymore

Overall: 1/10

No. 890: Eternatus

BEWARE MY POLYGONAL FURY 

This guy sucks majorly. He's so clearly designed to be a "boss" first and a "Pokemon" second, and while you want a little of that for your Legendary, the end result is something that looks like a Kingdom Hearts boss. or the villain from a Digimon movie.

Besides, didn't they kind of do this aesthetic already with Necrozma? All sharp angles because that's easier to model than something with curves, and becomes an unreadable mess unless you're looking at a fully rotating 3D model? I know the games are 3D now and they take that into account when designing, but I think it's a sign of bad design when the end result is such a jumbled mess like this.

Overall: 1/10