recursal/Fanatic-Fandom huggingface dataset:
Pidgey Line

The first couple dozen pokemon were never meant to be anything mind-blowing; they filled the roles of fairly mundane animals, giving us a little taste of the setting and its rules before we got into the flaming snails and flying magnets. Pidgey is this generation's most basic "flying" type pokemon, or rather normal/flying, an extremely common type combination.

In fact, for the longest time, no pure-flying pokemon ever existed, which I honestly thought made sense; the "flying" type doesn't represent what a pokemon is comprised of, but what a pokemon happens to be doing. It has to be attached to another type to represent what sort of creature is actually doing the "flying" here, so "normal" type was kind of its bare minimum.

So, here's Pidgeotto, a bigger Pidgey with more radical hair. Despite being named after pigeons in both the English and Japanese versions, this line looks positively nothing at all like an actual pigeon, which used to disappoint me because pigeons have such an interestingly distinct look and tiny, ridiculous heads. This would be rectified later, but I need to stop alluding to pokemon it might take me over a year to get around to.

Aren't these names a little mixed up? Why does it go Pidgey - Pidgeotto - Pidgeot? The final evolution should be Pidgeotto. It's the biggest, and therefore it should have the most letters. This and the fact that the design is almost completely identical to its predecessor used to confuse the heck out of me.

So, I definitely wouldn't have expected a mega evolution for this thing. It's freaking HUGE, which is neat I guess, but there are so many more interesting pokemon who more desperately need this kind of boost, aren't there? Butterfree is the only one of these first six evolution lines that didn't get a mega form. RUDE.

I'm sorry, Pidgey fans. I know Pidgey carries a lot of nostalgia, and a plain, white bread bird pokemon is something that just has to exist, but it's so outstaged by every other bird pokemon, so quickly, and doesn't even have the decency to look like a real, hilarious pigeon. We're only a couple slots away from a more exciting bird pokemon! Don't take it personally, I'm just not a "plain brownish bird" kinda person, okay?
Tentacool Line

Hot on the trail of Victreebel, we've got another exotic, sinister poison type that REEKS of pure cool. It's even in the name! Tentacool is a jellyfish pokemon, its "poison" typing reflecting the presence of venomous stinging cells in its two tentacles, though it always looked a whole lot more to me like a cephalopod, its bulbous, fleshy appearance and eye placement reminding me more of some deep-sea squid or octopod than a cnidarian. I'd complain about it having eyes when it would look so much cooler without them, but there are some Jellyfish that actually do have eyes, and they happen to be the cubozoa, or box jellyfish, which you may recognize as the deadliest and most toxic of all known Cnidaria. Nice!

More than anything, I adore how alien this critter looks, in the "classic space invasion B-movie" sense. Can't you just see one of those tentacles waving around a chrome plated raygun?

Alternatively, but still squarely in the "space monster" column, you may have thought Tentacool carried an Akira Toriyama vibe, sporting the same weird, embedded orbs he gave to Frieza and a long list of other baddies. I'm not gonna pour more fire on an already raging fandom war by asserting whether I prefer 50's Bug-Eyed Monster or 90's Shonen Villain interpretations of Tentacool. Can't it be both!? Can't we put an end to this twenty year bloodbath!?

Eventually, Frieza's severed head floats in the ocean long enough to evolve into Tentacruel, and damn if that isn't one nasty beastie. The pokedex says it has eighty tentacles, but we can forgive them for only drawing around a dozen of them at a time. I kind of miss that lovely lightbulb shape to Tentacool, but with the addition of a squid and an octopus in later generations, there remain no aquatic pokemon with tentacles either as plentiful or as lengthy as the 'cruel, so if tentacles are your thing (in any sense of that phrase), Jellyfish Frieza can't be beat.

Tentacruel's even more interesting feature, however, may be its gigantic, beak-like scissors. This is another feature that would make sense on a mollusk, but on a jellyfish it's totally out of left field in a very nice way. A jellyfish with blades on it. Nice!!!

I'll end on a note that Tentacool and Tentacruel are also the pokemon that made me almost forgive what Misty said about Caterpie. Her fear of bug types was, for a while, the only time a character in-universe ever called a pokemon gross, ugly or creepy, until she started gushing about her adoration for these nightmare spawn of the deep, and the tables were turned. Ash thought they were hideous, the local populace regarded Tentacool as unlovable pests, and Misty alone was willing to defend them to the end. It may make her a bit hypocritical, but at least she knows how I feel whenever the subject of spiders comes up.

I also hope you appreciate what I had to go through to find a wholesome image of Misty and Tentacruel together when I couldn't remember what episode this came from.

Tentacruel is another of those pokemon that feels objectively awesome. Even if you're not a fan, you cannot look at that thing and sincerely tell me it's not rad as all hell.
Venonat Line

I've waited twenty long, grueling years now for the existence of a fly pokemon, but to this day, the only thing that even comes close is poor, unloved, darling Venonat, which isn't even named after a gnat in Japan, and stops being even tenuously similar to the order Diptera as soon as it evolves.

Otherwise, what we have here is a flawless bug/poison design, a scuzzy ball of hair with a buggy-eyed face, cute little mandible-fangs and weirdly fleshy, humanoid feet.

