Dento PoddoKoon

D’s Team:   P’s Team: K’s Team:

The first Gym you will have access to in the game is in Sanyou City, but this gym is unlike any other as it has three Gym Leaders, all with different type specialties. You can’t pick which Gym Leader you face, but what factor does decide this is what starter you choose. When getting to Dento, Poddo and Koon you will only be able to face one of them, the one who specializes in the type that is strongest against your starter. For example, if you picked the Water-type Oshawott, you’ll face the Grass specialist Dento. Upon entering Sanyou City the Gym will be blocked by its attendant and he will not let you in until you visit the Pokemon School, which is just a few houses to the left of the Gym. Upon entering the Pokemon School you’ll see on of your rivals; Cheren. Battle and defeat him and you’ll then have full access to the Gym. As evidence of your newly accessible Gym, Dento will be standing outside of the Gym to greet you instead of the attendant. Now we can get to the real action. The Gym has a restaurant theme and is divided by curtains into four areas. In area one you have the usual attendant and Gym statues, in areas two and three you have your basic Gym trainers (In this case a maid and a waiter), and area four is where our faithful trio of Gym Leaders reside. Like all Gym’s this one has a puzzle of kinds in the manifestation of a quiz to test your knowledge of Pokemon type compatibility. This puzzle is extremely easy for almost every type of player, whether he/she is an experienced trainer or a just a beginner, as it deals with the three starter types; Grass, Fire and Water. As I said before the areas are blocked by curtains, and in front of those curtains are buttons which you step on to open them. The curtains have a simple logo and color that represent either Grass, Fire or Water. For example the curtain that represents the Grass-typing is green in color and has a leaf on it. The three buttons on the floor’s ‘typing’ are also represented  by a color and obvious logo. The three buttons on the floor are the key to open them, as you must step on the one that is strongest against the curtain’s respective typing.  For example, if you are facing a Green curtain you must step on the red button to open it, as Fire-types are stronger against Grass types. If you make the wrong choice you will hear a dull buzz and you just have to try again until you pick the correct button and you hear that satisfying ping noise of victory. Like I said, pretty easy right? Following those instructions, make your way through the Gym, past the two regular trainers and up to the final area where the Gym Leader triplets are. The three will do a very entertaining introduction in a triangle formation and the one you are forced to fight will be at the tip. (If you try to talk/battle the others they’ll tell you that you have to fight someone else) Enough of the Gym’s layout and such, now time to discuss the designs! Dento, Poddo and Koon, more or less, have the same basic design. Besides their hairstyle/color, their bowtie color and the style of their pants, they’re basically the same. And I personally really, really, really, like their designs! It’s both simple and sleek, not to simple where it’s boring and not complicated where it just looks like crap. What I like most about their individual designs is that their personalities match with their clothing choice, and I think that it plays an important role of their individuality. If I had to pick favourites it’d probably be a tie between Poddo and Dento. Poddo reminds me a bit of myself with his ‘let up’ spikey hair, his rebellious attitude and the way he talks (in the Japanese version) Is EXACTLY how I talk in when I speak Japanese. (This will really only make sense to people that kinda speak Japanese and understand the different honorifics, how you address yourself, verb endings etc. etc.) I’ve always loved Dento’s character design and since the Anime has been airing it has grown even more! Only thing I really hate about him is that his battle sprite is horrible! I’m surely not the only one that finds his pose awkward and strange looking right? Koon on the other hand….he’s just kind of ‘bleh’ to me. Despite him wearing my favorite color blue, the aspects of his designs that make him unique really bother me. I really hate how his hair has these three awkward, somewhat random, elongated wavy lines. I know that it’s part of the thing that gives him the aspect of being a Water-type trainer, but I just think that they could’ve represented that differently with his hair, and maybe make it not look so….globbish? I can’t think of the right word there, but for those who don’t like his hair either, you know what I mean. The other thing that pisses me off slightly is his pants. Poddo’s are slightly baggy and Dento’s are ‘normal’ sized but his are those style which I absolutely can’t stand; the kind that hang slightly over your ankles. That type of style that seems like all K-Pop boy bands wear. I just can’t stand it. I’m probably slightly overreacting, but as a huge Manga fan who’s all about characters, I kinda bitch over the slightest details. I find that when it comes to these three it really depends on who you are, and how you dress when it comes to picking which one is your favorite and least favorite. Now on to the actual battling! Now as you can tell by the beginning of this article each of these guys has a Yooterii and they’re respective elemental monkey. As they are the first Gym Leaders, they are relatively easy but I find them to be the hardest first Gym Leaders out of all the regions. But don’t take that as “they really are quite hard”, because they aren’t . That is if you get your own elemental monkey. I tried taken this gym on without one (I picked a Snivy so I faced Poddo) and I lost over and over again. You can only catch Minezumi, Yooterii and Choronekos in the tall grass before this town, so they don’t really help all that much against an elemental monkey unless you level it up pretty high. If you plan on keeping one of those Pokemon on your team then go for it and train the hell outa them, but if you’re like me and you’re just too lazy to, I would just pick up your respective elemental monkey. Beside Sanyou city is the Abandoned Lot of Dreams, and although the actual site of the lot is blocked by a small tree, there’s trainers that you can battle within the area that is accessible to you. The one on the very far right will give you your respective monkey once you beat him. As simple as that. You get the elemental monkey which is weakest against your starter choice type, in other words: The elemental monkey that will be strongest against the Gym Leader you need to face. Once you get this monkey I recommend training your it and the rest of your Pokemon to levels 14-16, and if you really want to make the battle easy for you, you can go even higher! In terms of the actual battle the lvl. 12 Yooterii shouldn’t be too much of a problem for anybody just send out your starter to do all the work on it. Although depending on the level people who picked Snivy might take longer to take it out and attain more damage due to its lack of good attack stats. After that once the Leader sends out it’s elemental monkey at lvl. 14 send yours out and just hit ‘em with a few moves that will be super effective. Pretty simple. I also recommend bring a potion or two if your Pokemon are of relatively low level. After beating either Dento, Poddo or Koon they’ll reward you with the Tri Badge, TM 83, and the ability to use Cut outside of battle!

