“Hey! Learn our syntax here.”
- zoom
- png (654 KB)
- cred: nago
378
- ↓ 0.01
- ꩜ 0.03
- ↑ 2.95
{C} → Mud-Slap : 30
{C}{C}{C}{C} → Dig Away Flash : 100
Your opponent’s Active Pokémon is now Paralyzed. Shuffle this Pokémon and all attached cards into your deck.
illus. Mina Nakai
External: Pokemon.com ↗, Bulba ↗ · #ad / Affiliate Links: TCGplayer ↗, cardmarket ↗, Amazon ↗, eBay ↗
This Pokémon uses its hard tail to make its nest by boring holes into bedrock deep underground. The nest can reach lengths of over six miles.
Ambassador
This is the correct way of doing cross-gen evolutions. If a Pokémon has gone over 20 years without receiving an evolution, then it kind of gets settled in your mind as the definitive form of a Pokémon, and any design team would tread carefully to introduce an evolution of it that drastically changes the way it looks. Even 20 years isn’t really the cut-off, as a lot of Gen 4’s cross-gen evolutions were poorly received at the time – they’ll invariably be contentious. As a few points of comparison;
– Scizor is reasonably well-received as an evolution of Scyther. I’d propose that’s only because it was introduced in the immediate next gen, and in the North American/international case, Scyther only had time to kind of “consolidate” the idea of being an unevolving Basic for about a year or two. It spent a trivial amount of time not having an evolution on hand.
– Electivire is an example of a contentious evolution. I love Elekid and Electabuzz, two of my absolute top favorite Pokémon, but I’d personally retcon Electivire out of existence if the scenario ever presented itself. Why the contention? Elekid and Electabuzz had a long time to “consolidate” themselves as their evolution line, so any evolution added would be risky – it’s almost a 50/50 if an Electabuzz fan might like an evolution. I wouldn’t be against it, but when it’s one that radically changes the shape of its body and, very crucially, changes its eyes, that can change its entire aesthetic, vibe, personality, and so on. People who really *like* a given Pokémon, I think, are probably going to be very sensitive to changes like this.
– Sirfetch’d is, I propose, in a very similar boat. I notice a lot of younger fans like Sirfetch’d whereas older fans are, on paper, happy that Farfetch’d got an evolution, but can be nonplussed by its design – feeds into the whole idea of consolidation/getting used to a certain design. (Yes yes I am aware the standard Farfetch’d can’t actually evolve into it but a lot of Pokémon fans don’t even play the games anymore :V)
– Wyrdeer is an example of an evolution that gets it, IMO. Particularly with something I suggested – the eyes – it doesn’t feel like Stantler is losing the core of its vibes/aesthetic on evolution, so if you like Stantler, you’re probably alright with Wyrdeer. It plays it safe, but I think the PLA team was really quite *smart* to play it safe given how long Stantler has been around.
– So I think Dudunsparce is clearly taking a page from the Wyrdeer playbook rather than the Gen 4 playbook, and I think cross-gens are gradually going moreso in this direction. I obviously think this is a good thing, and I’m not going to do a hard play for cred and claim Dunsparce is one of my favorite Pokémon (I’ve done those Cave of Dragonflies rankers, it’s only a top 100ish) but it is one I’m fond of. Maybe in another world a Dunsparce could’ve evolved into a uber-powerful flying leviathan with wide open eyes, but in the world we live in, the time for such an evolution passed by about 20 years ago. I am quite relieved to see that amidst the (imo misguided) demands to give it an evolution the nu-GF team gave it one that recognizes people have had time to come to love Dunsparce for Dunsparce, and Dudunsparce is that exact same Pokémon I liked as before, just with an extra syllable and another segment.
Twylis
I both agree and disagree. On the one hand, when a pokemon has been around this long, it’s definitely important to respect their original concept and the people who have been fans of it for years. Doing minimal changes is one way to do that, but like. Dunsparce has been around for almost 25 years — it’s in absolutely no danger of getting overshadowed by an evolution, and it will continue to be the “star” of its evolution line no matter what, just as Pikachu takes center stage over Raichu. So given that, why not do something more drastic? Take the line in a totally new direction that can get *new* fans, even if some of Dunsparce’s existing fans don’t like it. It’s not like Dunsparce would stop existing — and even in terms of in-game strength, it would still get Eviolite compatibility out of it.
I think the bigger issue is that, with historic Dunsparce evolution wanters, it was clear that most of them didn’t actually care that much about Dunsparce. They wanted an elegant feathery serpent dragon thing — and Dunsparce was just a convenient mechanism to achieve that.
