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Which reminds me, did Kukui have his Ninetales when he fought Lance, because while I get that Ninetales in any form isn't a great sweeper, this means he lost to a Dragon user, possibly using his Elite Four Team without Charizard or Aerodactyl, while using an Ice/Fairy Type.
Wait, did he lose? I'm pretty sure it's left open whether he lost or not. I personally think he won, as I remember he tells the story in a very confident way. Sorry if I misunderstood what you meant.
I'll take this opportunity to say something I had forgotten about him: both Alola Ninetales and Crabominable represent Mount Lanakila as well.
I consider it more of a retcon since all of Hitmontop's sprites and animations beforehand were it constantly spinning or upside-down.
Hitmontop in Gen 5 was just upside down with a relatively generic stance, so I feel it was added entirely for flavor and to connect an actual fighting style, like boxing or kickboxing.
There's also the fact that honestly, the "upside_down" animation would have made little to no sense when translated in a 3d environment. You'd have wanted him either constantly spinning or constantly on the verge of falling off.
There's also the fact that honestly, the "upside_down" animation would have made little to no sense when translated in a 3d environment. You'd have wanted him either constantly spinning or constantly on the verge of falling off.
The old console models are generally pretty good for gens 3 and 4, but some of the older ones are up there with the worst 2D sprites the series has had-
A lot of the N64 models are just the animators/modelers messing around and you know maybe it's Good, Actually that the series clearly has a more established style guide now
The most insane thing is this must have been the only reference given to the Ranger artists because it's the only other instance in the series where Crobat gets these horrible buck teeth & dead stare and they never made a new one so it was in all 3 games https://www.spriters-resource.com/ds_dsi/pokemonranger2shadowsofalmia/sheet/20098/
A lot of the N64 models are just the animators/modelers messing around and you know maybe it's Good, Actually that the series clearly has a more established style guide now
Every time I watch the False Swipe Gaming videos about history of competitive, I have to brace myself for these atrocities...
At least, well, it was the first time they did 3d modeling for Pokemon (and i'm not even sure they were done by GF even), so, I can "allow" their existance, won't stop them from being nightmare fuel though.
As much as I love XD and stuff, the battles in these games are... really something. (Also, so atrociously slow...)
You know how in XY and Gen 7 you can ride on an overworld Lapras sprite when you have that Pokemon use Surf?
In Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, there is an overworld Kyogre model your player can ride on and control if you give your Kyogre Surf. If you also give it Dive, you get to see the full Kyogre model and ride on it underwater!
In addition, Soaring in the Sky on Latios or Latias is amazing and I love how this mechanic was seemingly inspired by Pokémon Ranger Guardian Signs.
Crobat's Battle Revolution style is so ugly. Why does it look like that? Why are the fangs on the bottom?
Also, from clips on FSG where he uses footage from the older "Stadium" type games I kinda roll my eyes at how overexaggerated and goofy looking a lot of the animations are. Kangaskhan especially, it kinda ragdolls everytime it gets hit. Groudon also kinda reels in pain everytime he's hit, it honestly looks like it's in genuine pain a little bit
I definitely appreciate the newer 3D animations and models in that regard. Thank God they fixed Crobat!
Wait, did he lose? I'm pretty sure it's left open whether he lost or not. I personally think he won, as I remember he tells the story in a very confident way. Sorry if I misunderstood what you meant.
When you reach the top of Mount Lanakila in both SM and USUM, Kukui will mention...
"I still remember it like it was yesterday! I went all the way to Indigo Plateau, yeah, right to the Pokémon League headquarters... and I went right at them, cousin!""Those Gym Leaders in Kanto really messed my team and me up! But then I saw my team battling for me through it all, pouring their souls into their moves for me.""And then that last guy, that Dragon user in the cape...""Oh sorry! Enough about me—let's get you in there, yeah!"
He trails off mentioning Lance, and Kukui not bringing up the result of the battle implies to me that he lost, plus Kukui being the Kanto Champion is a pretty major detail to not bring up if he did win that match. Considering Kukui challenging Lance is never brought up in any future mainline or spin-off game, it seems that he simply lost to Lance, but was inspired by his journey through the Kanto Gym Challenge to make the Alola league.
You know how in XY and Gen 7 you can ride on an overworld Lapras sprite when you have that Pokemon use Surf?
In Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, there is an overworld Kyogre model your player can ride on and control if you give your Kyogre Surf. If you also give it Dive, you get to see the full Kyogre model and ride on it underwater!
In addition, Soaring in the Sky on Latios or Latias is amazing and I love how this mechanic was seemingly inspired by Pokémon Ranger Guardian Signs.
