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Weird cliche with starter pokemon

ValorSugarcakes

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For some reason for the 3 newest generations, I’ve somehow been discovering a cliche with the fanbase’s interest with the 3 starter trios for XY, SM, and recently, SwSh!!!! Here’s the cilche:

- Cute starter always gets the Ugly, chubby design/furry design and has the worst stats (Chespin, Popplio, and Scorbunny)

- Cool, and uncute starter always gets the love and overrated treatment along with powerful stats (Froakie, Litten, and Grookey)

- Average starter with some minor disagreement (Fennekin, Rowlet, and Sobble)

Does this mean that the creators are following some type of cliche or is this a coincidence????

I bet by gen 9, no one’s gonna like the grass starter, everyone’s gonna like the water starter, and there will be some people who like the fire starter!!!!
 
- Cute starter always gets the Ugly, chubby design/furry design and has the worst stats (Chespin, Popplio, and Scorbunny)

- Cool, and uncute starter always gets the love and overrated treatment along with powerful stats (Froakie, Litten, and Grookey)

- Average starter with some minor disagreement (Fennekin, Rowlet, and Sobble)

Does this mean that the creators are following some type of cliche or is this a coincidence????
All of this is based upon your own opinion though. I personally wouldn't call Chespin cute, Rowlet average, and Grookey cool, for example, nor would I say that Cinderace and Primarina are chubby with the worst stats of their respective trios. Also, I am fairly certain Grookey is still, to my knowledge, the least popular Galar starter so I don't think it's overrated. There really isn't any sort of cliche pattern going on here.
 
The only cliche I've noticed is that they keep making them more and more anthropomorphic each gen. Back in gens 1-4 there still had animalistic designs and nowadays they look like humans in fur suits. I hate them

Cinderace in particular looks terrible. Inteleon looks kinda creepy as well (THe hands are too big). Rillaboom looks great tho. That official art is great.
 
Does this mean that the creators are following some type of cliche or is this a coincidence????

the same was with gen from 1 and 5, fans judge their own ways and creators have no affect on it...

I noticed only they tried to make gen 2 monotyping again,

where :

-all got the move substitute , u-turn

-all starters are over average fast thist time taking speed from 85 to 120

-grass got a physical wallbreaker stats, and sound moves against substitutes
(counterpart to Serperior(fast wall) and Sceptile(fast special wallbreaker))

(with fake out it can hit fast and twice and can reduce oponents speed and gets ability to support longer), warrior class

-fire a physical hyper fast wall breaker, a warrior class with a small mage aspect Court of Change
(Counterpart to Typhlosion special wall breaker)

-water a hyper fast special cannon , a sharp shooter with screen setting options and water pulse to confuse target on start
(counterpart to Blastoise the special wall and Samuotrr the more offensive wall breaker)

- all all very low on special defense this time, making them open for a special oriented increased priority move

- 2 out of three have weak defenses
-2 out of three have low special attack
- all 3 lack good special defense

fire and water have a role of scouts this time with u-turn coverage and sucker punch.
both are equivalents of Sceptile this time, with Inteleon mostly bc both are special attackers (a anime sword battle with Leaf blade vs Liquidation between them would be cool )

also like in "League of Legends" their hidden skills as they can support teams diffrently like
Cinderace has a mage aspect with Court Change but this time we didnt get a "mage" actually like we got with Delphox , Deciduey , Primarina, Greninja... that got a lot of tricky moves and even other weather and hazard setting options.

I think they tried to make them stylish to the region motive but forgot about their purpose and animal traits... their over all spects... that could change giving them TMs outside the box...
 
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- Cute starter always gets the Ugly, chubby design/furry design and has the worst stats (Chespin, Popplio, and Scorbunny)

None of these actually have the worst stats of their trio. Cinderace is arguably the best of the Galar trio, Chesnaught is better suited to its role than Delphox is to its role, and Primarina is the only one of the Alola starters to have a stat distribution that actually makes sense (although Incineroar is better in doubles, that's largely due to its ability).
 
None of these actually have the worst stats of their trio. Cinderace is arguably the best of the Galar trio, Chesnaught is better suited to its role than Delphox is to its role, and Primarina is the only one of the Alola starters to have a stat distribution that actually makes sense (although Incineroar is better in doubles, that's largely due to its ability).