Personally, I actually quite dislike Dudunsparce. It really is just Dunsparce with another segment, but *why*? Why would a fat snake get additional body segments? Dudunsparce isn’t just barely different from Dunsparce — it’s Dunsparce but far, far less visually cohesive. It feels like the design was intended to be funny, along the lines of Alolan Exeggutor, but at the expense of actual design sense. I think I might’ve actually preferred a Palafin situation, where it just looks legitimately the same upon evolving. But my ideal would’ve been taking the core aspects of Dunsparce and emphasizing them even harder — a significantly fatter, sleepier snake with even tinier wings. But doing something truly new and unexpected would’ve been welcome too — so long as they kept those key elements.
I think the priority when doing a cross-gen evolution should be to do something new and creative, but still being very, very careful not to abandon the key pieces that gave the original pokemon its visual identity. Annihilape and Firagiraf do this very well, I think. Annihilape takes the original concept in a totally new direction, but retains the core premise of a funky pigmonkey fuzzball who’s incredibly, incredibly angry. Firagiraf is still a weird bifurcated giraffe with a chain chomp on its body, but the bifurcation all got moved to the front, creating a totally distinct design that nonetheless stays faithful to the original concept. A lot of Gen 4 evolutions really didn’t understand this (Dusknoir and Magnezone especially come to mind, for me) but many others did — Mismagius, Porygon-Z, and Weavile being excellent examples. And while I do love quite a few of its less faithful ones too (like Gliscor and Honchkrow), we’re so many years out now that a drastically different evo design may as well just be its own separate species anyway.
Ambassador
I’ll quibble on only a few points.
>Dunsparce has been around for almost 25 years — it’s in absolutely no danger of getting overshadowed by an evolution.
At this point, I’m a TCG fan first, so an evolution of a Pokémon I’ve come to love definitely poses a threat of overshadowing it. A multiprizer Electabuzz is never happening again; Porygon doesn’t get terrifically interesting cards anymore, just basic cards that are tuned to being the inconsequential Basic in a Stage 2 line; etc. Sure, this isn’t always going to be the case – Stantler and Girafarig never got interesting cards anyways – but given cases like Shuckle getting a GX in Gen 7, Dunsparce eventually getting a multiprizer felt eventually plausible, but at this point I wouldn’t hold my breath unless I had a deathwish.
That I still enjoyed other pillars of the franchise I might also give examples of, let’s say, Gary using an Electivire in the anime. I’m going to wish it had been Electabuzz, and wondering if it maybe could’ve been. Or, in the games, when Iono uses a Mismagius, I’m going to wish/wonder that maybe it could’ve been Misdreavus? It’s not a great example, because I’ve come to like Mismagius, but I hope you get my point – evolution does pose an existential threat of some sorts when it comes to their place in brand synergy. They’ll always exist, but FOMO starts to set in.
(Regional formes feel like even more of an existential threat – Exeggutor *is* a top favorite of mine and seeing it slowly supplanted by Alolan Exeggutor is kind of lame – but that’s a tangent for another day, maybe.)
>Dudunsparce isn’t just barely different from Dunsparce — it’s Dunsparce but far, far less visually cohesive.
I think my appreciation of Dudunsparce might be at least partially cynical. I really do not trust modern GAME FREAK’s design sensibilities whatsoever, and I continue to think a lot of the Gen 8 and Gen 9 monsters just veer so wildly from what I think of as Pokémon that basically, when I find out an old favorite is going to evolve, there’s now a chance it evolves into something I just don’t recognize and won’t be able to get used to. And I don’t really trust GF to be able to split the difference between adhering to old design sensibilities and making things that fit these new paradigms.. is a safe evo kind of boring? I’m fine with it but won’t stubbornly pretend that element doesn’t exist here – the criticism is valid – but I propose that attempting the alternative would simply be too risky.
>I think I might’ve actually preferred a Palafin situation, where it just looks legitimately the same upon evolving.
I just had to look that thing up (I don’t get it), but in some sense – yeah, I think the closer cross-gen evos look to their originals the more comfortable I now am about it. Mismagius used to be a cross-gen I really didn’t care for – it’s so similar looking as to be redundant, it’s not like Mismagius became meta anyways, you could’ve buffed Misdreavus with new moves or Abilities instead of just slapping new evos onto things.. but it ended up being one of those cases where “oh you’re just complaining, you’ll get used to it” came true. I appreciate it for being a decent, elegant design, and not one where it radically changed the “personality” or vibes of the Pokémon it evolved from. Would I rather it didn’t exist at all? Honestly, even now, yeah, kind of, and I feel that way about all the Gen 4 cross-gens to some degree. But in a context where that’s a completely unreasonable thing to wish for, I’m happy to see compromises in Pokémon like Mismagius, Lickilicky.. and the weirder GF gets when it comes to their monster design paradigms, I’m almost *excited* to see Dudunsparce because it’s definitely a compromise that’s well on my side of the line.