Litten, Torracat and Incineroar
I have a little personal conjecture about how Incineroar was designed.
Game Freak deeply, sincerely, earnestly didnât mean to make a fourth Fire/Fighting starter PokĂ©mon.  They were just going to sit down and come up with some unique, entertaining and vaguely Hawaiian-inspired Fire-type.  But then Incineroar just rose up, unbidden, out of the primal mists of Game Freakâs collective id, embedded himself in their tortured psyches, and refused to leave.  Aware that they were making another Fire/Fighting starter PokĂ©mon, but horrified by their inability to stop, they desperately called on Yveltal for help, and the vicious and cunning death god answered their prayers by corrupting Incineroar into a brutal Dark-type.
I mean, obviously some of that is speculative, but I think the general outline is close.
Expand
Litten, Torracat and Incineroar are our Alolan Fire-type starter PokĂ©mon line.  As Fire-type cat PokĂ©mon they are a little in danger of being a sequel to generation VIâs Litleo and Pyroar, but fortunately their final stage, Incineroar, takes a very different direction.  Litten is a kitten whose oily fur is highly flammable, causing him to hawk up flaming hairballs.  Thatâs⊠a bit of a weird fighting style, but at least an elegant way of bringing the Fire element to a cat PokĂ©mon, so weâll call it a win.  Likewise, instead of shedding hair all over the place, Litten just sets all his fur on fire and burns it up in seconds (something I occasionally wish my cat could do).  Littenâs notoriously withdrawn and standoffish nature is appropriately cattish as well, and possibly meant to anticipate his eventual evolution into a Dark-type.  That progresses to a highly aggressive, but simultaneously petulant, attitude in Torracat (again, not unlike a bad-tempered housecatâŠ).  Torracatâs most distinctive physical feature is the little fiery bell at his throat, actually his fire-producing organ, which makes a ringing sound when Torracat uses his powers.  Presumably this mimics the bells that cat owners sometimes give their pets to warn off prey, which I suppose constitutes another interesting way of manifesting Torracatâs Fire type.  Itâs unfortunate that it doesnât go anywhere, though; Incineroar loses the bell for a flaming navel and fiery belt.  I would have liked it if Torracatâs bell somehow manifested in Incineroarâs wrestler design as the bell that rings between rounds of a wrestling match; it seems like a really good opportunity to unify the design that was missed.  There are a lot of cat PokĂ©mon now (Meowth in two regional forms, Skitty, Shinx, Glameow, Purrloin, Litleo, EspurrâŠ) and to be honest Litten and Torracat donât do enough on their own to convince me that we needed another, but itâs Incineroar who was tasked with taking this design in a new direction.  So letâs talk about that.
Incineroar has the species designation âthe Heel PokĂ©mon,â which makes pretty clear that weâre dealing with the evil counterpart to Hawlucha â a PokĂ©mon based on a villainous persona from the world of professional wrestling.  Incineroar comes from a similar masked wrestler tradition to Hawlucha, where a mask is supposed to give you a whole new identity to fight under, and you fight for the honour of that identity (often a totemic animal).  Incineroar, as a villainous version of this idea, is not only a jerk, but ostentatiously a jerk, specifically going out of his way to be destructive and chaotic, just as a heel is supposed to.  Iâve seen people specifically locate Incineroarâs inspiration with one Japanese wrestler in particular â or rather, one masked persona, used by five wrestlers over the years: Tiger Mask.  And at first I was sceptical, but the deeper I go down this particular rabbit hole the more I think he probably is iconic enough in Japanese pop culture to actually be referenced by a PokĂ©mon design (besides, according to the WWE website âit would be difficult to overstate [his] influence,â and I try not to question heavily-muscled men in capes and speedos).  The only problem is that Tiger Mask is emphatically not a heel.  The wrestling persona was originally inspired by a 1968 manga, where the character was a Japanese wrestler who had played heel in the United States and turned âfaceâ when he returned home, but the real-world Tiger Mask has always been a heroic character, as have his anime adaptations (because of course there is a Tiger Mask anime; there was even a reboot last year).  There is a corresponding heel character called the Black Tiger, who has a red-and-black colour scheme in the anime, but he doesnât seem to be as well known, and also the wrestler was arrested for drug smuggling back in 2012 (this is the kind of trivia I just know now; SEND HELP).  Anyway, if you were going to create a PokĂ©mon that paid homage to the Tiger Mask mythos, why go for the derivative villain rather than the iconic hero?  Something about it doesnât quite ring true â and kinda brings me back to my (only partly tongue-in-cheek) introduction.
