We often talk about "Failed Shillmon" (Or rather Pokemon that Gamefreak/TPC planned on being popular but it didn't pan out as well they had hoped such as Zoroark or Incineroar, etc...)
But what opposite Direction?
What are some Pokemon that Gamefreak/TPC DIDNT intend on having fans but still ended up having sizable fanbases anyways?
I'll start with an obvious example:
Gamefreak outright confirmed that they were expecting Blaziken to be unpopular because they thought players would find it Ugly and were shocked to see how popular it became
What are some other Pokemon you think might had this affect on Gamefreak/TPC?
In my personal opinion I also think that certain Starters such as Decidueye, Primarina and Inteleon (in Japan at least) ended becoming more popular than Gamefreak had intended
>Decidueye
Only popular to westerners and still remains to this day. Its the inverse Inteleon
>starters
>legend
>pseudo
>Pokemon that Gamefreak/TPC DIDNT intend on having fans
The premise of this thread was dumb but the responses have been dumber than expected. Saying they didn't intend their most powerful, used, and shillable pokemon to be liked is just really bonkers.
tell that to Goodra or Kommo-o
Bax kind of flopped popularity-wise too
>flopped
So you admit they are designed to be popular, whether they end up being popular is outside the point,
Goodra is on the top 100 poll and is only barely below Tyranitar. Combining the votes it has with Goomy on the same list pushes it just above Dragapult. Things would likely change if all lines votes were combined, but the Goodra line is still very popular.
Nah they definitely didn't intend on certain Starters having fanbases. Just look at the signs.
>They intentionally screwed Decidueye competitive wise.
>They intentionally screwed Primarina marketing wise.
>They intentionally screwed Inteleon marketing AND competitive wise
>They intentionally left Delphox and Chesnaught in the dust while Greninja got an alternative form
Gamefreak knows what it's designated Shillmon Starters are that they put their stocks into and which ones they don't intend on people caring about much
It's kind of obvious these days, since the chosen one just gets Protean/Libero.
Greninja only got a new form in the anime because, like everybody else, they expected the Gen 6 starters to get a Mega. So when GF told them it wasn't (and all their begging fell on death's ears), they made their own.
>fell on death's ears
that's a cool way to misunderstand that phrase but i still have to be the one that tells you it's actually "fell on deaf ears"
That applies to literally every Starter anon
Pokemon fans are like Dragon ball fans
Can't even read
Bidoof for sure
I blame PMD for its popularity.
Yeah that was certainly a component of its popularity but it achieved true meme status which was impressive and still is.
Piplup. The most shilling it got during gen 4 was being Dawn's starter in the anime and you can tell that the anime staff caught on to Piplup's popularity and started having it be outside its pokeball every episode like Ash's Pikachu. Then when the DP remakes came around they wasted no time shilling it as hard as possible.
It was probably the most mocked Pokemon during gen 4
That can't possibly be true. Happy Feet had just come out a year prior at most and was a massive success and made penguins really popular in the public conscience. They knew exactly what they were doing with Piplup.
Chandelure as the face of Gen 5
Judging by how hard its getting sabotaged by the creators, Flygon
absol
Gardevoir
Was about to say this one. Gardevoir popularity is huge even outside the porn but it was barely shilled at the time.
I've always felt that all the porn was WHY they barely utilized it despite the popularity. They know what it's fanbase is like. They have to strike a balance between profiting from it's appearances and carefully tiptoeing around the fact that it's the most unintentionally sexualized creature they've ever created.
I don't know if it counts but the Regis are pretty popular despite being a pain in the ass to get and Regigigas intentionally made to be shit.
Croagunk, it's about as honest as a popular Pokemon gets
Mmmm had a lot of screen time in the anime as a comedy relief... And then it got added to Pokken as a playable charcter
>And then it got added to Pokken as a playable charcter
The same game that proceeded to die and get outsold by every other fighter
>Didnt sell
Irrelevant.
My point is they only added popular pokemon as playable (Croagunk was playable AND assist)
No way did they expect Blaziken to be unpopular, they had it debut in the anime by destroying Godrizard.
Gardevoir would probably be an actual example of them being caught off-guard by popularity since it didn't get shilled until gen 6
Charizard wasn't THAT big of a shillmon at the time
Nope see here
They expected Blaziken to be a disappointment
Even Masuda who loves Blaziken, thought people were gonn end up boxing him because he wasn't cute anymore
What a weird perception.
Johto was a fricking mistake
>johto out of fricking no were
kys
Johto is the home of cuteslop
Keep crying, Moetosister.
>Even Masuda who loves Blaziken, thought people were gonn end up boxing him because he wasn't cute anymore
Since fricking when are fully evolved starter Pokemon as cute as their first stages?
