971: Greavard

Every Generation has to have a dog, and Greav--

Yeah, this generation is odd in that it has three separate two-stage monotype dog lines, all seemingly unrelated to one another. It just kinda has an incidental dog trio. In a way we can only assume is an apology for Boltund, since we're not along in not finding that one particularly impressive.

But for Greavard itself, it's easily the best of the doggies so far! It's a Ghost type seemingly based on a puppy sheepdog, with long, pale, shaggy hair. So much of it that it covers its eyes! Which was definitely a niche of cartoon dog missing from Pokemon.

On top of that, it has a comically large noggin, complete with equally comically large chompers!!! And it has a lovely zig-zag mouth to boot! And the second-best part is the candle that sits atop its head, burning a purple ghost-fire.

Greavard gets its ghostliness from how it's a bit of a ghostly zombie-dog. Sometimes in the wild, you'll find them mostly buried underground, with only their candle sticking out. When humans or Pokemon come by, it'll pop out and excitedly try to play with them.

At which point, the being it's playing with will slowly become visibly fatigued and sleepy due to Greavard sucking the life force out of them by playing. The best part though is that Greavard isn't doing it on purpose. Not a malicious bone in Greavard's body! It's just something due to its nature that it's comically just oblivious of, which is such a silly idea for a ghost puppy.

You know what they say: An apple a day puts you in the grave!

972: Houndstone

And look, we live in a world where all of Yamper's appeal evaporated the second it evolved, and it's far from even the first Pokemon to do it. We were fully expecting a Ghost dog to turn into something conventionally badass. We most certainly were not expecting THIS.

Houndstone is probably one of the single most brutal-looking Pokemon, at least based on appearance alone. If nothing else simply because it's the first-ever Pokemon that is an ACTUAL bona fide skeleton!! Not just merely ALUDING to a skeleton or skull with visual motifs!! Or in Duskull's case, is a skull and little else. It even keeps the lack of visible eyes and gigantic underbite too! And while it doesn't have zig-zag teeth, it does have a really craggly, bony mouth that is wonderful in its own way. And atop its head is a headstone or headstone-esque protrusion, completing the "zombie" look with the way it rises from underground! HELL yeah!!!!

And the best part is, oddly, how it keeps its shaggy hair. On one hand, it seems obviously there to simplify the design so that it isn't just a stylized dog skeleton, but a side effect of still having hair is that it makes Houndstone look like a very recently rotting corpse. Like that HAS to be intentional right? Obviously, we're not gonna post a picture of that, but the resemblance is uncanny.

The lore is. As sometimes happens with supernatural Pokemon, the Pokedex seems to forget Houndstone had to be a Greavard first, but it's apparently an actually re-animated dog Pokemon corpse, with the 'dex stating that a "lovingly mourned Pokemon" gets reborn as a Houndstone.

Houndstone even gets a signature move that done got the thing banned in competitive play, "Last Respects". It's a move that increases in power the more members of your party are knocked out. And while hinging a strategy on losing 5 team members and hoping the 6th can do the job alone isn't the best idea, Last Respects also easily becomes THE most powerful move with no other drawbacks. We don't care for competitive, we just think unhinged stuff like this is funny.

This thing is like a dream Pokemon. On one of our many wishlists back when we reviewed Pokemon on a tumblr blog, we put down a "tombstone", "zombie", and "skeleton" Pokemon. Fully expecting the latter two to possibly never happen because perhaps the straight, blunt, traditional "undead" is too brutal for Pokemon. Well here's Houndstone to just knock all three of those out at once! And not even hold back on the visuals beyond not being outright gorey or purposefully shocking, and that easily makes it one of the coolest and visually unique Pokemon to date.