Hey Delphox is a supporter, semi fast special attacker with quite special walling potential , if its ability would get a buff and it more stats moves only.
If it gets spirit break and court change, magician a buff then it can be very good.
________________________________________________

- we lack a water type with high attack status
- we lack a grass type with high sp. defense and sp. attack status
-we lack a water and grass type with a lot of hp
____________________________________________________________
hp: emboar 110, rillaboom 100, swampert 100, samuotrr 95, torterra, 95, incineroar 95 ,
chesnaught 88 , feraligatr 85, , empoleon 84, , blaziken 80 ( fire gen 9 ???)

attack: rillaboom 125, emboar 123 ,blaziken 120, cinderace 116, Incineroar 115, swampert 110 , torterra 109
chesnaught and decidueey 107, feraligatr 105, infernape 104, samuotrr 100, greninja 95 (water starter gen 9???)

sp.attack: primarina 126, inteleon 125 , delphox 114, empoleon, 111 blaziken 110 ,charizard and typhlosion 109, samuotrr 108, sceptile 105, infernape 104, greninja 103, venusaur 100, deciduey 100, (grass for sure gen 9, fire also better )

defense: chesnaught 122, torterra 105, blastoise 100, feralighatr 100, serperior 95, swampert 90, incineroar 90, Rillaboom
(fire gen 9 ??????)

sp. defense: primarina 116 , blastoise 105, empoleon 101, delphox 100, ,venusaur 100, seperior 95, swampert 90, incineroar 90
(grass and fire starters better here need to become)


speed:

greninja 122
cinderace 119, inteleon 120 ,sceptile 120

serperior 113
infernape 108
delphox 104
charizard and typhlosion 100

rillaboom 85
blaziken 80
venusaur 80
blastoise 78
feraligatr 78

chesnaught 64

incineroar, primarina, swampert, empoleon 60

torterra 54


perfect typings forstarters still missing:

- water/fight, water/ghost, water/electric , water/poison
-grass/fairy, grass/electric , grass/rock, grass/steel
- fire/poison , fire/steel, fire/ghost, fire/fairy
 
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I don't believe there's an actual intention to do that but I still consider an option that by been designing the same trio over and over again may lead to some unconscious bias, just like they may have the tendency to just associate certain colours to certain types because after a while they don't think outside of the box and tend to lose critical thinking.
 
by been designing the same trio over and over again may lead to some unconscious bias
Unless each trio has been designed by the same person, or each individual member of the trio is designed by the same person, I don't think this is the case. I figure it'd be quite difficult for a group of designers who've worked on different kinds of Pokemon to all share the same unconscious bias in regards to starters.
have the tendency to just associate certain colours to certain types because after a while they don't think outside of the box and tend to lose critical thinking
I wouldn't say GameFreak's tendency to associate certain colors to certain typings is evidence of them losing "critical thinking," especially when there's been such color-type associations since the very beginning of Pokemon. Not thinking outside of the box, sure. But I wouldn't say an association between red, orange, and yellow and the Fire type, for example, is evidence of GameFreak's inability to think critically. More just that they are rather beholden to pop culture associations and tropes--just like a lot of other franchises.
 
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We don't even have the same opinions over which starters the cutest. Lol. Fennekin and Rowlet are the cutest (and most appealing to me) starters of their generations, IMO.
 
You’re applying your opinion to everyone else for this ""theory"" to fit.
For some reason for the 3 newest generations, I’ve somehow been discovering a cliche with the fanbase’s interest with the 3 starter trios for XY, SM, and recently, SwSh!!!! Here’s the cilche:

[QUOTE- Cute starter always gets the Ugly, chubby design/furry design and has the worst stats (Chespin, Popplio, and Scorbunny)
Cinderace arguably is the best in the trio competitively. It literally has Protean 2.0 as an ability. And here if you’re classing Primarina as "ugly/furry" but leaving Incineroar out.

- Cool, and uncute starter always gets the love and overrated treatment along with powerful stats (Froakie, Litten, and Grookey)
How dare you call my baby Litten uncute.
P.S.: Grookey is far from overrated. It’s currently the only Galar starter to not even get an anime debut.


- Average starter with some minor disagreement (Fennekin, Rowlet, and Sobble)
Rowlet and Sobble were literally the most popularly loved starters of their generations.
 
just like they may have the tendency to just associate certain colours to certain types because after a while they don't think outside of the box and tend to lose critical thinking.