I had a whole debate with Jim the Editor over what Incineroarâs type should be, because his feeling is that it doesnât make sense for this PokĂ©mon not to be a Fighting-type, that Incineroarâs Dark-type traits are secondary to â dependent on â his Fighting-type traits; as a heel wrestler, he canât be a villain without first being a martial artist.  Heâs typed wrong, and this is a blemish on the design.  My counterargument was that the concept of a heel involves an element of theatricality that you could say makes them primarily villains and only secondarily fighters (i.e. pro wrestling is fake; fite me irl).  Iâm also inherently disposed to liking this line of reasoning because I have a pre-existing idea that one of the characteristic traits of Fighting PokĂ©mon is that they are supposed to be honourable, so it actually makes a great deal of sense for an ostentatiously villainous PokĂ©mon like Incineroar to be specifically excluded from the type.  Having said that, âFighting = Honourâ isnât exactly an obvious inference from any official source, and doesnât fit all Fighting PokĂ©mon (i.e. f#&%ing Primeape), so if you donât particularly buy into my personal brand of nonsense, Fire/Fighting is arguably a better fit than Fire/Dark for Incineroar â probably because they started from âwrestlerâ and then looked for ways to justify a type other than Fire/Fighting, rather than actually starting from an idea that was demonstrably Fire/Dark.  Jim the Editorâs suggestion for such an idea, to be submitted here to the court of public opinion, was to have Incineroar be a sort of arsonist/con artist, starting fires outside to draw attention and lure people out of their homes while gangs of Litten and Torracat plunder all their stuff (Incineroar could easily pull off a sort of circus strongman or ringmaster look that would be appropriate to this concept with only minor physical changes).  Litten in this scheme could then be street performers and pickpockets, which gives them a more interesting identity too.  Feel free to heap scorn on this idea in the comments, lest Jim get a swelled head.  Thatâs enough on the design and flavour side, though; I should get on with how Incineroar works.
Incineroar is a physical tank in the tradition of Ursaring or Machamp: youâre slow and canât avoid hits, but in theory you can survive them long enough to hit back.  This is an odd thing for a Fire PokĂ©mon to be, and arguably the only pre-generation VII PokĂ©mon who can even do it are Emboar and Arcanine (no, Magcargo and Torkoal, you do not count), so weâre in a field with little competition.  His hidden ability is Intimidate, which would be a wonderful thing for a PokĂ©mon like this to have (or, well, almost any PokĂ©mon to have; a free attack debuff every time you switch in is just really good), but alas, for the moment this is not to be, so weâll have to make do with the generic Fire-type starter ability, Blaze.  Incineroar has a really solid selection of attacks; in addition to his Dark-type signature moves, he gets Flare Blitz, Earthquake and Cross Chop, all powerful attacks that threaten an excellent variety of types.  Outrage is interesting, but probably not recommended; Dragon attacks have great neutral type coverage, but thatâs not one of Incineroarâs flaws anyway, and they hit almost nothing super-effectively (not to mention that being locked into Outrage can stop being fun abruptly).  For some reason, Incineroar can learn Leech Life, which Sun and Moon buffed into a surprisingly solid attack, and honestly, health drain is probably quite a good thing for a PokĂ©mon with Incineroarâs stat profile to have.  Alternatively, U-Turn is also on offer as a source of Bug-type damage and tactical flexibility; it does less damage, but Incineroar isnât short of power moves anyway, and being able to tank an attack for the PokĂ©mon youâre switching in is a decent use of Incineroarâs bulk.  Swords Dance is there too, to send his attack stat into the stratosphere, but bear in mind that Incineroar is just not fast enough to sweep anything.  It really hurts in general that heâs so slow, and that Fire/Dark is not a great defensive combination: Fire attacks are great; being weak to Rock, Water and Ground is decidedly not, and Dark adds a nasty Fighting weakness to boot.
