And why do I hate these chibi-fied, off-palette creatures so much?
One bright spot that saw exceptionally online people through a rather grim weekend was the reveal of the newest video game installments for the Pokémon franchise. An announcement for Pokémon Scarlet and Pokémon Violet with an accompanying trailer revealed some of the newest inspirations, Arceus -inspired open-world gameplay, and, most importantly, the three new starters. The newest Pokémon to join the first-choice ranks are Fuecoco, the fire-gator; Sprigatito, a weed cat; and Quaxly, a water duck, and clearly the least inspired of the bunch. It’s not really Quaxly’s fault—water-type starters have been notoriously straightforward since Nintendo looked at a turtle back in Generation 1 and said “How about a turtle that’s a water type?” (Mudkip, our darling Gen III boy, was the best of the bunch.) But looking at these new monsters for Scarlet and Violet, they all seem… rather cute. Soft shapes, not a lot of extra bits sticking up, and of course, massive eyes. Sure, the first tier of every Pokémon’s evolution are always pretty chibi-fied, but these three in particular seem made for mass production.
