Hey frens and welcome back to another ZU Player of the Week. This is the project where we learn about some of ZU's finest community members in the form of interviews. I am grateful that I will have the chance to interview so many amazing ZU players and I hope that you enjoy these as much as I do. This time around, we're rounding off the moderator trio with the emperor himself...
(RIP Porygon2 which has not appeared in an episode of the anime yet)
czim!!
czim's top 6:
(ZU Moderator, ZU Council Member, Old Gen of the Week Host, Emperor Palpitoad, Pancham Enthusiast)
Ditto used Transform!
Ditto transformed into Palpitoad!
*rrrrrrrrrrrr*
Hello czim, how are you doing on this fine day?
I am with a bit of a headache today but overall im fine, its been a very cold week here! And you?
I'm doing well myself, thanks for asking, British weather is actually not terrible for once. I hope you feel better soon though.
As per usual, can you tell us a bit about yourself outside of Smogon?
I am an old man from and currently living on São Paulo, Brazil. I graduated on chemical engineering on college but I switched areas and I am currently working on a health company in the processes area. Other than that there isnt really much to tell, I like travelling a lot but the pandemic (especially here) has been terrible for it. I also like cooking, watching movies and playing videogames.
Thanks, a very cool introduction, and yes hopefully the pandemic ends soon so that we can all go travelling again
Where was your favourite place you've travelled to?
I havent been around to a lot of places abroad. I've been to Argentina twice and the US a couple times in Florida and New York and even lived in Florida for a couple months in 2014 when i worked for Disneyworld. It was a blast so that'd be probably my favorite place. For domestic stuff I love a little city in the mountains called Monte Verde which is great in the winter with excellent food. Its a 3h drive from here and i used to go there at least once a couple years with the gf before covid
Wow that sounds amazing, I've never been to South America myself, but would certainly love to visit parts of it one day, especially since you said one of the places has amazing food.
They all have amazing food lol
No joke, brazils food is easily the best in the world and our neighbors arent too far behind
Argentina knows how to cook meat, thats all i have to say
ooo sounds tasty
I am a bit of a food buff so i love trying new stuff and the food here is unmatched
US food is shit tho
I do like some of their stuff like cheesecakes and those chicken wings that slowly kill you
Each bite is 1h less of life
haha, rip americans
What are some of your favourite foods then? and since you mentioned you enjoy cooking do you have some favourite meals that you are willing to share?
Thats a hard question tbh, I dont rly have a favorite food. I think food is good for the climate, so when its hot i love japanese food and fruit salad, when its cold a good fondue or a nice brazilian rice and beans.
I do like to make drinks the most, especially caipirinha versions with different fruits than limes. For meals i dont really have a favorite as well, though ive been loving a tomato soup recipe in this cold weather
ah fair enough, all of these sound great tho :)
Picking foods is hard :(
very understandable, food in general is just very tasty loool
let's shift our attention to mons for now, how did you first get into PS/Smogon?
Honestly its so long ago i dont even remember how i found ps. I remember joining in late BW and mostly memeing on random/OU until I met some side server goons that invited me to join a league on the infamous frost side server. I thought it was pretty fun and became a monotype main for years, even becoming a mono mod, before i finally took my first break. Then i came back and joined LC and finally ZU and started getting a lot more active on smogon around 2017/2018 iirc
Wow that is a long time ago.
I told you im an old man
Even for ZU standards you've been around for a while; what's one thing that you're nostalgic about when looking back at when you were first getting started in the ZU community?
