988: Slither Wing

Already at quite easily my favorite Paradox Pokemon, the ancient ancestor to Volcarona is Slither Wing! And how do you dinosaurify a moth of all things? Well, have it be stuck on all fours, turn its abdomen into a tail, and have its wings stick straight up, as if to look a little like a stegosaurus's spine panels! It's such a fun way to offer an alternative to a Pokemon like Volcarona. Plus rather amusingly, it can sit upright, and it looks a bit like a puppy when it does so.

It seems incapable of flight, instead now picking up a Bug/Fighting typing, Some of these type choices are odd; it feels like the couple of 'mons made Fighting type seem to just be substituting Fighting for a general "savage" archetype or something. Cause I dunno what's so "Fighting" about this thing, otherwise. But what I do enjoy about this thing is how it's a Volcarona, but remade into a flightless moth! There's a number of species of moth that don't fly but, obviously, still have their wings. Not that Slither here is based on any in particular, it's just "what if Volcarona was one of those."

I also think Slither Wing runs with the "reimagining a Pokemon and dinosaurifying them" far better than the others. As much as I feel like being "extra" or "a bit much" is sort of the point of the past paradoxes, even I have to admit Flutter Mane and Brute Bonnet having some of their features emphasized just by adding some spikes on top of them and calling it a day leaves a lot to be desired. The inclusion of some extra spiky bits on Slither feels a lot more organic and believable. All while not feeling like it goes overboard with it. Maybe in part because it's already an arthropod, which tend to be spiky critters, but still.

The one bum thing about Slither Wing is that it's the best Paradox Pokemon. And yeah, a 9/10 score is nothing to sneeze at, but as much as I find the concept cool, the designs themselves, while not bad, don't feel like they quite hit the peaks of, say, the Ultra Beasts. Not that the two groups should be compared too hard, because they're going for vastly different aesthetics. But still, even taking them for what they are rather than what they aren't, 9/10 is the tops for me, even though for the UBs I was handing out 10/10s like candy, and I STILL love those weirdos to this day.

Just even then, I hardly feel like any of these Paradox forms really surpass their contemporary counterpart to me, other than maybe the Past Paradox beasts, but I'm getting ahead of myself.