Favorite Gen V Pokemon

[SlowPokemon]

I realize we already have a favorite Pokemon thread, but it hasn't been used in ages and I'm interested in something a bit more specific: Gen V Pokemon. Gen V tends to get a bad rep as many complain that the new monsters are stupid, ugly or useless. I really like most of them personally. Post a couple of your favorites here, maybe with  little description about why you like them so much. Here are three of my favorites (though it's really hard to narrow it down to fewer than ten or fifteen of course).

Gothorita

Gothita, Gothorita and Gothitelle are often the source of a lot of criticism, as some people find them rather ugly. I really like Gothorita's design, though. I used a Gothitelle in my first Black version game (though I stopped training it after beating the Elite Four). I'm planning on using one again in Black 2 since it's been a while, but I don't think I'll evolve Gothorita--it's so cute. And it definitely doesn't have enough bows.

Serperior

Snivy was my starter in my first Black game, and I still think it's really awesome. The highest base speed stat of the starters (which is also the highest base stat of the starters) sets it apart from slow Grass types like Torterra and Meganium, and I think Serperior has a super cool design. Yeah, it looks like Milotic. Still.

Minccino

Come on, you knew this was coming, right? I love Minccino, chinchillas are awesome and it's easily one of the cutest monsters from BW. It's really hard to use because of its rather meh stats, but I can't help loving this adorable little guy.

[BlackDragonSlayer]

Only ones I can think of right now, non-starter non-legendary, is Zorua, Zoroark, and Volcarona.
Zorua/Zoroark: They're just so epic; dark type gives them power!

Volcarona: Bug Fire type? Thank you very much. Plus, I got a Critical Capture on it.

[Bubbles]

I personally like Oshawott (though tepig is my starter, I have no idea why) and Stunfisk. Stunfisk is underappreciated because its the magikarp of its generation

[spitllama]

[Nebbles]

Scolipede, Joltik, Reuniclus... there's so many great pokemon that were in gen V.

[FSM-Reapr]

Trubbish FTW

Minccino

[Clanker37]

Serperior, Scolipede, Reuniclus, Chandelure, Krookodile, Liepard...

And the list goes on and on

[Cobraroll]

As I'm writing this, I notice that I stray a lot off topic here, but please bear with me. I feel that it's necessary to describe this in more general terms than just listing what I like and not.

Starting on-topic, I really like the Litwick evolution line. It's so awesomely simplistic, and works well. It's original too, which is a fresh breath in a generation practically stuffed with "replacements" for Pokémon from older generations. I use that word because in BW1, you encountered many Pokémon that served the exact same purpose as other Pokémon had done for four generations, and they were barely designed differently (see Basculin/Magikarp, Boldore/Graveler, Timburr/Machop, etc). Perhaps my view on this will change in BW2, where some of the older Pokémon have been given a time to shine alongside the new ones, instead of being totally absent while the new ones did the exact same stuff.

Scolipede is cool too. Its design, reminiscent of a centaur or something, is decidedly awesome. It might seem detailed, but is actually rather simple.

Have a look at the Unova Pokédex, while keeping older Pokémon designs in mind. Compare any Unova mon to older designs/concepts (martial artist Pokémon, tadpoles, balls of cottony puff) as you scroll down from the top on. For a while, you'll think "this has been done before". Then, when you get to Solosis or thereabouts, the concepts begin to be totally unlike what you've seen in earlier generations. Original designs flourish. You get single cells, deer, ice cream (hey, I said "original", not "good"), fungus (and awesome fungus at that! Go Foongus and Amoonguss!), steel-barbed durians, chandeliers, snowflakes, and bugs in shining armour (literally). It's as if GameFreak were obliged to make some "generic" Pokémon that could fill the early game in the same vein as other 'mons have done earlier, before they were allowed to be creative and make whatever the heck they felt like. There are plenty of good designs in gen. V, but you have to search a little for them.

A trend that distinguishes the later generation designs from the earlier ones, is the excessive use of colours and patterns. This has its roots in the limited capabilities of the GameBoy; it wasn't possible to draw complex patterns with so few pixels, and the original designs all had to look nice in black and white. Then Generation II came along, and added colours to sprites. Two colours, to be exact. Look at any sprite from Gold, Silver and Crystal. Note that none of them have more than two colours apart from black and white. Thus, no early-gen designs use more than two colours. Nowadays we've got colourful designs like Cofagrigus, Sigilyph, Archeops, Escavalier, Druddigon and Heatmore, sporting more colours than were the custom back then. Three colours are still the rule of thumb, but in the old days, at least one of those three were black or white. The random patterns don't help much either (Emboar and Serperior are terrible).

