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Thoughts and Theories on Pokemon Legends Z-A

With Pokemon Legends Z-A being very different from Legends Arceus, I wanted to figure out what all the differences we know so far are, and what similarities there were to connect the two as "Legends" games.

So here are all the big similarities and differences with a pinch of speculation and a dash of slight TeraLeak info!

Differences between PLA and PLZA:

Pokemon may no longer be able to kill you.

It’s a modern world- you can actually fight trainers, and many different kinds! With this extra source of Exp and gameplay, will there be less focus on mass catching and research tasks?

To build on this, the “boss fights” will likely no longer be noble Pokemon, or not even singular Pokemon at all. Instead, they will likely take the form of trainer battles. Not Gym Leaders, as that would undermine Clemont’s job. Instead, they may be major city figures who use Megas, whom you must recruit to give you access in developing the rest of the city.

Less focus on crafting, maybe more focus on money and business-building? Dex completion will likely still contribute to earning funds in some way, though.

The cast can’t be ancestors anymore- instead we get timeskip designs to show off. Most likely the residents of Lumiose. Clemont, Bonnie, Emma. Maybe other Kalos residents like Xerosic, Sycamore, Sina, and Dexio. Hopefully even Calem and Serena!

Maybe the Fallers subplot will continue, maybe not. Maybe depressed Emmet will be here.

While regional variants may still be around, there will likely be less focus on them thanks to the return of Megas.

To help us estimate how many new Megas there may be, there were 28 Megas in XY. 18 Megas in ORAS. 18 Alolan Forms. 20 Galarian Forms. 16 Hisuian Forms. 4 Paldean Forms. 22 Paradoxes (Counting Koraidon & Miraidon)

With less focus on the wilderness, Ride Pokemon may have a reduced role (Cabs and Gogoat could return) and parkour combined with Rotom Phone upgrades will likely further replace Ride Pokemon.

With Megas returning, this could mean the potential return of abilities and held items. This is not a guarantee, though. Megas have appeared in many other games that lacked either abilities or held Mega Stones, including Let’s Go, Pokemon Go, Mystery Dungeon DX, Shuffle, Smash Bros, MastersEX, and more.

Most notably, you are bound to one city instead of a whole region.

The urban environment means we could get complex new indoor areas for the first time since USUM in 2017 (If you don’t count Let’s Go and BDSP as remakes)

So, what IS a Legends game?

Similarities between PLA and PLZA:

You return to an older Pokemon region at a different point in time compared to the original games (Past/Future). As opposed to remakes, which re-tell the events of the original games.

The starters are a mixed assortment of previous starters (likely) with new forms for their final stages.

You are not taking the Pokemon League challenge in any way. Instead, you are building up a civilisation (Jubilife Village/Lumiose City)

Heavy theming on the balance between humanity and nature. PLA is about urbanizing and colonizing a wilderness, and PLZA is about re-introducing nature to a developed city.

“Drive by” catching is a thing, where you can throw Pokeballs at Pokemon without engaging in a battle screen to fight them.

The battles themselves diverge from the typical turn-based format of the mainline games.

While you are not able to explore the whole region (Floaroma, Eterna, Canalave, and its islands aren’t in PLA), what you can explore is divided into five different roamable areas, unlocked as you progress through the story.

A marketable appeal in seeing a region and its characters in a different time (Ancestors in PLA and timeskip designs in PLZA)

A marketable appeal in introducing new forms for existing Pokemon and (likely) even a small handful of new Pokemon!

Sidequests given to you by townsfolk help flesh out the world and its people.

No version exclusives, and story focus on a Trio master legendary/mythical which didn’t have its own game before.

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I animated something for the new Pokemon Legends Z-A announcement!

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WELL WELL WELL

My Big Pokémon Gen 10 Theory:

I've seen tons of speculation on what region future Pokemon games may be in, or what new flashy battle gimmick they'll have. And since I haven't heard anyone propose this theory , I thought I'd post it here for future reference!

TLDR: The Gen 10 Special Feature will involve getting rid of the turn-based battle system entirely and having manually-controlled Pokemon in real-time battles!

Why do I think so? Because they've been slowly testing it out over the last few years.

Legends Arceus introduced Strong and Agile styles, which allow Pokemon to attack multiple times in a row, breaking from the standard back-and-forth turn order already. Despite this, battles weren't in real-time in this game- enemies would still wait for you to input your attack before the rest of the battle proceeded.