This is not the case, especially taking in mind Scorbunny's color is primary white instead of red. If it wasn't revealed to be a starter before the game launch, you could easily believe it was a Normal or Steel type upon first discovering it.
 
Unless each trio has been designed by the same person, or each individual member of the trio is designed by the same person, I don't think this is the case. I figure it'd be quite difficult for a group of designers who've worked on different kinds of Pokemon to all share the same unconscious bias in regards to starters.

I wouldn't say GameFreak's tendency to associate certain colors to certain typings is evidence of them losing "critical thinking," especially when there's been such color-type associations since the very beginning of Pokemon. Not thinking outside of the box, sure. But I wouldn't say an association between red, orange, and yellow and the Fire type, for example, is evidence of GameFreak's inability to think critically. More just that they are rather beholden to pop culture associations and tropes--just like a lot of other franchises.

I believe you have a point but I also think that the simply fact that you have staples such as typing and the fact that even if not the same person designing, I believe that the designers still have to look to previous starters in order not to repeat themselves may end up restraining and creating said bias, more so when there mught be some general ideas to be kept such as making them attractive, not looking too much aggressive.

As for the colours, I say that they lack critical thinking because the colours do not apply only to the Pkmn themselves but also to moves. For example, I don't recall in all this time to have seen blue thunders/electric moves (I can't recall if Zekrom's and Zeraora's move colours) or even making it a more common sight, it's always yellow; in Grass-type, they are all very healthy, only shiny versions look like decayed and the same applies to Razor Leaf and so on; for fire, flames are always red and the only exception I can recall is the Litwick line and perhaps Blast Burn in Gen. IV. They may have started as tropes but by following the same path over and over again they just stick with it perhaps without even thinking and hence my thought on it.

This is not the case, especially taking in mind Scorbunny's color is primary white instead of red. If it wasn't revealed to be a starter before the game launch, you could easily believe it was a Normal or Steel type upon first discovering it.
The red elements in its ears gave it away...at maximum I'd say Normal/Fire instead of just Fire and that's is what I was trying to get at. I could say that perhaps Rowlet would be a better example but it also has the green bowtie.
A person can perhaps not guess both types when that's the case but will most likely find one of it due to the colour elements or in the case of single-types, the colour also help most of the times.
 
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The red elements in its ears gave it away...at maximum I'd say Normal/Fire instead of just Fire and that's is what I was trying to get at. I could say that perhaps Rowlet would be a better example but it also has the green bowtie.
A person can perhaps not guess both types when that's the case but will most likely find one of it due to the colour elements or in the case of single-types, the colour also help most of the times.

Rowlet is more green than Scorbunny is red, so thats a poor example.
Taking Milotic here. Nothing in its design screams Water type. It gives of Psychic type, because of its pink elements, but this is not the case. As such, elements on its own say little to nothing, especially since it has been proven that Pokemon can have some elements from one type, but are a different type altogether (Milotic, but also Pyukumuku and even Toxel, who has a White element, which suggest Steel or Normal, but not Electric and aside from its mouth, nothing about Pincurchin screams Electric either, if you wouldn't know better, you would think it is a Dark type - because of the color pallete). I didn't saw Pincurchin getting leaked and based on its color pallette, i thought it was a Dark type and they put that Yellow mouth in, to make it appear somewhat cuter and to have some color in its design.
Sobble and Grookey also have that obvious starter vibe to them, something Scorbunny lacks because of its primary color being White (I didn't even notice the red tips on its ears when it was first revealed, and yes, i noticed the feet, but they feet alone also don't scream Fire type to me) and it gets even worse with Raboot. Only Cinderace is give off that Fire type vibe.
 
Taking Milotic here. Nothing in its design screams Water type. It gives of Psychic type, because of its pink elements, but this is not the case. As such, elements on its own say little to nothing, especially since it has been proven that Pokemon can have some elements from one type, but are a different type altogether (Milotic, but also Pyukumuku and even Toxel, who has a White element, which suggest Steel or Normal, but not Electric and aside from its mouth, nothing about Pincurchin screams Electric either, if you wouldn't know better, you would think it is a Dark type - because of the color pallete). I didn't saw Pincurchin getting leaked and based on its color pallette, i thought it was a Dark type and they put that Yellow mouth in, to make it appear somewhat cuter and to have some color in its design.
Pokémon aren’t just their colours you know? Milotic is incredibly obvious as a water type because it’s shaped like a sea creature/serpent.
Toxel is quite literally entirely purple and the "white element" which you say gives it Steel or Normal type is actually a white bolt of electricity. It isn’t an element, it quite literally is electricity. Not all electricity is yellow.

