I've been playing a spot of coop Pokemon with my nephew, and I was again reminded of how much I liked the designs of the Generation 9 monsters. I've been chomping at the bit to gush about Palafin and Houndstone and Rabsca, but unfortunately we still don't have the official 2D art for a lot of them (as far as I can tell), and I'd like to have those on hand because there's some details I miss in the 3D models.
So instead, I decided to channel my fanboying into talking about previous generations instead, starting with the first one! These will basically be my ramblings as a massive biology/zoology nerd whose interests were catered to (and then some) by a massive multimedia franchise. Pokemon is a treasure trove of interesting monster designs, the current tippity top in the field as far as I'm concerned, and I'd be delighted if you'd join me in my gushing/critique/word vomit.
Disclaimers: this is all just my opinion, these rankings are in no way concrete and subject to change on any given week, I'll be bundling evolutionary stages together whenever I feel like it, and for simplicity's sake I'm not gonna count stuff like Megas or G-max forms until the generation they debuted in
#10 Onix
What an exceedingly elegant concept! Giant earth-burrowing serpents have been a staple in fiction (think Tremors, Dune or Star Wars). Pokemon slaps the rock type onto that blueprint by forming the literal earth-worm's body out of a line of charmingly rugged boulders. The stern, serious-business expression fits it perfectly, and I bet thousands of five year olds back in 1998 got intimidated by this hulking beast from Brock's team. I sure was.
#9 Nidoking
The Nidoran family stood out to me in the first generation for being a clear case of sexual dimorphism, with the sexes being treated as separate species. Now both are badasses, but I have to give a slight edge to Nidoking here, who looks like he got pissed that Godzilla has been kicking its butt in all the movies, and now he's ready to be the one kicking butt in greener pastures. This was definitely one of the gnarliest looking mons in Gen I, a poisonous spike-studded dinosaur that by the way could also summon lightning and quake the earth. Fun fact: this bloke is also the centerpiece of the current world record speedrun for Pokemon Yellow.
#8 Slowpoke
Look at this thing's huge, blank eyes and derpy smile. What a dork. How can you not love it? But even cuter is that this thing is Psychic type. Its name is literally slowpoke and somehow this marbles-challenged mammal has a brain powerful enough to achieve telekinesis. It's one of the things that Pokemon has consistently done well-- introducing fresh twists to common creature concepts. Not pictured is its evolution Slowbro, where a symbiotic Shellder is consistently injecting poison to its host, but that's alright because that's basically morning coffee for Slowbro. Funny little creatures.
#7 The Bulbasaur line
Guess who my first pick for starter was.
But why did I pick Bulbasaur I guess is the real question. And the answer would be that: more than Charmander, more than Squirtle, Bulbasaur embodied the idea of what a monster was. It's equal parts toadlike dinosaur and onionlike bulb, a conundrum that sent my head spinning as I pondered what its internal anatomy must have looked like. A part of me thinks that's why it's Pokemon numero uno. It's the designers over at Game Freak telling the world, this is a taste of what we have to offer.
I also quite like the flowery tree on Venusaur's back. A prehistoric-looking plant on a prehistoric-looking dino. Neat.
#6 Exeggcute
I think we've always underappreciated how FREAKY this thing is. It's not just a walking palm tree. Its "coconuts" are its heads! And there's three of them and every single one of them is psychic. So they could explode your head from twenty meters away, but instead they apparently opt to drop their own heads. After which the self-decapitated coconut-face is happy to roll "away". To where? What does it do? DOES IT COLLECT MORE HEADS?
Oh my god. Is that why it's called Exeggcutor?!
#5 Poliwag
Another thing Pokemon is great at is sneaking in biological factoids, and Poliwag was the first and I think still is the only fictional depiction of a tadpole that I can think of that shows off one of that animal's more striking features, which is its intestines peeking through its translucent abdomen. And in a fun Pokemon twist, they can even use their swirling guts as a tool for hypnosis! No need to add any extraneous doodads (looking at you standard JRPG wolves), just had to reinterpret real anatomical details for a fantasy world.
#4 Victreebel
One of the most fun things about my encyclopedia trawls back when I was a child was how the stuff in those books would totally upend what I was being taught in school. Plants for instance were generally accepted to get their sustenance from photosynthesis. So of course little ol' me got instantly invested in the idea of carnivorous plants, and my first loves for that particular group of organisms were the venus flytrap and the pitcher plant.
Back then I thought it was interesting that Pokemon went with Victreebel for its carnivorous plant rep when every other video game and anime was doing their own variation of the Piranha Plant. And I think Victreebel and its preevo are still fairly unique in that regard in pop culture. I had to give Victreebel bonus points over Weepinbell for staying upright like a proper pitcher plant, and also by having a leaf-tipped vine that it can use to lure unsuspecting Weedle into its belly full of digestive acids. It doesn't even need the fangs, except it wanted to look menacing.
