life and the earth

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#010-#012 - The Caterpie Line

Now, we've finally made it out of the starters for the game, meaning that soon on, the creatures are going to get a lot more wacky, strange, and borderline surreal. Not yet, though, meaning we still have to start our journey with simple little Caterpie.

Caterpie is the introduction to the Bug-type as well as the co-progenitor with Weedle to the "Early Bug-type" archetype that we'll be seeing in later games, and if it isn't the cutest thing! Landing on the more interesting side of the basics, Caterpie is a stylized caterpillar with a surprisingly complex round body, little pod-feet, fun eyespots, a short "tail", and... that's about it. It's almost just unchanged from an actual caterpillar, but you know what? I love it anyway. Good for you, Caterpie.

Metapod... really, there's not a lot to say about Metapod, either. I dig the gnarly crescent-shape and the distinctive silhouette it has as well as the weird segmented bits on its backside (frontside?), but once again, it's pretty much just an actual pupa dropped into the Pokémon world and given a pair of cartoonish eyes. It cleanly communicates the idea though, so no real negatives to it.

Fortunately, it pays off when Metapod evolves into Butterfree, which is so charming! Butterfree is less of a butterfly than a butterfly inspired monster—its body is cartoonish and round with little claws and ovoid feet—but I think everything works together enough to give the "idea" of a butterfly, like what a 6 year old would draw if you told them to draw a butterfly. And I think it works really nicely, as Butterfree has a nice design with all kinds of alien charm to it that fits an early game Pokémon.

Anyway, Bug-types have never exactly been the cream of the crop gameplay-wise, which makes sense because a lot of them are early-game and thus made for you to drop when you get some heavy-hitters, and lo and behold, Butterfree's stats aren't... great. But it's useful enough to get you some places in the early-game and also can introduce you to status conditions considering you evolve it early enough.

Caterpie and Metapod are fun, I guess. They're seen a lot in the TV show when they need some little, cute creature to fill up the forests, Misty has her iconic loathing of Caterpie, and Ash catches one early on, so that's something. Being in Kanto makes them kind of a "poster child" for the Bug-types, so they're pretty recognizable that way.

Unlike the previous lines, the Caterpie line pulls inspiration from different insects and places them into one "chimera-Bug line", so to speak. Caterpie has the stench-emitting horn of a swallowtail larva, Metapod has the angular shape of a Cabbage white pupa, and Butterfree has the striking wings of a black-veined white butterfly. It's nice enough, though, and these changes are so subtle they feel like what an actual real-life insect could go through!

Before we wrap this up, I would like to take a trip to the Pokédex to see what they have to say about this line. A lot of these are fairly normal for their inspirations; Caterpie devours leaves to store up energy and releases a horrible smell through its horn, and Butterfree loves the smell of honey and looks for and extracts it from flowers. But did you know Caterpie's little feet are for scaling trees vertically? Or that Butterfree's wings repel water? Grossly, they also seem to have put in the realistic fact that the chrysalis is not the animal, but the container for the gooey insides, meaning Metapod's liquidy innards can and will spill out of its shell and become a delicious meal for Pokémon like Pidgey and Spearow, making this one of the many many many aspects of Pokémon biology that have not and will not ever be shown on screen for good reason.

With that, while the Caterpie line may not be the most exciting line (especially compared to some others in the future), it beautifully shows off the idea of evolution, and it's a classic and cute Bug line with endearing charm every stage of the way. Nice job, Caterpie!

Caterpie Line - 9/10

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#007-#009 - The Squirtle Line

Squirtle! Our last starter before we foray out into the real world, it's a lovable, round turtle (although it's really more of a tortoise) with a cute design nicely devoid of harsh angles compared to the other two. Everything on this kid seems to be made up of ovals and circles.

Like its peers, it's a very simple design overall. A bipedal fantasy turtle with a cute wave motif in its bludgeony tail. It's fittingly a nice aqua-blue, although it's less monochrome than the other starters by virtue of its large shell, which helps break it up visually.

Kid Squirtle then evolves into teen Wartortle, which may be one of my favorite mid-evolutions overall! It changes up just enough to feel different from Squirtle without losing its charm, with a new deeper blue coloration, a more tanky shell, claws, a toothy beak actually matching its inspiration this time, and most noticably, a large crested wave-tail.

Wartortle gets 0 complaints from me as it's a simultaneously elegant and cool design, especially with its weird wing-ear thing, but the direction changes a bit when teen Wartortle evolves into...