But you know what IS in real time? Tera Raids in Scarlet and Violet. While internally the game still registers "turns" in these raids, if you don't input your attack in time during these raids, you can still easily miss out on attacking for a turn, while everyone else is still in the heat of battle.

Another minor but important change for this theory is battles now taking place in the actual overworld instead of a small arena that matches the environment. Allowing you to move around during the battle (Legends Arceus) or at least move the camera around freely (Scarlet & Violet).

And now with The Indigo Disk, they've introduced a new mechanic called "Synchro", that allows you to manually control your Pokemon and move it around, something that we know more from games like Pokepark and Mystery Dungeon. This I believe, is the second-last piece of the puzzle. Preparing us for the eventual game where rather than standing around clicking orders to our Pokemon once per turn, we'll instead manually control our Pokemon to move around, attack at any rate, and dodge enemy attacks just like in the anime! (I am a touch sad that this feature was introduced in the same games Ash Greninja got scrapped, but hey...)

But what is the final piece of this puzzle, you may ask? I believe it's figuring out what to do with the Speed and Accuracy stats. For the last 26+ years of Pokemon, the Speed stat decides who attacks first in a turn. But if turns are gone, then what now?

Maybe instead, Speed will now decide the actual movement speed of your Pokemon as they dash around the battle? A Regieleki would be able to become an actual blur of lightning, while a Shuckle would be practically immobile.

Or to make things simpler, Speed could maybe determine the attack rate of your Pokemon. An Electrode could maybe fire off 10 Thunderbolts in 5 seconds, while a Pincurchin might only be able to fire 2 Thunderbolts in that time?

Meanwhile, accuracy could tie into the literal accuracy of your moves. Moves like Magical Leaf could lock on to your enemies from across the map, while a Focus Blast could just fly off the map in the opposite direction you aimed it.

Or if they didn't want to go too overboard with this system, they could also just add a "charge time" setting to attacks. Where moves like Scratch can be spammed as much as you can tap the A Button, while moves like Solarbeam could take a solid 5 seconds or so to charge and fire.

But yeah, this is my big theory for the future of Pokemon! Let me know what you think, or if I missed any details! I can't wait to come back to this post in 3+ years when Gen 10 actually introduces "ZetaStretching" instead, where all Pokemon become oblong and all their moves become OKHO moves, haha.

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With the new Avatar series being post apocalyptic, I had to draw this up:

I'm not the most hyped about the new premise either, but I'm going to wait until we get actual footage to form my opinions!

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I'm happy to announce that I just reached 3000 subscribers on my Youtube channel! As thanks, I'm accepting questions for a future Q&A video!

You can submit questions about the various art/comics/animations I've made, or just general life questions either on this post, in my inbox, or on any of the socials listed on my Youtube!

I wasn't expecting to hit this milestone so soon, especially when I have several huge projects coming up that I was hoping to take questions for, so maybe I'll have the submission deadline be in early April when all those are out! Or maybe I'll have hit another milestone by then, that'd be cool!

Thanks to any of you on Tumblr who also subscribe to me on Youtube! It makes me so happy that this many people appreciate what I do!!

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By popular demand, I animated a full version of the AutoFister "What is This Feeling?" cover!

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Mild rant about "Work Harder, not Smarter":

As usual, negativity under the cut for those who don't want it!

Lately, I've been dealing with a lot of unwanted input from someone that if I need to succeed at anything, I just need to keep blindly "Working harder", that if I take abuse from an employer, it's just "Valuable experience". And this unsurprisingly came from the same person who told other people that being abused by their relationship partner was also a great learning experience.

I told them that as someone who's worked multiple jobs, I received more actual work experience and skills from my most recent job where my boss was a great chill guy who would reasonably talk me through using new software and customer service, compared to the job before that where my senile contracting boss constantly accused interns of stuff they didn't do just to pick fights. To which this person just replied "That's not how the real world works, though."

To compare, I'm not the biggest fan of jogging, but when I was younger I HATED it. Because I got cramps, and dehydrated, and I didn't know proper running technique and posture. And whenever I complained about how much jogging hurt, I was only met with a "Just jog more, if you're feeling pain and exhaustion it's because you're weak." No other advice.

But when I joined a gym and talked to other professionals, I actually got useful and helpful advice. I was taught how to improve my posture so running is less tiring, to stretch even more extensively before exercising to avoid cramps, and that drinking a lot more water before exercising helps because sweating it out feels great! And as a scrawnier kid, working out my core muscles first helped make other exercises easier because those are the most important ones, rather than just blindly running and getting tired. If I had just kept running with poor technique and prep, I would have just kept getting cramps and burnt out before I reached a point where my stamina would meaningfully improve.