Venonat is the perfect blend of adorable and freaky. If, God forbid, Gloom never existed, Venonat here might have even taken its place in my heart as unevolved, pikachu-like sidekick material.

Regrettably, Venonat is one of those pokemon that evolves all willy-nilly into something it has little more in common with than typing and phylum. Venomoth's design is basically just a big, pale moth. Which I do like very much, especially as a poison type, and I even used to rank it among my top three favorites, right after Gloom and Parasect. I can't even really explain why that was, when Venonat was so much more appealing and the same generation offered things like Weezing, Muk and Victreebel vying for that same #3 slot. I guess a spooky moth called "Venomoth" just hit something really special for me at the time, and I even used a Venomoth as my avatar and more or less "character" in my first and dearest online chat community through my teenaged years.

The Donphan in the room here is that Venomoth may not have been intended as Venonat's evolution at all, because the same antennae, eyes, mouth, hands, feet, and purple fur are all shared by none other than Butterfree. Side by side, the connection seems painfully obvious, while Venomoth's eyes and horns follow more logically from Caterpie and Metapod.

That said, I'm glad this "switch" was made, because while Venomoth fails to live up to Venonat's precedent, it's still a cooler outcome for the little guy than Butterfree. There's an old adage that goes butterflies are beautiful, but moths are monstrous. More people these days seem to better appreciate how fluffy and bunny-like moths actually are, but they still feel a little more gothic than butterflies.

Venomoth gets four out of five, because it may not be as interesting as its predecessor or a lot of other pokemon, but a giant, ghostly, toxic moth is still pretty rad on its own merits.

...You know what venonat REALLY reminds me of, though?

That's right, good old Mothman, the only truly beautiful thing besides the Flatwoods Monster to ever happen to West Virginia. All you'd have to do is trade Venonat's tiny hands for bird-like wings and drop its antennae, mouth or both. It could even keep the naked feet, maybe evolving into longer, ostrich-like knobbly legs. It would have been all too perfect, and could have still made sense as a poison/bug called Venomoth!
The Mordred

Transport

Torpedo Launcher

The Mordred is the personal ship of Lauren Blackwell, a High Captain in Blackwell's Reavers and daughter of their leader Valencia Blackwell. The vessel itself is a beefed up Bulldog-Class Cruiser, with improved armor and reworked engines.

It is often used as a gunship for Lauren's personal endeavours, as well as a smuggling ship for goods and/or people.
Nidoran Line

I was definitely looking forward to reviewing these oddballs. Before genders were officially introduced to almost all pokemon, the first generation gave us two gender-based variants on ostensibly the same monster, Nidoran, though each was treated as its own separate "species" with its own pokedex number.

The Nidorans are more than just a binary gimmick, though. While sort of rabbit-like in appearance, these critters have hairless, reptilian skin, they're covered in allegedly needle-sharp barbs, and they're venomous. They're ground/poison types, their many spines and horns injecting toxins in anything foolish enough to mess with them!

Zoologically, these creatures really don't seem to be based on anything in particular, unless you want to consider them a fictional branch of Synapsid, the extinct animals combining both "mammalian" and "reptilian" anatomical features, though there isn't any mammal or reptile in our world with a coating of venom-filled skin barbs. This was back when a lot more pokemon are taxonomically ambiguous "monsters," and not always drawn so specifically from mythology or science.

"Nidorina" and "Nidorino" finally evolve into "Nidoqueen" and "Nidoking," big bruisers whose ground typing is reflected in their ability to plunge into the earth and burrow. They're among the meanest-looking tetrapods in the original 151, and it's no surprise they were signature pokemon of Giovanni, big boss of Team Rocket.

Now, I said these pokemon don't match up to any particular real-world animal, but they do bear a very striking resemblance to the Toho kaiju, Baragon, and it probably isn't a coincidence. How many other purpleish, fanged, horn-nosed dinosaurs are there with bunny ears? Not only that, but Baragon is also an earthquake-causing burrower. All the Nidorans did was throw venom into the mix!

I'm totally cool with the Nidorans being shameless ripoffs of a minor Godzilla nemesis, but I do have a critique for them. The "venomous needle" aspect is what makes them particularly cool and unique, but we're left to use our imaginations and take their word for it, since they're only actually drawn with a few blunt, rounded-looking horns, and Nidoking's even shrank over time. This earlier Sugimori art is bristling with spines!

While they could stand to look pricklier, the Nidos are extremely cool, fascinatingly odd monsters, even if they are just transparent Kaiju references.
Geodude Line

Geodude is the first rock-type pokemon in the dex, and another solid first impression. It's little more than a rock with arms, but that's Geodude's appeal. A rock with arms that rolls around saying "geodude" over and over is hilarious.

Geodude is not, however, only a rock type. In fact, there aren't any pure rock types in the original 151; just a whole lot of rock/ground types, Geodude included. Thematically it makes a lot of sense, but the combination of rock and ground type only results in a pokemon with a crapload of weaknesses including compound weaknesses to wildly common water and grass moves.

