A lil cup of leep

345: Lileep

And HERE is the official point where one of our favorite recurring concepts becomes a recurring concept: fossil Pokemon are back!! And somehow STILL not going for the obvious Jurassic Park dino-revival angle, instead we get more Cambrian Explosion fellas!! Though Lileep feels a bit like cheating since it's based on a sea lily, an echinoderm that's still with us today for all intents and purposes, but they WERE far more of them the further back you go. You could say that's like saying a t-rex Pokemon would be cheating because we got chickens, but ancient sea lilies are pretty dang similar to "modern" ones. We're only saying, you could probably pass Lileep as a non-extinct Pokemon and it wouldn't be too weird, even in a world full of dinosaur-esque designs like Aggron or Kangaskhan.

But we suppose, either way, it's neat to have a sea lily on board! Though its tentacles look a little closer to that of a sea anemone, with the blunt, pink digits. They also interpret sea lilies rather literally; like we said, sea lilies are actually echinoderms, like starfish or sea urchins, and not literal plants, like Lileep here is. But it is interesting that it still hangs onto aspects that aren't obviously plant-like, like the little nubs for legs. But the best feature by far is its face, being a black void in the center of its "flower", with no facial features other than a pair of bright yellow eyes. This thing could pass as a Kingdom Hearts Heartless!!

Trust me, I'm a nice little flower

346: Cradily

One could bemoan Cradily for being a bit more "usual", at least at first glance. And indeed, Cradily is a bit more readily land-animal-like than any weird deep-sea invertebrate. But on closer look you'll notice it still has the pitch dark face with glowing eyes peering from the void. It just has eyespots on its forehead and eyes within a mouth-like face! It doesn't ditch too much of what made Lileep cool, though we just with its tentacles were perhaps more integrated into its face rather than just sort of being around its neck.

What seems to be the dealio with the fossilmon this time is that they're Cambrian explosion creatures, but reimagined as primal land-dwellers a little bit when they evolve. Hence why Cradily looks a little bit like a cartoon sauropod! They're meant to be an odd "missing link" between Cambrian creature and "Jurassic" creature. But you forgot about amphibious fish! You missed a step, guys! Oh well, it's a neat idea with pretty adorable execution.