Why are you looking for Pokemon at the soup store?!?

201:

Here's a Pokemon that almost feels like solid proof you can make a Pokemon out of essentially ANYTHING. A Pokemon based on the Latin alphabet? SURE why not! Indeed, there's a form of Unown for each letter in the alphabet, plus a couple punctuation marks for a little extra spice. This was the first Pokemon to come in a ton of varieties, loooong before it was just a somewhat regular thing that happened between all the newfangled Furfrous and Alcremies.

Their designs are so simple it's almost barely worth commenting on. They're simply eyeballs with lil appendages that make them shaped like glyphic letters. It is interesting to see how this anthropomorphizes each letter exactly, what with some of the letters using their appendages as legs or even a mouth, like with K! How adorable!!

And it's even one of the few Pokemon that got EVEN BETTER when the series shifted to 3D with every form having a unique animation to them! They SO easily could've just had each Unown have a normal floating animation and little else but LOOK AT ALL THESE SWEETIES GO!! I is SO HAPPY! N and floating in the shape of itself! And look at W, X, Y, and Z all having a dance-off! I'm not sure what Q's up to, but I'm sure it's trying its best.

I'm not sure if the ? and ! Unowns were necessary per say, especially since they were introduced in a game after the original Gold and Silver, but we're happy for them regardless. I think Unown is a really good example of just how much mileage you can get out of even what seems like the most limiting creature concept. Making alphabet-shaped critters sounds like a nightmare, but these fellas RUN with it so hard and I appreciate them a lot.

And also, you can do this with them:

Teehee

They're also easily one of those Pokemon that exist for the sake of world-building rather than being worth anything in battle. Where did the alphabet come from in the Pokemon world? Just some letter-shaped Pokemon, of course! There's still the mystery of whether they came first or the alphabet did, though. Just one of those Pokemon mysteries... They otherwise only have the move Hidden Power and that's all there is to them. They do feel deserving of an evolution or something to give them SOMETHING worth actually using them for, even if it's something weird and gimmicky like an evolution only being able to embody one type in particular because it's made of the Unown that spell that type's name, thus it's Psychic/[That type] and can only learn moves from that type. At least then you could have a fun challenge run with your alphabet soup of a team! Because it's a shame to love these guys so much but they're so not-interesting to use it's not even worth it for a challenge's sake.