My Favourite Pokemon, Types, and Versions

Hello, hello! Yukigami here again!
こんいちわ！

Firstly, here you go, have a Vulpix!

Isn't it beautiful?

I have this picture as the avatar for one of my online Go accounts on KGS.
This is what I have posted in the KGS user info:

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ふしぎで、かっこいい。
かわいくて、美しい。
一番きれいなポケモン。
まぶしくて見えないよ、ロコン。

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The passage above kind of rhymes.
It is read,

"Fushigi de, kakkoii.
Kawaikute, utsukushii.

Ichiban kirei na Pokemon.

Mabushikute mienai yo, Rokon."


It roughly translates to:

Cool and mysterious.
Adorable, and beautiful.
The number one prettiest Pokemon.
You shine so bright that it's blinding, Vulpix.

But it really sounds better in Japanese, ne?

Now, onto the main pointless point of this post!

Some of Yukigami's favourite Pokemon:

Vulpix, Ninetales, Arcanine
Wartortle, Starmie, Blastoise

Lilligant, Bulbasaur, Ivysaur

Espeon, Gardevoir, Mew

Eevee, Persian, Zangoose

Zorua, Weevile, Absol

Sandshrew, Gliscor

Glaceon, Lapras

Dragonite, Dragonair

Jolteon

Gengar

Scizor

Note: This list is not exhaustive, and gives no hint as to a 'Top X' list.

 Some of Yukigami's favourite types:

This, however, I can divulge with confidence.
In no particular order:

Ice, Water, Normal, and Ghost


I have trouble creating a hierarchy out of these four favourites. Although some of my very favourite Pokemon are fire-type, fire doesn't quite fall into the Top 4.

Reasons why I like these types?

**Ice types are cool and mysterious. Pun both intended and not intended. There aren't many ice types, and ice tends to be on the beautiful side of things. I think snow is beautiful. Snowy Christmas or New Year's Eve nights are very romantic. I have many romantic night-time memories under lightly snowing purple Winter skies - "romantic" also in a fantastic sense.

 Furthermore, I am Yukigami after all ('Yuki'-->雪-->Snow). I was born in the Fall (Does that mean I should be called Akigami? ;p ), and I have always loved that time of year, not excluding Winter. The colour of the dying leaves... In all irony, it is beautiful. Also, I have pretty good Canadian tolerance to the cold. My friends always question my choice of clothing, but all I can say is "it's not cold!" or "I like it though."


**Water types are often beautiful, and when it comes to Pokemon, I am pretty aesthetic.
Several of my top ten favourite Pokemon are water-type, such as Wartortle, Blastoise, and Starmie.

Rather than being beautiful, Blastoise is simple yet cool, especially under the right rendering. I have always really liked him, and he is my starter-of-choice.

Starmie is very aesthetically pleasing and also rather useful competitively. Wartortle has the best of both worlds; He has most of the coolness of Blastoise, and a Weevile-esque badass-ness. He also has some beautiful parts, such as his big, elegant white tail and wing-like ears. His teeth show, he wears a cool "don't take no shit from no one" expression, and even has some cute little moe cheeks. He is one cool second-stager.

Water is something that is just innately beautiful. Remember all the times when you've seen the sun shining along the surface of a body of water, like glittering diamonds. Water is calm and amorphous, and as such, can represent a cool, stoic, and flexible mind and personality. Though this might glorify me too much, it definitely suits me well. Furthermore, and this may sound strange, I love to drink! And I'm not talking about beer. I am always thirsty, like a fish, and require a lot to drink in a day. Water is definitely another Pokemon type that's befitting of me. I usually chose the water-type starter Pokemon in my first game play-throughs, and while Blastoise is my favourite (and one of the strongest, now that he has a great Mega-evolved form), before 6th-gen I always thought Swampert might be the strongest of all starter Pokemon, or one of them. His power definitely goes under some people's radar.

**Normal types, especially the stronger ones, in my opinion tend to be anything but normal. Snorlax, Clefable, Zangoose, Togekiss - these Pokemon really don't have much normalcy to them, do they. Of course, now that Pokemon X and Y are out, two of those Pokemon's normal typing have been replaced by fairy typing. Lots of normal types look really "nice" in my opinion, like "nice and simple", but this part may be a tad subjective. I tend to prefer Pokemon that look more simple, or more beautiful. Another cool thing about normal types is that many of them have high HP, and can learn all kinds of elemental moves. Whether or not they can competitively make good use of those moves, Thunderbolt, Ice Beam, Surf, Flamethrower, Psychic... It's still pretty cool that they can use them at all. Furthermore, let me ask you: what did you imagine the first time you heard of 'normal-type?'? What I first thought was something like "down-to-earth, bland, typical, people, non-elemental, physical..." and so on. But is that really the case with normal types? Well clearly, no, it isn't! So it's not a boring type or anything!

**Ghost-types seem to fit coincidentally (or not so coincidentally?) well into my group of favourite types. Ghost-types are cool, mischievous, dark, mysterious, and often able to use a plethora of elemental moves. The spookiness and mischief of ghost-type Pokemon really appeal to me, perhaps partly because I was always a bit of a clown and a trouble maker years ago as a kid and as a young teenager. I was never a bully, 'gansta', or vandal - rather, I was a class clown, and someone who'd mostly lost his sense of danger for a while, as though having nothing to lose. That's what things were like back then. For some reason or another, if taking on the persona of a Pokemon trainer I would definitely feel a sort of kinship with ghost-type Pokemon. To me, they represent a kind of alternativeness, a kind of rogue-ness, and a kind of difference. Furthermore, I have always loved Halloween!

