Let's Talk About Pokemon - The Nidoran Family

029 and 032: Nidoran Female and Male

The "two" Nidoran families are within the same ball park, so I'm going to go ahead and review them both together here.

For the few that may not know, in the Gen 1 days, gender wasn't invented yet. But on the other hand, sexual dimorphism is a fairly common thing in the animal kingdom. So this warranted dedicating two entire evolutionary lines to denote a male and female variants of the same species. This gets awkward by today's standard, where variance in gender is represented under the same line, rather than having them take up two slots in a Pokedex. And of course, since they occupy their own entire numbers in the Pokedex, it's kind of an awkward thing to retcon. Whoops!

I do like both of the Nidorans though. They're cute, little earlygame critters. Helps that the two are rabbits, which I love. At least I think they're rabbits. They're like, odd crosses of rabbits and lizards. Lizits. Rabbards? They're a mystery, but I like them.

030 and 033: Nidorina and Nidorino

The older the line gets, the more ambiguously monstrous they get. And this is definitely what I mean when I say Gen 1 has something newer gens simply don't have enough of anymore. I still love newer generations, and they still have a handful of creatures that aren't any one animal in particular (Toxtricity, Darmanitan, etc). But there definitely is a bit of a lost art in making Pokemon that are just plain monsters. These two started out as weirdly scaly rabbits, but now they've picked up on some rhino influence, and even later they become vaguely human-like on top of that. It's just a level of taxonomic degradation that I wish we saw a bit more often in modern Pokemon.

031 and 034: Nidoqueen and Nidoking

Now these two are pretty mean looking. I like them both, but my preference switches over to Nidoking. Both of them just ooze a lot of Gen 1's flavor, to be honest. And definitely feel like the quintessential "chimeric" designs of Gen 1. How many other franchises have a rabbit-rhino-dinosaur-man that's also venomous?

Nidoqueen isn't totally without merits, it just feels like it kinda blends together with Kangaskhan's look a bit. I do like it otherwise, between it giving off that motherly vibe. But again, that's kinda Kangaskhan's shtick. I do think it's lame that the female is stripped of intimidating features like big teeth and generally harsher shapes.

Especially since things like rougher features and teeth is something Nidoqueen ALREADY HAD but got stripped away over time. Eugh. VERY much not a fan of that.

Nidoking is undeniably one of the most badass designs in Gen 1 though. It just EXUDES a menacing aura, with a bestial mean look to it. The only real problem with it is that it has a lot of aesthetic overlap with Rhydon and a bunch of the other dinosaur-like Pokemon in this Gen, but other than that looks pretty dang wicked.

But something else that makes Nidoking a bit of the quintessential Gen 1 Pokemon is how kaiju-ified it looks, with it very much fitting in with the rubber suits of old. Most in particular, Nidoking feels like it takes inspiration from Baragon from the classic Toho monsterverse. Especially with the two being purplish and having big ears. But what definitely excells it a bit past coincidence is how Baragon's main feature as a creature is that it burrows underground. Which is probably why these two adopt the Ground typing!

Personal Score: 8/10

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