Burmy is just a really well-constructed take on its real-world inspiration
Wait, hang on, the Combee line is AMAZING!
Pachirisu is where Pikaclones begin to have their own ideas
Video scripts below the cut
Burmy:
Burmy is an interesting one. It's based on bagworms, which make their sheltering cocoons out of materials they find in their environments as camoflage, hence the different forms it can take on. The body itself is neutral black with bright yellow eyes in large part to create a neutral canvas on which its various cloaks can provide a high contrast, which is quite effective design.
Wor-madam does much the same thing but More, and dials up the femininity of the presentation by adding "pigtails" out of its materials and taking on a top heavy "fancy lady with a fur coat" sort of profile, again reflecting the way female bagworms remain in their larval stage their whole lives. It's solid stuff.
Mothim, then, gets the traditional bug pokémon final stage, subtyping into flying and growing wings. The black body remains and is used the same way, as a means to create contrast, but it adopts a bright yellow orange and white scheme, with especially those antennae giving its face a sharp, slightly dangerous-feeling character. It's a honey thief, according to the pokédex, which is perhaps why it has those "fingers" on its wings?
This whole line is just solid design craft, I have no complaints.
Grade: B
Combee:
I've never really given Combee a second thought, but upon re-examining it for this review I realized, hang on, these are freaken brilliant. It's a bee made of hexagons that are fused together into one body, quite literally embodying the way that a bee hive is a kind of gestalt entity, a unity composed of thousands of individuals joined together into one organism. The bees ARE the hive, in this case quite literally.
Vespiqueen takes the metaphor one step further, being a queen bee who is quite literally her own hive. I do feel like she ought to be designed to be way bigger, but the idea here is killer, and if you made it even slightly less kid-friendly, it would make for a killer horror monster.
But this is Pokémon and it's not going to go that far. Still, the top half of the body literally carrying a bee hive around beneath it, shaped in a way to evoke a big regal gown, that's clever, and the blood red eyes and sharp mandibles make a sharp contrast in deadliness with the cheerful adorableness of Combee, visually communicating the scale of difference in power between the two, but also that Vespiqueen isn't ruling by consensus, it's pheromone mind control and she is a tyrant. It rules.
Grade: S
Pachirisu:
Oooh, they keep trying to make Pikachu 2 happen, and Pikachu 2 just isn't gonna happen.
That's not Pachirisu's fault, of course, and does a much better job of distinguishing itself from Pikachu than Plusle and Minun did last generation. It's a squirrel rather than a mouse, and gets its electric theming from that bright blue streak on its body, as well as from sharp spikes in the blue fur that contrast with the soft, round adorableness of the rest of the design. I kinda feel like it woulda been better if it hadn't gone for the bright yellow cheek pads, because, again, that just reminds of Pikachu's iconic red cheek pads and invites comparison, but also, it confuses the color scheme a bit. Am I meant to understand the blue color and spikes as representing its electric power, or is it the yellow? Even the Pokédex gets a bit confused whether it stores its electricity in the cheeks or in the big fluffy tail. Electric cheeks is Pikachu's thing, so focusing on the tail and designing that out would have given it much more of its own identity.
For all the comparisons I'm making though, it's not fair to call it just a Pika-clone, it does have its own ideas, and frankly I would have loved to see an evolution for it that really leans into the static electric fluffy fur concept.
Grade: B