I kinda miss those early stages of ZU with a lot of development going on and more people around. I know thats not really a ZU only thing but with gen8 a lot of people went off ps. Also I absolutely loved how bad our mons were back then, no joke, Grumpig was like A rank
Gen8 did cut a lot of my favorite shitmons
mhm, it is a shame that gen8 did these things, hopefully the remakes are compatible with sword and shield so that you can use your favourite shitmons again
At least they left baltoy and pancham
The 2 sm czim trademarks
ah yes i found that baltoy post of yours from many years ago when doing some research
"Research"
yes :D
anyways it very much makes sense why you have an attachment to so many "unviable" Pokemon :P
Ye i always liked metagames where i could use those
Thats the similarity between mono/lc/zu that i think at least
And nfe obviously
Bc im a nfe legend
yup would have to agree that you are the undisputed nfe legend still after several years
I honestly don't remember how that even started any more
Pretty sure i won a game once
And never stopped winning after that
Except when i lost
that makes sense to me :D
As someone who plays a lot of zu old gens, which is your favourite of the bunch and why?
Thats like asking me to choose between my kids
I dont have kids but still
every parent secretly has a favourite
It has to be SM, its the one where most zuers started on and when the tier started being taken seriously. I think its the most fun metagame on smogon history tbh, with great variation and just the right amount of shitmons
ADV and GSC also get an honorable mention here but I'm not gonna go super deep on those two
ah wonderful, quite a few ZU players also regard SM to be one of the metagames ever
U can literally use furfrou with top hat
Should be everyones favorite metagame
lmao
what would you say to those who are potentially looking to get into some ZU old gens, especially with this year's ZUPL likely happening in the next month or so?
Well, please do because our player pool sucks
Jokes aside though, theres not really much to say outside of "give it a try". I think our old gens are wildly different metagames ranging from GSC and ORAS being super fat to DPP and BW being a sack fest. There's truly a zu old gen for everyone
wonderful, that's very good to hear that they are all diverse
Did u ever think youd use smoochum competitively?
no...
unless you're playing some old gen lc
See, zu old gens are special
That 85 spa tho
that's actually not bad
Paired with 15 def
interesting stat spread huh
current gen ZU saw some big shifts today, which of the Pokemon are you most upset about losing and which of the two new ZU mons are you most looking forward to using?
Garbodor leaving is huge but im kinda looking forward to how the meta will shape without it. The one im most upset about is Silvally Ghost, i loved using it as a sneaky wincon that preyed on fat normals. Considering Arctovish is likely not staying long I'm looking forward to using it and see how it goes
ye that's fair assessment of the shifts
What Pokemon do you expect to be the winners with these shifts
Monke seems like a big winner here, Garbodor was the most splashable answer to it. Other physical breakers like Sawk and Centiskorch also seem to love this shift, especially with the 2 new ice types to prey on
Ye that's pretty interesting given the fact that you and the other council members are currently voting on Grassy Seed
Centiskorch has also been talked about a lot, as a Pokemon which can never quite justify itself as something which deserves testing although these shifts may change things, we'll have to see
I think we might have to ban a couple things without garbodor around
Another mon that i wanna see more of is Roselia, with Garbodor leaving , the role of "Spiker that annoys Tangela" is vacant so it might be viable
Ah yes ZU becomes NFE wars
jokes aside that could definitely be a very interesting mon that rises up
Hattrem might be better too
In case more passive hazard setters become common
I would love Hattrem to be better hehe
And how do you think the shifts affect Palpitoad?
It stays with the same viability that it had before
Thats all im gonna say
loool
I mean, just get good and switch palp into fishious rend and then double on to something to eat the freeze dry
People shouldnt expect palp to do everything
I think I'll stick to Jellicent :)
This is a cursed emote
Lmao
Its a top tier emote
Like
This interview is over
=====(Intermission)=====
I meant to say
Better
You mentioned you also played other video games outside of Pokemon in your free time, which ones do you currently play and what are some of the games you've enjoyed the most?
Also, do you have a favourite Pokemon game (main series or spinoff) and why?
