Happy mother's day!

115: Kangaskhan

Yet another one-off, here we have Kangaskhan. And it's surprising that this Pokemon IS a one-off with no prior evolution. Considering how you have a potential Kangaskhan prevo RIGHT THERE. Already made, but it's not a usable Pokemon ingame.

Kangaskhan is, say it with me folks, a creature design that is inspired by an animal rather than being directly based on it. The kangaroo element is obvious with the big pouch that it uses to hold its children in, but as far as similarities to kangaroos go, that's about it. Like a lot of other Gen 1 Pokemon, it picks up a number of saurian features like claws, spines, and even a lizardy tail. Though I will admit at this point I'm getting a bit of fatigue with chimera creatures being melded with lizards to create kaiju-esque designs, cause Gen 1's full of them. And Kangaskhan isn't even the last one!

Still though, on Kangaskhan's own merits, it's a plenty creative creature with a neat animal basis and going in creative directions from there. I do like Kangaskhan overall, the one thing I'd say is I wish its color scheme was just a little more adventurous, but that's about it.

Destroying a metagame has never been so adorable.

Mega Kangaskhan:

Right here is probably the single most clever implementation of Mega Evolution I've seen. Kangaskhan itself doesn't Mege Evolve, rather the baby in its pouch does. Allowing it to fight alongside its mom. How adorable! This Mega doesn't do a whole lot to change it, but it's nonetheless really cool, and conceptually is easily one of the better Mega Evolutions. It's just a shame that it came out so ridiculously busted. Not that it matters to me that much as someone who doesn't play competitively. More than anything I'm amused that Kangaskhan of all things suddenly became the OP Pokemon to have for a while.