Sharpedo & Kyogre even had special properties, which was neat. Sharpedo was twice as a fast but you couldn't fish; Kyogre was faster than normal but also twice as big so you couldn't squeeze into certain gaps.
Many Pokémon fans like to bash the story of X/Y. Especially here on Smogon, it seems. While I personally love X/Y as I think they are excellent games, I do agree that their story wasn’t particularly good. In fact, it is one of the few issues I have with these games. Their story had some good moments, and I really enjoyed the Looker Missions post-game story. But on the whole, the main story was pretty bad. I don’t think it is the very worst in the series, but definitely below average when it comes to stories in Pokémon games. Fortunately, there is one version of this story that I think is really good.
So, let’s talk about one example of what I personally think is the X/Y story done right. I really like the X/Y chapter of Pokémon Adventures. I enjoyed it a lot. The way the main characters are handled is great. X is a strong trainer who mainly focuses on Mega Evolution, his attitude is funny for the reader but often annoying for the other characters. Y is a Sky Trainer with a strong attitude, she’s not the kind of girl you want to mess around with. I like how the manga expanded on the concept of Sky Battles from the games, it was handled very well. I find Y’s rivalry with her mother understandable and relatable, and I like how the manga expanded on the concept of Rhyhorn racing as well. The Rivals are great too, much better than their bland counterparts in the games. The Gym Leaders are also fantastic, their personalities are much more interesting than in the games and their involvement in the story is much better in the manga. The same goes for Diantha who has an excellent role in the manga and a bit of a rivalry with Malva as well, which I think is cool.
Speaking of which, I feel that Team Flare are also much better handled than in the games. In the manga, they are well written and feel like an actual threat. Lysandre and the admins are all great, the same goes for Malva and her involvement with Team Flare. In comparison, I think that is something the games should have done more with, having an E4 member being a member of the evil team is a concept that has a lot of potential. I also like how they integrated Essentia’s story as a part of the main story. The legendaries are amazing too, Xerneas and Yveltal have the main focus but Zygarde also has a very big role. The manga also manages to make sense out of some things that didn’t get a proper explanation in the games, the most notable being why Mewtwo was in Pokémon Village. Then there are some fun references to some of the previous manga chapters as well, and we get to see a very cool hint towards the S/M/US/UM chapter at the end.
Apart from the story, I think the X/Y chapter is successful regarding many other things too. It really captures the Pokémon variety of Kalos very well while it gives some great focus to several of the Kalos Pokémon at the same time. I like how Mega Evolution was handled as well. The chapter was also very fast-paced with a lot of action, which I liked a lot. And I really like the ending and the final battles.
I guess there’s a lot more I could say about it, but I think this is enough. Plus, I don’t want to risk getting into too many spoilers. In the end, the X/Y chapter is not one of my favorites from Pokémon Adventures, but I really liked it a lot and I’d say it is my second favorite chapter overall.
On a somewhat different note, I have heard that the X/Y anime is supposed to be really good as well, but I haven’t watched it so I can’t say anything about it. But if that is true, then I guess that is another example of the X/Y story done right.
Many Pokémon fans like to bash the story of X/Y. Especially here on Smogon, it seems. While I personally love X/Y as I think they are excellent games, I do agree that their story wasn’t particularly good. In fact, it is one of the few issues I have with these games. Their story had some good moments, and I really enjoyed the Looker Missions post-game story. But on the whole, the main story was pretty bad. I don’t think it is the very worst in the series, but definitely below average when it comes to stories in Pokémon games. Fortunately, there is one version of this story that I think is really good.
So, let’s talk about one example of what I personally think is the X/Y story done right. I really like the X/Y chapter of Pokémon Adventures. I enjoyed it a lot. The way the main characters are handled is great. X is a strong trainer who mainly focuses on Mega Evolution, his attitude is funny for the reader but often annoying for the other characters. Y is a Sky Trainer with a strong attitude, she’s not the kind of girl you want to mess around with. I like how the manga expanded on the concept of Sky Battles from the games, it was handled very well. I find Y’s rivalry with her mother understandable and relatable, and I like how the manga expanded on the concept of Rhyhorn racing as well. The Rivals are great too, much better than their bland counterparts in the games. The Gym Leaders are also fantastic, their personalities are much more interesting than in the games and their involvement in the story is much better in the manga. The same goes for Diantha who has an excellent role in the manga and a bit of a rivalry with Malva as well, which I think is cool.
I've still not read the XY chapter of the manga and I'd really like to! All the arcs up to mid-B2W2 are available via Kindle so I downloaded the full set a couple of years ago. But there's been no sign of XY and all the chapters after it coming soon, annoyingly (although I just checked and it turns out they're *finally* releasing the rest of B2W2).
I think the issue come with artist interpretation from limited assets.