Aloe

Aloe’s Team:

The next Gym Leader you’ll face will be Shippou City’s Normal-type specialist Aloe! Unlike other Gyms it doesn’t actually look like one from the outside because it’s connected to the city’s famous museum. So it might confuse people, but it’s located at the very top of the town. When actually approaching the Gym the only thing that stand in your way from taking it on is N. He’ll ask you for a battle, and if you beat him you can go on. When entering the building you’ll be in the museum part of the building and Aloe’s Husband (Who his somehow a pale Asian…?) will give you a small tour of it. Keep moving ahead and you’ll enter a room that looks like a library, with shelves and shelves of books. Believe it or not, this is the gym.  Her Gym’s puzzle is like the previous one where it’s a quiz, except instead of being on type compatibility it’s about just random general knowledge. And when I say random I mean random. One question you’ll get will be “What’s something that you eat, is cooked in a pan and delicious?” Each book shelf that I mentioned earlier has a ladder that when you go up and Press ‘A’ will ask you a question, but you have to go in a specific sequence. That’s how you will be asked the questions and how you’ll answetr them.   All the questions are very easy to answer and after answering them you somewhat ‘gain access’ to the next book that will ask you the question. If you had the Japanese version and can’t understand Japanese, this Gym was probably pretty annoying. But If my memory doesn’t fail me, if you just keep pressing ‘A’ you’ll get through no problem. Once answering all the questions correctly one of the shelves will move to reveal a secret staircase to a secret underground room! When going down the stairs you’ll find another room filled with books and display cases and of course, the Gym Leader Aloe.  As it seems fit I’ll start talking about her design now. I absolutely love Aloe’s design, and to be honest all the other Gym Leaders in Unova, but once again there’s just some little details that piss me off. The fact that she’s black just makes like her from the start because we haven’t actually had a black character in any Pokemon game! That’s like a huge step up for Pokemon! Her actual clothes have an amazing color scheme that go perfectly with her skin tone and her personality, and not to mention the whole ‘mom’ aspect of her design. In short, another basic wonderful design. Only thing that’s been bothering me is the question on whether she is fat or not. Because she looks skinny from the waist up but then suddenly you move your eyes down to the apron and BAM! She looks fat. Luckily they re-did the artwork and made it so you can actually see her without her big old apron. And the answer to that eternal question is that she isn’t fat…I think. I guess she’s just big boned? >< Anyways, on to the actual battle. Aloe carries a lvl. 18 Haderia and a lvl. 20 Miruhoggu under her belt.  She’s kinda similar to Whitney with her Milktank, just not as annoying. Before you actually start the battle I recommend training your Pokemon to lvl. 21-24 and having a few potions. There’s of course the whole type advantage aspect, so having a fighting type would be pretty helpful. Luckily there’s awesome fighting types such as Dokkora, Nageki and Dageki on the outskirts of town that you can catch. If you don’t want one that’s fine, I defeated Aloe no problem without one but because of my all of my Pokemon’s crappy Attack stats I trained them a bit more so they were between lvls. 23-26. If you do have a fighting type in your roster you should easily be able to clear this Gym with a few super effective moves. For the people who don’t, listen up. The Haderia she has should be absolutely no problem for anybody, similar to Sanyou’s Gym, you just need to send out your starter let it do it’s ‘signature’ move one or twice and it should take care of it. This may seem mean, but the way I did it was that I used my HM slave, Daigo, as a sacrifice to face the Miruhoggu first so I could heal my starter. Because Miruhoggu’s Vengeance will kill you if you’re not careful. If you’re using a Pokemon with pretty low defense you’ll need to be extra careful as it could just take one hit of it and your Pokemon will faint. Only advice I got for this Miruhoggu is that you hit it with your Pokemon’s most powerful attacks hard and you do it quickly. It’s best to have a fast Pokemon so you can get in a few hits before it faints. If your first Pokemon faints and it’s your most powerful , don’t reset the game so you can re-do the battle, let yourself lose and just try again. You’ll quickly gain the experience you’ll need and figure out Miruhoggu’s ‘pattern’ so that you can beat it the next time. Once you defeat Aloe she’ll reward you with the Basic Badge and TM 67!

