Let's Talk About Pokemon - The Weedle Family

013 - Weedle

The OTHER line of bugs is instead going for a hornet, rather than a butterfly! Which of course, means ALSO starting out with a worm, turning into a pupae, and then the full adult insect. Weedle obviously taking some liberties, as hornet larvae are totally defenseless, but not Weedle! It comes with its own little unicorn-horn poison stinger! Seemingly plucking that feature from caterpillars, as some species are poisonous and do have stingers.

Visibly, though, Weedle seems to mostly take after sawfly larvae, a species of wasp that does have a rather caterpillar-like larval stage. With its heavily segmented body, many legs, and a big, red button for a head that quite resembles Weedle's big, round nose. Hymenoptera larvae otherwise, for the most part, are just pale and maggotty, blobby worms. In retrospect, I can't help but wish Weedle were a bit like that, seeing as to this day the closest we have to a maggot or maggot-adjacent Bug type is Snom. Either way, Weedle's exceedingly simple, but a fun little oddball that picks up animal inspiration from all over the wormy larvae world.

014 - Kakuna

Kakuna is where the hornet and wasp features start to come in. The pupae of hornets and their cousins; wasps, bees, and ants, are peculiar in that they look like the adult insect, just pale (depending on age) and stiffly in a state of stasis. Kakuna picks up on that a bit, looking a bit like hymenoptera, but folded into a convenient pupation shape. Especially with the visible, black eyes, solid color throughout, and the visible abdomen!

Interestingly, its Red sprite doubled down on this by giving Kakuna forelimbs! Though this seems to have been one of those off-model moments of the original RBG, since to my knowledge, no other piece of official Pokemon media ever shows Kakuna doing this ever again. Sigh. If only it had been a feature they kept! It would've given Kakuna something different that makes it unique.

015 - Beedrill

The fully evolved Beedrill is decently cool as well. As I've kept saying, I get more hornet or wasp vibes from this thing than "bee". Bees tend to be rounded and stumpy, especially through stylization lenses, while hornets and wasps always wind up slender and sinister, like Beedrill here. Speaking of stylization though, Beedrill itself is funny as a counterpart to Butterfree, a Pokemon that is an insect that gets a whole lot cartoonier and abstract. Whereas Beedrill here is notably more realistic-looking, with long, spindly limbs, three body segments, and the shape of its head, which is only shy of some sharp mandibles in terms of looking more hornet-like.

It still leans into stylization though, just the other way around. Here, Beedrill ends up with massive conical stingers for forelimbs, which it's usually shown attacking with more than the stinger on the end of the abdomen like you'd expect, for a hornet Pokemon. Almost wish it was a bit more explicitly stingerless; some hornet and wasp species actually lack stingers, like the aforementioned sawfly. So it'd be funny to spin that as like. Yeah, it doesn't have a STINGER, per se, but it DOES have two big forelimb spikes to jab you with. Totally different.

Personal Score: 6.5/10

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