Meganium I guess
Charizard is arguably more cute than Charmander
Typhlosion
>sudowoodo
>torkoal
I want to believe
Garchomp
it was Cynthias ace and thats it, but Cynthia wasnt a juggernaut of popularity back then yet, so it wasnt really shilled. No more than Metagross being Stevens ace
Granted they probably expected a cool strong shark monster to be popular anyway, but not THAT much
They made it too powerfull. They knew
I've always found Lopunny to be a particularly odd case of this. It's one of the most popular Pokemon within the furry and porn artist communities, but unlike other coomermons that became shillmons like Gardevoir or Braixen, Lopunny is consistently neglected to this day. Nearly 0 appearances in the anime outside of its debut generation, has had no presence in recent spin-offs with limited rosters, and it got culled in SV.
at least it got a mega
That’s because its popularity is entirely due to coomers/furries so if nintendo/tpc were to shill it they’d have no plausible deniability that they’re not pandering to perverts. On the other hand Gardevoir is a decent pokemon gameplay wise and has a more interesting design than just “lol we made the playboy bunny into a mon wink wink”. So there are plenty of non-coomers who like gardevoir.
tl;dr: unlike gardevoir lopunny was made to be a coomermon ON PURPOSE, that’s why they can’t shill it.
Amoonguss, for all the wrong reasons too
Bidoof, even if its popularity is just memes
>Gamefreak outright confirmed that they were expecting Blaziken to be unpopular because they thought players would find it Ugly and were shocked to see how popular it became
Bullshit, Blaziken was always an intended shillmon. One of the first Hoenn pokemon revealed, used to beat Ash and Charizard in the Johto league anime, and they pushed it hardcore with an early mega evo in XY.
And in the end Swampert still beat it in a recent popularity poll.
>https://comicbook.com/anime/news/pokemon-anime-blaziken-evolution-ugly/
>"I think people from our generation have certainly experienced buying painted chicks. So [Torchic is] orange, and just like a real painted chick, it starts out cute and then grows into something fierce and hard to look at," Sugimori revealed.
>"We wanted to recreate that experience which led to Torchic, Combusken, and Blaziken. We wanted the people raising them to feel that sense of disappointment."
Huh, never knew that.
>We wanted the people raising them to feel that sense of disappointment.
Why are they like this?
It's that same uniquely Eastern logic that convinced North Korea that depicting Americans as badass cyborg wolves would be insulting somehow. It's the reason why most animes do not seem to understand the concept of tone.
Japanese people are so mentally ill
You people are misunderstanding, its sense of dissapointment that its no longer cute, like it happens in real life. They might as well be talking about Combusken.
Plus they also said Blaziken was a test to see how humanoid they could make a pokemon, so in a sense it is a really important pokemon as the franchice did in fact churn out a lot of antro mons
>Blaziken is the reason we're stuck with Lucario
Axew, definitely. We know the anime had an evolution arc planned for Iris' Axew that they were ordered to drop and awkwardly write out due to how much merch it was selling.
i dropped that series at burgh, the frick you mean axew never evolved
He never evolved in Best Wishes but he did come back as a Haxorus later on in Journeys
Iris had specifically been tasked with evolving it by her matriarch, but never did so, and when she finally returned to her village and talked to the matriarch about it, she said something like "well that's fine too, evolution isn't everything". It really screamed the writers trying to brush over the fact that TPC had told them to scrap their plans.
Zangoose outside of gay autistic freaks into fatshit
Serviper could qualify as well since they come as a pair
Seviper is for enabling Shaun's autism only
All snakemons really
if they thought it was ugly and people would hate it then why did they put out a design they thought was ugly? and why were it and kecleon the first gen 3 pokemon teased in the anime? that makes no fricking sense
Because they're Masochists
They admitted they wanted people feel disappointed at seeing Blaziken
It's really because the developers weren't sure if the audience would accept a Humanoid looking Starter (because Blaziken was the very first entry in a LOOONG line of Humanoid Starters)
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2022/07/random-pokemon-artist-reportedly-designed-blaziken-to-test-fan-reception
They broke the Starter design philosophy when it came to Blaziken by making it look so human and such a drastic departure from Torchic.
THAT is the reason why the Gamefreak didn't believe Blaziken would be Popular
Which wouldn't be such a problem if it didn't lead to EVERY SINGLE GENERATION SINCE having a mandatory humanoid starter
I give gen 4 a pass. Infernape is a monkey, not a humanoid
If you're gonna give Infernape a pass than may as well give Emboar one as well since both are based on Journey to the West characters (Son Goku and Zhu Bajie respectively)
I meant Son Wukong I fricked up there
Infernape is clearly Hanuman
Well they turned out to be popular, and showed that a more humanoid direction (which they were interested in exploring more) could work.
