Pleasing and Pathetic: The Best and Worst of Purple Shiny Pokémon
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Art by Daylight.
Introduction
Purple is often a color that represents attraction and royalty, and for some purple shiny Pokémon, that statement most definitely holds true. On the contrary, purple can also be associated with mourning, which fits some other purple shiny Pokémon, as you may mourn how bad they look sporting the color. In this installment of The Best and Worst of Shiny Pokémon, we will be looking at the highs and lows you can find in the catalog of purple shiny Pokémon. Keep in mind this is all just our own opinions, so don't get too riled up if you don't agree with what we say. More importantly, though, if you're looking for an answer as to why there are so many purple shiny Water-type Pokémon, you've come to the wrong place. Don't worry, we think it's a bit strange, too.
The Best
Zoroark
By deetah
Shiny Zoroark boasts my absolute favorite color palette of any purple shiny, hands down! Its majestic royal purple mane looks stunning alongside its slate gray fur, and the color scheme fits the theme of darkness and illusions quite well. A strong majority of purple shinies utilize a lavender color, and, while there's definitely nothing wrong with that, the world of Pokémon could really benefit from some of the variety that we see here. That said, Zoroark is really a unique Pokémon, so maybe it deserves a unique shiny form! My only teeny tiny complaint is that this shiny form does deviate a good bit from its pre-evolution, Zorua, which sports a blue cyan color. Aside from that, I really love the direction that Game Freak went in with Zoroark's shiny form!
Mudkip
By Rabia
Perhaps this is a pick blinded by nostalgia. Several, several years ago—I was no older than 13 at the time—I kept up with a shiny hunter on YouTube and asked them to hunt for Mudkip. After all, it was my favorite starter in my favorite Pokémon game, and I've always loved purple as a color. Graciously, said YouTuber took on my request, and one day they uploaded a video in which they finally found it: shiny Mudkip, in all of its glory. This shiny isn't unique by ANY stretch of the imagination; after all, purple shinies are incredibly common for Water-type Pokémon to have. But, it will always have a place in my heart for being one of the earliest shinies I ever saw, and hey, purple axolotls exist! Look at that, real-world application.
Braixen
By Astra
I would doubt that there would be much debate if I said that purple is the color for witches, especially after witnessing this great shiny form. Braixen's design fits right into the cutesy witch trope in media, meshing well with the slyness of a fox. The fiery palette of its regular form is fairly appeasing, but I think that its shiny form pulls it off better. The pastel purple is also perfect for Braixen, which I find honestly better looking than the yellow its regular form uses. Keeping the sharp red in its ears and the tip of its tail is the cherry on top, as I personally believe it is the best part of the regular form's design. Actually, maybe it's a sharp orange? Either way, it slays.
Pumpkaboo
By deetah
I think it would be a crime to talk about purple shinies and NOT include Pumpkaboo or Gourgeist. Purple, yellow, and black are an amazing combination as is, and they complement Pumpkaboo's design amazingly, giving it a ghastly, spooky look. Its dark purple body creates great contrast with the glowing yellow light from within, allowing for an even more effective jack-o'-lantern look. I daresay Pumpkaboo's shiny palette is even better than its original—it's certainly spookier! You'd definitely be considered one of the coolest people around with one of these adorning your house for Halloween.
Tsareena
By Rabia
For Grass-type Pokémon, purple isn't a very common color to see so dominant within a palette. Enter shiny Tsareena, where it's utilized quite well all things considered. I think there was a slight miss here given royal purple is a color that, well, exists, and Tsareena's whole shtick is she's the queen. However, the two shades of purple used here work really nicely together. The more dominant lavender has an elegance of its own and is quite calming, while the slight shade edits made to Tsareena's body pair well with it.
Honorable Mentions
Mega Charizard Y: As much as I prefer Mega Charizard X to Y as a Mega Evolution, Mega Charizard Y has it beat when it comes to the shiny palette. Mega Charizard Y builds on the iconic Charizard's shiny palette, boasting a nice pale purple color. I'm not usually a fan of pale colors, but I think it suits the design very well. The dark red used for the inner wings gives it the perfect amount of contrast. Mega Charizard Y is looking even more like a prehistoric dragon with this color palette!
Quagsire: Continuing our trend of purple shiny palettes being given to Water-types, Quagsire once again pulls it off well. It's incredibly basic, but Quagsire's default palette is similarly devoid of spectacular patterns and color combinations too. For a Pokémon with about three unique thoughts each year, a simple, yet effective shiny palette is all Quagsire needed.
Vaporeon: A good half of the shiny Eeveelutions are pretty unfortunate wastes of shiny popular Pokémon, but Vaporeon luckily manages to squeeze by with one of the nice ones. It manages to not be a boring color brightness adjustment like Glaceon's while also not being too abrasive for a complete color change like Espeon's. The light pastel pinkish purple (purplish pink?) still manages to complement its aquatic design, reminding me of something like an axolotl.