Im one of those patient gamers tbh, so i usually try to play the freebies i get on ps plus. Currently i played stuff like subnautica, hollow knight, enter the gungeon, ff7 remake, control and now im playing horizon zero dawn. I absolutely loved hollow knight and subnautica and those 2 are easily on my top 10 of all time alongside stuff like roller coaster tycoon 2 , kingdom hearts, god of war, red dead redemption and so on... Other than that there are 2 games i play frequently outside of Pokemon, Rocket League and Fall Guys, one very tryhard and the other one very chill lol
I love the adv era but i like anything from the first 4 gens. Other than that i really love emerald, i think its the best pokemon game ever. HGSS also was really fun
emerald is an amazing game and so is hgss.
many of the other games you've mentioned there are also amazing
especially hollow knight
very much looking forward to the sequel
Yep its been a while
What are some of your favourite movies of all the time?
Im a sucker for animation, scifi and horror. Some of my favorites include Wall-E, Bambi, Fight Club, V for Vendetta, City of God, Se7en, Arrival, les diaboliques, cabin in the woods, Klaus, Upgrade, Whiplash, nightmare before christmas and American Beauty
Ik its not cool to like kevin spacey anymore but hell, american beauty and se7en are excellent movies
very nice, a lot of good stuff here
what are some of your favourite music genres / songs?
I like a bit of everything tbh, but i like a lot of pop rock/pop punk that i always come back to because it feels very nostalgic
Stuff like oasis, fall out boy, killers, paramore, new found glory, blink182, panic at the disco, my chemical romance.. will always be nice to listen to
ah throwback stuff, very cool
I also like a lot of brazilian stuff like skank, novos baianos, chico science e nação zumbi, os mutantes, cpm22 and so on. I dont rly expect u to know anything here but still lol
Brazilian music is very rich
lmao never heard any before but I'll be sure to listen to some post-interview
If you like ill give u some recs
sure
Novos baianos - acabou chorare (the best album in br music ever, good place to start in)
Its rock, pop, mpb, bossa, samba
Everythings there
sounds very fun
Onto my favourite question of the interview, you and the other zu staff members are in a food fight, you're allowed to have one ally, who would you choose to have a truce with? Additionally would there be anyone you would deliberately target?
Id have a truce with apa, so i could have an infinite supply of onions and cabbages
onions aren't very effective vs ho3n though, be careful!!
No u stole my joke :(
whoops mb
Nah im jk lol
Id target tuthur bc hes french and hed be throwing baguettes at everyone
ah yes baguettes are deadly weapons
Better safe than sorry
starting this wrap this interview up now, would you mind sharing your favourite team from any ZU generation?
So this team is pretty much a collection of unviable mons that somewhat works
Tspikes+memento pinc is rly nice and helps the wincons setup and most notably helps drifblim stall normal types that it cant touch
Manectric is the rising voltage mon of choice
Lilligant provides the team with a much needed ground check and nature power tbolt is rly cool. Swoobat does swoobat things
Finally, crustle provides hazards and acts as the "dont lose to frosmoth" mon, thats why its boots sturdy
Otherwise the team gets mothed
Thats pretty much it
this team looks really cool and unique
will be a blast to try out, thanks a lot
Ye its inconsistent but its elec terrain
Its just a shaky archetype but i hope it gets better now
Definitely very underexplored
so I expect it to only get better
but I guess it also depends on the result of the Grassy Seed vote
Not as good as the palp team sadly
(Context: Palp team with Garb was sent at first)
Unfortunate
Ye we might get to a point where thwackey becomes an anti terrain tech
If we ban seed
How the turntables
That would honestly be pretty cool, similar to how Vanilluxe was a Rain answer
Mhm
Lastly, is there anything else you'd like to say or any fellow palpitoad lovers (this part is not actually exclusive to them) you'd like to shout out?
I have too many fans to shout out any in particular, so ill just shout out the entire zu community that makes this tier what it is, the most fun place on smogon/ps. Also i wanna give Temporal Totodile a shoutout for the shortest ps break ever
Also ty for hosting this, was rly fun lol
no problem, thank you for taking some time to partake in this interview
Feel free to ask to czim any questions you want!
