What Pokémon Generation Has The Best Designs?

with over 800 Pokemon now it's fascinating to study each and every design are wildly different from one another Pokemon have incorporated a wide wide variety of real-world biological mythological and even cultural influences in an effort to create a diverse cast of lovable characters that also inhabit a fictional but still believable ecosystem today I'm not interested in discussing individual designs in which are the best or the most popular but rather generations as a whole in an effort to determine which generation of Pokemon had the best designs so a little preface before we get started I'm gonna be making a lot of generalizations here because I'm gonna be covering groups at Pokemon rather than individual designs in this video I'll be referring to batches of Pokemon by different descriptors and that's not suggesting that literally every Pokemon in that generation falls in that category there are always outliers and literally every generation has a decent balance of Pokemon that are cute monstrous man-made round tall and pretty much everything in between and I think it's somewhat fair to generalize here one specific generation could have the best Pokemon ever designed but if the other 99 alongside are bad then the generation can't take home the title the second thing I want to note is that art is completely subjective that's why it's so fun to discuss because any great work of art will inspire a conversation with vastly different opinions based on personal interpretation so whatever generation comes out on top today will just be my opinion so let's kick things off with the first generation of Pokemon now over 20 years old these Pokemon set the template for what a Pokemon is and what a Pokemon could be quite literally these were the first creatures ever designed in the franchise so I think to this day we point to these ones as a reference of what was fair game to design a Pokemon around let's take a look at them generally pokemon from generation 1 were a lot more reptilian and rugged than what we have now these creatures were often based on a whole amalgamation of different dinosaurs and animals to create a true RPG monster experience some Pokemon I have in mind for this generalization are marowak Nieto King Machop and Kangaskhan these are good examples because they all look vaguely dinosaur ick with very subtle nods to Japanese and sometimes Chinese mythology in the case of Gyarados or dragon heir but those are rare and I'm not saying all the Pokemon here are vague monsters because these ambiguous designs where it leans into many different animals are more cute in their design philosophy for example Pikachu Evie and Clefairy are some of these cute but still ambiguous Pokemon that I think are the hallmark of generation 1 designs I believe their designs are directly responsible for making them arguably some of the franchise's most popular and iconic designs so that's definitely a point in generation once favored on a more detailed level it's interesting to note that the Aizen generation one more less detailed and I'll have the generic dinosaur style but that's because I don't think they knew how to design eyes quite yet so they all kind of look the same because of the rugged dinosaur look and the whole angry eye thing I think with the exception of the Clefairy and the Jigglypuff lines most fully evolved Pokemon and Kanto it look generally tough or at the very least regal or they were designed to fill a specific RPG niche based on traditional RPG monster types for example you have the Machop line as a humanoid reptilian you have the ghastly line as ghosts and you of the electrode line as mimics none of these designs really draw from world culture or are specific to Kanto and are really just basic designs for example Pidgey is just a bird to fit the need for an early game bird and that's about it with that in mind let's move on to generation 2 one glance at generation 2 tells you the biggest generalization that you need to know there's a lot of cute gear overall the designs are more cute but that's because there is a huge abundance of small and baby like Pokemon thanks to the introduction of breeding mechanics and cross generation evolution also thanks to the Game Boy Color and the popularity of the anime the colors become more saturated and varied as we expected pokemons move away from vague monsters and into something more marketable to kids of all ages and all genders so to emphasize the cute factor a lot of the Pokemon here ditched the angry dinosaur eyes and get a more simplistic expression for example we have sudowoodo Quagsire and fan fee they come to mind also with less rugged fur or horns even the tough Pokemon have brighter colors and look a lot more cartoony you could see design aspects like Earth's rings rings or m4 OSes face and all of its patterns to emphasize what I'm saying here because of this a lot of the designs look a bit oversimplified and lack memorability for me and a lot of other folks a lot of these are just kind of round and their expressions don't do much in their favor to this day jota has a lot of filler for this design reason I should also mention that there are some classic monster style designs like Tyranitar heracross and steelix here now that simply due to the fact that these were designed concurrently with generation 1 and they were left out simply for storage limitations because of this makes of extremely cute and simplified Pokemon and leftover monsters from generation 1 I think there's a huge contrast here in terms of design the highs are high but the lows are low here so it feels a lot more inconsistent than generation 1 which was already kind of inconsistent so we'll have to factor that into the final ranking when considering joto here comes generation 3 and with that what many dubbed the advanced generation the graphical limitations were far less of an issue here and the Ruby and Sapphire games really felt like a soft reboot for the franchise in many ways I would argue that the designs actually have a lot to do with that they came later in the franchise based on mythology especially mythology that would fit the culture of the home region the design philosophy changed here greatly it leaned more into the deliberate specific theming Pokemon like clay doll Agron absol and Mawile all have direct inspirations from Japanese and Chinese mythology also there were a lot of object Pokemon that weren't expressly animals and were more deliberately executed so they weren't just objects with eyes the way they were back in generation 