#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!