But yeah, as someone working on multiple projects right now while looking for a job, going to someone for sympathy and only receiving a "you're not working hard enough, keep working harder, no I won't give specific advice or reassurance." don't motivate me to do better. It makes me feel like everything is futile and insufficient and drains away what little energy I had left.

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Creature Commandos fight scenes be like:

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Happy Year of the Snake!!

It may not be my specific year, but I've loved snakes ever since I was a toddler, so much so that I have one as my icon!

Also this animation I made is now relevant again

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My original animated short film premieres on Youtube March 30th!!

Wishful Thinking launches on my Youtube channel on March 30th 2025! It's my biggest project ever and I can't wait for you all to see it!!

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I made yet another comic to cope with the finale:

A follow up to my earlier comics:

(G.I Robot) (The Commandos Mourn)

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Nina Mazursky

A Creature Commando

A True Friend.

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Creature Commandos Episode 7 (SPOILERS):

I'm so sorry

I swear I'm working on those hurt/comfort comics too.

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Y'all know I'm shellshocked after that Creature Commandos finale. Unfortunately, I'm on a family trip so I can't draw away my feelings right away, but I'll absolutely make a follow-up to my G.I Robot comic, updated with a lot of new info from this week's episode.

I hope you all stay safe and happy and hope Season 2 develops more of all these plot points and does justice to our crew!

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After being inspired by Creature Commandos (Supernatural band of misfits) and Moana 2 (Tropical island period piece fantasy) I wanted to try my hand at crafting together a new group of OCs!

Set in 1330s Southeast Asia, mythical Malay figure Badang teams up with an assortment of paranormal weirdos to protect the Straits of Malacca from all kinds of threats!

The goal with a lot of my stuff is to make sure that it's still entertaining for non-Southeast Asians, and deals immense psychic damage to any Southeast Asians who get the idiotic references I love making. I don't want my representation to ever feel like a condescending tutorial or an exclusionary in-crowd thing!

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My Top 4 favorite manga of 2024!

And here we are again! After I had so much fun curating my picks from last year, I thought I’d take the time to highlight and appreciate my top 4 favorite manga series that I’ve started reading this year!

#4: Okashi na Elf to Joshikousei (Sweets, Elf, And A High School Girl) 16 Chapters- Complete!

Genre/Themes: Light-hearted fantasy, baking, comedy

Premise: An elf named Alice is in debt running her departed mother’s bakery when she gets whisked away to the apartment of a Japanese schoolgirl named Ruri. Ruri, wanting to help Alice out, teaches her all sorts of quick and easy dessert recipes (that the readers can try out too!) and the pair soon form an unlikely friendship!

I love baking and things that teach me about it, and while the most popular cooking-themed manga may not offer much in the way of real recipes, I’m really glad this one does!

It’s got a great art style, cute and cozy premise, and an all-round wholesome feel to it! And the desserts it teaches you to make often come with alternatives and backups, really carrying home the whole Bob Ross style “happy accidents” tone of the series.

A brief and simple manga, and for those whom it may concern, the light Yuri themes only stay as themes for the series. Unlike our next pick…

#3: Nengan no Akuyaku Reijou (I Got My Wish and Reincarnated as the Villainess (Last Boss)!) Currently ongoing at 44 biweekly chapters!

Genre/Themes: Otome Isekai (Female-focused video game style fantasy), Yuri (Lesbian romance), Overpowered protagonist comedy

Premise: A sickly girl named Elizabeth is reborn into a fantasy world as the arbiter of evil- but Elizabeth is a kind person at heart, and is so grateful for her new lease on life that she only uses her overwhelming sinister powers for personal fitness! And things get even more out of hand when she falls in love with her classmate- a sweet honest girl named Karen and the “chosen one” of this world. Follow Elizabeth and Karen on their magical adventures as they bond with each other, fend off obnoxious male suitors, and hopefully prevent Elizabeth’s destiny to destroy the world!

Never thought I’d have an Isekai on here, let alone another Yuri, but here are some key differences that sold me on this series- maybe they’ll sell you on it too!

The protagonist isn’t aware this universe functions like a game- she’s not an otaku using her outside knowledge to manipulate those around her. She’s just happy to be alive and loves exploring (and massacring) her way through this magical kingdom!