Another reason why some people loathe gen. V designs, is that many of them work terribly bad in an ecosystem. The Vanilite line is too reminiscent of ice cream, designed to be sentient ice cream cones, not creatures resembling ice cream. They screw subtlety all over, shouting "LOOK! WE'RE ICE CREAM!" right up your face. Trubbish is ugly, because it's literally a bag of thrash with eyes and feet. Klingklang looks too artificial to have a habitat anywhere. Cryogonal is just floating around, existing for the sake of existence. Gothitelle doesn't seem to have any place in nature, it's too humanlike to fit anywhere. Note that this also applies to several Pokémon from earlier generations. Where the heck do Gardevoir live, for instance? What is the habitat of Alakazam like? In general, Psychic types are hard to place in nature.

On the other hand, you have gems like Deerling and Sawsbuck. Those are truly graceful, and wouldn't look out of place in a forest clearing with Kakuna hanging from the trees and Heracross feating on beehives while Pidgey fly overhead. Emolga can be seen as living in tree canopies, and Jellicent float eerily around the deep seas, competing with Lanturn for catching the scarce prey in the abyss.


Another unfortunate factor of several gen. V designs is their pose in official art. Stunfisk, for instance, looks comically derpy. It looks like it doesn't have a clue about the world around it, the sort of character to ask twice for the recipe for boiled water. It flat-out looks DUMB, and isn't given a single chance to prove otherwise. You give it one look, think "stupid!" and move on.
As several Internet artists have shown, Stunfisk is more than a worn-out shoe sole with a stupid face, but in the games, that is all we see. There is more to Stunfisk that meets the eye, but it's never shown unless you explicitly search for it.

Other Pokémon suffering from this is Cryogonal (least dynamic Pokémon pose ever), Conkeldurr (when do you ever see it in a different pose than "hands leaning on concrete pillars, occasionally lifting them"?), Eelektross (dynamic design, but we never see it in any other pose than "randomly floating around"), Darmanitan (portrayed in the same pose with the same stupid grin everywhere it shows its face), Vanillite/Vanilluxe (no moving parts whatsoever, ugly grinning expression), Sigilyph (same), Galvantula (unfortunately posed exactly like Ariados wherever it shows its face, leading people to believe they are carbon copies), and, worst of all in my opinion, Garbodor:



Holy cow, that is derpy. Though, I think Garbodor actually is great, but Sugimori walked all over it and left it for the crows with this art. Come on everybody, give it a second look.

First of all, the green stuff. It took me a while to realise, but this is actually fur. Thick, entangled fur. Incredibly filthy, probably smelling like a landfill, in other words attracting mates for the jolly Pokémon.
Garbodor's arms are long and multi-jointed. Due to its habitat, it's hard to tell the horned, thick skin from the mud it's coated with. Garbodor's fingers are a mess, it's extremely un-dexterous, but has enough control of its fingers to pick up objects and stuff them into its mouth. A swing of a Garbodor's arm can tear the bark off trees, or send smaller Pokémon flying. It secretes toxic pus from glands in the right hand. Large eyes help it see in darkness or thick smoke. Due to the location and appearance of its mouth, it's reasonable to assume Garbodor doesn't bite, it crushes. It doesn't have jaws, only muscles pressing together bones resembling spike mats, grinding food into a porridge dissolved by its extremely corrosive saliva.
Random bits of thrash, rocks, twigs and leaves stick to Garbodor's skin. This provides camouflage in its natural habitat, but living on landfills makes Unovan Garbodor rather flashy and colourful with all the coloured paper and plastic sticking to it.

All in all, Garbodor are cool Pokémon, but got totally screwed over by GameFreak. Here's hoping future media will put them in a better light. I'm working on a sketch to get my point across.

[Nebbles]

hey don't you say bad things about my baby Galvantula :C And I think Trubbish is cute!

[Olimar12345]

Meloetta.

[BlackDragonSlayer]

hey don't you say bad things about my baby Galvantula :C And I think Trubbish is cute!

Hmmm... I'd like to see a "Non-Unovan Garbodor."
But, yeah, I like Galvantula; I have one on my team (it's still in training, currently around level 40).

[SlowPokemon]

@cobraroll I disagree with you on a lot of points on the Pokemon, but that's because I love all of the Pokemon in existence, including their designs XD

Also, there's no fur on garbodor. The green stuff is what's left over of the plastic bag after the gray garbage sludge and multicolored garbage globs spewed out of it.

[Nebbles]

Trubbish and Garbodor grew on me, actually... I really kind of like them. Dunno if I'll ever use one, but...

[BlackDragonSlayer]

Trubbish and Garbodor grew on me, actually... I really kind of like them. Dunno if I'll ever use one, but...

I would have rathered a Muk evolution... although they may not have wanted to do that...

[November]

For me, it's a tie between Cofagrigus, Archeops, Volcarona, and Kyurem. Fantastic designs, and work very well in-game and competitively.