Although Tabitha looked rather similar to the male Team Magma Grunts of Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire, there are other ways to make him look a little more distinct than just going "LOL he's fat now." I mean, not to knock people of that type of girth, but the portly redesign of Tabitha just seems insulting to the original design of Tabitha. And on the fandom side of things, he's going to get so much grief from both his name (Tabitha seems to be a usually-feminine name) and his size (in that it starkly contrasts his original leanness).
Absolutely. I actually welcome more characters of varying body types, but we've had a fair amount of portly male characters (and Wattson comes back for these games, too!), and
no overweight female characters.
Maybe the Chefs from Unova are, a
little? But no major female character has been of heavier weight, which I think is a shame...
My main gripe with Tabitha's redesign is...they kept Courtney practically the same, except they gave her a mini-skirt instead of her original longer one. Why change Tabitha so drastically? He wasn't important to begin with, and even though he looked kind of like the Grunts, so did Courtney. Changing the Leaders is one thing but this just seems like a pointless change to give him a less appealing design. And it has nothing to do with his weight--Wulfric had a very unique, memorable design. At this point it just seems like he was made larger to make him "stand out" without giving it much more thought, which is a shame, if you ask me.
As for Pokemon HeartGold/SoulSilver, to my knowledge, the 4 Rocket Admins didn't really have any "old" designs from Generation 2 other than generic Team Rocket Grunt artwork (which practically everyone uses for Team Rocket bar Giovanni, IIRC. Additionally, I don't even know if there was any female Team Rocket Grunt artwork prior to Pokemon FireRed/LeafGreen, so there's that.) In my opinion, the designs granted to the Rocket Admins with the advent of HG/SS mesh well with the standard Rocket Grunt designs anyway (lean design, usage of dark colors for the most part, with the white colors receiving precedence in other Team Rocket outfits). Ariana retains red hair (possibly looking even more imposing/elite than the Generation 2 design) and Archer still looks menacing, so that's not too much fuss. Archer, Proton, and Petrel all looked rather similar, so I guess people were in favor of them being "redesigned" (which wasn't too drastic, in my opinion); and at least you can still take Proton and Petrel's redesigns seriously.
Gen 2 did have female Grunts, but that honestly has no bearing on this--because you're right about the Admins' redesigns into HGSS. Petrel and Proton used the standard Grunt sprites, so they
had to be redesigned from scratch (at least they still kept their black Grunt uniforms). Archer's hair color changed but I can see the similarities with the original Admin sprite. Ariana looks a lot more different but keeps her red hair as you've said (and you could argue that her new hair is shaped more similarly to Silver's in an attempt to get people talking about who his mother could be---!). Tabitha looked a bit similar to the Grunts, yes, but as I've said, so did Courtney, and her design is barely changed, with the exception of giving her a shorter skirt.
However, with Team Magma, we apparently now have, for lack of a better word (ugh, and I hate to indulge into stereotypes too much >.<) , a "nerd boss" and a "fat Admin". Regarding the former, although I guess a "nerd villainous team boss" is somewhat new, Pokemon has enough "nerds" as it is (Bug Maniacs, Collectors, Colress (who was somewhat part of a villainous team himself), Clemont, Scientists). I know there's more to those people than just being "somewhat-tall intelligent people with prominent glasses", but it's possible to be smart without glasses. As for Tabitha, going from "lean" to "portly" is just about the most jarring change you could make in terms of a visual redesign. None of the HG/SS Rocket Admins had that happen to them, so I don't see why Tabitha was redesigned like that. Also, essentially being Maxie's right-hand man, Tabitha has to do a lot of walking/traveling around (from Mt. Chimney to areas ranging from Seafloor Cavern, Lilycove City, and Mossdeep City, depending on how the storyline unfolds; IIRC, the anime even portrayed him as an agent/scout of sorts), and a "fat" Tabitha doesn't seem inclined to be doing stuff like that.
Absolutely. The more I think about it, it looks like they're trying to make Team Magma seem like "a bunch of nerds" while making Aqua seem more "cool." Matt was seriously buffed which also
kind of came out of nowhere, but it wasn't as out-of-left-field as Tabitha. But taking that into consideration, I don't see why Game Freak would
want one team to seem "nerdier" than the other--and it's honestly not nice to include a chubbier person amongst those nerds. Unless they want to teach us the "evils of bullying" and give Tabitha more of a role in these games, it's just not a redesign that will sit well with me.
As for change, I don't think people necessarily disagree with it; people just want good/sensible change. I mean, you didn't see someone like Silver's or Whitney's lean Pokemon Gold/Silver/Crystal designs suddenly becoming fat for no reason in Pokemon HeartGold/SoulSilver; their redesigns more or less retained the leanness of their original designs. There's ways of updating things adequately while still remaining faithful to the original designs (as opposed to drastic, out-of-nowhere changes)..
Very good way to sum it up!
ROFL; you are the first person I've seen who has called Mega Swampert an "Egg" (the design isn't that bad in my opinion, though!). XD Totally agree with you; it feels like the "HOENN CONFIRMED" hype train is either hitting some bumpy areas or taking an odd detour of sorts... The thing bothering me the most is the redesigns of Tabitha, Brendan/May, and Teams Magma/Aqua in general. I don't like prejudging stuff so negatively either, but it's not that different compared to the people who are already lauding the changes with positive prejudging. :/ I mean, unless Tabitha goes on an intense exercise regimen during the events of
OmegaRuby/AlphaSapphire, I highly doubt that any amount of waiting will make me warm up to his design.
Lol, I
am starting to warm up a bit to Mega Swampert's design (Swampert is my favorite Pokémon so I really
want to like it!), but the few in-game screenshots of it we have...the silhouette just...it's an Egg.
Yeah this kind of thing is bound to happen--I remember with the reveal of Mega Evolutions...at first it wasn't stated how they would work, and all I could think was, "This seems cool, but if there starts to be four stages of evolution the game balance would break and the power creep would literally be irreversible..." But once it was confirmed to be in-battle only I was much happier with it. There's nothing wrong with having a critical mind about these kinds of things. If anything, if fans are able to professionally express their opinions, it could even help developers create better games in the future.
This. Although Steven Stone doesn't exclusively use Steel-type Pokemon (with the presence of Armaldo and Cradily), at least the Hoenn fossil Pokemon are mineral-based unlike Mega Charizard X. :x
Yeah, his teams are almost always 50% Steel and 50% Rock.
Better use a Pokémon that is weak to Rock, then!
I'm hoping this is the case, but again, there are plenty of Hoenn-species Mega Evolutions that could've been used for a demonstration, let alone a Steel/mineral type that matches Steven Stone's modus operandi.
Something else I'm finding weird about this "demonstration" is that the scan shows the Mega Charizard to be Lv100. ORAS confirmed to be difficult, I guess?
May looks lanky as heck; her legs seem longer than her whole upper body!
I'm also not enjoying that "bow-legged" look that she and Diantha have... @@;
