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Okay here’s part 02. This is as far as I got last time so after this its gonna be all new stuff. 

Totodile through its evolution are definitely some of my all time favorite Pokemon. In fact, I’m nuts about all three of the Johto starters and each of their evolutions. Easily my favorite starter group. Even though my first Pokemon game was Blue and I traveled all through Kanto I consider myself to be a Johto kid at heart. Its where most of my favorite Pokemon hail from and when my love for the series truly kicked in.

I’ve liked all the starter Pokemon for every game until Black and White. I’ve also liked all of their evolutions except Wartortle and Combusken. I’ll do a post later about Wartortle but when I originally saw Combusken I was shocked and disheartened. I expected Torchic to evolve into some Moltres kind of thing I guess. And its named reminded me of this brand of crackers which I thought was gross.

What I quickly realized though was the Combusken and Blaziken design were far, far cooler than any kind of elegant fire/flying type Pokemon ever could have been. And what an awesome debut concept of Fire/Fighting. I’m also someone who cheers for an underdog, even if I’m the only who thinks its an underdog. So little by little Combusken grew on me until now its one of my favorite designs. Oh yeah, and overtime I totally disassociated the cracker thing.

What I find to be really, really disappointing is Game Freaks decision to repeat Fire/Fighting three times in a row. Torchic’s evolution is a tremendously unique concept but Chimchar and up are the most basic and expected execution of the idea. Again, I like the designs, I just think the repetition in type set up and design are uninspired.

And then to do it a third time! At least a fighting fire pig is pretty unexpected and unique. We can guess its fighting style to be different from your average Fighting type pokemon due to body shape, you know maybe a sumo kind of thing, and thats pretty cool too. I’ve played very little of Black at this point, I don’t even know what Tepig’s final evolution is called so maybe the sumo connection is really obvious for you, but for me right now, all I’ve got is impressions from Sugimori’s illustration.

Anyway the Unova starters, for the first time I just wasn’t immediately captured. I was turned off initially by a feeling of repetition. I thought the overall feeling of Snivy and expression of its face was simply Treeko. I liked Tepig the most and was really into it until I noticed its tail which I felt took away from the design I was enjoying and simply reminded me of Spoink. Honestly, if Snivy/Treeko thing wasn’t there I would have quickly overlooked the Tepig tail.

I also try to remind myself that really, lizards of different species are going to share some common visual traits, same thing with pigs. I could just write it off there until the detail that Snivy is a snake comes in. I guess I feel that its a lack of courage in Snivy’s design that kept it with arms and legs until the final evolution. Why couldn’t it be a snake the whole time? I think it would have been a blast if it required a different set of body language to communicate its emotions in all the illustrations and anime.

Then there’s old blank faced Oshawott. I really didn’t have any appreciation for this Pokemon till I saw a drawing showing it express emotion. I don’t think I would have had such a problem if its head wasn’t white, adding to the feeling of emptiness and desolation of Oshawott’s soul.

I don’t want to go to far off on this negative tangent, the last thing I’ll say here is I don’t appreciate how complicated the Unova starters designs become as they evolve. Something I love and value is doing more with less and the Johto starters are prime examples of that. Cyndaquil and up are the best as they have unique shapes, two tones of fur, and key, tremendously unique placements of fire.

Okay so Totodile is my favorite because I tend to be attracted to the water starters, my favorite color is blue, and I’ve loved dinosaurs, reptiles, and amphibians as far back as I can imagine.