When Geodude evolves into Graveler, it becomes the sort of thing most people think of when they hear the phrase "rock monster," a burly chunk of stone with craggy arms and legs. I always liked just how rocky and bumpy this pokemon looked, and the fact that it allegedly eats rocks is another classic "rock monster" thing to do. It's even said to prefer the mossy ones, which is cute. I imagine that's kinda like the frosting on a donut to a geophagous organism.

Graveler's evolution is another that comes clear out of left field. Golem's physiology and even overall style feel entirely different from its predecessors, mutating from a boulder with human-like features and six limbs to basically a stone-skinned reptile in a cobblestone-like spherical shell. It's a very cool design, though I feel bad for anyone who was a huge fan of Graveler and expected something following its progression more logically, which I guess would have been more of a big rocky humanoid troll thing, and would have suited the name "Golem" even better to boot.

Still, Golem has a very, very "kaiju"-like feel, like a lost Ultraman monster, and those chunky rock scales are pleasing to look at. I'd have personally found Golem a little cooler if its head was withdrawn into its shell, just a dark hole with eyes and maybe teeth peering out. I'm always biased towards that look, its true, but it would have also felt a little closer to what Geodude and Graveler were moving towards.

The Geodude line are interesting rock beasts, though I have mixed feelings about the final twist.
Seel Line

Our first ice type is a safe enough animal to saddle with that heavy responsibility, a water/ice seal with a face almost more like a goofy pug dog. I also kinda like how its tail looks a lot like a cartoon water spout. I never noticed that before.

Seel evolves into the somewhat more elegant Dewgong, one of those pleasantly simple, streamlined animal pokemon who thankfully stayed home when they were handing out anime eyes.

It is not, however, a dugong, nor any other kind of Sirenian, an animal group still missing from pokemon's roster. You can't just name a pokemon a flimsy misspelling of entirely the wrong animal, Gamefreak! 700+ pokemon and we don't have a manatee or sea cow yet? If we did, I couldn't really see it as an ordinary, predictable water type, but there are limitless other possibiities.

-A steel/flying zeppelin creature with organic propellers.

-An electric/ice type resembling a storm cloud.

-A grass type resembling a gourd, melon or cucumber. Hilarious if they also give it jagged teeth and make it a carnivore.

-Steller's Sea Cow is extinct, yeah? How come we don't have any ghost type pokemon representing extinct species? A ghostly dugong would be way too cute for a water/ghost.

-A water/dark cthulhu-like Dugong. This is the only way I would accept something as hipster as a Cthulhu reference in pokemon, as my wife and I are fully convinced Cthulhu was some sort of big sea cow all along. He's fat, he's always sleepy, and his greatest nemesis is a boat propeller.

I can't think of a whole lot to say about these two, but they're alright.
Clefairy Line

Clefairy, as some of you know, was very nearly slated to be the mascot of the franchise and Ash Ketchum's partner in crime, a role that was ultimately handed over to the slightly more memorable Pikachu. This isn't to say that Clefairy is without its merits, of course; it's billed as a "fairy," but it resembles neither what we typically expect a fairy to look like or any particular animal. It's like some entirely made-up genus of globular, pinkish mammaloid, and it's by far not the only one in the game, either.

Changing negligibly when it evolves into Clefable, I feel like this line was also intended to be the poster child of the normal type, even if the first pure normal type we encounter is Rattata. Later, however, the clefs' and other pink, globular normal types would be retconned as actual fairy types, and I just want to say how grateful I am that our eighteenth and presumably final new type wound up being something as interesting as fairy and not the "light" type the fandom kept pushing for as a counterpart to "dark." The two are similar in some fundamental ways, but "fairy" just feels, I dunno, a little more monster-themed, I guess? The much-hypothesized "light" type carried an angelic, holy sort of theme that would have been far more limiting, and while the majority of fairy pokemon are cute and pretty, they've already got their share of spooks and weirdos that never would have fit into "light."

Besides...the counterpart to "dark" is fighting. The intention of the two is pretty much closer to "villain" and "hero" types.

Like Pikachu, Clefairy was given a pre-evolution in the second generation of games, coinciding with the introduction of actual pokemon breeding mechanics. They sort of went hog-wild with these for the Gold and Silver games, but subsequent generations have introduced "baby" pokemon more sparingly or not at all. I could go either way on this, personally. There are pokemon who could still use a "prevo" as we took to calling them just because it doesn't make one damn lick of sense how something like a Lapras hatches straight out of an egg, but on the other hand, this is pokemon we're talking about. Why waste a slot for an entire new monster just to rectify a logical gap? I'm glad they don't toss around "babies" so much these days.

Anyway, it's also interesting that the Clefairy line is repeatedly said to come from the moon, or have arrived on our planet from a meteor. Of course, if you ask me, all pokemon are pretty obviously from space. I even got paid real money once to posit my pokemon theories. The internet is magical.

I got really sidetracked throughout this review, but Clefairy and Clefable are decent enough fluffy critters, slightly more interesting now that they're official members of the seelie court...or are they unseelie? How would we even know?
Weedle Line

As precious as Caterpie is, Weedle is a lot more interesting. It's a non-Lepidopteran larva, for one, which is rarely ever portrayed in popular culture at all. How often do you see grubs or maggots in cartoons, compared to caterpillars? Heck, there aren't even many other pokemon representing non-moth, non-butterfly larvae. What's up with that?

