Amazing Tiger & Bunny x Pokémon Fan Art by 結衣

One of my recent obsessions that I have been preoccupied with to the point that it rivals all other obsessions in my life is Tiger and Bunny. Tiger and Bunny is a 2011 anime about heroes. Set in a fictional future American city, certain citizens have powers and use them to fight crime on live TV! It's got a great plot and is exciting and well-paced, but what really got me into it were the characters. If you're wondering why I'm talking about this on my Pokémon blog, it's because Pixiv user 結衣 has created amazing pieces of fan art featuring Tiger and Bunny characters with Pokémon!

Many of the Tiger and Bunny heroes use elemental attacks (fire, ice, etc), and 結衣 has paired up each of them with an appropriate Pokémon as well as a matching attack. My translation of the artist's original title is below each image in bold. Click on the images to go to the Pixiv page.

おじさんとレントラーのワイルドボルト！ by 結衣 on pixiv

Oji-San and Rentora's Wild Bolt!
Kotetsu T. Kaburagi / Wild Tiger x Luxray

バニーとバシャーモのブレイズキック！ by 結衣 on pixiv

Bunny and Bashamo's Blaze Kick!
Barnaby Brooks Jr / Bunny x Blaziken

キースとコバルオンのせいぎのこころ！ by 結衣 on pixiv

Keith and Cobalion's Heart of Justice!
Keith Goodman / Sky High x Cobalion

ネイサンとファイヤーのオーバーヒート！ by 結衣 on pixiv

Nathan and Fire's Overheat!
Nathan Seymour / Fire Emblem x Moltres

ローズとラプラスのうたう！ by 結衣 on pixiv

Rose and Lapras's Sing!
Karina Lyle / Blue Rose x Lapras (aahhh this one is my favorite)

バイソンとトランセルのかたくなる! by 結衣 on pixiv

Bison and Toranseru's Harden!
Antonio Lopez / Rock Bison x Metapod (I guess because he has a lot of armor but can't really do anything?)

イワンとテッカニンがかげぶんしんで見切れたああ by 結衣 on pixiv

Ivan and Tekkanin's Double Team has been Detected
Ivan Karelin / Origami Cyclone x Ninjask

パオリンとデンリュウのかみなりパンチ！ by 結衣 on pixiv

Pao-Lin and Denryuu's Thunder Punch!
Huang Pao-Lin / Dragon Kid x Ampharos

斉藤さんとゴニョニョの… by 結衣 on pixiv

Saito-San and Gonyonyo's ...
Saito-San x Whismur

Definitely check out the rest of the artist's work! (Just remember that Pixiv has a looooooot of nswf stuff.)

Adorable Halloween Pokémon Plushies!

Hello PokéFans! Long time no see! I've been busy and, to be honest, I haven't really been thinking about Pokémon that much lately. Shocking, I know, but I'll try to get back into the PokéSpirit soon! For now, I wanted to share something that I only recently realized existed—something that combines three of my deepest passions (Halloween, Pokémon, and plushies): Halloween Pokémon plushies!

It seems that at least a couple sets of these have been released by The Pokémon Center since as early as 2008. The fact that I was previously unaware of their existence leads me to believe that someone was purposely keeping me in the dark as part of some vast conspiracy to prevent me from being happy. The good news is, many of the plushies are still available on Amazon and other online retailers! They aren't cheap, but judging by the quality of the plushies from The Pokémon Center that I own, they should be well worth the price.

2008's set is painfully cute. That Piplup! I'm going to be having dreams about that Piplup until I get my hands on one. Chimchar is just as sweet with his stash of lollipops. Croagunk is the only one from this set I could find on Amazon, and he's pretty great, although Glameow probably wins for being the most adorable/seasonally appropriate...and then there's Halloween Golbat, which is just a regular Golbat with a tiny orange hat. Golbat, you even suck at Halloween.

The entire 2008 Halloween set is available at ToyWiz for extremely reasonable prices! Come to me, Piplup.

The 2010 set consisted of Pikachu wearing a purple witch hat and holding a pumpkin, Umbreon carrying a lantern for some mysterious reason, Espeon with a candy sack, Gengar with a pointy witch hat and pumpkin, and Sableye as a not-entirely-convincing witch. I want Gengar the most out of this set, but Espeon is a close second. I normally like Sableye quite a bit, but I'm just not feeling her as a witch.

Next up is 2011's set, featuring the best (?) Pokémon from Black and White! First up is Minccino as a prince...fairy thing, and Purrloin is pretty cute with her candy pumpkin and mask. Lampent is the clear winner of the bunch. He doesn't even need a costume, since he's already terrifying. He just gently caresses a Pikachu-shaped pumpkin while staring deeply into your soul. I don't know how I feel about Axew. Is that supposed to be a witch costume? Is he wearing a cape or some kind of bowtie? Finally we have this year's Pikachu, wearing a Halloween scarf and a tiny top hat. 2011 kinda phoned it in.

I couldn't find confirmation as to whether there was a similar 2009 set or not. Searching just seems to turn up this "Cut" Rotom, and I'm not even sure how that's supposed to be a Halloween edition. Because he's orange? They could have at least wedged a lollipop into his wheels. Whatever, I still want him.

