Let's Talk About Pokemon - Paras and Parasect

046 - Paras

Now this family is an unsung goldie, if you ask me. If you know Pokemon, you know it can take some surprisingly dark turns for a franchise largely with children as a target audience, and Paras and Parasect here are probably among the darkest if nothing else for how rooted in reality they are.

Paras is defined by its two types. I mean, d'uh, but I am making a point here. The Bug half is represented by being the nymph stages of a cicada. That is, the wingless insect that spends years underground, eating tree roots until they're eventually ready to do their adulthood shtick that many know cicadas for. Paras are largely found in caves and have an orange carapace like most cicada babies are known for.

And on one hand, I understand why abstraction and stylization hits bug and bug-adjacent Pokemon the most, just given humans come with a hard-wired aversion to insects and anything like that. But on the other hand, just look at Paras! It's easily up there with being one of the buggiest of the Bug Pokemon! Being a rare Bug Pokemon that has the correct number of limbs, beady eyes, and ALSO has an odd little "nose" and set of "teeth" that bring insect mouthparts to mind! And it's STILL such a precious little critter! See, Pokemon? You can get away with critters being just a little buggier!

Then comes in the Grass part of its Bug/Grass typing. Kind of hard to not notice the oversized, cartoon mushrooms on its back, which are the star of this line, actually. And not just because it's Paras' little accessory! But because it's hard to get into their purpose within the design without getting into its evolution, we'll move onto Parasect, but a good amount being said also applies to Paras, here.

047 - Parasect

The mushroom is notably more of a central feature for Parasect, taking up more of the design space than the bug itself is, at this point, with Parasect almost looking like a hermit crab that's using a mushroom cap as a shell. But what very much is the purpose of the mushroom hi-jacking this design is because it's hi-jacked the Pokemon itself.

The more natural life cycle of a cicada after they've spent those years underground is that they crawl to the surface, shed their skin one final time to grow wings, scream until they find a mate, and then die with the cycle started anew. But Parasect, though, is a creature that stays grounded, never growing wings or anything. Those dead, pupiless eyes are all that need to be said to denote that your pet cicada is dead and its corpse is being puppeted around by that giant mushroom erupting from its back.

A type of fungus called a cordyceps specializes in infecting insects, growing into their brain to affect how it works, tricking them into moving to an ideal location for spore-spreading before the fungus simply eats the insect from the inside-out, spreading to more insects as it grows. An organism so freakish you'd swear it was from science fiction.

Naturally, though, Pokemon takes its own more fantastical angle by having the fungus be able to achieve a full cognition takeover of the Parasect's body, making it its own. Apparently still eating its body, as the Crystal entry states that, as Parasect's body starts to become useless, it'll also infect the eggs a Parasect lays, in effect meaning this entire species of Pokemon is doomed to be infected with this fungus. And while Pokemon gets messed up in a lot of ways, on top of everything else, that's especially messed up.

Parasect itself, though, does have one SMALL thing that subtracts from the design, being that it ditches Paras' little multi-part mouth in favor of a quite silly smiley face. Which is a shame, because the dead, white eyes are such a good feature for this line and Parasect would've literally been perfect had it just kept that feature from its prevo. As such, I end up liking Paras just a bitty smidge more, but these two are easily the coolest Gen 1 Pokemon, to me, and one of the creepiest Pokemon out there, even to this day.

Personal Score: 10/10

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