1 so the pokemons inspirations come through clearly but they also look like they inhabit the world well pretty much every design and Hoenn was also pretty vibrant both in design geometry and saturation to match the extreme tropical climate of Hoenn pokemon like a Wailord Tropius Ludicolo and camerupt all of excellent designs they use a great mix of both rounded shapes reminiscent of generations - cuteness and the vague ruggedness of generation 1 to promote a really good variety with almost every pokemon being memorable in some way so generation 3 is really where concepts met execution on to generation 4 I would say that this generation was more of a departure from Hoenn in my opinion it was a bit like generation 1 in the fact that many designs channel the monster vibe once again with rugged designs using less saturated color palettes despite the DES allowing for colors just as vibrant as the Gameboy advanced for example star Raptor Garchomp luxray they're all very popular and they fit the monster role in terms of having an edge to their design so to speak but unlike generation one's monsters they're clearly based on one thing Pressley rather than an amalgamation of many things for example where his Nieto King sort of looks like a rhino but also his features of a gorilla a rabbit and a dinosaur and a bunch of other things it's clear that here in generation four had pout on this clearly based on a hippo and nothing else because of this heavy inspiration based off of only one clear thing I would say that it hurts a lot of Pokemon Pokemon League asteroid on moth Amandla mania and all of okay designs but they look really boring because they lack the high contrast shapes and colors from generation three and they use more realistic proportions so they look like forgettable real-world animals rather than exciting Pokemon based on those animals so in this way generation four kind of feels the same as generation one where a lot of the Pokedex is just plain animals drawn in a somewhat cartoonish way so that leaves room for very little that's exciting but generation four also had a lot of cross generational evolutions so it took generation one and two standards and applied them to newer Pokemon incorporating darker color palettes so they look like seamless transitions they look like bigger tougher and often rounder versions of older Pokemon enhancing their original designs but I think that this is where Pokemon started to get roasted for being over designed with some of them having questionable and gratuitous details that makes it look like these guys don't really live in the wild so overall generation four was another high contrast one like generation two there's about four or five Pokemon that are universally praised here but the rest seem very forgettable due to their over realism like I mentioned before so that hurts generation four onto generation five and where do I even begin with this one right off the bat this was the most controversial generation with designs like the ice cream and the trash Pokemon is easy targets this prompted many people say immediately right off this generation is the worst by far but I think it's worth discussing firstly in this generation Pokemon became a lot less realistic and more cute than ever before there were a lot of Pokemon that tried to be plain old animals just like generation 1 in terms of concept but the art design philosophy was way more exaggerated here and he used way more exaggerated shapes and even generation 3 did it made the body proportions a lot less realistic brighter colors less detailed fur feet and eyes that were a lot bigger were hallmarks of this generation but I don't think it's always bad because the eyes are generally more expressive than the dinosaur eyes of generation 1 or the oversimplified expression of generation 2 this also brought into light the idea of accessories as natural elements of Pokemon like the Coretta ggys sported by both throw and sock and the wooden steel pillars for conch elders evolution line this reduces the idea of believability somewhat in my opinion a lot of generation 5 Pokemon were again based off of inanimate objects but it was the inanimate object philosophy of Gen 1 more so than Gen 3 because there were a lot of manmade Pokemon but they weren't using it in the body design in an organic and believable way and instead it reverted to the primitive philosophies of generation 1 where it was literally just an object with a pair of eyes tacked on I will say that garb owner is actually exempt from this and is actually fairly organic looking and really well designed so generation 5 is another case of heavy polarization there's a lot of excellent designs because by this point Pokemon really nailed the monster design and had a base Pokemon on something real without making it too vague so it was ambiguous like generation 1 but also not basing it on one thing too hard so it came off as boring in over realistic like Gen 4 did from this point on I'm gonna be talking vaguely about the following three generations as a whole jumping back and forth because I think the same design philosophy is persistent since generation 6 and it hasn't really changed all too much the biggest reason for this was just how thematic the region's got every region dating back to generation 1 was based off of a real-world locale but with generation 6 as Kalos we got regions that were very heavily based off of the real world locations like Unova is based off of New York City but it feels a lot less like New York City expressly then Kalos feels like France alala feels like Hawaii and gallo feels like the UK so the Pokemon designs followed suit with this heavy handedness and we got a bunch of very themed Pokemon that weren't based off of Japanese lore anymore or even plain old animals and they instead use cultural connotations of their home regions as direct design inspirations for example in generation 6 we have the desert fairy types and the perfume fairy types both very French in generation 7 we have sandy gas being a sand castle and comfy literally being a Hawaiian lei and in generation 8 we have alchemy being a desert once again this time based off of British delicacies and we have stones earner literally being Stonehenge which is an actual physical location in Britain a lot of these designs are great but the downside is that it's hard to imagine certain Pokemon outside of their native regions so their designs do become a bit limiting so therefore if we find one in a future game that's anywhere but gallery it'll make a little sense for that to be its natural