All hail the Magic Conch!

138: Omanyte

This is it, the last leg of the original 151. And we finally get to one of the more interesting groups of recurring Pokemon styles, the Fossil Pokemon! Fossil Pokemon, as the name implies, are Pokemon that have long been extinct, the only remnants of them being fossils, which can be revived via Poke-Science. Though if Sword and Shield and New Pokemon Snap are any indication, these days, the cloning technology used to recreate these Fossilmon is so effective, that they've been cloned into excess and are now integrating back into the wild. Which, turns out, is a big problem, because being a creature from several hundred million years ago means it's an invasive species! Whoops!

You would expect the first of this subsection of Pokemon to be the predictable dinosaurs, but actually no! Instead, we got a pair of ancient marine invertebrates here. Gen 1's love of dinosaurs was staved this time.

Omanyte here is very clearly an ammonite, which is a pretty cool fossil basis. Omanyte is a cute little baby-Cthulhu. It's simple enough to be enjoyed by plenty. Not sure if it was intentional, but I also like how its body looks a bit like a bushy mustache poking out of the shell. I feel like the one thing I could reasonably ask for from Omanyte is that its eye be a bit more octopus-like, but other than that, it's great!

Ironically, is no longer the center of attention of this line.

139: Omastar

Omastar is a bit more like it for me. It's a bigger, radder Omanyte with its weird face and a body of tentacles. The four-"toothed" beak is a good idea that I feel could've been executed a bit better, at least on this artwork, because it just looks a bit flat and not like the black is meant to be a mouth. But hey, it's got octopus eyes now! Well, sort of.