The Worst
Gengar
By Rabia
This shiny sucks. It sucks, though, for more than being one of those overly common "hey look, we just darkened the colors by one shade" shinies. Consider, for a moment, shiny Mega Gengar. The sleek whiteness manages to add on to its ominousness, having it literally match a ghost's colors. CLEARLY, Game Freak understood how they could adjust Gengar's colors to give it some extra pizazz.
Let's continue, though! Did you know Gligar's base color palette got MULTIPLE edits in Generation 4? Compare its sprite in each of Diamond & Pearl, Platinum, and HeartGold & SoulSilver. IT IS NOT THE SAME IN ANY OF THE GAMES! Game Freak clearly has no issue with adjusting the sprite of a Pokémon as they see fit, even one multiple generations old. Why not do the same for Gengar, or at least for its shiny? Oh wait... they DID change its color palette! Starting in HGSS, its base palette became significantly more similar to its shiny, losing some nice distinction in the eyes especially and resulting in the disappointing shiny we have today.
One would think Gengar of all Pokémon would be a PRIME candidate for an improved shiny palette given its popularity among Pokémon fans. But no, we're stuck with one of the most dull, insipid shiny Pokémon ever. Good work, guys.
Pinsir
By Astra
Pinsir is already an ugly Pokémon to begin with, so having a decent shiny form would be its only saving grace. Unfortunately, it fails miserably in that department. With no exaggeration at all, shiny Pinsir has absolutely no good redeeming qualities attached to it. I suppose the light purple could be a worse color, though the darker purple it sported before the switch to 3D in XY was a tiny bit better. The mustard yellow horns makes this shiny form even worse, as well. It's so appalling that I decided to write about it first because I didn't want to keep thinking about it.
Alomomola
By deetah
Purple isn't exactly known for being an unflattering color, but this shiny form looks like a filter was slapped over Alomomola's once-pink body and had the highlight turned up one too many times. Also, what's with the green eyeliner? I'm all for colorful and bold makeup choices but... bright neon green? That said, I'm not really keen on Alomomola's design in the first place. Game Freak seems to love the convenience of giving Water-type Pokémon a purple shiny form, but this one definitely misses the mark. Most certainly a striking fish to behold, but not in a good way!
Hariyama
By Rabia
Hariyama was cursed with a pretty weird palette to begin with, so it's no surprise its shiny fails to appeal. I guess my main issue stems from THEM MAKING IT SO PURPLE FOR NO REASON, THOUGH? It's just such a bizarre color for a sumo wrestler Pokémon to be because I cannot rationalize in my head why it'd be purple all of a sudden. Take Hitmonchan for example: shiny Hitmonchan's boxing gloves go from red to blue, which you could pretend was due to its hands being bruised up from all that fighting. Hariyama ain't like that. That's not how sumo wrestling works. Why are its feet purple too? Why is that little spot on its stomach purple? Just about nothing here makes sense in my head.
Exploud
By Astra
I look just as angry as Exploud as I'm writing this because of how much I don't like its shiny. It's pretty unfortunate that such a nice purple shade was wasted on it. Are you telling me that the Loud Noise Pokémon gets one of the most calming, soothing, relaxing colors for its shiny? Granted, for its design, Exploud doesn't have a lot to work with when it comes to being aesthetically pleasing to the eye, but I can imagine that there are a few better options for its shiny. This is one of the only times where I can envision a better-looking shiny for a Pokémon with an obnoxiously saturated color completely different from any color from its regular form; dare I say that this includes the infamous shiny Pokémon plague that is neon green.
Dishonorable Mentions
Thundurus: Thundurus is an unfortunate example of a shiny that only received subtle adjustments to the contrast, making for a pretty unimpressive palette. It was such a missed opportunity by Game Freak to not experiment with other colors for the clouds or mustache. A shade of yellow in the clouds showing the glowing aura of electricity could've really emphasized Thundurus's role as the Bolt Strike Pokémon. I will cut it some slack by acknowledging that its shiny is probably the best of the Forces of Nature, but that's not saying very much.
Feebas: In some ways, Feebas's shiny is remarkable and thematically excellent. The reason? It's frickin' hideous! Like, egregiously ugly. Wouldn't let it within ten feet of my child ugly. But, this makes a lot of sense! Feebas's whole design is based around it being an ugly lil' fish but evolving into a majestic... whatever Milotic is. The original evolution method for Feebas quite literally has you raising its Beauty stat. Regardless, this shiny palette in general is quite an eyesore. I've yet to think of why they made Feebas's fins gray, and the purple here just does not work for me.
Walrein: I guess with a design like Walrein's, you can't really make it pleasing to the eye with anything besides its original blue color palette. Its shiny could've definitely been worse with something like neon green, for example, so perhaps we should be grateful that it's this light shade of purple. As Pokémon fans, though, we can't be happy with anything, right?
Conclusion
That about sums it up for the best and worst of purple shiny Pokémon! With such a pleasing color as purple, you wouldn't expect there to be so many pathetic purple shinies, but we were definitely proven wrong. Also, just why are there so many purple shiny Water-types...? I guess it's up to you to speculate. We'll see you next time, and thanks for reading!
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