987: Flutter Mane

It's funny, when you hear the idea of "ancient ancestors to modern Pokemon", you'd probably think Pokemon that are more dinosaurian or visibly related to other extinct animals. Instead we get Flutter Mane, a Paradox form of Misdreavus, a friggin ghost. Which just raises some hilarious ecological questions. Dragapult's line is rather blatantly the ghost of an extinct species, but here this Ghost/Fairy type has us contend with the implications that ghosts in and of themselves have evolved over time in the Pokemon universe. As if to say this beast is the ancient ancestor of a banshee, which is a comical thing that Pokemon has to make me think about.

It performs the usual, more spikes, more red, and it inverts the colors of its eyes for good measure. The main eye-catcher is that, instead of having the ghostly "hair" Misdreavus had, Fluttershy here has odd "wings" sprouting from its head, plus feathers.

The Pokedex states it has "similar features to a ghostly pterosaur", which is a hilariously unhinged way to refer to this thing. Pterosaur?! Okay then. Unless of course, it's referring to an extinct Pokemon we just haven't seen in the games yet, since it also states "the two have little else in common." But it's still one of those things that make this whole Paradox thing sound a little odd.