Here we are, the end of the new Pokémon road, about eighty monsters accounted for (plus regional variations, so even more than that.) Those ten months sure passed by quickly. The critters we’re talking about today mostly hail from late in the game, which often means they aim to be the toughest of the bunch, or are the weird stragglers that keep us on our toes. All in all, I think Sword/Shield has some of the most inventive and diverse new Pokémon of any generation I’ve seen for a while, and that continues here, making sure that we end on a high note.
(Most images from Serebii, as you could guess)
We have yet another new type combination in Ice/Bug, which was always going to be one of the more out there ones for the designers to make. They’d either have to go really elaborate to justify it, or just happen upon a brilliantly straightforward idea—and it seems like they managed to hit the latter. Snom is actually fairly simple in concept, based on a very specific breed of caterpillar that really lent itself to the idea, which makes me wonder if they learned about the bug first, or were actively seeking an insect that works for this type combination. In any case, Snom has a good visual gimmick in its icicle carapace (made by eating snow, which is another fun idea for an arctic insect), and its also really cute, possibly one of the cutest in these games. If you’re the kind of person who can’t find an insect cute, I don’t know how much we even have to talk about.
Where Snom is a little more of a deep cut, an ice moth seems like a logical choice for our first ever Ice/Bug—after all, one could easily conflate their powdery scales with snow. There have been a decent amount of moth Pokémon in the past, but moths are probably among the most diverse insects on the planet, so they never look too much alike—case in point, Frosmoth is much rounder and thicker than the other moth Pokémon , which is appropriate for its environs. It looks positively bundled up, and brings to mind some of the fuzzier moth species out there. It has nice, solid coloration as well, not only contributing to the feeling that its perfectly suited for its habitat, but also to the very supernatural flair it has. Another thing about moths: they almost always seem a bit otherworldly, and while previous Pokémon like Volcarona interpreted that as a bit more aggressively alien, Frosmoth’s wing patterns and its big jewel-like eyes are a bit more elegant.
And sometimes Pokémon does something silly like put a cute face on Stonehenge. You kinda figured that they’d fit a reference to it somewhere in the games (it’s maybe the most British thing you can put in), but maybe not as an actual Pokémon…here we are, though. Stonjourner is just so wonderfully goofy, directly living up to the reputation the series’ creature designs have among certain people (put a face on an object, you have a Pokémon)—but you know what? That reputation is deserved, and it also leads to great things. The basic concept is very much vintage fantasy—stone structures that walk around on their own, and gathers together to form magical circles. If you put it like that, most people would say “Yes, that seems like a sensible idea for an imaginary creature.” Then, because you’re a genius, you’d add “It also kicks things”, and everyone is left in silent awe.
For the first penguin Pokémon since Diamond/Pearl, they came up with a visual and gameplay hook that, once again, is both really funny and also unique (most of the gimmicks in these games seem to have a crucial visual component.) Seeing its giant ice cube head gives Eiscue some immediate appeal, following the trend of stylized cartoon designs that I keep harping on. The contrast between the Ice Face and Noice Face (someone got a Christmas bonus for that one, I bet) also adds to the humour—it’s so tiny, and it doesn’t look very happy to no longer be a blockhead. It’s not a particularly complicated concept, but it works really well. Far stranger are its Pokédex descriptions, which not only say that it drifts to the region from far away on an ice flow (which is fun, and also means they can justify having Eiscue show up in any region they want), but also that it uses its single hair to fish with, and also that the hair is “connected to to the surface of its brain.” I don’t even know, man.
Despite more or less rebooting the Pokédex this generation, not many new Pokémon can be seen as counterparts to older ones not available this time. The one exception seems to be Indeedee, which fills the support role usually held by the Chansey line and Audino. They even have a fairly similar body shape to Audino. I guess making them Normal/Psychic does distinguish them a little bit, as does having gender split differences similar to Meowstic. Indeedee is a strange one—the idea is not so out there, as they’re Pokémon made to be either a butler or a maid (with their coloration, horns, and expression changing to indicate their role), another one of those cases where the natural and human worlds integrate in fantastical ways. It also makes sense that they’d be Psychic-type, because then they can better serve their…superiors? Masters? I’m not sure what term to use. But they’re also these vaguely mammalian bipeds with horns, kind of nondescript (once again, very comparable to Audino.) Bulbapedia compares them to Roman household spirits, which actually makes a lot of sense and even brings in some folklore that Pokémon has surprisingly not used so far. It’s definitely a neat concept, they’re just very difficult to really visually decipher—very low key weird.
