At the end of the gauntlet…is this Blue and Red? Because they don’t look nearly as old as the chatter suggested.

???: You’re Bonnibel, right?

Yes/No

???: See that, Red! I’ve still got it!

Red: … … …

???: The name’s Blue! This guy is Red. Nice to meet you. And hey, congrats to you on becoming Champion of Alola! We were both Champions of the Kanto region, in our own ways.

Ahahaha, oh Gary. Still clinging, eh?

Admittedly, it’s a lot less funny after playing through a game about broken dreams, especially when the rival’s five-minute championship was one of the few minutes you just had to feel bad for the guy, even if you named him after the kid you hated most.

Blue: Nice to meet a fellow Champ, yeah? What do you say, Red?

Red: … … …

Blue: Still as silent as ever, eh? look, I’m a Trainer. So, if I see another strong Trainer, I’m gonna want to fight them. So how about a battle? Which one of us’ll you choose?

Red/Blue

A difficult choice, though mostly due to the way things ended up canonized, and the fact I was there before it. Red is the uber champion atop the mountain – you have to grind to even be able to make it through there without wrecking half your team, and then you have to grind a whole lot more to actually have any hope of winning. In contrast, I beat Gary my first playthrough – by the skin of my teeth, sure, but I did it. Then again, my “Gary”, in turn, was one that came with the suggested name of “Ash” – “Blue” was the character and game I had, and “Blue” is the color I picked back in the Gamefreak HQ.

Ultimately…I guess I pick “Blue” because you fight Gary before you do Ash, and further, while who doesn’t enjoy threatening to crush all those who dare stand between you and victory, the fact is my pokemon juggling was enough to unlock hard mode. Also, because I did pick Blue back then, and, as back then, this is set up like I’m expected to go with Red.

Blue: Yeah, you get it.

I don’t, really – it’s a tangle.

Blue: Here I go!

…he does not open well. A L65 alakazam, which is impressive in terms of numbers, but against my sliggoo, it uses future sight and then reflect. Admittedly, does wisely swap in Gyarados to take advantage of rain dance.

I do lose in the end, but mostly because I don’t want to burn revives.

I go fishing and get a relicanth.

It was fortuitously discovered during a deep sea expedition. Its teeth have atrophied, so now it survives on microscopic organisms it sucks up.

That’s a repeat entry, sadly.

It also reminds me how weird it is that relicanth can be fished for regularly at all. It was introduced in a game with a mechanic about diving to the sea floor, which, if not exactly trenches, is at least different from fishing near the surface. But like so many gimmicks, that didn’t survive the transition to the next game, so relicanth is treated just like any other water pokemon.

Not sure what a good fix for that would be – the massive amount of featureless water in Hoenn was admittedly a nightmare to navigate, and every generation insists on adding new HMs that just make exploring more of a tedious juggling act. But exploring underwater caves is pretty cool (and much easier to navigate than flat water) and this game did away with HMs entirely, so it wouldn’t have been a problem there. And I do think it’d be nice if pokemon had clear patterns to where they lived, instead of every generation shoving them wherever.

Ah, gabite’s finally evolving at L48. Now I possess a garchomp, which looks way weirder than I remember. Also it just really bugs me that it’s got the hammerhead eyes without its eyes being on them. I guess you could argue it’s got recessed eyes because it’s a digger and it needs them protected, but then it should need the other sense organs protected.

The protuberances on its head serve as sensors. It can even detect distant prey.

why aren’t its eyes on them dammit.

Ah, the more doggy lycanroc! But I faint it.

Jangmo-o!

And in the catching of it, another evolution was triggered.

Silvally.

This Pokemon… I don’t even know how to describe it… says unnecessary rotom unnecessarily.

Although its name was Type: Null at first, the boy who evolved it into this form gave it the name by which it is now known.

So yeah, the whole evolution = helmet removal doesn’t work too well. Maybe having it be a held item where removing it triggers the evolution? Part of the problem is there’s no proper disobedience mechanic, so talk about pokemon being difficult to control has no reflection in the game. The idea is probably it’s uncontrollable until it loves you, but saying you’ll keep it trapped in a slave helmet until it loves you enough it’ll obey you without it is not a good model of friendship.

I think the best way to work this is that the control helmet is because Silvally isn’t in control of itself. It is made up of a bunch of random parts, after all. In that case, it’s more like wearing gloves to keep from scratching someone. If you take good care of one, it can get over its reflexive lashing out and become a more unified, functional individual, at which point it doesn’t need the helmet any longer.

Regardless, this is all very complicated and the frankenstiney element could’ve been done fine by just having null be an even bigger mess of parts, maybe with visible stitching where they attached things, and then silvally is a more unified, coherent whole.

(It also means it’s now canon to the gameverse that pokemon don’t just say their own names, but that’s been kind of obvious given the anime’s thing never made an ounce of sense with the punny names they have.)