#3 Mewtwo
I just love how it looks EXACTLY how you would expect a defective clone of Mew to look. Its three fingered hands and feet remind me heavily of 80s rubber aliens, its chest little more than ribs, and my favorite touch, a secondary spinal cord which presumably contains that extra bunch of psychic neurons that boost Mewtwo's stats to legendary status. Mewtwo was also the edgy misunderstood loner in the anime, which only makes it cooler.
The lore surrounding Mewtwo was pretty engrossing, too. Reading all those files in that abandoned manor on Cinnabar, wondering what kind of creature could cause all this destruction... and all that ominous information just stays in the back of your head as you pummel the League and become Champion. Then you finally get the chance to explore Cerulean Cave, and lo and behold, there he is. The final antagonist of your journey, and if you're good enough, you can become his friend.
#2 Kabutops
We all knew which was the cooler fossil. This thing deserves to be called Scyther more than the real Scyther.
But the coolest thing about this Pokemon is that its shield-like head and segmented thorax are clearly based on a trilobite, while coopting the "arms" of its fellow ancient arthropods, the eurypterids, for its scythes. Kabutops basically runs with the idea of a trilobite adapting to a life on land and evolving to become the apex predator. A different but no less terrifying kind of Tyrannosaurus rex.
Which reminds me, Jurassic Park with fossil Pokemon still needs to happen.
#1 Parasect
The idea of "zombie fungi" has become rather popular in recent years, but back in 1997, I didn't see the likes of Cordyceps in movies and video games. I read about them in an encyclopedia focused on fungi, where there was a picture of an infected ant, with its dead eyes, and body overgrown with the ghostly, whitish strands of its parasite. That picture took up half the page along with 3-4 paragraphs explaining the plight of the poor bug. It creeped the hell out of me. It gave me nightmares, but I was so, so fascinated with it.
Then comes Pokemon. I take one look at Parasect's eyes and... it had the same dead eyes that had haunted my dreams. And right then and there I wanted one as part of my collection (not on my team-- I wasn't about to have redundant Grass types).
More than the pitcher plant, more than the trilobite T-rex, this mind-controlling parasitic mushroom was the biggest nerdgasm. It's a little more passe nowadays, but Parasect will always have a place in my heart as something that secured me as a lifelong fan of Pokemon.
And that's it. Mind you, there are a fair few mons that could conceivably take any of the top ten spots if I were in a slightly different mood, but as much as I'd love to gush about them, this list is already outrageously lengthy. If you did manage to get to the end, 1) wow, you have a lot of free time and 2) thank you for reading! Smell you later.
So instead, I decided to channel my fanboying into talking about previous generations instead, starting with the first one! These will basically be my ramblings as a massive biology/zoology nerd whose interests were catered to (and then some) by a massive multimedia franchise. Pokemon is a treasure trove of interesting monster designs, the current tippity top in the field as far as I'm concerned, and I'd be delighted if you'd join me in my gushing/critique/word vomit.
Disclaimers: this is all just my opinion, these rankings are in no way concrete and subject to change on any given week, I'll be bundling evolutionary stages together whenever I feel like it, and for simplicity's sake I'm not gonna count stuff like Megas or G-max forms until the generation they debuted in
#10 Onix
What an exceedingly elegant concept! Giant earth-burrowing serpents have been a staple in fiction (think Tremors, Dune or Star Wars). Pokemon slaps the rock type onto that blueprint by forming the literal earth-worm's body out of a line of charmingly rugged boulders. The stern, serious-business expression fits it perfectly, and I bet thousands of five year olds back in 1998 got intimidated by this hulking beast from Brock's team. I sure was.
#9 Nidoking
The Nidoran family stood out to me in the first generation for being a clear case of sexual dimorphism, with the sexes being treated as separate species. Now both are badasses, but I have to give a slight edge to Nidoking here, who looks like he got pissed that Godzilla has been kicking its butt in all the movies, and now he's ready to be the one kicking butt in greener pastures. This was definitely one of the gnarliest looking mons in Gen I, a poisonous spike-studded dinosaur that by the way could also summon lightning and quake the earth. Fun fact: this bloke is also the centerpiece of the current world record speedrun for Pokemon Yellow.
#8 Slowpoke
Look at this thing's huge, blank eyes and derpy smile. What a dork. How can you not love it? But even cuter is that this thing is Psychic type. Its name is literally slowpoke and somehow this marbles-challenged mammal has a brain powerful enough to achieve telekinesis. It's one of the things that Pokemon has consistently done well-- introducing fresh twists to common creature concepts. Not pictured is its evolution Slowbro, where a symbiotic Shellder is consistently injecting poison to its host, but that's alright because that's basically morning coffee for Slowbro. Funny little creatures.
Guess who my first pick for starter was.
