Bagon? He isn't even wearing one!

371: Bagon

You know we're in the home stretch when we have a pseudo-legendary to look at! Bagon goes back to the Dratini mode of pseudos, being a Dragon type in a fairly obscure location. Its design is fair enough, existing as a cartoon dragon with a pachycephalosaurus-like big bony cranium. Which looks unfortunately like a mullet.

It's a football! I chiseled it!

372: Shelgon

Shelgon is a fun idea though. Like Larvitar into Pupitar, Shelgon is a bit of a cocoon-like stage for this dragon line. What would a dragon cocoon look like if dragons could cocoon? This, maybe! It has a bit of the energy of a "monster egg" in pop culture, being simply an egg with mean eyes peering out of a crack in the shell. But this time it's just what the animal looks like. Shelgon's fun, for how simple it is!

It's flat fuck (f)tuesday

373: Salamence

One might think Salamence would've been an odd mix of barnacle and dragon, but instead, it drops its Shelgoniness entirely. Shelgon is Shelgone. Instead, we kinda end up with a more run-of-the-mill dragon design. To be fair, a quadrupedal western-style dragon was something that was missing from Pokemon thus far, but Salamence has never really struck us as particularly exciting. It has striking wing designs in how simplistic they are, and its head shape is neat. But even Jinx, the one in the system who's most susceptible to this "rule of cool" kinda design isn't very impressed with it. Salamence is cool, but that's about it.

MOON, SHINE DOWN

Mega Salamence:

The decision to turn Salamence into a giant flying croissant is one we would've liked to have been in the design room to see. It's better than regular Salamence in that it's got more of a visual identity than base Salamence, but we wouldn't have expected something so... silly. Like, the exaggerated shape and the way its forelimbs hang onto a little "bar" that's part of its body that makes it look like it's hang-gliding just makes the design extremely difficult to take seriously. It's just a bit of a design that feels unsure if it wants to be goofy or badass, and is a funny in-between. An in-between that's more entertaining than non-Mega Salamence, but still.