Pokemon Water Starter Designs

[CAUTION! I WILL BE TALKING ABOUT ONE OF THE EVOLVED FORMS OF A POKEMON FROM X AND Y]

Okay. Water Type Starters are awesome. I always use them. Let's see what we have:

Blastoise is a turtle, Feraligatr is an alligator, Swampert is a mudfish, Empoleon is a penguin, Samurott is an otter, and Greninja is a frog. Kind of boring when you look at it this way. Let's look at the OTHER side of things.

But really the connection only starts at Gen 4 and onward.

Empoleon is an emperor penguin. Today, there are Japanese Emperors. They can be like the "ruler or leader" of the nation for those who don't know.

Samurott is a samurai. See where I'm going with this? Samurais are Japanese and were used in combat. They are huge and have lot's of armor. They aren't flexible and they can carry huge swords. They are for brute force.

Greninja on the other hand is a ninja. I guess you can see the connection. Unlike Samurais, the use stealth to their advantage. They are very flexible and use flexible/somwhat small weapons for stealth. They don't usually have ANY armor and infiltrate the enemy.

So Emperors, Samurais, and Ninjas are the design for the 3 newer generation water starters. This might be a coincidence but it is cool!

That actually is really cool, I haven't thought about it before. I've always said that I like the fire starters the most but if you think about it, the creativity with the water starters is very good. Though, like the fire starters, they range from reptiles (Feraligatr and Charizard) to birds (Empoleon and Blaziken) and go through stuff like turtles and monkeys so they are both pretty great in their designs imo. Not going to go into grass starters because I usually don't like them as much, no offense to grass starter lovers ;)

Before gen 4, there wasn't too much connecting the water starters, more than that they were based off water dwelling animals. Grass starters were pretty much based on dinosaurs or reptiles in Treecko's case, and fire starters were rather random; lizard, mouse and chicken. It was probably easier to find base animals that made true sense for the water types, as no real animals do breathe fire or throw leaves I guess.

But the last three generations of water starters are indeed pretty much connected when you think about it. I can't see a similar connection between the other kinds of starters... Torterra, Serperior and Chesnaught are all very different. As are Infernape, Emboar and Delphox, unless you want to consider the fire/fighting typing a connecting factor for the first two but meh :3 I wonder if they kept this water starter thing in mind when they created them.

I usually favour Fire and Grass type starters (no offence to the Water type starters, I just prefer to use Lapras or Gyarados or Sharpedo as my Water type in game) but I'll give my opinion anyway.

Gen 1
As various others from around the internet would tell you, Blastoise is a cool turtle with cannons attached to its back. I agree, but I've only used it a couple of times. Charizard is my favorite starter, period, so I almost always choose him. On the few occasions that I don't choose Charizard, I find I get the most use out of Venusaur. Nothing against Blastoise though, I still think he's pretty cool.

Gen 2
I would have to say that Feraligatr is my favorite Water starter. I have a fascination with reptiles in general. It's design is so ferocious, so primal. I think it's badass.

Gen 3
Sceptile is my favorite starter from Hoenn and I almost always choose him, but on the odd occasion that I don't, I'll choose Swampert. I like Swampert mainly because of its typing. It's the only Water/ Ground type whose design I don't mind. I don't love it, but out of all of the Pokemon with its typing, it, without question, has the best design.

Gen 4
I always choose Infernape, no matter what. I don't mind Torterra, I think it's pretty cool, but Empoleon is the only Water starter that I don't really like. Nothing against it, but I found Dawn's Piplup in the anime to be extremely annoying and it turned me off from the entire line. I also kind of don't like the sort of pompous look it has, but given his theme, I understand why they drew him like that.

I don't hate him entirely though, I think he has one of the more useful dual types in the game.

Gen 5
I get pissed off at Ash's Oshawott in the same vein as Dawn's Piplup, but I've gotta admit, Samurott has one of the coolest designs for any Water type pokemon that I've ever seen. I really, really love its design.

Gen 6
I've gotta say, Froakie creeped me out when it was first revealed. I've gotten used to it though since its evolutions came out. I love the concept for Greninja, but I'm still getting used to the 3D graphics so its too soon to tell.

I've actually always found water starters to be the most boring, design-wise. They're usually just aquatic creatures, stylized and painted blue.

To their credit though, unlike vegetation and open flame, it's rather hard to incorporate physical water into a pokemon design, and the Greninja line was really the first to do so.

Timbjerr said:

I've actually always found water starters to be the most boring, design-wise. They're usually just aquatic creatures, stylized and painted blue.

To their credit though, unlike vegetation and open flame, it's rather hard to incorporate physical water into a pokemon design, and the Greninja line was really the first to do so.

Click to expand...

To do so would break physics. Vegetation and flame only break regular science.

And in the case of vegetation, not even- there are animals with plants growing on them.

I almost always find myself loving the Water starter.

Gen 1 - I love them all but Squirtle is awesome!
Gen 2 - Totodile is the only one I like.
Gen 3 - I like them all but Mudkip is awesome!
Gen 4 - Piplup is the best by a long shot.
Gen 5 - Oshawott is the best once it becomes a Samurott.
Gen 6 - I was team Froakie from day one.