Morning After: How Do You Feel About Starters’ Evolutions?

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The reveal of the starters’ middle evolutions in the upcoming Pokémon Sun & Moon didn’t come out of the blue, but the designs were certainly a surprise for fans.

Rowlet’s evolution Dartrix has become a narcissistic teenager with a hair obsession. Torracat, Litten’s evolution, has gained some bulk and an edge of danger. Then we’re left with Brionne which has given Popplio a distinctly feminine charm.

Have any of your thoughts changed since you first some the reveal? Personally, I’m warming up to Brionne and making peace with its final evolution, even if it doesn’t get a more masculine look for males of the species. In fact… I’m almost willing to ditch the avian archer for my own merman; honestly I never thought I’d even consider that.

But then again, it is 2016. They say anything is possible this year and Generation VII might get even crazier than the US elections.

<3 PJ

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277 thoughts on “Morning After: How Do You Feel About Starters’ Evolutions?”

  2. So my team now and nicknames (this only includes revealed Pokemon) this is Moon

    Brionne- Goofball
    Komala- Koma
    Lycanroc- Howler
    Alolan Sandslash- Icicle
    Eevee depending on what I make it
    (Flareon- Fluffy
    Leafeon- Photo
    Umbreon- Umbra
    Sylveon- Ribbons)
    Togedemaru- Togey
    Mimikyu- Mimi

    You forget I’m gonna rotate Togey and Mimi

    Reply

  4. I’ll rate them real quick.
    Datrix – 10/10
    I absolutely love it’s design! It’s the perfect shade of green and brown, I love the name, and it’s hair obsession fits what I enterpreted Rowlet’s personality to be like. Once again the Rowlet line continues to be my favorite, maybe my favorite starter of all time.
    Torracat – 8/10
    It’s a great design, and I love how it’s body shape isn’t just a generic cat. It’s face looks great, the tag thing is kinda wierd. What really kills it for me is knowing that the potentional of it’s design will be squandered. -_- (Dual evos? Should I just give up at this point?)
    Brionne – 4/10
    Brionne is, well, I mean it’s alright I guess. The shade of blue is nice, but the skirt and ears look so off to me. The name is great though.

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  5. So far for my FireRed run with mons I haven’t used before:
    (Got the ThunderBadge)
    In party:
    Spice- Ivysaur
    GRENADE!!!- Voltorb
    Diggin’- Diglett
    KingBeetch- Beedrill
    Prof. X- Drowzee
    Jacob- Meowth
    In Box:
    KAAAAWWWWN- Fearow
    Ratatatata- Ratticate
    Ch’Ding- Farfetch’D (got through a trade)

    BTW a little sidenote is the nicknames are supposed to be a little goofy because I just want to have as much fun on this run

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  7. I was just thinking…why GF always create the same fire starter? I mean, why can’t a fire starter be slow and bulky? Except for Emboar, there’s not a single Fire starter whose HP is above 80 and whose speed is below 100 (considering that they obvious gave Blaziken speed boost and protect for no reason at all). Can you believe that 5 fire starters on 6 (and probably 6 on 7) have 100 base speed or more when except from Greninja no other water starter has more then 78 base speed? 78 for God sake! Also, no fire starter except from Delphox has a base defense over 85 (at best). Basically the fire starter is always the same pokemon: a special or physical sweeper, or a mixed sweeper (and of course half of them, or maybe 4 on 7 considering Torracat bio, are fire/fighting so basically 3 fire starters are completly unuseful just because Blaziken exist). Grass is not truly a good type but at least GF used a bit of imagination among them, no one like the others.
    What I want for Gen 8 is a wall Fire starter with great defenses and poor speed and a water starter with at least 90 base speed.

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  9. So boogie2988 just basically confirmed that the NX is a handheld console hybrid. The handheld plugs into the console and you can unplug it to play a form of the game mobile. I’m unsure if this means the full game or like, a mobile game sort of like Fall Out Shelter or something. It is apparently very easy to program for and and person from Ubisoft (It is implied the person is from Ubisoft) says that it is very innovative and that they wish they came up with it.

