963: Finizen

Now THIS is a Pokemon that feels like it's been a long-time coming: finally Pokemon has its own dolphin! And it's... alarmingly straightforward. It's little more than a cartoon dolphin with some paper water cooler cup pattern down its side. Its dorsal fin being colored in the shape of a wave is a neat touch, and it even comes with a ring around its tail as an obvious reference to dolphin shows. Other than that, yeah. It sure is a dolphin buddy that's a little too unextraordinary looking. But... perhaps that's the point?

Hah! That's dolphin humor for ya.

964: Palafin

For you see, Finizen's evolution, Palafin, is normally little more than literally just Finizen but with a heart pattern on its chest. And given the oblong evolution method, one would imagine how someone might feel trolled here. This thing just evolves into itself?! The hell?!?

Take a chill pill, I meant no ill will!

Hero Form:

Well, that's because it's got a form gimmick! And yeesh, given how gung-ho the past few gens have been with form gimmicks, imagine the restraint that Palafin here is the only new Pokemon this gen with a major form gimmick to it that isn't just cosmetic.

The idea behind this transformation is that Palafin is a superhero, and that "Finizen" is merely its civilian disguise! It even transforms by getting away from the scene to change into its superhero costume! It has to be sent out in its weaker "Zero form" first, before being switched out again. Then once it switches back in, it becomes its "Hero form" with ridiculously boosted stats. How clever!

Its design took some warming up to, cause it IS pretty weird to see a man-shaped dolphin, especially with such goofy proportions. With the extremely top-heavy design with barely anything below the waist other than some silly clown-shoe tail fins. And to be fair, yeah, we think a version of this design where it was at least a smidge more dolphin-shaped would look cooler, but we also think the comedy of the absurdity of this thing's very concept is what really sells it.

It's got a silly body shape, clunky gloves seemingly made of water or bubbles, and something giving the illusion of a "mask" over its eyes. And that absolutely ridiculous collar it has. It looks dumb but it really owns being a dumb Pokemon. Even funnier considering it has a base stat total that has it up there with the Legendaries. Naturally, with an absurdly high Attack stat.

All it's REALLY missing is a Fighting type. Fighting has been Pokemon's closest thing to a "heroic" type, and the type is accompanied with other superhero-esque designs, so it feels odd that a new definitive "Superhero" Pokemon doesn't have it. Sure, something something balance, something something this already beastly thing doesn't need a STAB Drain Punch on top of everything else, but still.

We gotta hand it to em, cause we've never really seen even a Dolphin fakemon that's even half as interesting as this weirdo. And not that we blame anybody; dolphins are a hard critter to design an interesting Pokemon around, but by god they did it.