Arti

Arti’s Team:

Next up is the third Gym of the Unova region! Located in Hiun City and lead by the Bug-type Gym Leader Ateii! If you try to enter the Gym right after you enter the city for the first time without really doing anything, the attendant won’t let you in. To resolve this small Isshu (Haha puns ftw) you must follow Ateii to the Harbor of the city to discuss Team Plasma with Bell, Iris and him and then later fight the Plasma members that are stationed in Hiun. Once completing that task the Gym is yours to freely conquer with no one to stop you! This Gym has a kind of bee hive feel to it, as it is a Bug-type Gym, and the puzzle it has attached to it is rather simple to complete. The Gym is divided into several sections by walls of sticky honey. To clear these walls of honey you must run into them at maximum speed and just keep ‘pushing’ until you clear through it. Sounds simple right? Looks like you can just breeze through this Gym and try to avoid any trainers. Well, the slight catch is that some honey walls are blocked by gates that can only be opened by stepping on their respective buttons which are located randomly throughout the labyrinth of hive shaped rooms. So you basically have to clear honey walls to get into each room, where there might be a slight chance of  you having to battle a trainer, and having the next honey wall being blocked. I make it seem way more complicated than it really is as you can just follow the next honey wall you see to get to the next key area. After clearing all the rooms, honey walls and trainers, and opening all needed gates, you’ll be at the end of the gym where you’ll find Gym Leader Ateii standing on big butterfly-wing-like-design platform. This is the perfect place to talk about my opinion about his design. To be completely honest, his design still really hasn’t set in to my mind yet, so as of right now, Ateii is my least favorite Gym Leader in the Unova region. It probably started once I saw his overworld and VS sprites.  I mean, he looks like he’s gonna take over the world and then rape the crap outta me in his VS sprite, and he just looks so disproportional in his overworld . And the fact that he basically only wears my three least favorite colors; brown, lime green and pink, makes me dislike him even more. But after seeing his Sugimori art, my opinion slightly changed for the better. And to be honest I still really like this guy from a design aspect, it’s just that those colors are a complete turn-off for me. So you could say I have a love-hate relationship with his design, I want to love him so much but those colors and those clothes are just….*insert made up word to show my grief* For some reason, the very flamboyant attitude and clothing of Ateii and his love for Bug-types seriously remind me of our very own PJ. (Hopefully he doesn’t take offense to that considering how much I’ve bashed this guy) So that may be the reason why I have this little voice in my head that thinks Ateii is awesome, because he reminds of PJ and he is just an awesome person. I’ve talked about this guy and my hate/love for him to many other people in preparation for these articles and many have said that I’m just obviously a homophobe. That is definitely not that case, if anybody is thinking that while reading this. You guys above all should know how pro-gay I am, which is just another reason why I try so hard to like this Gym Leader. Drifting away from my fanboy self, it’s time to discuss the actual Gym battle! Ateii’s team consist of a lvl. 21 Hoiiga (Bug/Poison), a lvl. 21 Ishizumai (Bug/Rock) and a lvl. 23 Hahakomori (Bug/Grass). Your Pokemon, no matter what the situation, should be able to take on this Pokemon just based off its level. Whether you think that they’re low leveled or not, if they’re at least level 21, you’ll be fine. But the only thing you really need to clear this Gym is a Fire-type, and luckily for you there’s many Fire-type Pokemon and moves at your disposal at the time of gaining access to this Gym. Such Pokemon include, Tepig (if you chose it as your starter) Baoppu and Darumakka. And If you don’t want to capture any of those Shimama learn Nitro Charge rather early on. My suggestion is to capture a Darumakka in the Resort Desert right above Hiun as it will prove to be a powerhouse on your team throughout gameplay. And after that it’s basically a game of “hit all of Ateii’s Pokemon hard with any Fire-type moves you got”. It may seem rather blunt and way to easy, but if you follow that strategy you’ll KO his entire team with ease. Only Pokemon of his that you will probably need to hit two or three times is his Bug/Rock hybrid, Ishizumai. All of that being said, I’m rather disappointed on how easy it is to defeat this guy, especially since there are so many amazing Bug-types this gen. I would’ve preferred that you faced Ateii much later on so he was more challenging. Regardless, if you win you are rewarded with the Beetle Badge and TM76!

