Scarlet/Violet model gifs ripped by Twitter user adamsb0303!

973: Flamigo

And now at our final bird of the generation, we hit yet another animal that's been long waiting to be made into a Pokemon. This time with a bit of a mixed result, as on the surface, Flamigo seems like a rather straightforward "stylize an animal and call it a Pokemon." Though we would say Flamigo is a little more interesting than people give it credit for.

Flamigo's design is very "what you see is what you get." It's a body with very noodly proportions, between the long, rubber-like neck, perfectly straight stick-legs, and a perfectly spherical body. And such objectively perfect shapes do have the side-effect of making Flamigo look a little plasticy, there is seemingly a rather obvious element of Flamigo making reference to the tacky flamingo lawn ornaments with the way it looks. And its body appearing to be somewhat balloony also brings things like pool toys to mind as well.

But this Pokemon doesn't come with any of the typings you'd expect from a flamingo Pokemon. No Water/Flying, not even Normal/Flying, but rather Fighting/Flying. It seems a little left-field at first, but another aspect of its design is that strange knot it's made out of its neck at the base of it. This gives it not just some additional flavor of balloon animal, but the base of its body, together with the folded wings, now resembles a cartoon boxing glove. And though a lot of peopled noted that, we've yet to see very many note how Flamigo takes the flamingo's rather unusual beak shape and makes it look like a swollen, bruised lower lip! Like it took a sock to the jaw!

Flamigo is fascinating in how it's a design with a lot behind it, but with not a lot going on. Shooting off a bunch of disparate ideas, but still coming together in the end and somehow coming out so mundane and unassuming looking. We do wish the design was a bit more fantastical in the end, because it's a pretty uneventful-feeling design. But we got a little bit of a soft spot for it.