Poor little Weedle, lone grubworm in a caterpillar's world. It's such a silly, charming little design to boot, with that big pink nose and the conical "stinger" on top of its head. A grub with a head-sting! Interestingly, there are wasps in the real world with caterpillar-like larvae - they're called sawflies - but most baby wasps and bees are just pale, rounded, limbless globs. Weedle is pure fantasy!
Interestingly, Weedle wasn't always going to be the larval stage of a Hymenopteran at all. An early, prototypical Weedle was once previewed on Gamefreak's official website, first evolving into some sort of fatter grub-monster and finally into some sort of beetle. This would have definitely been the insectiest-looking bug type of the first generation, had it not been scrapped. Shame.

Instead, Weedle evolves into Kakuna, accurately resembling a Hymenopteran pupa and a whole lot cooler looking than its counterpart, Metapod. I even thought Kakuna was so cool in my youth that I kept one on my team and didn't evolve it. I kept on training a Kakuna with poison sting and harden like it was a badass addition to my team all on its own. I had no concept of the metagame, of strategizing or that some pokemon were inherently less good than others no matter how high their level. It was a simpler and happier time to be a pokemon kid.

Nonetheless, the fully evolved Beedrill is pretty darn cool as well. More of a paperwasp than a bee, it boasts almost fully realistic insect anatomy, apart from the number of limbs and the giant, conical stingers on its forelegs. I actually never really liked those stingers, to be honest; they're so chunky and plain, they feel kind of incongruous to the rest of the arthropod, like it's just wearing a couple of white party hats on its arms. They could have used some spiraling lines, I think, so they might have at least really looked like "drills," but I digress. Beedrill is alright.

Now, Mega Beedrill, that's more like it! I almost feel bad liking a mega so much more than a first-generation bug, but this one makes the stinger-limbs mesh a whole lot better with the overall design, and its crescent eyes are much closer to those of a real bee or wasp, which in itself is a huge plus for me.

I still wish we also had that beetle, but the Beedrill line make pretty nice bad-boy counterparts to Butterfree, and the Mega really boosts their appeal as well as their long-overdue popularity.
Magnemite Line

What's not to love about Magnemite? This electric type's artificial appearance really stood out in the original 151, demonstrating that Pokemon could truly take any conceivable form and didn't need to follow biological sense. What's with the screws, which don't seem to be holding any pieces together? How is Magnemite alive? Does it have organs inside? Where did it come from?

I'm glad we've never really gotten straight answers. There are those with an obsessive need to rationalize pokemon as believable, evolved living things to the point that they outright reject these object-like pokemon, but I really prefer pocket monsters as impossible, illogical and extranormal entities who nonetheless find their way into structured, ecological niches.

Magnemite is also just damn cute. Anything with a big, round eye or eyes and little pinhole pupils is endearing to me by default, but even moreso if it doesn't have any other recognizable features.

Like Diglett, Magnemite takes the "ain't broke, don't fix it" by just becoming three times the Magnemite, referred to as Magneton. That a magnetic monster evolves by merely sticking together makes a lot of thematic sense, and has the same flawless appeal as Dugtrio. If you loved Magnemite - and you should - then you're logically going to love having three Magnemite as a single pokemon and calling it a day.

It's with mixed feelings, then, that I accept the fourth-generation addition of Magnezone, where Magneton's magnetic bond becomes powerful enough to fuse the three Magnemite into a single body. The result looks intriguingly like an alien spacecraft, and I love the idea that "UFO's" could have all along been these surreal, living magnet-beings who somehow formed on our own world.

However, the cuteness I spoke of was a pretty delicate formula, and Magnezone may be cool, but it lacks that sweet, wide-eyed innocence I loved so much. I know two of the three beings represented here stay basically the same, but my mind can't help giving priority to the largest, central 'mite when reading Magnezone's overall personality. It's undeniably cool as heck that you can capture and train a magnetic, three-eyed flying saucer, but I'm just not quite as big a fan of its grouchy demeanor.

Gee Magnezone, when did you get so

negative

NEGATIVE!!! HAHA!!!!
Diglett Line

My personal preferences for bugs, fungi and blob creatures aside, Diglett might honestly be one of the most perfect designs in Pokemon. It boils the idea of a mole down to basic, abstract elements in an immediately eye-catching and memorable way - a minimalistic face popping out of the soil - which serves more as a symbol of an idea of a creature than a creature itself, though this very same abstraction of a mole has had a precedent in our culture for generations:

The classic whack-a-mole arcade game has seen thousands of variations with all sorts of different mole designs, but at its most basic, the "moles" are nothing but plastic pegs, sometimes with a just couple of crude features slapped on for fun. Even in Diglett's first anime appearance, a guy ran around trying to smash them with a mallet. Hilarious.