    WOW OKAY

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  10. Now that the dust has settled…

    Toracat it’s not perfect. I don’t particularly care for it. I think I would like it more if it bridged the gap between the first and final form better. Torracat turning into litten3 is just such a dramatic jump… Regardless, I don’t hate Litten3’s design and I will gladly use it as my main Pokemon as long as it is NOT part Fighting

    Dartrix is pretty okay design wise… Emo teenager, I get it. Once again, just can’t understand the dramatic leap int the final form. Rowlett and all its evolutions look so different from each other.. Also even though I love rowlett, I’m really not a fan of this humanoid stilt leg hooded bow and arrow owl man. Just not what I wanted at all for rowlett so I don’t think I’ll ever end using this guy unfortunately

    Brionne… Bless this poor child’s little heart. This is probably the straight up worst second stage starter I’ve ever seen. I didn’t really notice yesterday but today I’m digesting it all and I really just can’t believe how ugly this thing is. Like seriously GF, wtf? I thought poplios transformation into poplio3 would be way more graceful than this. All three of these Pokemon look completely unrelated, it’s just confusing to look at. It’s like they didn’t even try to make them look connected. But at least poplio3 is really cool and beautiful. It will really give milotic a run for its money.

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    • I’ve been thinking about how dramatic some of the changes from evolution to evolution are. Wondering if the leaked starters we’ve seen could be some sort of Z-Form as leaks have suggested there are and not the usual appearance of the Partner Pokémon in the final evolutionary form.

      Reply

    • Think of Brionne as a Metapod or Spewpa. 🙂

      Sometimes people go into a confused phase at some point in their life then they’ll grow out of it. Particularly Dartrix.

      And if you find these evos jarring, just think of Dragonite or Rhyperior, and you’ll be just fine.

      Reply

  11. Well I personally LOVE all three of them. With Torracat being my fave of the three. <3
    All together I would have to say form wise, I like Litten the most of the three first forms, then Torracat, of the second forms, and I actually really love Popplio's third form the most out of all the last evo's (that were reviled at least)

    But I am still going to have all three of them on my team on my main playthrough. I am buying both games, and I am playing Moon version first, but I am going to be using my sun version to get the other two starter Pokemon for on my Moon version main playthrough. LOL I used to do the same thing with red and blue when I was younger. 😀

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  12. Hmm, just realised that if the demo does allow for a massive spoilery datadump, at least some DMCA takedown-fearing sites like Serebii etc. will steer clear of the info and allow for a “safe” connection with the pokémon news sphere to remain open, so that’s something. It’ll be quite annoying not to come around here for a time, but you gotta do what you gotta do to actually get to enjoy the discovery aspect of the game.

    I know you probably wouldn’t be foolish enough to do this at PJ, but if you do massively cover the info on other outlets such as youtube, could you try and refrain from spoilery titles etc.? (I realise this might be very difficult on social media once all the new pokés start to spread, but I only follow you on youtube and not fb and twitter so if it comes down to it it shouldn’t be too difficult to at least keep video titles non-spoilery. I guess it is just to avoid me the hassle of unsubscribing and resubscribing, but that doesn’t feel like it should be necesary.)

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    • Yeah I’m leaving here as soon as I get word of a demo. It’s a shame honestly, they should’ve learned their lesson with the ORAS demo.

      Reply

    • I i mean i truly doubt gamefreak would learn from their mistakes
      but yeah i do thing people may fear takedowns
      But screw that I WANT INFO

      Reply

    • We discussed how we’re going to handle spoilers in the chat recently. All officially announced news will not be marked with spoilers (for example with the reveal of Partner Pokémon evolutions we’ve got an image on the front page showing them), however leaked information will be marked as spoilers on the front page of the site and our other channels.

      We won’t spoiler warning individual images within an article, instead choosing to spoiler the whole article on the front page.

      Regarding possible information incoming from the demo. We comply to any legal requests or takedowns we’re faced with. 🙂

      Reply

      • Yeah, that’s a perfectly good policy and I didn’t expect anything less from you all! Wasn’t expecting you to go pirate either, it’s just IIRC PJ didn’t receive massive takedown leaks back in Gen V and thus you aren’t quite acting “once bitten, twice shy” like others might be. I assume you’ll publish as expected until you do get bitten if that ever happens :p .

        Reply

  14. The tiger is a 10. the teenage owl is a 7 and the silly water thing is a 4. But regarding the final forms the only one that can be saved is the archer, because the other two redefined the expression trainwreck.

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  15. I still absolutely love Popplio’s line. Popplio is absolutely adorable, and I mean. . . just look at Brionne. I will say, Brionne’s official art doesn’t quite do her justice, however, when they showed her in game, I was sold. I’m really looping forward to evolving her up to “Entermaid”.