First, let's note that Crobat's 3D model has looked like that since Pokemon Stadium 2. So with that in mind, here is likely the art they had for Crobat, see if you can't spot the issue:
(Crobat had not made its anime appearance yet)
Yeah, Crobat has never been depicted WITHOUT a full set of teeth in its mouth. Not only that, the teeth aren't just a single band of white, we can see at the bottom two lines indicating gaps meaning we're seeing 3 teeth.
Now, I suppose the person who made the 3D model saw the gap lines, though it made sense that it meant the teeth were connected to the bottom of the mouth, and well we get the monstrosity of Crobat's model. "Why didn't they just leave the teeth in the mouth"? My guess is because they wanted to give Crobat a biting animation cause it was a vampire bat. "But why does it teeth don't look like fangs"? Well, note the Pokedex never mentioned anything about fangs until ULTRA SUN, most of its other dex entries had been about how fast its four wings make it.
BTW, you may look at the TCG card and go "well, that shows the teeth are connect to the bottom", but I want to note that this card, the only card of Crobat that would have been out at the time, was part of the second Gen II expansion which was only released a few months before the release of Stadium 2. I imagine it took much longer to make all the models for the game than just a few months so this card as "proof" is up for question. Was it drawn first and possibly used as inspiration for the 3D model? Or was the 3D model already complete and Shin-ichi Yoshida somehow saw it and that influenced his drawing? Or did both the 3D modeler and Shin-ichi Yoshida just came to the same conclusion? Is there Crobat concept art that they saw but hasn't been released to the public? Also note that Shin-ichi Yoshida's art style doesn't always stay on design and sometimes distorts the Pokemon for a more interesting/dynamic image. So even if his image came first, it's not necessarily what GF thought Crobat teeth would be like.
Eitherway this had influenced future Crobat TCG cards which depict it in 3D, sometimes using the "buck teeth" model (some of the drawn ones even has the gap lines either longer than usual or go all the way up, though I never seen one with more than 3 teeth).
When the anime finally debut Crobat, under control of a main character no less, they had plenty of chances to show what Crobat's opened mouth looks like. But instead of what we see in the TCG card and the 3D games, the anime always kept the white teeth band in Crobat's mouth even when doing attacks or smiling:
In the Kanto visit episodes of the Alola Arc, Brock sent out Crobat to battle Team Rocket and for the first time we did see Crobat open its mouth... revealing no teeth. And the next frame after it shows the typical way Crobat used Supersonic with a mouth full of teeth. So that seemed to have been an animation error (Bulbapedia seems to agrees with me, or they're just noting the editing mistake of inconsistent frames)?
Not to mention when the gams jumped to 3D they've kept Crobat's band of teeth in its mouth, even when eating in Pokemon-Amie.
So with that, I think GF's decision is that Crobat just always has a band of teeth. Personally I see it either as it having 3 fangs on top or one middle fang & two bottom fangs:
I'm not surprised Crobat looks like that in the anime, I've noticed that a lot of Pokemon are animated with a lot of "design quirks" and kinda look weird at times. I'm not sure why I notice this stuff often honestly. I think the "3 fangs on top" look makes the most sense considering it's design
I've still not read the XY chapter of the manga and I'd really like to! All the arcs up to mid-B2W2 are available via Kindle so I downloaded the full set a couple of years ago. But there's been no sign of XY and all the chapters after it coming soon, annoyingly (although I just checked and it turns out they're *finally* releasing the rest of B2W2).
Too bad it isn't available through Kindle yet. Though I guess it will happen relatively soon since it should be published right after B2/W2. I hope you'll enjoy it once you get around to reading it!
Personally, I prefer physical copies when it comes to manga. I got the physical box set of the X/Y chapter, it has 12 mini-volumes with 3-4 chapters in each volume. Though it doesn't feature the side stories, and it isn't "final" either since the real volumes for the X/Y chapter are currently being published... in Japan, that is. I guess we will have to wait a lot longer until they are available in English.
Speaking of the side stories for the X/Y chapter, I really like them a lot. Spoilers ahead, so I'm putting this in a spoiler tag this time.
Of the side stories, my favorite is definitely the one with Y and Veevee. I thought it was funny, but also quite touching. It was a great way to showcase Pokémon-Amie in a way that works for the manga, as well as build on the friendship between Y and Veevee... which of course evolves into Sylveon at the end! Easily my favorite out of the side chapters. I re-read it just now and I love it.
Apart from that, I also liked several of the others, notably several of the later ones which sort of had a mini-arc focusing on Korrina and her (Mega) Lucario. It was really cool.
Also, since Crobat has been discussed a bit in this thread lately, I guess I should say something positive about it. I like Crobat. While it is very far from being one of my top favorite Pokémon, I think that it is without any doubt the best member of the Zubat line. For me, it "saves" the Zubat line, so to say. I am not overly fond of Zubat itself, while Golbat is my third least favorite Pokémon. Crobat is cool though.