...And why fix what isn't broken? When Diglett evolves into Dugtrio, nothing changes other than the amount of Diglett, and while some people find this the laziest and cheapest style of pokemon evolution, I'm sure I needn't even say how much I'd love if Venonat could evolve into just a bunch more Venonat. Maybe three Venonat wearing the same trenchcoat like they're sneaking into an R-rated movie. WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN.

So yeah, if you're absolutely in love with Diglett as-is, Dugtrio is kind of the dream, isn't it?

Of course, nothing about the original mole pokemon is quite as tantalizing as the mystery of what they look like under the ground. Fans have had a blast over the years coming up with a range of answers from the predictable stylized mole to bizarre and terrifying subterranean monstrosities, while the anime and other materials have glossed over the issue or taken absurd shortcuts, like when Brock held a Dugtrio in his hands and they just sort of stopped at a clump of soil. I mean...what?

I'd probably prefer if this mystery stays with us - there's just too much fun you can have with it - but I get the feeling that some day, before the sun burns out and the existence of pokemon is horrifically erased from the entire continuum of reality forever, it's entirely possible we'll end up with an evolution or mega-evolution in which Dugtrio emerges completely from its portable soil-dimension. I'm rooting for a giant, frightening dirt-monster, maybe even a dragon type, but I'm also completely on board with the "hand, or something" theory.

Diglett and Dugtrio are easily among the most iconic images in the pokemon franchise. They almost can't be improved upon, and the nonsensical nature of a creature perpetually emerging from a hole - no matter where - is a big part of the charm.
Shellder Line

There's Slowbro's symbiotic pal! I didn't realize until doing these reviews how far apart they were in the pokedex, or that Slowbro is the one that comes first. That kinda seems like a bit of an oversight, doesn't it? Reading the 'dex in order would just make a lot less sense.

Anyway, a wild-type, free living Shellder takes on a water/ice bivalve form, rather than a gastropod, and what a lovable bivalve it is! Its shell is just so pleasantly designed, it has those spooky circular eyes I love so much, and it has a comical pink tongue representative of a bivalve's tongue-like "foot." Like many other cartoon mussels, it gives the impression of having a face inside of a mouth, which I just got done saying is one of my favorite design features wherever it comes up.

You can guess, then, why I'm not quite as fond of Cloyster's smug mug. I really am a total sucker for cute, and especially weird-cute, like Shellder, Grimer, Psyduck and Magnemite. Actually, I guess I'm just a sucker for those perfectly circular eyes with little dot-pupils. They're basically the eyes Mizuki Shigeru gave to 90% of his monsters.

Still, Cloyster is an interesting creature. You can interpret its "head" as its own black pearl, and that rugged, multi-layered shell is one of the most elaborate yet organic designs in the original 151. Whether its notorious resemblance to a certain part of the human anatomy detracts or enhances the appeal is up to you, but it does make the pearl-head look like a demonic shadow-baby emerging into the world, and that's pretty funny.

My only gripe, besides the drop in cuteness, is that the pokedex claims nobody knows what Cloyster really looks like, and coupled with its original sprites, I get the feeling it actually wasn't supposed to have a black sphere for a head. Its original concept was clearly more of an oyster with a dark, shadowy hole in the middle, eyes and teeth leering out of the darkness. This, I could definitely get more behind than the rather underwhelming pearl-baby-orb.

To go on a side-rant here, people have been quick to say in many of these reviews that the pokedex is only semi-canon hyperbole, but 1), I don't care, and 2), it's still the most insight we're ever given into these creatures. Reflected by their play mechanics and used as a springboard for their anime and manga appearances, Pokedex entries are consistently treated like the setting's highest authority. I've always considered them canon, and for reviewing purposes I always will, excepting only where numerical data is impossibly absurd, like when a pokemon burns hotter than a million suns and can bench-press the moon.

It may look like more of a douchebag once it evolves, but I still love the idea of a pet battle-monster that's just a big, nasty scallop with ice powers.
Growlithe Line

This is another of those pokemon that doesn't really do anything for me. Sorry guys, I know a domestic dog is kind of a necessity somewhere in this generation, but Vulpix and Ninetales pretty much already filled my personal "fire type canine" quota and pull it off with nicer designs, to boot. Like I said, I'm not really a fan of those triangular anime eyes so many pokemon have; they're just kind of minimally functional, stock anime eyes without a lot of personality.

For once, though, I find a two-stager really upping its personality when it evolves. I like that Arcanine is such a big, shaggy tiger-like dog, with its unruly hair and big bulky proportions. It really is HUGE, too, like, bigger than a whole human.

Growlithe and Arcanine are dogs that breathe fire. If that's your favorite thing in pokemon, more power to you, but I'm personally pretty moot...and we've had, what, a hundred zillion twillion more fire dogs since? It feels like it, anyway.
Voltorb Line

Every time a new generation of pokemon are released, you end up with a whole lot of fans loudly complaining that the latest batch of designs feel unimaginative or desperate.

And every single time, the rest of us can always point back to the original 151 and say "ball with eyes on it."

...But is that such a bad thing? Monsters can come in any form imaginable. What's wrong with putting eyes on a ball and calling it a day? It's not like Voltorb is just any old ball, either. It's a pokeball that's somehow also an electric-type pokemon.