Hilariously Terrible Bootleg Pokémon Stickers

About a year ago, I bought a giant box of random "vintage" (i.e. mostly stuff from Generation 1) Pokémon stuff on eBay. For around $25 I got a giant Meowth plushie, some books and manga, a talking Lucario figure (MIB) and some miscellaneous loose figures and cards. Obviously I was mainly in it to score the Meowth, and pretty much disregarded the rest of the stuff after a brief glance.

The other day I was organizing my bookshelf and I started leafing through one of the random Pokémon books (a "book" of cut-out papercrafts) and noticed some sheets sticking out of it. Unbeknownst to me (and possibly even to the seller), this lot contained an amazing gem: two bootleg sticker sheets from Taiwan, showcasing the absolute worst Generation 1 Pokémon clip art ever created.

The funny thing is, I actually remember buying these exact same stickers from the local comic/anime shop when Pokémon first came out. I'm pretty sure I knew they were bootleg at the time, and the images made no sense, but despite this I was still willing to shell out $5 (each) of my hard-earned money, simply because it was POKéMON, and god I really had to have any Pokéthing I could get my hands on. (Note: this sounds ridiculous now that Pokémon merchandise is so ungodly plentiful, but at the time, the only mass-produced American Pokémon goods were those crappy KFC Zubat plushies.)

I don't really want to open them because the paper is such shite quality I'm pretty sure they will disintegrate immediately upon exposure to oxygen, so I've scanned and archived the sheets, highlighting my favorite ones.

Snorlax Eats Stuff!

I had this idea and started taking photos for it awhile ago, but now I've finally got the actual blog up and running! Presenting Snorlax Eats Stuff, a Tumblr photo blog!

I also made a Squidoo lens featuring some of the top Snorlax Eats Stuff photos. I may be trying to keep up with a lot of Pokémon mini-projects, but don't worry, I'll still update here as often as possible. ^^

Dark Type Pokémon, or The Fall of the God of Psychic

Oh, Sabrina. You remember Sabrina, leader of Saffron City's gym: the unassuming little girl who uses Psychic-type Pokémon. At this point in the game, you haven't fought very many of those, but if you were smart, you picked up an Abra early on. By now, you should have a faithful Kadabra (or Alakazam, if your parents loved you enough to buy you a Game Boy cable. Mine didn't.) by your side, kicking the ass of Machokes left and right. Knowing this, you can probably guess that Sabrina will be tough to beat.

Pokémon is like an ultra-complex game of rock-paper-scissors. Everything is strong against something, and weak to something else. So what is Psychic weak to? Bug and Ghost. Great! I picked up this Gastly in Lavender Town. And hey, in the anime, Ash beat Sabrina with nothing but a Haunter, so all I have to do is get this thing up to level 25 and I'm set!

My ticket to victory.

Aaaand then you get to the gym and realize that something the anime neglected to mention about Haunter is that it is a dual-type Pokémon: Ghost AND Poison, which makes it horribly weak to Psychic attacks. Oh, and it only has two Ghost moves: Lick (crap) and Nightshade (double crap.) One blast from Psybeam and Haunter is KO'd before he even gets a chance to whip out his tongue. Your ass: instantly kicked.

Your many painful defeats at the Saffron City gym left you with a bitter taste in your mouth and an important lesson: the Pokémon world is set up with a system of checks and balances, but Psychic-type rules all. Better start leveling up that Blastoise.

Obviously this all changed with the "discovery" of Dark-type Pokémon in Gold and Silver. Now there are good, powerful moves that are super effective against Psychic-types, AND Dark-type Pokémon are completely immune to all Psychic attacks.

WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW

Gold and Silver also tempered out Psychic a bit with the addition of the Steel-type, which is resistant (but not immune) to Psychic-moves, as well as the addition of pure Ghost-types and more powerful Bug moves. From Generation 2 onward, Psychic-types were demoted from terrifying demigods to impotent, sorry bastards who can be obliterated by a fucking firefly.

My problem is that I still have PSYCHIC=KILL EVERYTHING deeply ingrained into my head. I still think "Bite" is a Normal move. Then I encounter a level 16 Poochyena, and half my team is writhing on the floor in agony. I realise that the game needed to be more balanced, and that the advent of Dark and Steel also meant that Fighting-types stopped being so utterly useless, but I still remember the good old days when all I had to do was feed Rare Candy and PP Ups to my Kadabra and the Pokémon League Championship was mine for the taking.

Side note: There's a lot of talk in the Pokémon fan community about the possibility of a Light-type to counter the Dark-type. I thought it was fairly obvious that Dark-type is the counter to Psychic-type, but this would imply* that Psychic-type were somehow "good", which contradicts my assumption that Psychic-type Pokémon like Alakazam and especially Mr. Mime are inherently evil.

*Not necessarily, I suppose. It may be a case of evil versus more evil.

Links:
The Top 5 Dark Type Pokémon
Pokemon Season 1 Box Set - Indigo League
Pokemon HeartGold
Pokemon SoulSilver

Pokémon Airlines

my Woobat is in like the top percentage of Woobats

Gonna try to do more Pokémon art these days, so look for it here or at my deviantART page. :)