Let's Talk About Pokemon - Clefairy and Clefable

035 - Clefairy

Technically, we're moving into our first Fairy type, though anyone that knows their Pokemon history would know Fairy didn't exist until X and Y. And in spite of Gen 6 introducing its own line of Fairies to be the mascot of, well, being a Fairy, Clefairy and Clefable have very much eased into being the poster children of the type, arguably more than the Flabebe line has. Either way, Clefairy is an overall decent little Pokemon!

Very ball-with-a-face with its proportions, Clefairy very much feels like "what if a fairy was a kind of animal, rather than a humanoid mystical creature." And I think it accomplishes this very well, being cute, but in a way where it can sell itself as a little TOO cute, if it needs to, and on top of that I quite enjoy the edge having the little monster claws brings to it. It feels a little bit like it was meant to be "Pikachu's girlfriend", very much in that way 90s mascots always came with a cutesier girl counterpart to be that mascot's girlfriend, what with it having almost the same ears as Pikachu and, at the time, similar proportions. I don't think they ever actually leaned into this, other than the Pikachu in Yellow falling in love with a Clefairy in the Pokemon Club, but that's it.

And not seen in its front-facing artwork very much is a teeny tiny pair of little butterfly-like wings, far too puny to ever realistically lift this thing off the ground, but definitely effective in selling it as mystical when it nonetheless is often depicted as floating a little when it jumps. Though this could also be in reference to the moon, which Clefairy is very directly tied to in most of its dex entries, also being said to be outright native to the moon before it descended to earth. So it's cute that it essentially permanently obeys moon gravity!

036 - Clefable

Surprised I was able to squeeze that much out of talking about simple lil Clefairy. Though by contrast, I don't have much to add when it comes to Clefable. It's one of those Gen 1 evolutions that is little more than the previous Pokemon, but a little bigger and with some of its features a little exaggerated. It gets much more pronounced wings, which is an improvement, and much more overtly Pikachu-shaped ears. But other than that, sure! It's more Clefairy if all you wanted out of Clefairy was that. There was more of it. These two are not exactly my bag, but I do think they stand out from the rest of the regular cutesymon riff raff.

Personal Score: 6.5/10

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