In gameplay terms, Voltorb occupies the same niche as that mainstay of fantasy role-playing, the mimic, a creature resembling loot for the taking until SURPRISE! IT WAS MONSTER!

It's a necessary role for a game like this, and in Pokemon, we don't find items in treasure chests. We find them in pokeballs!

In-universe, Voltorb's reason for existence is a little more ambiguous, but so are pokeballs to begin with. How do they work? Who figured them out? The answers could never be as interesting as the mystery, but if these little orbs can somehow store an entire living being like files on a USB drive, who's to say one couldn't somehow develop sentience of its own?

Personally, I subscribe to the theory that the first Voltorb came into being when a pokemon's essence corrupted and merged with a malfunctioning ball, but I'd also like to propose that perhaps some electrical entity from another reality simply found a pokeball a convenient gateway into our world, got stuck along the way, and reconfigured into a new pokemon species.

Whatever it is and why, Voltorb isn't fooling anyone once it evolves into Electrode, which is bigger than a beach ball and impossible to mistake for much else. I'm not sure how I feel about Electrode's face, the only change to it besides the orientation of its colors, but at least this is one pokemon that loses the triangle eyes.

Electrode, for the longest time, was also the absolute fastest of all pokemon, and it's pretty interesting that a giant, electrical sphere apparently gets around at lightning speed.

I'm alright with the balls
Mankey Line

Mankey has the honor of being our very, very first fighting-type pokemon to review! It never really occured to me to think about before doing these reviews, but the first numerical representative of each type was kind of designed to be exemplary of it, wasn't it? Rattata was our first normal, Sandshrew our first ground, Ekans our first poison. These firsts are all about as basic as their respective types get, and Mankey is no exception. It's pretty much just a hairy ball with a pig face and monkey appendages, which doesn't do much to visually communicate the fighting type, except that monkeys in Japan are generally associated with martial arts.

Mankey is also another one that barely changes at all when it evolves. In fact, it just gets angrier, acquires metallic-looking bands on its now hairless limbs, and completely loses its tail, which might be why it's so pissed off to begin with.

Fighting is kind of a more "abstract" type in pokemon. Nothing really chemically or biologically differentiates it from a normal type like, say, grass or electric, but it has interesting offensive and defensive properties regardless. It's strong against dark, ice, rock, steel, and normal type, making it one of the few "elements" with any non-neutral effect on normal, but it's not very good against psychic, poison, flying, fairy or bug, while fairy, psychic and flying do double damage to a poor little Mankey, and fighting moves can't touch ghost types at all.

This all starts to make sense when you think of the fighting type as basically a "hero" type, which is more or less how it's presented in Japan. Fighting-type pokemon aren't just physically strong, but ultra-disciplined, what Dungeons and Dragons would categorize as "lawful." This is why they're rivals of the "dark" type, which we'll talk more about when we hit generation II!

The pig-monkeys aren't the most imaginative or memorable pokemon out there, but they're enjoyable enough introductions to the fighting type.
Pokemon Gijinkas Wiki

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Psyduck Line

Another darling of the fandom, it's pretty hard to go wrong with psyduck. It's squishy, bulbous chubbiness, dim-witted personality and hilariously blank stare are all delightful visuals in a duck-billed water monster, and the nature of Psyduck's mental powers are damn intriguing. I'll once again let the pokedex explain:

So, we've got this dopey little critter whose sluggish brain nonetheless hides incredible psychokinetic power, suffers constant headaches, and doesn't even know what's going on when its brain-voodoo finally goes off. I love this kind of stuff. Psychic pokemon have always played around with these utterly weird, even unsettling mental forces, but nowhere is that more evident than throughout the first generation...even if Psyduck isn't actually a psychic type. It's pure water! I guess it's kinda cool that pokemon don't absolutely always have to have a predictable typing to match their abilities.

We're sure seeing a lot of top-tier pokes here in the middle of the dex. Psyduck is just innately lovable, and its "lore" is incredibly cool.

As is so often the case, I don't care as much for the final evolution as I do for its predecessor. I realize the entire point is that the slow, awkward, brain-dead Psyduck becomes a sleek, powerful fighter, and I can appreciate it, but Psyduck's failings are just so much more charming than Golduck's perfections. I do like how Golduck is also supposed to look a little like a Kappa, though, minus the head-dish and the turtle shell Kappas are famous for. In fact, Golduck's pokedex is the first place I ever really heard the term Kappa at all, rendered a much more famous monster by the ever more massive flood of anime culture in Pokemon's wake.

Golduck may be cool, but I guess I'm a bigger fan of pathetic!

It's always important, of course, to discuss an animal basis that the fandom doesn't always find obvious, and an awful lot of people still seem to be under the impression that Psyduck and Golduck are actual ducks.

Yes, it's in their name, I know, but let's be reasonable here. These pokemon are four-limbed, with webbed "hands" instead of wings, they have muscular tails and they swim under the water. Their every possible characteristic is that of a platypus, right down to the fact that they aren't flying types.

Even the completely flightless Doduo was a flying type in the first generation. Know why? Because in early production, it was called bird type, and it was given to all of the birds. There's already a flying-type duck, Farfetch'd, here in the first generation, which never recycles an animal for two otherwise unrelated monsters.

