Just follow your nose!

299: Nosepass

Here's a Pokemon that's been unfairly maligned for quite some time now. How is this adorable little nose statue evidence of "Gamefreak running out of ideas?!?" How is this of all Pokemon one of the ones most consistently hated on??!?! It's precious! For one thing, its face is simply adorable, with a slightly somber or "sleepy" expression. We especially like how the blackness of its eyes almost makes it look like a REALLY extreme shadow.

The fact that it's based on an Easter Island Moai head is a given, but the way it's rendered out as just a head with nubs for legs and the slates that line up on its sides like chiseled, stylized "ears" that come down to be arms is also great. There's even little ear holes where its arms were! The idle animation in newer games is also done up nicely to where it "walks" like how the statues were theorized to be moved from one location to another like in the gif above. Nosepass is just a recipe for an oddly adorable rock creature!

And that's not even getting into its namesake big red nose. Maoi statues are known for existing all in one big row, all facing the same direction. The way they incorporated that into a creature is with a magnetic theme! Nosepass is a compass! A Nose-pass if you will! And just LOOK at the way the nose is shaped! It's overall triangular in shape, and that definitely would've done the job, but they went the extra mile to give it divets to not only add more definition and nosiness to the nose, but also make the nose look like a big red arrow from most angles!! How absolutely BRILLIANT!!!

To add to its cuteness, it even behaves like a compass too, with it always facing north while it's at rest. It most famously does this in Pokemon Go and now in the overworld of Legends Arceus, where it'll only turn away from north if you break its concentration! Lil guy is FOCUSED. Nosepass is just a perfect little guy and we don't care what anyone says.