Kamitsure

Kamitsure’s Team:

The final Gym Leader that we’ll be discussing for Part I of this article is the Electric-type diva who resides in Raimon City! Introducing Kamitsure! This Gym is one those nice ones that are accessible right from the moment you enter town! Nothing major will really stop you from challenging the Gym other than all of the distractions of the sports arenas and the ferris wheel. The Gym has a theme similar to Raimon City, that of an amusement park. Allthough, with the bright neon details against a very dark background and foreground it has a much more arcade feeling to it. This Gym is rather unusal as it doesn’t really have much of a puzzle to it, but rather a path of Rollercoasters that you must follow. Although some aren’t active upon first encountering them, you’ll simply have to follow an alternative path to find the switch that activated that certain track. Or the switches may change your track so it goes in the direction you need it. This Gym is mostly for fun, as the roller coasters go fast, then slow and do awesome tricks such as flips! But the downside is that you have to wait sometimes for the cart to actually get to the point so you can get in it. So this Gym is by far, my favorite from a design aspect with its roller coaster rides and amazing color scheme. But at the same time it’s one of my least favorites due to the unchallenging aspect of it, considering this is the 4th Gym in the game. I expected much more of a challenge when going through the Gym. (I did face a challenge later on but I’ll talk about that later) After going  through  the very short, few rollercoasters you’ll reach the Gym Leader, Kamitsure. As per usual, it’s at this time where I’ll discuss her design. TO be frank; “WHY SO HOT KAMITSURE?!” Kamitsure is just one of those plain hot Gym Leaders that you feel slightly weird for calling hot because they’re a fictional character. Everything about this girl’s design is perfect. Her clothes are both simplistic and creative, but not too creative where it just looks strange. The color and styling of her clothing really bring out her personality and love for Electric-types! My favorite part of her design are those headphones! I think they complete her design, as if it they weren’t there the design would just be too simple and ordinary. Although that being said, I’m kind of curious to see her without them because her hairstyle slightly confuses me. The only that I kinda hate about her is that her overworld sprite makes her look overly anorexic and extremely tall, especially from a side view. And who in the heck can model walk with a hand on her hip for her entire life? She really must be a goddess. If I continue anymore I think I might fanboy overload so I’ll try to wrap this up. Those heels. Those headphones. That sexy outfit. Dat ass. I want it all. Ironically blonde white girls are total turn offs more me in real life. Now on to the actual battle! In my opinion this is one of the harder Gyms, but probably because I didn’t have any good type match ups when facing it. And to be completely honest I usually just hit Electric-types with whatever I have available, so that probably played a factor in to my challenging battle as well. Like for example, I used my Hihidaruma to defeat all her Pokemon.  But if you have the right type match ups, this battle will be a walk in the park for you. Her team consists of two lvl. 25 Emonga (Electric/Flying) and a lvl. 27 Zeburaika (Electric). I recommend your Pokemon being between lvls. 26 and 31 and as usual, a few super potions in your bag. I find the beginning of this battle much more challenging than the end game, so take that as you will. With Emonga’s killer speed and high evasiveness, if you’re not careful, it will either kill you or piss you off so much that you can’t hit it so much that’ll you’ll turn the game off in frustration. My only suggestion is to either have an extremely fast Pokemon, or a Pokemon that is strong enough or has a strong enough move where it can take out both her Emonga in one or two turns. Her Zeburaika, on the other hand, is much easier to take out, it may be fast but it’s Attack and Defense isn’t the best. So it’s just a matter of hitting it with a powerful move first. This is why I suggest having a Pokemon of higher level when facing Kamitsure, it’ll be much easier and quicker to take out her Pokemon. So the difficulty of this Gym Leader really depends on what level your Pokemon are, and what type they are. If you feel like you need to train your Pokemon more, there’s plenty of trainers and Pokemon available to reap experience of off in the Sports Arenas in Raimon City, the Desert below the city and the areans to the left and right outside the city. Once you defeat Kamitsure she’ll reward you with the Bolt Badge and TM72! Unfortunately you won’t be able to ask her to be your in game girlfriend…