habitat I'm not saying that Pokemon with theme designs shouldn't be found out of their native region because I think that's one of the greatest parts of the franchise the connection because some do work in other places like a lot of Pokemon from Lola are clearly designed to originally inhabit tropical climates but it's easy to imagine Pokemon like Google isopod candor aqua nade elsewhere versus something like stones earner because its design is a little too limiting if that makes sense so that's why I think generations 3 & 4 hold up in terms of design whereas I feel like Pokemon from generation 6 through 8 get a little carried away with this limitation so regardless of how good their designs are we're gonna have to factor that transport ability factor into our verdict at the end but I also want to add that all three of the most recent Dex's had the smallest output of new pokémon each both due to the addition to mega evolution and regional forms because of this I think designs were very well concentrated not all three Dex's and there was very little filler or inclusion of Pokemon simply based off of animals for the sake of it you can see this in places like a low-low where there is a Pokemon like crab brawler whereas generation one hunt is a plain old crab crab brawler is a crab with the added touch of having a boxing motif so that adds a lot to the latest three generations because what many people regard as gimmicks actually makes for what I think is the perfect balance of believability is a creature in the ecosystem and also having some kind of fun inspiration this can also be said of very distinct yet very realistic designs from generations six through eight like gogoat noivern toxicity and scent to scorch so I hate to reduce the last three generations to the same ranking but honestly they all have the exact same things worth praising as well as the same things worth criticizing in my opinion all three took a leap of faith and committed two entirely non vague designs often making very awesome Pokemon with very clear inspirations I wouldn't say any of the Pokemon here are too vague or too boring like we got in some of the early generations but they also suffered when these inspirations were so heavy-handed that they came off as extremely unrealistic and too limiting so to recap everything I think the best designs are the ones that perfectly strike the balance of believability they could easily fit into the real world and the Pokemon world time thanks to their designs Pokemon are used to battle in universe and that's the staple of the franchise and the metagame but I think people are drawn to the franchise because of the immersion and the idea that these Pokemon might have the inherent ability to be good in battle but first and foremost their equivalents to animals they live and breathe in and habit a complex ecosystem each one fitting in in their own unique way I think that's the charm of the franchise so a good design in my opinion and a good generation is a batch of designs that allows for striking descriptive factors of coolness cuteness or creepiness while allowing for realism is a living creature so the generation that contribute Pokemon with these qualities in a believable way will be favored so my final verdict is generation 3 I think that this generation for the reason I've stated before has the best mix of all the positive factors I like how the franchise expanded here and it took creative risks by having more deliberate designs there were less composite monsters to fill an RPG role and instead honored real world mythology in beautiful ways creating creatures that fit into the Pokemon worlds in again a believable way but they've designed details that have a rich history and basis in our real world cultures they also have the right mix of shapes colors and variety to allow for the Pokemon to be enjoyed beyond its native region so it avoids the vague filler problem that generations 1 2 and 4 had while avoiding the over teaming that generations 6 7 & 8 had for that reason I'm gonna go with generation 3 so there you have it that's my long awaited pick for the best Pokemon generation but really at the end of the day it's dumb to argue tirelessly about which is best art is very very subjective and we all have personal biases that are impossible to overcome though I know that I did make a verdict by selecting a best generation I also know that I very deliberately described each generation in a general way to get an honest overview of the design styles used there and to point out that there's a mix everywhere so there's good and bad everywhere it really is impossible to hate a whole generation because I can guarantee that in your least favorite generation there's at least one or two that you do like and conversely in your favorite one there's at least a few designs that you really don't like so while I personally think that generation 3 earns the title of best generation overall the beauty of this franchise is that anyone can make for any generation to be the best in terms of designs so no matter what there's a ton of joy to be found in almost every design creating a fictional world in a video game takes a lot of work especially when it comes to storytelling arts programming and marketing so if you need help with any of these things sometimes it's best to have a mentor for that you should turn to the mentors and moguls podcasts Heather Stone is an entrepreneur pioneer and founder of mentors and moguls with over 28 years of experience as an entrepreneur in the fields of asset management tech and finance she's no stranger to achieving goals and forging a path to success if you're interested in learning about business and practical tools you can apply in your own life check out the mentors and moguls podcasts on Apple and other podcast platforms so for more information you should check out the two links in the description below thank you once again to mentors and mogo's for sponsoring this video I have a full slate of projects planned for the rest of July so I'll see you in a few days for yet another exciting video [Music]

Channel: Tam Valley Productions

Views: 58,964

Keywords: pokémon, pokemon, pokemon designs, pokemon generation, pokemon xy, pokemon swsh, nintendo, tam valley, designs, evolution, arlo, captain midnight, papasea, tam valley productions, tvp, bring back wuhu island, wuhu island, truegreen7, truegreen, true green, nintendo speculation, pokemon generations, nintendo video, pop culture

Id: O1RdT7rrZzQ

Length: 16min 37sec (997 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 08 2020