Back to my heart dragon.

They live in mountains where no trace of humans can be detected. Jangmo-o grow little by little as they battle one another.

Except of course Poni Canyon is lousy with humans.

Why not have some area that was empty of trainers? I mean, we just saw Red again, and his whole thing was sitting on top of a mountain where nobody else was. Poni Canyon was also introduced as a restricted area (and one nobody should’ve been able to get in given the only person who could give permission was dead). It’s particularly unnecessary when so many trainers have only one pokemon while wild pokemon can summon more and then make you fight one on two, so it’s not like we needed trainers to create difficulty. Plus the game has new mechanics for pokemon ambushing you, and there’s that claim about places functioning as trials in themselves, and there’s that island of exeggcute setting precedent for mini islands. Why not a dungeony mountain? It could even have a downward area where you catch deep sea pokemon in the water or something, satisfying that aspect as well.

Speaking of, with the help of the internet I find the overlooked passage to the lower level cave in Poni. Still no dratini, but it’s fun smashing rocks.

My heart dragon evolves to less heartish hakamo-o.

It sheds and regrows its scales on a continuous basis. The scales become harder and sharper each time they’re regrown.

And then almost immediately into kommo-o.

Its rigid scales function as offense and defense. In the past, its scales were processed and used to make weapons and other commodities.

So at first glance that sounds like hunting, but a big point was made on the previous evolution that the scales shed. With that in mind, it seems more likely the scales were scavenged.

So, in the past, this pokemon was probably revered. It’s not just a giant terrifying dragon, it’s a giant terrifying dragon that’s so great a fighter that your own people armor themselves in its shed scales. And again assuming the hakamo-o thing still applies, then the older one is, the better the scales. Cultures would have their warriors called kommo-o, clans whose kommo-o was the oldest would have it as a point of pride, people would work to honor it so it would stay in their land and other groups might fight to gain control of its territory.

And then it stops. Humans learn a better way to make weapons and other commodities – not even a way to make better ones, for that matter, just easier. Bronze is stronger than iron, but iron is way easier to use. And so the meaning kommo-o had to people faded away.

…well, I’m sick of trying to catch a dratini and I’m going to trade for it. Also, castform.

Its form changes on its own, due to its cells’ sensitive reactions to temperature and humidity.

I really think it should get a sand form, given weather ball counts sandstorms as weather.

Anyway, dratini are apparently cheap and I get one for a cleffa.

After a 10-hour struggle, a fisherman was able to pull one up and confirm its existence.

Yeah, I feel that.

I also think it’d be kind of cool if this is where dratini came from. In RBY, the entries say there’s a small colony found somewhere and it’s presumably from that one that the Safari Zone got ones to start stocking their pond, and then Team Rocket steals them from the Safari Zone.

In GSC, they’re found wild, but only right around Dragon’s Den, suggesting that again, it’s a matter of humans breeding them. (Sure, they seem to have had them before then – but that’s been a plot hole ever since Lance explained his whole thing is dragons.)

Ah, riolu! Who suicides.

And again.

Ah, dratini evolves.

From time immemorial, it has been venerated by agricultural peoples as an entity able to control the weather.

Speaking of original pokedex entries that don’t make sense…the unsupported claim of dragonair’s connection to the weather gets just more bizarre now that we have all sorts of moves and abilities that mess with weather, none of which dragonair gets (they can learn the weather moves by TM, but pretty much everyone can). Meanwhile, for no clear reason psyduck and golduck have the cloud nine ability that would fit dragonair fine. (And even more confusingly, other dragon pokemon, altaria and drampa, can get it as a hidden ability, as well as lickitung.)

The only way I can make sense of it is that the thing getting venerated “from time immemorial” wasn’t actually dragonair. After all, they only proved dratini exist recently, and the pokedex entries themselves are full of “it is said to” which sounds like nobody really verified this. There are stories and pictures about a long dragon pokemon that controls the weather, then someone in Kanto evolves a dratini and says, “Hey, I bet this is what the stories are about!” and meanwhile Rayquaza just keeps chilling in the upper atmosphere.

Sick of suicidal riolu, I just throw a quickball into the face of the next one to appear.

It’s tough enough to run right through the night, and it’s also a hard worker, but it’s still just a youngster.

A youngster who’s had a pretty rough life, evidently. Riolu’s moveset is screech, reversal, nasty plot, and final gambit. So screaming, an attack that only works if you’re getting the shit beaten out of you, stewing on its hate uselessly because it has no special attacks, and suicide bomb. That really paints a different view of things that the noble puppydog thing people usually go for.

And I head back down to catch a sharpedo.

It has a sad history. In the past, its dorsal fin was a treasured foodstuff, so this Pokemon became a victory of overfishing.

…and next to the fishing spot there’s some girls in bikinis who claim to be hidden maidens.