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Finally, I hereby divulge my opinion on the six generations of the main Pokemon handheld games!

If I control for nostalgia value and the graphical/technical standards of each game's respective time, removing them from the equation, my hierarchy from the best experience and down would go like this:

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

2nd Generation (GSC)

3rd Generation (RSE)

6th Generation (XY)

1st Generation (RBY)

4th Generation (DPPt)

5th Generation (BW)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Additional comments:

Black and White had a lot of Pokemon that, frankly, were quite ugly. I just thought, what were they thinking??
Obviously the game had its good points, and like any Pokemon game, I loved it. But it was also way too easy to beat (like XY), and the aesthetic dissatisfaction of the Pokemon messed it up for me. Some of the Pokemon, including some less ugly ones, just have way too many intricate details; it really isn't very nice to look at. Simple is good. Less is more. Kyurem and Genesect are two examples of Pokemon I can't stand looking at, not to mention Genesect is rather hax, too. Then I see everyone using it competitively, and it disappoints me that people don't care about using their real favourites, or that aesthetics mean nothing to them. Numbers don't matter to me, though...

Even if some people claim one of them as one of their "favourites", it simply cannot be that the countless people battling with them all like them as a "favourite" and would favour them even if they weren't very strong. I just don't think strength - aka numbers - should be a legitimate qualifying quality for a favourite Pokemon. If it were, then I could work for Gamefreak and draw a bunch of thorns and spikes sticking out of a piece of crap, give it a name (Shitcicle), and give it awesome stats, and people would flock to it and use it in Showdown and stuff. Then if someone criticizes them on their choice of Pokemon - as I'm sure I'm not the only one annoyed when everyone uses the same boring teams with the same sets - they may claim that it is, in fact, one of their favourites. But would they really do that if the Pokemon is a shit-cicle? At least then, you could laugh at them and it will no longer matter to you.
Don't just battle - battle in style! Use, like, a Persian!

Please keep in mind that this entire blog entry is highly opinionated and biased, and you need not thinking much of it. I'm sure it will clash with many of your opinions. Furthermore, my game generations hierarchy is sketchy even for me. 3rd Generation, for example - it might be my favourite.

As for 4th generation, well, it wasn't quite as memorable to me as some of the other games. I also didn't like that some of the places and their music had a kind of hillbilly/hick thematic. But there were so many awesome things about the game that made up for that. Some of the cities were nice, like Hearthome, and the game had plenty of beauty. Cynthia was a truly awesome champion, and her music, too, was cool. Everything about the final encounter with Cynthia was powerful and awesome. Also, I probably played the 4th generation games more than any other. Even after lots of restarted games and accidental erased game files (my brother, etc.), my last file has close to 400 hours (stupid breeding!!).
Overall, I would say that 4th gen wasn't that far off from those above it on my hierarchy, and I like it a lot more than 5th generation. I loved the ending video/music, too!

What can I say about the 1st generation? Well, I can say that it is a fierce competitor for the top spot on my hierarchy, along with 2nd and 3rd gens.  Gary was a really cool champion. Or Blue, I should say. He probably has the coolest Pokemon Champion battle theme EVER, he looks cool and rival-y, and his Pokemon levels made him a relatively tough champion to beat without Player hax. First generation lacked much of the dimension the other games have to them though, and the game is essentially over after you beat the Elite Four. Even 2nd gen transcended that issue. Actually, 2nd gen transcended it the best out of them all!

6th generation, XY, is a solid game. The sheer amount of added features, fixes, etc. make it an indisputably awesome Pokemon game. One of the awesome things about it is the character customization features, which I've wished for since I was a kid! I was like, "man, I wish I could be one of those 'rocker' characters! gnarly, bro~"

There is just no way to say that Pokemon XY is not a great game. There is also no way it could fall below the middle point on the Pokemon game hierarchy. Two downsides about the game are that, with the change to Experience Share and the continuation of even easier Elite Four members whose Pokemon levels aren't very high and who use only 4 Pokemon (!!), and that the game feels kind of "finished" after defeating the Elite Four, much like the first Pokemon games.

3rd generation was simply awesome. There were lots of different terrains, and the map terrain itself was made beautiful and more dynamic. The game was a huge step up from the first two generations in many respects. Like XY, there were a huge number of added features and small additions. The music was nice, and many of the places - such as Ever Grande City, the sooty area near Lavaridge city with all the Spinda and whatnot, and the underwater terrain - were simple awesome and very memorable. There is just too much to say. Pokemon Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald were amazing Pokemon games and easy take 1st, 2nd or 3rd place.

It's not hard to explain why 2nd generation was my favourite, so I won't even have to say much. I will even put it into point form, for both our sakes:

-Great music (for example, National Park theme at night)

-Large map (even just Johto alone, no?)

-Pummeling infinite Rockets

-New Pokemon types

-A HUGE step up from 1st generation

-Espeon ~ ~ ~ !!! (Also, Lugia is pretty cool for a legendary ;p )

-ANOTHER REGION! Going back to Kanto, and reliving the first generation!!

-The cruise to Kanto!

-Get 16 badges, and then...battle...Red!!! That...was very ultimate.

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~Yukigami