Psyduck didn't get the flying type, A.K.A. the bird type, because it's a dang monotreme.
Doduo Line

There's something automatically lovable about flightless birds. I guess since the vast majority of birds evolved for flying, a ground-bound avian feels stranger, more exotic, and just a tad pitiable, though Doduo, funny enough, is a flying type pokemon, which is just another holdover from when "flying" type was almost just called "bird" type. In fact, the move "fly" in Japan is only referred to as though it's an impressive leaping attack, though that still doesn't explain why you can use it to ride your Doduo over mountains and seas to the other end of the country. That's not only a bit of a stretch for just a leap, but landing should splatter you both into an unrecognizable wet patch.

When it comes to the design, Doduo doesn't actually look anything at all like a dodo, which I'm hoping will get representation some day a as a ghost type, in reference to the Dodo's status as the most iconic modern-world extinction.

Instead, Doduo looks exactly like a kiwi, to such a degree that I'm surprised it's still so often compared to an ostrich, emu or moa. The only differences at all between Doduo and a kiwi are the long, thin necks, and the fanciful number of heads, with your average real kiwi, of course, boasting a minimum of four to six. (turned away from the camera in most photographs)

It's a shame that simple kiwi charm is dropped by Dodrio, yet another pokemon that loses cute, life-like animal eyes in favor of those tacky triangular ones when it evolves. It's still really cool that any pokemon is a giant, shaggy ratite with multiple heads, but what was wrong with the kiwi faces?

The kiwi-dodo-emus are really interesting and unique pokemon, but lose some of the magic when they evolve.
Pikachu Line

Here he is, folks, the golden calf of the Pokemon brand. Pikachu was chosen relatively last-minute to be the "mascot" monster of the series, and twenty years later, the world generally ranges from marginally indifferent to positively sick of the yellow rodent. This is an inevitability for any single character saturating the market to such an extent, so it's hardly pika's fault, and they honestly made a pretty good choice here. Pikachu is simple to draw, easy to recognize at a glance, just cute enough - especially in these blobbier Sugimori drawings - and just slightly weirder than a normal, mundane animal thanks to its cartoon lightning-bolt tail and electrical powers.

It really does feel like the most "marketable" critter in the first generation; a safe bet to gamble so much brand recognition on, and one that ultimately paid off.

Raichu, of course, is a lot cooler looking than Pikachu, especially with its more whip-ike tail, but Pikachu's status as the face of the franchise has shoved its own bigger, stronger, final evolution into its shadow. That has to suck for Raichu, knowing you're objectively better in every measurable way but that some young punk is going to soak up all the attention instead. Poor Raichu. Raichu was even portrayed as kind of a jerkoff in the anime. Pikachu didn't even want to ever be a Raichu.

With Pikachu merchandise flying off the shelves world-wide, it was only logical that they take things a step further and introduce a baby Pikachu in the second generation, known as Pichu, which really is about thirty million degrees more darling. Pikachu looks like a big steaming pile of barf next to Pichu. The world was not ready for a tinier, squeakier Pikachu, and it still hasn't fully recovered from Pichu's reign of terror.

Pikachu's overexposure puts it fairly low on most favorite pokemon lists, but a lightning-hurling chinchilla-like rodent isn't a bad concept at all, and Pikachu fills its role as series mascot quite well. Kudos to you if it's still one of your favorites on its own merits, and even more Kudos if you're a Raichu devotee. I'm gonna give the 'chu three and a half out of five.
Vulpix Line

I am someone who fully appreciates "cute" by both traditional and non-traditional definitions, but a cute mammal on its own doesn't impress me much conceptually, so while the concept of a multi-tailed, fire-breathing baby fox has appeal I can understand and Vulpix is the kind of animal I'd carry around like a baby and put comical hats on, it's not something that grabs my active interest as a pokemon. Vulpix at least boasts the distinction of being the first non-starter fire type pokemon in the 'dex, and it was about time, wasn't it? Fire has oddly enough been kind of a rare type throughout the series, despite being one of the most basic "elemental" themes and one of your three starter choices.

I guess I'm one to talk, though. Mortasheen is approaching 600 monsters as I write this and I have basically none with a fire theme at all. I love some of the weird stuff pokemon does with the type, but for whatever reason, I have a hard time getting into fire as a creature motif. I'm not really sure why.

You know what, I'm gonna try and fix that. I'm gonna try to make some fire monsters that I really like. Thanks, Vulpix!

When Vulpix evolves into Ninetales, it drops the "cute" in favor of a more mature sort of "elegance." Again, this is something I can take or leave, but I can still respect. Many more foxes - and other fire-type canines, fox and non-fox - are yet to come, but most have relatively overwrought and unrealistic designs. The streamlined simplicity of Ninetales is fundamentally pleasant, with a minimal color palette and no extraneous stripes or spikes or doo-dads to break up its form, and best of all, it doesn't have those awkward, angular anime eyes that are so common to other pokemon. These more animal-like eyes look vastly better and I really wish they were more standard to the series than those "Dragonball Z" looking ones they like to slap on everything.