Conversely, I like to see a Villainess character with an actual “Villainous” theme and story to her. I’m not a fan of “Villainesses” who are just mean rich girls- that’s just called “being a bitch”, haha. And the more malevolent Elizabeth’s powers seem, the better they contrast against how friendly she is, which makes the story even better!

The art has that nice solid shading that I like to see in manga- not that overly light airbrushing stuff.

Like I said about some of my top picks last year, I love a romance story where the couple actually enjoys casually spending time with each other- No melodrama, no petty arguments, no pining, no yearning, no rushed enemies to lovers, just two people who really care about each other, and this is that

As someone who loves One Punch Man and Mob Psycho, it’s just fun to see an overpowered protagonist express their simple and wholesome outlook on life as they beat down close-minded antagonists!

It’s really funny- this was the out-of-context panel that convinced me to read it!

I’m not particularly familiar with concepts like “doomed Yuri” or warning signs of queerbaiting, so if you know better than I do, let me know! Otherwise, this series is still tons of fun even without the romance, so that’s cool! I will say though that the most recent chapter as of me typing this, Ch44, is the first to have overly egregious fanservice, so that's a mild letdown.

#2: Replica Datte, Koi wo suru. (Even a Replica Falls in Love) Currently ongoing at 17 monthly chapters!

Genre/Themes: Highschool drama, mild thriller themes, mild supernatural elements, romance

Premise: Sunao Aikawa looks like a normal high school girl, except for one small detail- she’s a Replica. A temporary duplicate conjured up by the real Sunao to run the errands she’s too depressed to do in person. The real Sunao can will away her replica, Nao, whenever she’s served her purpose, erasing her from existence until the next time she’s needed. Despite all this, Nao wants agency as her own person- she wants to live life outside of Sunao’s orders, to find hobbies, friends, and maybe even fall in love. But she’s completely powerless to do so as things are.

I never thought a dramatic series with next to no comedy, action, or colorful fantasy elements would wind up so high on my list! It’s a great story about trying to find your identity in the face of those who try to suppress you. I really like how it follows a serious subject matter with lots of dark themes and implications, but neither the visuals nor the story take things too far by making it overly edgy or grim. There’s just enough tranquillity and joy to make the tense parts stand out, and vice versa. It’s gripping but not depressing, and that’s really really impressive!

On top of all that, this series has some crazy twists and turns! Obviously I don’t want to spoil exactly what they are, but rest assured there’s some absolutely mindblowing reveals throughout the story!

#1: Houkago Kitaku Biyori (Journey Home After School) Currently ongoing at 33 biweekly chapters!

Genre/Themes: Highschool Romcom, wholesome, very cute.

Premise: As he recovers from a sports injury, high school freshman Shun is caught up in the “Hyper Go-Home Club” by its sole member- an eccentrically positive girl who goes by Chokki-chan. The goal of the club is just to walk home, find cool stuff along the way, and appreciate the small “romances” of life we often overlook. And naturally, Shun and Chokki develop a strong bond with each other through these wholesome adventures!

I only just got into this series a few months ago and no joke, it’s already claimed the spot of my favorite manga of the year and one of my favorites of all time! Chokki’s personality of wanting to find the beauty in the small things in life makes her really endearing, and her chemistry with Shun is great! No bickering, no fanservice cliches, no rivals subplot, just two people wholesomely bonding through cute shenanigans like in Pseudo Harem (My #1 manga of last year)! I really really really hope this series gets an anime adaptation next!!

Pros:

·        Cute art style- VERY well drawn!!

·        Great humor (Can’t have a romcom without the com!)

·        Good and cute chemistry between the couple

·        Good pacing and progress (For 33 chapters so far)

·        Fun side cast

·        No need for fanservice

Cons:

·        I really can’t think of any! I just don’t hope they drag out the “will they won’t they” for too long, and that the couple getting together will be just the halfway point of the series, like with Pseudo Harem.

And that’s it! If you check out any of these series and like them, let me know what you think! I’d love to have more people to discuss them with! And truth be told, there were definitely a few other manga series in the running for the top 4, but their lack of publishing and/or slow translations put me off mentioning them- I don’t want anyone to suffer because I recommended them a series on hiatus, haha. If they ever get published/translated better next year, maybe I’ll recommend them for 2025!

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I saw a comment on how Weasel should've been put on the same team as Ratcatcher 2, since she's always willing to care for the unloved, so I absolutely had to draw it.