Nobody cared until I put on the mask

304: Aron

After a string of weirdos, we oddly have a more conventional-looking cave-dwelling creature. Aron is a small helmeted creature with a hide made of metal, thus it gets to be a Steel/Rock type. Metals are also just part of its diet. That seems to happen a lot in Pokemon, doesn't it? That eating a particular material will just grant something that particular material for a body part. Either way, Aron does the typical cute thing of looking babyish by having a comically oversized head, so it's gone for that particular brand of appeal.

The mask is cute though! Especially dug the hockey mask-esque look to it, and the huge blue eyes peering from massive eye sockets. It's simple and adorable! And it even gets to be adorable in not 100% conventional ways!

Trademark infringement? How low can you get?

305: Lairon

It notably takes a more Rhyhorn-like approach in its evolution, adopting a more blatantly dinosaur-like visage and proportions. Perhaps the jump is a little TOO extreme, with Lairon here looking a bit like it could be passed as a final evolution a bit. The segmented armadillo-like hide is cool, but man do the perfectly straight features run the risk of making Lairon look a little bit plasticy.

I'm about to eat this invisible sub sandwich!

306: Aggron

Aggron sadly continues this trend, with so many artificial-looking shapes it looks like it was designed to be a plastic toy ahead of anything else. That said though, we still have a soft spot for the dude, with it being one of the very few Pokemon we can describe as having "kaiju energy" left. Other than maybe Duraludon, there's not gonna be very many Pokemon past this point that feels like it was designed to invoke the same vibe as a Toho monster of some sort. Which stinks, cause that's almost universally a cool Pokemon archetype.

It's also a Pokemon that, while rather plain, is still just a really well-executed "rule of cool" design. Now more dinosaur-like than ever with some triceratops horns and just generally a pretty cool-looking face. Thanks to the "helmet" being white and covered in holes, it almost looks like it's wearing a skull, which is pretty wicked. The minimalist colors also help offset how otherwise busy the design is, though we still wish they chilled out on the segmentation.

Once I suffered a mortal body, now I am iron incarnate.

Mega Aggron:

This Mega though, we're also pretty torn on. It doesn't really detract from Aggron itself MUCH, and it even helps that its new armor looks a BIT more organic. But the way those horns originate from one of the plates in its back and through one of the holes in its "headdress" there looks incredibly awkward. You'd think it's fine because it's a feature consistent with OG Aggron, but the plate with the horns was still attached to its head! This plate is moreso on its back, thus meaning fixed in one place. Ergo, poor Aggron here cannot turn its head. It just seems like one of those things where it sounded like a cool idea but wasn't thought all the way through. We aren't sticklers for realism but we DO like designs with plausibility.

Also, one of the funniest things about this Mega is that it actually gets RID of one of Aggron's types. It goes from being a Steel/Rock type to just being a Steel type, almost like a shameful admittance that Rock isn't as good a defensive typing as they kept advertising it as in the early days of the series.