Blastoise! It seems to have taken the shell part of Squirtle more than the mythological aspect, as it's now properly tanky and heavy, with thick legs and arms, a deep blue hide, and an armored shell. Blastoise also has those weird mammal-ears on what's supposed to be a reptile, so I still don't exactly know what's going on with that, but it's fine for what it's supposed to represent.

Anyway, Squirtle gets fairly good milage in the Kanto region. It and the rest of its line are unburdened by any pesky dual-types that may hinder/help it, so you just get it straight and get an advantage to the first gym (Rock), an advantage using Normal-type moves for the second (Water), disadvantages for the next two (Electric, Grass), before getting neutral footing for the next (Poison). Pretty fair all around, and hefty enough to sustain some damage.

While Blastoise is a pretty adrupt turn into left field, Squirtle and Wartortle pretty clearly seem to be based on the myth of the minogame, a turtle which lives an astonishingly long life and gains a tail made of seaweed, explaining the wave patterns on Squirtle's tail and the apparent "furriness" of Wartortle's, which is said to accumulate algae over their 10,000 year lifespan, which checks out pretty nearly.

Blastoise though? It randomly reduces the tail into a realistically stubby one and gets... cannons? It’s an odd choice, but the three share a more coherent build than the Charmander line for example. Still though, I would've loved to seen a minogame inspired final evolution for the two to continue where they left off. Beggers can't be choosers, though...

As one of the original Kanto Starters, the Squirtle line gets plenty of spotlight in media and marketing. This can be seen in episode 12 of Indigo League, where the lovably silly Squirtle Squad makes their first introduction and immediately become icons. Blastoise is already pretty good for checking the boxes of a recognizable, menacing monster when Charizard isn't taking the spotlight.

Squirtle and Wartortle are great and cute designs with a nice mythological aspect, but Blastoise drops the ball a bit. However, one bad apple doesn't spoil the whole bunch, and it's not even like Blastoise is a "bad" apple. It's just a good apple in the wrong harvest. Overall, they're pretty good designs, and great introductions to the Water-type!

Squirtle Line - 9.5/10

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#004-#006 - The Charmander Line

The lithe, wily counterpart to Bulbasaur's serene sluggishness, Charmander is the second starter available to get, and the designated "cool" one to most kids! Its streamlined proportions and the fact that it's bipedal as opposed to Bulbasaur already lets us know this little creature is much more nimble.

Honestly, there's not a lot to say about Charmander, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's a simple, very cute bipedal salamander with a flame on its tail. You can't get much better than that for the first Fire-type Pokémon. Sidenote, but I also love how the first 3 starters are all colored after their types! It helps really drill in the point of what element they're tied to, and gives younger players an easy visual mnemonic.

Charmeleon resembles Ivysaur's progression in that they're both "grown-up and angrier". However, Charmeleon diverges a lot from Ivysaur in how much they change. Compared to Charmander, Charmeleon has boney, club-like arm, sharp claws, a turtle-like maw, and most noticable of all, a pointed bone-like horn on its head. All of these feel like natural progression from Charmander's meek stubbiness, so no complaints from me.

It also has a more reddish color scheme that it immediately goes back on when it evolves into Charizard, but maybe it was just to emphasize the point of evolution? I don't know. Charmeleon's good, although vastly overshadowed by its evolution...

Charizard! One of the most obvious-looking dragons, despite not being Dragon-type at all. Which makes sense, considering there was only one Dragon line in Gen 1 and they probably didn't want to spoil the rarity of it. Charizard is definitely the defacto Cool One out of all the starters. A giant, fire-breathing dragon with wings that can fly? Of course all the kids would want to choose it.

Charizard as a design is pretty good, too. Its tail is a bit heavy-set for what's supposed to be an aerodynamic beast, but you can just brush that off if you aren't some kind of person who takes video games for children too seriously and talks about them in depth or something. Anyway, its flame is much larger, it now has two pointed horns, and it now looks like a proper dragon monster.

Unfortunately, Charmander and the rest of its line are just... not that good in its home region. Fire already has a weakness to both Rock and Water, the first two gyms in the game (which both its peers breeze through), and Charizard has a 4x weakness to Rock, which is fairly common in Kanto. But it has good attacking power, and it's pretty fast, so it balances out pretty good in other games.