"Starter vibe" is subjective. Scorbunny and Litten fit in. Even Litten was primarily black. It screams fire enough to me specially when their first appearances were video and not an image. The first look we get at Scorbunny is generating flames with it’s feet. The entire line gives "Fire vibes" (whatever they are) to me.

Raboot has more red than Scorbunny do I don’t see your point there. A lot of people don’t use colour to give types, otherwise Pokémon designs would get stale fairly quickly.
 
Rowlet is more green than Scorbunny is red, so thats a poor example.
Taking Milotic here. Nothing in its design screams Water type. It gives of Psychic type, because of its pink elements, but this is not the case. As such, elements on its own say little to nothing, especially since it has been proven that Pokemon can have some elements from one type, but are a different type altogether (Milotic, but also Pyukumuku and even Toxel, who has a White element, which suggest Steel or Normal, but not Electric and aside from its mouth, nothing about Pincurchin screams Electric either, if you wouldn't know better, you would think it is a Dark type - because of the color pallete). I didn't saw Pincurchin getting leaked and based on its color pallette, i thought it was a Dark type and they put that Yellow mouth in, to make it appear somewhat cuter and to have some color in its design.
Sobble and Grookey also have that obvious starter vibe to them, something Scorbunny lacks because of its primary color being White (I didn't even notice the red tips on its ears when it was first revealed, and yes, i noticed the feet, but they feet alone also don't scream Fire type to me) and it gets even worse with Raboot. Only Cinderace is give off that Fire type vibe.

By what criteria is Rowlet greener that Scorbunny's red? Only if you're looking at artwork where Rowlet has its wings opened and even so...Rowlet has the bowtie, tail and smaller wings while Scorbunny has the ear's tips, feet, neck collar and what gives it away in addition to those, its eyes.
Milotic could have been Psychic, Dragon, Fairy (if revealed after Gen. VI or reclassified) and yet the scales, fin and neck holes also hint Water type.
Toxel has a little thunder in its forehead! If that element alone doesn't "scream" Electric then...
Now, Pincurchin indeed is a different story...I'd bet Poison due to its bright yellow mouth, the fact that it has tips...not Dark (Liepard and Scraggy are the (unfortunately) few examples of how Dark type Pkmn don't need to be dark and black.
Raboot and Cinderace...If revealed first and separately, I'd say Raboot was Dark/Fire and Dark as its primary because it seems that could partner with Scraggy to steal people and Pkmn and Fire because of the orange elements. For Cinderace I'd go with Fight/Fire...its orange elements again give away the Fire type but on the Pkmn on its onw and without be kicking and part of Scorbunny's line, I'd say that he looks like a kickboxer or muai thai.
 
ability wise do you think we will get a starter with Regenerator? Soundproof? Dazzling or Quenly majesty?

ability wise starters also start to be repeat themselfs...

Rowlet is more green than Scorbunny is red, so thats a poor example.
compare scorbunny with chesnaught better.

I like starters that have minimum base color and have a diffrent track then rest of their type and predcesors...

we got fire pokemon with Bounce, two brave bird users... many u-turn users now flip turn...

generaly grass is associated with Draining moves... would be cool to see a water or a fire pokemon gaining niche in this department especially taking that some will be slow and get interesting typings... a fire and a water draining move would be cool, or maybe a secondary typing move like poison or ghost would fit here? or reuse Parabolic charge if one gains electric secodary typing?

Incineroar with drain punch is the only ones I could think of... but thats without stab... weird Infernape didnt get some love here?
maybe gen 4 remakes could fix that?

generaly I like how they created Bulletproof and now Cinderaces Pyro ball to make interactions between generations in future and even for the anime too. They could pull Snipe shot also into that actually.


the color patters of new starters hope will get better, like how they make water starters white, maybe once a totally black and dark blue one again like empoleon? or a even whole white or purple one? or a fully yellow jaguary one??? a green looking water starter?

fire we got red, yellow, orange, black, white.. next should be purple , blue, totaly black, or even one with green flames....

grass also could go into yellow, orange, red, grey,brown, blue(rhino) with less green like with serperior, chesnaught, rillaboom and deciduey was done. generally moss and other kinds of stuff could be used here.

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