A card! A card! My kingdom for a card!

315: Roselia

It feels like we've been a downer on a lot of the Pokemon lately, but we're hitting interesting territory again! Starting with Roselia, a rather simple Pokemon with a cute demeanor about it, mostly just having roses for hands. But dang those are unnecessarily well-drawn roses. Like whoever was designing this just wanted to flex, cmon! It's as simple as a lot of grass types get in being a peaceful plant thing, but Roselia has the slightest of catches.

The three thorns on its head of course! This gives it enough of a sense of danger any Grass/Poison type ought to have. Though even then it feels like they undershot it a bit, since it feels like it could've been a touch more "don't touch" with some thorns on its arms too. Just to make it as awful to touch as real roses.

It also feels like Roselia could've used MORE. As in an evolution kinda "more". This may seem like a silly complaint in a world where Roserade exists now, but the fact that Roselia was a standalone in Gen 3 always struck us as odd. What's with all these weird early-game Pokemon that don't evolve? Not counting Megas or future evos, Roselia here makes for the 8th Pokemon with no evolution. What gives? Why do the late-game Pokemon evolve more than these early-game one-offs?