Charmander and friends seem to be somewhat based on the Western myth that salamanders are born in and immune to fires. Eventually, the correlation became so strong Renaissance alchemists adopted the salamander as the elemental spirit of fire. However, Japanese mythology actually associates the salamander more with water than fire, which could explain other lines in the future like Wooper.

Regardless, it's Charizard. Everyone knows who Charizard is. It's in Smash, it's in multiple game boxes and the focus of multiple card sets, and it's up there with Pikachu as one of the most popular Pokémon. Fire-breathing is also a very important trope in monsters... it's just very popular overall.

I love the Charizard line. It starts out as a meek but fiery baby lizard, and then slowly progresses into a large, flying, fire-breathing draconic beast. They're great representatives for the Fire-type coming forward, and none of them have any dips in quality at any point. Nice job, Charmander!

Charmander Line - 10/10

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#001-#003 - The Bulbasaur Line

Every single generation opens its listing with the three starter Pokémon, and always in the same order: grass-fire-water. This means the Kanto region starts out with the aptly named Bulbasaur, a tanky, squat dinosaur-inspired monster with obvious green coloring and obvious vegetation.

And you know what? Bulbasaur is in no way the worst introduction as 001 to the franchise as a whole. It's cute enough, with a bit of edge to it, but all kinds of pleasant, naturalistic curves and angles and anatomy. It also has a very easy on the eyes kind of color palette, with a nice spring-green, darker patches to break it up, and a darker shade on its large bulb, which is probably the most prominent feature of it. Very cute, if strange just off of basis of being an odd frog-dinosaur(?) thing.

Bulbasaur quickly evolves into Ivysaur, which is more or less a grown up and angrier Bulbasaur. Its color palette has shifted to a similarly nice teal with more of those darker splotches, it's gotten further off the ground and it's more stockily built, and its bulb has somehow transformed into a pink bud with green serrated leaves surrounding the top of its back. Plus, the wide snout on Bulbasaur has now transformed into a hooked jaw sort of resembling a beak in some kind of way. And it has angry eyes, and the horns on Bulbasaur have became weird... ears? On a reptile?

All in all, a good progression that makes sense, especially to show evolution off as you progress through a game. What gives metamorphosis more than a flower going from a bulb to a bud to a fully bloomed flower? Speaking of fully bloomed flowers...

Finally, we end up with Venusaur, who finally worked up to its name! Just look at it; it's clearly a hulking, wide tanky frog thing dinosaur just based off first impressions. It's gotten much taller and much wider than both of its counterparts, which may seem like a bit of whiplash from how relatively small Ivysaur was, but it somehow works out in the end just based off how good of a design it is.

Even if you wouldn't necessarily describe Venusaur itself, as elegant, it elegantly pulls traits from all types of little reptiles to combine them into one, lumbering reptilian titan, with what looks like visible warts? Weird, but fitting.

Anyway, definitely the most noticable thing about Venusaur is the giant flower on its back, finally grown from Ivysaur's bud after months of photosynthesis. The color palette of the petals, the light pink on pink in particular, is derived from the Rafflesia flower, which I find kinda odd considering there's another Pokémon with the same typing also based off this flower (which mind you, isn't poisonous in the first place). But beggars can't be choosers, and the Oddish line will also eventually be getting a glowing review from me when the time comes, so I'm perfectly okay with it.

While I love the Bulbasaur line's designs, what's especially weird is that the first starter, the first starter for Pokémon as a whole, is a dual-type. This isn't to say there's never been starters with dual-types before, as just two generations later came Blaziken. But Blaziken had the distinction of not being a Fire/Fighting Pokémon from the beginning, while Bulbasaur was a Grass/Poison from the moment you got it.

This is also skimming over the fact Bulbasaur is a giant asset in the first game due to this double-type, as it and the rest of its line either resist or attack super-effectively for the first five gyms in Kanto, and by that point, you'll effectively had gathered so many Pokémon you can just cruise on them for the gyms Bulbasaur either had a disadvantage or no advantage to. It's also fun to play with as well, with its many, many status-affecting moves, and bulky stats. It's unknown why you would choose any other starter at this point.

Regardless of that fun little tidbit, Bulbasaur is a great design, and works both on its own but especially well as part of the set it's in. Each of the three starters have such nice and elegant designs it's hard to choose any of them (cough ignoring gameplay cough). Bulbasaur to Venusaur are perfect representatives for the rest of the generation coming after, and they blend together elegant and cute in such a fun way it's hard not to like them. Props to you, Bulbasaur!

Bulbasaur Line - 10/10