A dubious little creature getting up to some mischief

Hisuian Sneasel:

Out of all the Pokemon to turn out as a regional form in past-Sinnoh, Sneasel somehow felt like one of the last ones they'd pick, just given the things already were in modern-day Sinnoh. Let alone one that gives up its Ice typing of all things. It would've been interesting to get an Ice/Poison type as we'd yet to get one of those, but oh well.

Instead, Hisuian Sneasel is Fighting/Poison. The Fighting type doesn't come through the design all that much, but the Poison typing comes through with the creature's poison-tipped claws. While rare compared to reptiles, amphibians, or fish, there are actually mammalian species that are venomous, so it's neat to get our first one since like, what, Nidoran?! While unlike Toxicroak, venomous mammals do use their venom to fell prey rather than purely as a defense mechanism, LIKE Toxicroak, it's just cool to have a Pokemon with poison-tipped claws. All of the fear factor of getting a wound opened and infected in the same swipe.

Sneasel also ends up with a neat white and purple color scheme, another color scheme you can't go wrong with. The only thing that's really lame about it is that it pretty much is just the base Sneasel model but with the colors changed. Maybe could've used a bigger ear-feather thing at least to lead into its evolution better.

One day it'll get another new evolution called "Sneaslest"

903: Sneasler

And rather than get a Hisuian Weavile, Sneasel evolves into the brand new Sneasler. And honestly, it's way cooler than Weavile was. Weavile was neat but we were always disappointed it sacrificed its asymmetry and was just a bit more of a shallower "rule of cool" Pokemon, almost completely ridding of Sneasel's devilish little gremlin-creature energy. Sneasler is cooler in that it's unusual and man-shaped, which normally turns us off of a Pokemon design but it kind of just works here, somehow.

We think the lankiness, seemingly coming from being a mountain-climbing Pokemon, is what really sells it, with its overly long arms being tipped with even longer claws. Claws that are now black as if to emphasize the point that sickle-weasels are a yokai dreamed up from the concept of frostbite. We also like that it's kept its asymmetry and even emphasized it with an extra long, stylish ear. It overall just feels like a much better natural progression of Sneasel. It's understandable if it mostly being Tall Sneasel is a hitch for anyone else, but we for two found it even stranger Weavile barely got any taller than Sneasel. And on top of that, this vaguely uncanny, weird energy Sneasler has is fairly unique among anthropomorphic Pokemon.

Two gripes with it though, the zig-zag pattern on its legs and face just seem odd. Where's the stylish poison-splatter effect from Sneasel??? Did Overqwil try to claim royalties on that?! Eh. But also it just feels like it has too many accent colors going on. The lightish lavender with purple and black is cool, even the red/pink is fine. Just, what's the gold doing on it? Other than "it was present on Sneasel too"? It just clashes too much with everything else.

We're also very amused at the stupid naming scheme. The original may be Sneasel, but this one is Sneasl*er*. Even in Japanese, Sneasel's name is "Nyula", while Sneasler's is "Oonyura", which essentially translates to "Big Sneasel".