Let's Talk About Pokemon - Growlithe and Arcanine

060: Poliwag

A frog or toad certainly feels like an animal that's easy pickings to be one of the series' early Pokemon. And so, we have the Poliwag line. Poliwag is cute enough as it is, just that's mostly what it is. A Pokemon-ized tadpole. It has little legs for a slight difference, but it's otherwise nicely stylized.

BUT this one actually has a bit of a spin on it! You'd maybe look at the spiral on its belly and not think much of it, but that's actually a Pokemon-style representation of a tadpole's innards pressed up against its see-through belly! Neat!

061: Poliwhirl

Poliwhirl's not really doing it for me. It looks odd, even for a cartoon frog. The huge Mickey Mouse gloves are a bit much as well. It's got none of the frog bits that I really like about frogs. Where's the tongue?! And the leaping?! And the bright colors?! Come to think of it, Through 6 generations of Pokemon, we got five frog/toad Pokemon lines, and only the latest one does anything neat with frog tongues. What's up with that.

But that said, it's hard to hate Poliwhirl. It's a fun stylization of a frog, to a point where it isn't overtly obvious that it is one. But once you learn it's meant to be a frog, you to start to wonder where its more froggy aspects are. But I do like that it's not obvious where its mouth is. Sure, you can assume its mouth is somewhere in the general vicinity of the upper rim of its swirling belly cause that's where you'd expect a cartoon frog's mouth to be. But can you know for SURE?!

Personal Score: 6/10

062: Poliwrath

Poliwrath is about the most uneventful evolution in the series' long history. Especially considering you exposed the thing to a radioactive stone to get it to... be angry? Well actually, yeah, when I put it that way, no wonder it's mad. But that still hardly excuses Poliwrath for skimping out on looking like an actual evolution. The typing is neat for the time, and it's technically not the worst thing ever, but it feels like there's a missed opportunity with making it a big hypno-toad sort of thing. Or just... anything but Poliwhirl but slightly bigger and angrier.

Personal Score: 4/10

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