Scarlet/Violet model gifs ripped by Twitter user adamsb0303!

909: Fuecoco

Now onto our starter of choice this time around! Fuecoco is a cutie of a fat crocodile fella, being overall chili-pepper in shape and being a critter that owns the proportions of a Bubble Bobble dinosaur. The apple-esque white face is also a nice touch and the teeniest tiniest of hints as to where this line is going to go. Just enough for an "aha!" in retrospect but not so overt that it spoils the surprise.

It could be a bit more overtly fiery, all it has is the cartoony "strand" of hair on its head, giving it a funny babyish charm. But as an element that's supposed to hint towards its fire typing, it could be better. Otherwise, our only real complaint is the random kraft single plopped onto its chest. It's just such an abrupt square of color that doesn't flow well with the design's other curvy features.

Personal Score: 8/10

My hair is on fire! My hair is on fire!

910: Crocalor

Things fall apart a bit for Crocalor, though. It's nice that it stays mostly Fuecoco-like, proof that Fuecoco is a perfect specimen. And it picks up a more proper fire feature; it has a head of hair or "sombrero" that resembles a bird's nest with an egg in the center. This egg is apparently a fireball manifestation of its vitality, or something. But more importantly, it's setup for a bit of payoff for once it evolves again. It's a really cute idea, we just wish the hair was a bit more fire-shaped, cause it looks too awkward and clumpy to really pass as flames.

The worse end of Crocalor's designs is that it's so cluttered with random stripes and bands that break up the design in a really inelegant way. We've heard these markings are supposed to resemble a poncho, but we don't really see it. Crocalor's sadly kind of a mess, and almost made us regret picking it up as our starter.

Personal Score: 5/10

The muscle is Vector, the karma collector

He's sworn to fight for youuuuuuu

911: Skeledirge

Thankfully, that is until we get to Skeledirge, which very nicely fills in as "cool fire starter" in much the same vein as a Charizard or Blaziken. The flaming cheeks/"hair" is improved at least, it's still very much trying to be nest-shaped flames, but it passes for flames a lot better here. And the egg "hatched"! It gets its Fire/Ghost typing apparently from how the fireball on its head gained a soul and took the shape of a tiny bird, and a cutie of one too! A nice and simple little will-o-wisp that doesn't busy the design too much with its presence.

This is a fairly obvious reference to the plover bird, a bird that allegedly has a symbiotic relationship with these behemoth reptiles. It's said that they enter the agape mouths of crocs to clean their teeth of food, but this behavior has never actually been proven to happen. Becomes extremely evident with how obviously photoshopped-looking any "picture proof" or how faked-looking any video evidence you find on the internet is. And perhaps the designer being aware of this, there is a joke to be had about how this little fireball birdie that willingly enters the mouth of a crocodile is a ghost.

This bird does more than just pick at Skeledirge's mouth though. Skeledirge is called the "Singer" Pokemon for a reason, and the bird transforms into a microphone on a stand, amplifying its singing and sending itself forward now in the shape of a blazing bird. Singing and crocodilians may seem to have no correlation, but crocodiles make pretty guttural-sounding vocalizations! One of the deepest voices of the animal kingdom, even! It's a neat and novel ideal on its own, but it goes a little bit deeper.

Image Source

A Twitter user by the name of "dandydande" made the observation that Skeledirge's body is meant to look like the birds-eye view of a concert stadium. Its white head and snout are a b-stage with "pyrotechnics" going off around it. And Skeledirge's squarish segmented back, while a little annoying to look at, does at least serve the purpose of looking like a stadium's seating chart as well. All this to go along with the birdie finding its home on Skeledirge's snout, posing it as a "lead singer".

And none of this is even getting into how there's also potentially some Día de los Muertos inspirations in the design too. With its head looking a little skull-like with some colorful decorative paint patterns on it. As well as, again, being a ghost type. It's a genuinely pretty layered design for this unlikely duo! There's so much going on in here that you'd swear this design would be a little cluttered with a lot of the elements fighting for attention, but surprisingly not.

A lot of it helps that Skeledirge itself is really cool. It still has the problem of its design being aggressively segmented and angular, but it's hard to complain with a skeleton-themed crocodile that also has the zig-zag "Heartless mouth" thing going on. We feel like all we could reasonably ask for is for it to be more overtly skeleton-y. This dude would totally be a metalhead anyway! Skeledirge is a pretty rock-solid design, it's just a shame it looks a little plasticy, keeping it from being up there as one of the greatest starters ever.

And hey, it's our first fully-evolved starter in a WHILE that's anthropomorphized in NO way whatsoever. The last time we got one of those was like, Serperior! On top of that, this is our first quadrupedal fully-evolved Fire starter too. Huh!

Something else Skeledirge doesn't have in common with the other Fire starters is that it doesn't relate to any animal on the Chinese Zodiac. Like, this is probably the line of Starters where you least have to stretch that they all have a common theme, but Skeledirge seemingly drops that completely too, since a crocodile has nothing to do with the Chinese Zodiac. So then, what of the Water Starter's weapons motif?