I always appreciated the completely optional towns in earlier gens, such as Pacifidlog Town in RSE and Anville Town in BW, because it felt like a genuinely clever reward for players who went out of their way to try and experience everything the game had to offer and look in every nook and cranny. Sure neither of those really offered anything too substantial (other than a place to Fly for the Regi quest in RSE and some items in B/W) but they always had their own little charm I couldn't deny.
I can't remember if any other games had outright optional towns (And by that I mean towns you could just completely miss as opposed to postgame only towns, and there's a ton of optional, missable dungeons off the top of my head) but those always stuck out to me
I don't know if this was intentional, but it's a neat bit of characterization nonetheless.
Flannery is very clearly painted as a reckless hothead, a surprising rarity among Fire-type specialists. The Pokenav describes her strategy as "battle aggressively", both she and her Pokemon are said to burn with a fiery passion, and her signature move is Overheat, an attack that "inflicts serious damage on the opponent" but also "might not be suitable for longer battles." Everything about her points to her favoring offensive glass cannons. But then you actually look at the Pokemon she uses, and...
Mostly unremarkable besides a decent Special Attack, but evolves into Magcargo, a slow and defensive Pokemon.
More offensively oriented than Slugma and Magcargo, but still undeniably slow tanks.
Her ace, and one that's even less offensively inclined than Magcargo in favor of a strong focus on defense.
What's going on here? Well, Flannery is new to being a gym leader. She wants to live up to her grandfather's legacy, and realizes she needs to do things her own way when she loses. The incongruity between her strategy and roster reflects her inexperience, and potentially indicates that Flannery is trying and failing to emulate her presumably more defense-oriented grandfather's strategy. Hell, she describes her skills as "inherited" from her grandfather. Maybe her Pokemon are too.
That's an interesting idea but honestly it just seems like Hoenn's not really built for anything else. The Hoenn dex has the following fire type families in it:
-Blaziken
-Ninetales
-Magcargo
-Camerupt
-Torkoal
Hoenn seemed uninterested in giving starters to anyone that isn't the rival so that's out. And Ninetales...honestly I think they didn't give her this because it's still several areas away; with the exception of Roxanne (whose pokemon are available in the "next area" Dewford Cave) and Wattson (whose pokemon are all mysteriously on a bunch of trainers at that point, and technically within a near by area, but completely inaccessible to you for another 2 badges......to the point where I feel at one point in development they were normally available) they seemed to not want to grab a Pokemon way far ahead.
I don't know if this was intentional, but it's a neat bit of characterization nonetheless.
Flannery is very clearly painted as a reckless hothead, a surprising rarity among Fire-type specialists. The Pokenav describes her strategy as "battle aggressively", both she and her Pokemon are said to burn with a fiery passion, and her signature move is Overheat, an attack that "inflicts serious damage on the opponent" but also "might not be suitable for longer battles." Everything about her points to her favoring offensive glass cannons. But then you actually look at the Pokemon she uses, and...
Mostly unremarkable besides a decent Special Attack, but evolves into Magcargo, a slow and defensive Pokemon.
More offensively oriented than Slugma and Magcargo, but still undeniably slow tanks.
Her ace, and one that's even less offensively inclined than Magcargo in favor of a strong focus on defense.
What's going on here? Well, Flannery is new to being a gym leader. She wants to live up to her grandfather's legacy, and realizes she needs to do things her own way when she loses. The incongruity between her strategy and roster reflects her inexperience, and potentially indicates that Flannery is trying and failing to emulate her presumably more defense-oriented grandfather's strategy. Hell, she describes her skills as "inherited" from her grandfather. Maybe her Pokemon are too.
Interestingly, in the anime her grandfather has a Typhlosion, ie the sort of Pokemon which does live up to the offensive glass cannon ideal.
But it's a neat take even if it's not a deliberate one on the part of the game designers. It is a weird juxtaposition that the only new Fire TM in Gen III is Overheat and the only new Fire-types in Hoenn are all slow tanks (apart from Blaziken but as noted no-one but the rival gets a starter in Hoenn). Makes you wonder how much character designs are meant to align with the new roster of Pokemon. My instinct is that they probably aren't, hence stupid decisions like there being a Fire-type specialist in Sinnoh at all (when even if Flareon and Magmortar had been in the original DP dex, you still wouldn't have 5 Fire-types to fill a team) or the best Water-type TM the eighth Gym Leader in Hoenn can give you is... Water Pulse, which completely sucks. In short, I think it's more that they make a set of characters and scenarios and have to bend what's there to fit them.
