Snow on mah feet, rain on mah head

152: Chikorita

For me, one of the most fun parts of having Pokemon in your childhood was that very first transition from Gen 1 to Gen 2. It's yet another thing we take for granted these days, but even with it in mind that Pokemon was so big there was no way it WASN'T getting a sequel, this was still pretty huge. Imagine thinking to yourself that you've got all 151 Pokemon memorized to heart, but then when you watch the eventful episode where Misty's egg finally hatches and it's... Togepi?! What the hell's a Togepi?!?! And when you go to see the first Pokemon Movie and you see Snubbull and Donphan for the first time ever. That's mind-blowing when you're like, 9!!!

But either way, our first Pokemon in Johto is Chikorita! It's yet another case of a design that isn't earth-shattering but I end up liking it quite a bit in spite of that. It's little more than a cute baby sauropod, but it does do nicely with the grass motif. I especially love how its body is bean-shaped and it has a leaf coming out of its head. Like it's a plant that's just sprouted! Aw!

One of the fun weird things about Chikorita is that it really has a liking to spin this leaf around over its head, too. It most notably does this to fire off Razor Leaf, but it's just a neat little quirk Chikorita has that didn't need to be there. It's nice!

Personal Score: 8.5/10

Because poor literacy is kewl.

153: Bayleef

Unfortunately, I don't feel like Chikorita's evolutions quite live up to the little guy. Not that they're bad, they're just not as interesting. Bayleef here loses all resemblance to a bean in favor of fully fulfilling the sauropod look. It's weird, despite it being objectively a more detailed design than Chikorita, it almost feels more plain now, somehow? I guess it's because Bayleef has more overall "surface area" to sit there and now have a lot going on. That said, I do like how striking its leaf design is now. Angular and slicked back like that. Even has a little "bite" out of it, like it had a Caterpie chew on it for a bit.

No Mega, no Gigantamax, but at least I got featured on the cover of New Pokemon Snap. Yaaaay.

154: Meganium

Meganium is a little nicer, I like how that flower is rendered and how its head is poking out of it as if it was the flower's stigma. It even has anthers on its head! I do also like that it turned green again, I dunno what was up with Bayleef's yellow. I think the only thing I'd change about it as far as design goes is maybe giving it its longer tail back as well.

And of course, now that Pokemon's a proper series, that means more new starter Pokemon. And more new starter Pokemon means each line of starters has to have a thru-line. (Well, that's optional of course, but it's neat to have.) I don't know if these starter Pokemon accidentally fell into these patterns and they later rolled with it, or if these were intentionally given parallels to Gen 1, but either way. Meganium is the start of all Grass starters being based on some prehistoric or extinct animal. Of course, Venusaur is the odd one out, since it was always meant to be a toad. But there's still no denying it has a lot of dinosaur-esque traits to it, so no wonder English translators thought "saur" would be a good suffix for their names. Meganium is a lot easier to justify since it's quite literally a sauropod thru-and-thru. Obviously not all the Grass starters are dinosaurs, but they still tie into the prehistoric theme somehow! It'll be something neat to talk about as we get to each batch of Starters.