Another post, another gen 7 Pokémon review!
• Grimer: I run into tall grass and I see... how, a recolored Grimer, a new Alola form! Doesn't change too much from original Grimer, asides from the fact it now has fangs, which I see give it access to biting moves. Now it really looks like a dangerous zombie that really wants to eat your brain rather than just a pile of toxic goo, but it's still for the third time in a row a new regional form for an old Pokémon is a Dark-type recolor... I want more diversity please!
• Muk: I discovered it in a trainer battle close to the recycling plant, and given the theme of the trainer and location I expected Alola Grimer's evolution to show up. I just expected this Muk variant to follow the same pattern as its pre-evolved form, just green with a yellow mark bellow its mouth... and how surprised I was, they didn't just make it look pretictable, they really went nuts with the coloration, it looks like a typical representation of the mind of a person on drugs ahah. Wait, no, they just didn't give it a mess of colors, they animated it so thet visibly move on its body, which combined with the fact it drops the rather oblivious appearance of original Muk now makes it look like a fearsome monster that just wants to spread terror!
• Crabrawler: I first saw it during mu first Hakuna fight, after Mankey and Makuhita I expected a brand new Pokémon to show up and I was right. Why a crab with boxing gloves, what is that supposed to represent? Asides from that I first found its color scheme to be weird and I wasn't fond of its appearance, an impression that lasted for quite some time so I left it in my PC after I got to encounter a wild one and caught it afterwards. Then I considered giving it a shot especially since I wanted a Fighting-type so I put it on my team and its design actually grown on me. Yeah it looks weird, but I found it later to be an appealing kind of weird, it shows plenty of combative personality from its appearence alone, and its unusual color scheme is actually well done. Its French name "Crabagarre" also helped, it isn't a super clever pun or anything, but for some reason it just sounds so fun and satisfying to pronounce. Thus I enjoyed using it, that is, until it reached level 40 which frustrated me because I didn't know how I could expect to see its evolution, and at least I had Eviolite to use on it. So I was disappointed and decided to put it on my PC again, assuming it was once of these guide-dang-it evolution methods like Inkay or Sliggoo and I didn't want to lose my time leveling it up without having an idea of how it evolves.
• Crabominable: first discovered it in the Fighting-type Elite 4 battle, and I have mixed opinions about this Pokémon. For the positives it has a super awesome typing which I didn't expect to actually be done anythime soon, and I'm a fan of the fact it is inspired from a real-life species discovered in 2005 almost ten years after the creation of the Pokémon series, which means this Pokémon could never have existed prior to generation 5 (asides maybe as a very late addition to the gen 4 roster). A Pokémon based on something created or discovered years after the creation of the franchise was a fantasy of mine and for some reason I didn't expect such a thing to ever be turned into a Pokémon, but they actually did it! And based on the same species I imagined too! The concept was also well implemented, a coconut crab (I learned later the exact species Crabrawler was based on) that wants to climb to prove its strength, then has to evolve into a yeti crab so it can adapt to the cold mountains where it evolves, it was unexpected yet cleverly done. However, despite the pretty awesome creativity there are a few things about it that bother me. From a pure gameplay standpoint, the implementation of the evolution method was not really well done, as I'm pretty sure there's no clue given about it and it can only be done super late on a Pokémon you can find fairly early in the game. From a design standpoint, I don't really like how Crabominable's appearance doesn't remind me of the personality Crabrawler looked like it had. The later looks combative, like it's not going to abandon no matter what, it really wants to be the champion, and now that it reached the peak of a mountain to prove its determination... it turned into a jerk who feels a little too comfortable in its new title and now sees its opponents as nothing more than laughing stock that deserve to be crushed and eliminated as soon as possible without any form of dignity, having completely forgotten about the efforts he had to do as a Crabrawler. It just feels like a sudden personality change rather than well-executed character development.
• Diglett: I just beaten totem Gumshoos, so I can leave Verdant Cavern, and... well, wild Pokémon are everywhere. How, a Dig- WHAT?! It now has hair! And the extracted soil looks more solid now. After three Alola forms that were mostly recolors seeing something else felt like a breath of fresh air. It happened to resist Normal-type moves, so I assumed it was a Rock-type and that this Diglett variant somehow adapted to dig on harder material or something hence it had to become harder itself. But when I realized it actually was Steel-type and I was really surprised. I guess the hair can be made of metal, and the soil it shows is actually metal too, but is the brown body so inorganic to the point it is also made of metal?
• Dugtrio: Diglett was my first Alolan form evolution, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that the evolution theme for these was different. Obviously I expected Dugtrio with each head having three small hairs each just like Diglett, and instead I got... an unexpected and hilarious thing for which each head has faboulus hair, and with three different hairstyles too! It reminded me of that Simpsons episode where Homer (temporarily) gets his hair back. Justified as it's inspired from Pele's hair, a volcanic fiber commonly found in Hawaii, especially since Diglett and Dugtrio supposedly adopted this form so they could be more adapted to detection of volcanic activity.