As much as like Phanphy and Donphan, they were always strange as the series’ only elephant monsters. Cufant fits the bill much better, and it also has plenty of its own unique traits, starting with its colour scheme. Orange and grey-green are not a combo you expect, but if the idea is to make sure you notice that this an elephant that is made of metal, then it works (I guess the shade of orange they used is a little “friendlier”-looking than the harsher one of real copper.) Making Cufant metal-based is a fairly inspired way to make an elephant—although visually it seems to be invoking a statue or figurine, it also works to make it seem more like a construction vehicle, which only really manifests in its spade-shaped trunk, but plays a way bigger role in its evolution.
First, I want to take note that in Copperajah’s Pokédex entries, it states that it was brought over from another region—this not only indicates that the Pokémon equivalent to India exists, but also posits a reality where British colonialists brought elephants back home and let them form wild populations in the English countryside. That’s a lot to take in. Anyway, Copperajah gains an even more unique colour scheme based on rusted copper that gives it some flair, and its extra large shovel-trunk puts its role as living backhoe to the forefront (which is even more apparent in its Gigantamax form, although the way that one stands on its hind legs is maybe a bit too Hanna-Barbera for me.) Another subtle detail is that its body and tusks are cubist, which I think is meant to make it look more “mineral”, a trait shared among some other Steel-type Pokémon. I think the growths on its head are probably intended to do the same thing, although they are also a continuation of Cufant’s design as well—it does give it a bit more of a fantasy look to it, in any case.
After skipping a generation, fossil Pokémon are back, but this time with a twist. Anyone who knows Paleontology knows that most fossils are discovered in separate pieces, and since the early days of the nineteenth century Bone Wars, there has always been questions and debates about whether we’ve put certain fossils together in the right way, with many notable examples of ones that were reconstructed wrong. So, given the whole concept of fossil Pokémon, why not use the real history to get creative with them? Just hand over your broken fossil pieces to Cara Liss (nice one), and you’ll get some of the most delightfully, intentionally “wrong”designs in the series. It takes a certain level of confidence in your aesthetic to be able to do something like this,and it makes for some of the more interesting designs, especially since they really play around with these Frankenstein creations.
There are two “top half” fossils and two “bottom half” fossiles, each one representing a different prehistoric animal. The first two are based on the “Fossil Bird”, which is an Electric-type proto-avian dinosaur that sort of reminds me of Woodstock from Peanuts. One of the other new features of these fossil monsters is that none of them are Rock-type, which not only gives the four forms more type variety, but also better represents what prehistoric Pokémon life must have been like. Dracozolt, part Bird Fossil and part Drake Fossil, is one of the most obviously “incorrect” combinations, placing the tiny bird torso on the colossal dinosaur legs (and they stylized it so all the exposed “meat” doesn’t look too gross), but its expression is just too precious, and it really sets the tone for how these Pokémon are meant to work. It’s supposed to be a funny image to see this obviously mismatched thing running around, especially since it seems pretty happy even in its life as a scientific mistake.
Arctozolt, the Fossil Bird combined with the Fossil Dino (which is meant to be a marine reptile, or possibly a proto-whale like a Basilosaurus), hides the mismatched nature a little with the snow that covers it, but it’s still clearly not right. It’s a flippered sea creature walking upright, for one, and I love the idea of it just slapping its way up and down the beach. The ice-themed lower half even gives them an opportunity to make the bird half even cuter by giving it a cold—another signal that this is a screw-up, though it still seems to be having a ball being alive. Both Dracozolt and Arctozolt’s Pokédex entries give it different ways to generate electricity (either through its legs or by shivering), which indicates that while it’s a piecemeal creation, it manages to figure things out anyway.