Do I like Blaziken? Yes?
Do I like some humanoid pokemon? Yes
Do I need to see humanoid starters in every single generation? Hell no
There's a good reason why Gen 1 remains the most iconic Trio of Starters to the day while all the humanoid fursuits barring Blaziken and maybe Infernape are completely forgotten about as soon as their Gens are over
>Complaining over a monkey being humanoid
Gen 4 was free of fursuit starters
Interestingly, in Pokemon Blue, charmander had a lump on it's back that looks like it is the origin of charizard's wings. But it was removed in all later artwork of charmander
This just shows how moronic Blastiose's evolution line is
Exactly.
People always say “BIPEDAL THIS QUADRUPEDAL THAT” but my problem isn’t with bipedal starters. My problem is with HUMANOID ones. Feraligatr and Infernape are perfectly fine designs while being bipedal. This is because their movement and posture is more like that of a reptile or a monkey than a fricking human.
On the other hand you have shit like cinderace or inceleon which feel more like individuals than species so I can’t imagine them existing in the wild.
And why do you think they exist? Because it all goes back to Blashitken because morons liked that ugly man in a chicken costume more than actual monsters like Sceptile and Swampert
>actual monsters
You morons always say muh monster this muh monster that muh mom is a monster and all that autistic shit when there isn't an "Actual monster" you homosexuals never watched monsters inc did you? go the frick off with this "actual monsters!!"
Ferocious beast not humans in fursuits
But thanks to shit like Blashitken and Meowshitrada we're gonna be stuck with them until the end of time
>Ferocious beast
Holy underage
>Human in fursuit
Yes and? monsters ARE people in suits historically but maybe you were born waaayyy to late to know that
>I can’t imagine them existing in the wild.
You quite literally can't find them in the wild sperg
Only applies to gameplay
In flavor text starters in the past would still suggest behavior in the wild instead of what they would do in captivity/urban setting
Damn....imagine the cool animalistic non-fury starter evos we would have had in recent gens if Blaziken had flopped...
>We often talk about "Failed Shillmon
Do you mean just Smash schizos?
Sandshrew/Sandslash should have been more popular than they were. Oh well.
it's still the favorite Pokemon of many, many normies.
i still to this day don't understand the obsession with gardevoir
her limbs are like twigs, almost as thin as sonic's legs (again, another character i don't understand)
you'd easily injure her by mistake, psychic types aren't meant to be physical
it's like being attracted to picrel, it's just a highly intelligent brain with barely enough limb strength to not fall over and splat all their brain matter all over the floor
if you love her, you'd let her go.
Its not that thin, plus its specifically the "embrace" pokemon, Gardevoir was designed to love and be loved
...Did she just wear that Ditto out?
Yes, and now she's coming for you.
Do they feel pain if you touch their chest horn?
emotional clit
I'm going to give a twist and say Game Freak is probably relieved Incineroar gained a ton of organic popularity via Smash and to lesser but still valuable extents VGC usefulness and it was pretty fun to watch in the anime. I think they're leaning into making it less "tough" (still is) and more "cool" a la Charizard and Blaziken, toning down its hammy animations - compare its poke ball pop-out, attack, and damaged animations in Gen 7 versus 9.
I know pokemon fandom memes on Decidueye being organically popular and Incineroar a forced shillmon, but I was there through all the starter wars and Incineroar had legit fans from the get-go and the Decidueye was overshadowed by Rowlet big-time.
chandelure being popular is always gonna be weird. it always consistently ekes out a top spot in popularity polls, imagine if game freak went ahead with their original idea and had Lampet as the final evolution
>Gamefreak outright confirmed that they were expecting Blaziken to be unpopular because they thought players would find it Ugly and were shocked to see how popular it became
Source?
It's one of the first pokemon they showed in the anime to shill gen 3
Blaziken wasn't shown in the anime until a few months before the release of gen 3. They had been shilling it for two years at that point with Kecleon, Wailmer, Duskull, Azurill, Wynaut, Latios, Latias and I think a few more too. Volbeat?
>Zebstrika
You just know, I just know, everyone here just knows but Gamefreak/TPC did not knew, and they so did not knew that they made it the ace pokemon of a supermodel.
I hope we keep getting humanoid starters to piss off spergs
>Gamefreak outright confirmed that they were expecting Blaziken to be unpopular because they thought players would find it Ugly and were shocked to see how popular it became
Wait....so the surhumans who liked that ugly digimon are the ones we have to thank for starter evos becoming humanoid jobmons after gen 3?
This thread....isn't insane
Nature is healing Blazikengay