But we’re taking all the shots ourselves. (music note) We don’t have a cameraman. (music note)

I regret speaking to you.

Ah, now they want a multi-battle to tape. Little better than I was picturing.

There’d be this big, bad Trainer who is so, so mean to the poor Hidden Maidens…

NO.

But they say there’s rewards when I refuse, so…

TMs. Huh. Surf and waterfall.

Brunette: Maybe we’re like, high key stars, but we’re low key HM makers. No, seriously, we make Hidden Machines.
Blonde: Yeah, we’re like national treasures back in the Kalos region because of our HM skills. But there’s no money to be made in making HMs. You can’t even sell them!
Brunette: But we heard that people don’t need HMs here in Alola, so we figured… Like, maybe we could sell them here as regular old TMs, right?
Blonde: And we thought we could sell tons of them if we market them ourselves, since we’re so cute!
Brunette: Surf and Waterfall are both super strong TMs! You should, like, at least try teaching them to one of your Water Pokemon pals.

So, on the one hand, I do like hearing about the manufacture of items. On the other hand, everything else about this.

Also, there’s the problem that the TM/HM divide isn’t just about what’s useful in a given game, because they’re also impossible to forget without the move deleter. That means you can’t just take a stock of HMs, head to a region where they don’t use it, and call it a TM.

(…also also, HMs clearly are valuable. In the first game one’s a prize and another’s a bribe. That the player character doesn’t buy them doesn’t mean nobody does. The player doesn’t buy most TMs either.)

I go to the GTS for a carvanha, who is in fact named piranha fish. Original, namer, original.

If they scent the faintest trace of blood, they rush to attack en masse. When alone, they’re rather cowardly.

While this is not actually true about piranhas, these particular ones do evolve into sharks, so having them react to blood rather than motion is actually a good connection.

Having asked the internet why my sliggoo wasn’t evolving and discovering that rain dance didn’t count, I fly off Po Town’s perpetual downpour to get a goodra at last.

It gets picked on because it’s meek. But then, whoever teased it gets to feel the full force of its horns and a good swatting from its thick tail.

Not all that meek, then.

Since I’m in the area, I then go to Aether House. You guys still running now that we know everything was some confusing evil plot? What say you, weird person in a giant helmet?

I know you. Thanks to your efforts, the shadow that hung over the foundation has been lifted. That’s what I’ve heard. I would like to entrust you with a very precious Pokemon, as both an apology and a show of gratitude on behalf of the foundation.

And now I have a porygon! Nothing says good people like a healthy bribe.

It can convert its body into digital data, which enables it to enter cyberspace.

Man, porygon has not aged well, has it. “Cyberspace”. “Polygons.”

Porygon is a miracle born of science. A Pokemon with a digital brain.

Pretty sure more than that’s digital.

Science exists to lead us to a brighter future. And I am here to protect those who will inherit that future.

You definitely seem like a good person who isn’t saying ominous things in preparation of genocide-beaming the undesirables at all.

I head back to the GTS to begin the trading.

Porygon was updated to a new version in readiness for planetary development. But that dream remains unrealized yet.

There’s pretty little done with the space program in Pokemon, probably because there’s pretty little done with any non-pokemon things in Pokemon, but this combines interestingly with the theories that humans are themselves alien to the planet and the present day is after they rebuilt their civilization from savagery. Perhaps one of the best kept secrets of the porygon program is that it’s based on mysteriously ancient blueprints.

And on to the final one…

Its program was modified to facilitate extra-dimensional activities, but that led to noticeably strange behavior.

While porygon2 seems like a perfectly understandable decision, this one is weirder and suggests, at the very least, that their space program was running into some pretty big problems in order for it to seem like a good idea to instead try hopping dimensions while staying on the planet’s surface. There’s been mention of other dimensions since the first generation, so this isn’t as weird an option as in our world, but it’s still odd.

Half of porygon-z’s entries suggest the reason it’s a glitchy mess is from an error in the program, while the other half suggest it’s an unintended consequence of the program working as intended – and there, it’s unclear if the weirdness was necessary to make it tune in to other dimensions, or if it tuned in first and went crazy second. Given it’s evolved by a “dubious” item, I’m actually on the side of it being a mess because the coding was a mess – but another way of looking at it is it’s dubious because it’s some alpha prototype that was clearly not supposed to be released for use.

With that, I appear to have finished the Ula’ula pokedex, but it’s showing as 129/129 with no crown. Perhaps the tapu? That’s probably it.

Well then. Tapu Bulu? In you go.

The guardian deity of Ula’ula is a lazy Pokemon. It commands plants to immobilize its foes and then deals them a savage blow with its horns.

It’s not really such a bad thing I’m doing – look at how it’s described. The reverence for these creatures died already. Their temples are locked-off ruins. Bonnibel just happens to be here before things finished rotting.

I’m only doing what they said to.