    Can’t wait.

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    • Brionne… I just… I can’t. I love poplios final Evo. She is really gorgeous although the intense femininity still feels so random and out of the blue considering poplios boyish-neutral design but whatever. And “entermaid” just kinda makes me barf. Doesn’t roll off the tounge at all

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        • Out of the names suggested so far, I must admit, that one is also down the bottom of my ‘preferred name’ list.

          I’m expecting something that uses the word ‘Idol’ since they’ve already used ‘Pop’ for Popplio.

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  18. I have no issue with any of the evo. Sure, some like Brionne needs time to get used to, but they look great and has a distinct charm to their looks.

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  20. Form 2 of the alolan starters are all good (apart from Brionne’s satanic eyes).
    Which makes the leaked final forms all the more tragic.

    Reply

      • Eh, I’m happy enough with it.
        I have a few issues with its final form (mainly the cowl, the way its head changed drastically and it using feathers as fingers), but I think its form 2 is a pretty natural progression. Plus I can sympathise with the love of keeping one’s hair immaculate.

        http://img06.deviantart.net/fafd/i/2016/278/9/1/hey_by_salanchu-dak008f.png

        Either way I’m going with Rowlett because its final is better than the other two, which is a shame because originally I was planning to use Litten and I like both of Littens first 2 forms.

        Reply

        • Oh, don’t get me wrong (I worded horribly) I LOVE its mid form
          It’s final is good, but not perfect
          The other two got less .. .good ones
          Popplio’s is fine imo
          And Littens… needs to be scrapped

          Reply

          • I don’t have anything against Popplio3’s existance, it’s just one of those Pokemon that I’d probably never choose to use. I’d like it more if its hair wasn’t tied up.

            Tony the Tiger (Litten’s final) is a sin that must be punished.
            http://i.imgur.com/epqnU2q.png

  22. Alolan Persian, Robinroot (Dartrix evolution), Beltigre (Torracat evolution), Sirene (Brionne evolution), Marshadow, and the name for Cutiefly’s evolution will be revealed on October 14th’s update on Pokemon Sun and Moon.

    Also, October 14th’s update will reveal three more Alola Guardian Deities, plus more new Pokemon, plus new Pokemon with gender differences, plus more Alolan forms, plus a few new Mega Evolutions, plus some new Legendary and Mythical Pokemon.

    Pokemon Z will have Zygarde Cell, Zygarde Core (Red and Blue), Zygarde 10% Forme (Red and Blue), Zygarde 50% Forme, Zygarde Complete Forme, Ash-Greninja, Magearna, plus 37 more new Kalos Pokemon, plus Mega Flygon, Mega Meganium, Mega Typhlosion, and Mega Feraligatr.

    Reply

  23. I have a theory about the final evolutions of the starters (and it’s probably said by someone else by now). Okay since they revealed Rockruff’s evolution which has a midday form and midnight form, the starters will probably have this as well. So because Lycanroc’s Midday form is more of a “natural” and “tame” evolution, and the Midnight form is more of a “unnatural” and “rebellious” evolution. It might be possible to say that this will be the same for the starter evolutions as well, AND suppose that the chinese leaked evolutions are real, we could see another set of evolutions for Popplio, Litten and Rowlet. Also we might see an eclipse form for the starters and Rockruff possibly due to Marshadow?

    Reply

  24. I liked Torracat the moment I saw it. I didn’t really like Dartrix at first but the more I looked at it the more I started to like it. And Brionne…is….cute….I guess?

    Reply

  25. Jeez, some people on here. Is your masculinity THAT fragile that it is IMPOSSIBLE for you to accept that Popplio can have a more feminine looking form than a masculine one? I find it rather disgusting how people are acting toward this. So it is ok for us to just either ignore or accept other Pokemon who look only ONE gender specifically but it is not ok to accept this one? Everyone complains that Ash needs to grow up in the anime, meanwhile, I think it is all the people who complain about an evolution line looking “too feminine” that need growing up to do.

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    • My only problem with a starter line being too feminine or even too masculine is they set the tone for the game. I think starters should be ambiguous to gender stereotypes because you have to get one, I love popplio and won’t ever evolve him. As for other Pokemon with “gender stereotypes” that’s okay, you don’t have to play with those and there are many more options of same type Pokemon. The starters will be the first and best of their type for a while in the game. I am all for being girly and love me some princesses but popplio and littens evolutions are not good.

      Reply

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