Vulpix and Ninetales aren't "me," but I'm giving them a four because I can't argue that they aren't very pleasantly designed, and should have been gamefreak's standard measure of quality for a lot of other mammalian 'mons.
Meowth Line

For a long time, Meowth and its evolution were the only explicitly feline pokemon, and to this day, I don't think there's any other as charmingly designed as this little dweeb. The huge eyes, oversized head and lack of a nose are so much more adorable than any more detailed cat could ever be, even if the first time I saw a Meowth, I thought I was looking at some sort of lemur-like monster.

Meowth's design is specifically intended to invoke a maneki neko, the "beckoning cats" said to bring good fortune and typically shown holding gold coins. Meowth is the only pokemon in the game that learns the move "pay day" by leveling up, which seems to just create actual, spendable in-game money out of nowhere and begs the question of how the Pokemon world can possibly hold together any monetary system at all when this is a thing.

Admittedly, this otherwise average, unevolved normal type could have been one of the first generation's most forgotten pokemon if it wasn't such a unique and unusual mainstay of the animated series. I can't think of anyone who ever liked pokemon to any degree and didn't love Team Rocket's Meowth. The conniving, desperate rapscallion is impossible not to root for the hardest of the central cast even if his ultimate dream in life IS to climb the ranks of what's basically the mafia, proving how cute literally anything can be once a small, pitiful non-human is doing it.

What I just want to know is why nobody in the show's canon is more awed that this one random pokemon learned through sheer determination to speak in complete sentences. Even when it's threatening your life through some sort of interpretive poetry with the two sexiest people you've ever seen pedaling a giant, mechanical goldfish, your mind is PROBABLY going to remain kind of stuck on the existence of a talking cat.

Meowth would be a darling pokemon even if one of them wasn't also a precociously devious criminal mastermind who's spent the last twenty years somehow stalking and terrorizing the same perpetually prepubescent boy.

...But then, there's Persian. I'm sure there's people who like Persian more than Meowth, but I'm not gonna pretend I can wrap my head around why, unless you associate Persian with a real cat you had or some other personal, special case. Otherwise, how BLAH can a pokemon possibly get? After something as iconic and precious as Meowth, you just turn it into sort of a normal looking housecat with a marble on its head? Meowth should have evolved more like Pikachu or Jigglypuff, just sort of scaling up and elaborating a little on what made it stand out.

Meowth is the most endearing cat pokemon out there...but evolves into the most forgettable.
Krabby Line

Sometimes, we can forget the charm of animal pokemon as basic as Krabby. It's nothing but a cartoon crab with an underbite, but it pads out the setting's biodiversity and therefore its ecological believability. I like Krabby.

When Krabby evolves into Kingler, one of its claws grows far larger than the other, its underbite gets more impressive and its head spikes multiply. It's basically better in every way, except for the eyes. They're cuter, more mischievous eyes, but their perfectly straight bottoms make them look like flat, two-dimensional disks, shaded like they're supposed to be round and bulging. I can let it slide under cartoon law, but it still clashes to a degree with the nicely executed shape and depth of the rest of Kingler.

And another thing bugs me about these guys, too.

There is never, ever a good reason to treat crustaceans as something distinct from the other arthropoda. The only reason popular culture seems to exclude them from "bug" umbrella, near as I can tell, is that people would rather see them as appetizing seafood, I guess. We've long known however that the crabs, lobsters, shrimp, barnacles and water fleas were even closer to the insects than the arachnids are, and current models even place all known insects within the Crustacea. There's simply no excuse for Krabby and Kingler to be pure water types when they could have been water/bug, a combination still absent from any fully evolved pokemon. To add insult to injury, later generations would introduce an entirely different crab, a lobopod, and even a damn snail into the "bug" type, though we would also see a couple more lines of non-bug crustaceans as well. What are they, then? Incredibly crustacean-shaped mammals?

Actually, I like that idea. Or maybe birds! If both a blue whale and a vampire bat can be mammals, I think Krabby can be some kind of extremely divergent duck.

My only complaints are all anal.
Farfetch'd

If there were an award for the most overlooked and unappreciated pokemon in the first generation, I don't doubt Farfetch'd would either win or come pretty damn close. Even back during the height of Pokemania, I remember people forgetting the poor thing ever existed. Fans of the lonely duck have clamored for an evolved form for two decades with no luck, and it's steadily been considered the worst fully evolved pokemon in the lowest competitive metagame tier.

Farfetch'd is basically a novelty pokemon, seemingly conceived only to add a little more collectability to the original roster. It's based on a Japanese proverb that basically means "a duck has come bearing green onions," indicating a very fortunate but extremely unlikely turn of events - since duck comes out pretty delicious cooked in onion.

Farfetch'd, however, uses its leek like a sword, so it's kind of like an ironic parody of the phrase. The duck has shown up with its own onions, but it's also going to use them to kick your ass. That's cute. Farfetch'd really does deserve that evolution one of these days, which I'm fully expecting to look like a badass samurai duck with topknot-shaped feathers and a huge long leek katana.

It's just a duck holding a leek, but that's pretty whimsical, and it deserves a nice rating for how much it's put up with these long twenty years.