But why did I pick Bulbasaur I guess is the real question. And the answer would be that: more than Charmander, more than Squirtle, Bulbasaur embodied the idea of what a monster was. It's equal parts toadlike dinosaur and onionlike bulb, a conundrum that sent my head spinning as I pondered what its internal anatomy must have looked like. A part of me thinks that's why it's Pokemon numero uno. It's the designers over at Game Freak telling the world, this is a taste of what we have to offer.
I also quite like the flowery tree on Venusaur's back. A prehistoric-looking plant on a prehistoric-looking dino. Neat.
#6 Exeggcute
I think we've always underappreciated how FREAKY this thing is. It's not just a walking palm tree. Its "coconuts" are its heads! And there's three of them and every single one of them is psychic. So they could explode your head from twenty meters away, but instead they apparently opt to drop their own heads. After which the self-decapitated coconut-face is happy to roll "away". To where? What does it do? DOES IT COLLECT MORE HEADS?
Oh my god. Is that why it's called Exeggcutor?!
#5 Poliwag
Another thing Pokemon is great at is sneaking in biological factoids, and Poliwag was the first and I think still is the only fictional depiction of a tadpole that I can think of that shows off one of that animal's more striking features, which is its intestines peeking through its translucent abdomen. And in a fun Pokemon twist, they can even use their swirling guts as a tool for hypnosis! No need to add any extraneous doodads (looking at you standard JRPG wolves), just had to reinterpret real anatomical details for a fantasy world.
#4 Victreebel
One of the most fun things about my encyclopedia trawls back when I was a child was how the stuff in those books would totally upend what I was being taught in school. Plants for instance were generally accepted to get their sustenance from photosynthesis. So of course little ol' me got instantly invested in the idea of carnivorous plants, and my first loves for that particular group of organisms were the venus flytrap and the pitcher plant.
Back then I thought it was interesting that Pokemon went with Victreebel for its carnivorous plant rep when every other video game and anime was doing their own variation of the Piranha Plant. And I think Victreebel and its preevo are still fairly unique in that regard in pop culture. I had to give Victreebel bonus points over Weepinbell for staying upright like a proper pitcher plant, and also by having a leaf-tipped vine that it can use to lure unsuspecting Weedle into its belly full of digestive acids. It doesn't even need the fangs, except it wanted to look menacing.
#3 Mewtwo
I just love how it looks EXACTLY how you would expect a defective clone of Mew to look. Its three fingered hands and feet remind me heavily of 80s rubber aliens, its chest little more than ribs, and my favorite touch, a secondary spinal cord which presumably contains that extra bunch of psychic neurons that boost Mewtwo's stats to legendary status. Mewtwo was also the edgy misunderstood loner in the anime, which only makes it cooler.
The lore surrounding Mewtwo was pretty engrossing, too. Reading all those files in that abandoned manor on Cinnabar, wondering what kind of creature could cause all this destruction... and all that ominous information just stays in the back of your head as you pummel the League and become Champion. Then you finally get the chance to explore Cerulean Cave, and lo and behold, there he is. The final antagonist of your journey, and if you're good enough, you can become his friend.
#2 Kabutops
We all knew which was the cooler fossil. This thing deserves to be called Scyther more than the real Scyther.
But the coolest thing about this Pokemon is that its shield-like head and segmented thorax are clearly based on a trilobite, while coopting the "arms" of its fellow ancient arthropods, the eurypterids, for its scythes. Kabutops basically runs with the idea of a trilobite adapting to a life on land and evolving to become the apex predator. A different but no less terrifying kind of Tyrannosaurus rex.
Which reminds me, Jurassic Park with fossil Pokemon still needs to happen.
The idea of "zombie fungi" has become rather popular in recent years, but back in 1997, I didn't see the likes of Cordyceps in movies and video games. I read about them in an encyclopedia focused on fungi, where there was a picture of an infected ant, with its dead eyes, and body overgrown with the ghostly, whitish strands of its parasite. That picture took up half the page along with 3-4 paragraphs explaining the plight of the poor bug. It creeped the hell out of me. It gave me nightmares, but I was so, so fascinated with it.
Then comes Pokemon. I take one look at Parasect's eyes and... it had the same dead eyes that had haunted my dreams. And right then and there I wanted one as part of my collection (not on my team-- I wasn't about to have redundant Grass types).
More than the pitcher plant, more than the trilobite T-rex, this mind-controlling parasitic mushroom was the biggest nerdgasm. It's a little more passe nowadays, but Parasect will always have a place in my heart as something that secured me as a lifelong fan of Pokemon.
And that's it. Mind you, there are a fair few mons that could conceivably take any of the top ten spots if I were in a slightly different mood, but as much as I'd love to gush about them, this list is already outrageously lengthy. If you did manage to get to the end, 1) wow, you have a lot of free time and 2) thank you for reading! Smell you later.
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