Thinkin about violence

246: Larvitar

Our psuedo-legendary of the Gen is a lil baby dinosaur thing! Larvitar is simply cute in a lot of ways, namely just by being a nice babyification of its evolved form. But we think what really sells the look of the thing is that tinge of edginess to it, namely a harsh splotch of red in the middle of its design and the mean eye with markings that look a bit like a scar mark on its face. This kid is trying to look far edgier than it actually is!

It didn't appear angry enough, so it carved holes into its face for eyebrows.

247: Pupitar

Pupitar is one of the more interesting middle-evolutions for these psuedos, if simply because portraying a reptilian thing as something in need of a pupation phase is really neat. It certainly helps that as far as cocoon type designs go, it's up there as one of the neater ones! With a cool visage that has deep and sunk-in eyes assumedly because its "chest" is hollow right, with nothing but the head of a developing Tyranitar inside of it. Eyes peering out of a part of the body shrouded in shadow is just never not a cool design feature.

He is no longer baby, he craves power.

248: Tyranitar

Then it finally becomes the Rock/Dark Tyranitar, probably one of the coolest of the Psuedo-Legendaries. An overall cool silhouette, dark "holes" all over its body and cool kaiju-like proportions are just all recipes for a decent enough time. But what wins us in particular over is its chest! You can still see Pupitar residue in the eye-marks and the "facemask" it had! That's so cool!

Speaking of kaiju-like, it's decently hard to deny Tyranitar isn't taking at least some inspiration from the good ol' King o' Monsters. But there's another certain kaiju that Tyranitar is also the spitting image of. Ultraman, in fact, is a big source of inspiration for the fact Pokemon exists at all. It's been often stated that the series got its inspiration from bug-catching as a hobby, which is certainly true. But Ultraman, in its monster-of-the-week style show setting, also featured the concept of capturing giant monsters in capsules. Pokemon's just that, but on a much smaller scale!

All this to say Tyranitar is alarmingly similar to Ultraman's Bemular in a lot of ways. It even has the row of spikes going down its entire side just like Tyranitar! Godzilla just has the row of dorsal fins!

His vest ripped when he tried it on

Mega Tyranitar:

For a while, we were a little harsh on Mega Tyranitar. And it still is a little bit more visually messy than it feels like it aught to be, but it still has cool bits here and there. Like the red spots now peering out of the "holes" on its chest, and being given a few more creepy holes as well.

And the thing we mainly bemoaned Mega Tyranitar for was how it never really looked like any form Godzilla had ever taken. Especially since there was things like Burning Godzilla or Space Godzilla right there to take inspiration from. But y'know what? Maybe the intent is moreso that it's a jab at the hilariously overdesigned "final forms" certain kaiju take just in general rather than a reference to anything that happened to Godzilla in particular. Which seems fitting enough for the Mega state of THE kaiju Pokemon. We still don't like it AS much as regular Tyranitar, but we get it.