The two that are created with the Fossil Fish are even more messed up, but that’s probably because it doesn’t have a bipedal body shape. Dracovish is probably the weirdest of the four, potentially the weirdest new Pokémon in Sword/Shield, and it might actually take a moment for you to notice exactly why: rather than place the fish head on the top half (which was more obvious, even if it would have looked odd as well), they put it on the dinosaur’s tail. This is another thing with a basis in real life, but as a design choice it really shows how much thought they put into these things, and how much fun they must have had designing them. Dracovish’s dex entries are so clearly written with tongue firmly planted in cheek: it either pretends that this is what it looked like in prehistoric times, and that it led to its own extinction (Dracozolt and Arctozolt had similar entries), or makes it clear that this thing shouldn’t be alive at all: “Its mighty legs are capable of running at speeds exceeding 40 mph, but this Pokémon can’t breathe unless it’s underwater.” This is some next level biology humour.
Arctovish really hammers home that the Fossil Fish is getting the short end of the stick, and it’s another subtle design choice: combining a fish head with a marine reptile seems like it should work out okay, but then you notice that its head was put on upside down (the dex says that it makes it difficult for this thing to eat, another dark joke.) They cheekily camouflage it by making the top of the fish’s head seem as much like a face as possible, so even though we’d notice that it’s not the same toothy fish face as Dracovish, we might not pay much attention to it at first. Arctovish is probably the least interesting of the four fossil freaks, but it still has plenty of fun stuff going on.
We’ve finally reached this generation’s powerful dragon family, and we have some real interesting ones here. Dragon/Ghost is a type combination we’ve only seen on a single legendary Pokémon before, so they’re probably attempting to come up with a more accessible version of that, and what they created is very conceptually rich. Most interesting, to me, is that it straight up tells us that Dreepy is a ghost, as in the spirit of a long dead animal (as Bulbapedia points out, possibly based on diplocaulus, going by the head shape), which is an idea I don’t think Pokémon has brought up before, even with all the ghosts there are. Dreepy is fairly cute, and really does look like what you’d expect a “dragon ghost” to look like (although it also looks fairly insect-like as well), but you probably wouldn’t be able to guess its central gimmick until you saw its evolved forms.
Here we go. Apparently its not a long journey between “ghost dragon” and “stealth bomber”, and it gives this line a stand-out visual component, although it’s not as immediately identifiable as a ghost in this form (aside from the fact that it floats.) Garchomp was also a dragon that was meant to look like a jet (…and also a shark. But it’s Ground-type? Garchomp is weird), but the concept seems to be more logically used in Drakloak. What really makes this one go far, though, is the idea that it always has a Dreepy with it (or an equivalent small Pokémon, which is another amazingly weird and wonderful bit of Pokédex trivia), which gives it an endearing and fun secondary idea, and makes Dreepy’s dart-shaped design make total sense in retrospect. Even just in its second form, there’s a lot going on here, more than you’d expect from the Dragon-type niche.
Dragapult brings everything together into a unique mix: not only does it look even more like a stealth bomber (complete with landing strip on its chest), but it now hides Dreepy on its head to fire out like missiles (which they enjoy, apparently.) That strange familial dynamic is another one of those pieces of fantastical biology, feeling natural while also being completely ridiculous. As well, its tail is made to look more wispy, which makes it look more explicitly ghost-like again. I really like the sinister look it has, and like with Drakloak, its effortless floating animation has a lot of personality. While each generation’s “big” dragons usually have something interesting about them, I feel like Dragapult and kin are probably some of the most creative, and don’t try to be hard to be cool.
Back during the Sun/Moon days, I felt that Necrozma (and especially Ultra Necrozma) represented the designers actively trying to make a Pokémon that felt like the final boss of an RPG. Well, that’s what Eternatus is, too, perhaps even more so. It even has an even more powerful, and unplayable, second form! This is one is trying really really hard to be cool and frightening-looking, and certainly there are very few Pokémon as heavy metal as a dragon skeleton from outer space. I don’t even know how much there is to say about it, because in terms of visuals and concept it is pretty blunt, and the way they tie it into the history of Galar and to Dynamax, while interesting (the idea that this amazing phenomenon in the region is caused by an alien skeleton dragon living underground), is also presented pretty bluntly, maybe even dashed-off, in the games themselves. Its “Eternamax” form certainly works as a final boss (and I like the visual that it has rolled itself up while unleashing its giant claw face), and unless they intend to top it some day, will likely remain the single most powerful Pokémon in terms of in-game stats. Other than that, Eternatus is pretty much exactly what it says on the tin, so to speak.
Well, that’s all of them. I hope you enjoyed another year-long journey through the land of Pokémon opinions. I’m tired.
A Scrapbook of Infinite Noise 