If you are inclined to buck Fire PokĂ©mon stereotypes and push the defensive, tanky side of Incineroar, there are some support options that he can take for that, although it is maybe a bit of a waste of his excellent physical attack stat.  WillâoâWisp is nice because burns cripple physical attackers, and doubly nice if we can eventually get Intimidate on him.  Taunt can stop support PokĂ©mon from messing with you, but again, his poor speed hurts; you ideally want Taunt on a fast PokĂ©mon that can actually anticipate and counter a support move, not just shut them down after the fact.  Bulk Up might be interesting, especially in combination with WillâoâWisp or Leech Life; Incineroar is already far from a pushover defensively, so if your opponent seems to be missing special attackers that can easily take him out, there might be some merit to going all in on buffs.  Body Slam is nicely thematic, and being able to paralyse opponents is good for Incineroar and probably for the rest of your team too; itâs just unfortunate that Normal attacks are terrible.  In an entirely different vein, you could try to turn him into a sort of bastardised surprise physical sweeper by speeding him up with Flame Charge.  Itâs no Agility, and the move itself is so weak that you do pretty much have to pack a second Fire attack (thereâs no room for, say, Swords Dance), but if you play your hand close to your chest you might be able to confuse someone to death in the late game.  Finally, Incineroar does get Nasty Plot, with a passable selection of special attacks (Flamethrower/Fire Blast/Overheat with Dark Pulse and Focus Blast), but unlike Decidueye his base special attack score is average at best, so the very most I would suggest is putting Overheat on a physical attacker set to maybe surprise a physical wall (bonus points if you make a Z-move out of it).
Because Incineroar is a pro wrestler, and pro wrestlers have a love for signature moves that goes beyond all logic and common sense, he has not one, but two: Darkest Lariat and Throat Chop. Â Of these, Darkest Lariat is the one you generally want. Â Itâs actually one of the strongest Dark-type attacks in the game, though I should stress that this isnât saying much, since Dark has no really high-powered attacks. Â Darkest Lariat helpfully ignores defence and evasion bonuses, and until recently I might have written that off as mostly useful for screwing with the AI, since defence and evasion buffs arenât common in competitive games. Â Specifically in doubles, though, Darkest Lariat does have the peculiar advantage of beating the living $#!t out of the infamous Infinite Defence Palossand (of course, Palossand also has Ground attacks to blow up Incineroar, but itâs something). Â The other signature move is Throat Chop, and this is much more niche. Â Itâs slightly less powerful than Darkest Lariat, and has the unusual effect of disabling the targetâs sonic attacks by striking them in the windpipe. Â There arenât a lot of powerful or common sound moves, so Throat Chop is mostly useful against a few Normal-type special attackers, like Exploud and Pyroar, who use Hyper Voice as a major source of damage. Â However, I do find it really amusing that Throat Chop can quite badly screw over Incineroarâs Water-type counterpart, Primarina, by disabling her Sparkling Aria. Â In practice you still wouldnât choose to take that fight as Incineroar, because Primarina might just have a different Water attack, but itâs interesting that the designers built in this little reversal of the standard Grass-Fire-Water starter dynamic. Â As far as I can tell, Decidueye doesnât have any similar thematic advantage over Incineroar, nor Primarina over Decidueye.
Iâm not as convinced by Litten, Torracat and Incineroar overall as I am by Rowlet, Dartrix and Decidueye.  They have the same sudden, fairly radical shift to a different sort of design at the third stage that I noticed in Dartrix, but it doesnât quite fit as well â there isnât really anything tiger-like about Incineroar (tigers being famously ambush hunters), probably because heâs tiger-via-masked-wrestler, but then again, Hawluchaâs the same thing, and her human and animal inspirations do slot together a bit better because of the focus of lucha libre on âaerialâ moves.  And⊠well, to be honest, the whole âslow physical bruiserâ thing just hasnât been a great game plan for most PokĂ©mon whoâve tried it in the past; Emboar has never been especially prominent, and Incineroar is trying to do something fairly similar.  I mean, thereâs nothing I think is especially poorly done here, but not a lot that excites me.  Iâm calling this one a solid meh-out-of-ten.
