#unfortunately. puck has so much lore

[bloodtwin]

𝐌𝐀𝐈𝐍 𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐄: OLD DOG LEARNING NEW TRICKS ;  𝐁𝐆𝟑  。

Default verse set during the events of Baldur's Gate III. Each act of the game has its own specific tag because there are very distinct differences in Puck's characterization & the amount of knowledge he has about who he is, depending on where he is in the journey.

𝐕. 𝐀𝐂𝐓 𝐈. ➷ WHAT’S WITH THAT HOLE IN YOUR HEAD … ？

At the start of the game, Puck is at his most naive & most malleable. At his core, he has an idealistic mindset with recklessly heroic tendencies due to a strong sense of justice. However, he remembers nothing from his past & has no concrete basis for his beliefs. He can be easily swayed into giving in to his dark urges. That being said, he is deeply afraid of himself & his urges. He does not know the full extent of his strength, but he knows that he is more powerful than he'd like to be. He intentionally tries to make himself seem weaker than he is to be less intimidating. Whether or not he is successful in this endeavor is up in the air. He has a scar at the base of his back that he believes used to be a tail that got severed somehow. He cannot remember how it happened. Canonically, he is very open about the Dark Urge & does not attempt to hide the fact he killed Alfira. He chooses to save the grove.  

𝐕. 𝐀𝐂𝐓 𝐈𝐈. ➷ YOU CAN BREAK A SHOVEL WHEN YOU BREAK NEW GROUND！

During this act, Puck is starting to lose his grip on his meek persona, asserting himself more aggressively & giving in to his urges more frequently ⸻ even if he is attempting to resist the urge ⸻ especially upon entering Moonrise Towers. His self-sacrificial behavior will also increase as he spreads himself too thin by trying to save everyone he possibly can. Also much more reclusive, not as open with his thoughts & emotions as he was in the previous act. Whether or not Puck chooses to kill Isobel ( default: sparing her ) , he will re-grow his tail overnight. Later in the act, he will learn it got chopped off by Kressa Bonedaughter after he attempted to strangle her with it during her experiments on him. With this verse, I will default to Iago being recruited at Last Light Inn, post-Marcus fight unless plotted otherwise. From them, Puck will have learned that he used to be their ❝ childhood friend ❞ & co-worker in the Guild. He will not know they are actually twins nor will he know anything about being a bhaalspawn, but he does know they are keeping things from him.   Canonically, he convinces Shadowheart not to kill the Nightsong. He also attempts to persuade Ketheric to surrender.  

𝐕. 𝐀𝐂𝐓 𝐈𝐈𝐈. ➷ HE MADE THE WORM！HE HAS TO KILL THE WORM！

Post-Durge reveal, Puck now knows that he is a bhaalspawn & Iago is his twin. He also learns about his involvement in the plot of the Absolute. He kind of goes insane & has a, uhh, I Love It by Icona Pop ( feat. Charli XCX ) vibe going on. That's the best way I can describe what's going on in his head, sorry. I tried to write a serious description, but similarly to Puck's attitude in Act 3, I had to get silly with it. Canonically, he does not agree to an alliance with Gortash, rejects Bhaal & defeats the Netherbrain. 

[the-brolliologist]

Consider for me if you will,,

I know this is going to be very specific but hear me out:

Penumbra Podcast HLVRAI AU

Specifically the Juno Steel series

I'm going to explain this as best I can </3, unfortunately I can't word my thoughts very well

Juno would be Gordon; main character, some Guy that is experiencing The Horrors and is also kinda angry, gay man with some gender, lost a body part, has a gun that he can use pretty well, used to work for the government but hates it now lmao

Nureyev would probably be Benrey? They're the love interests, VERY FRUITY!!, shady lil guys, kind of morally gray, betrayal... (for some symbolism the skeleton could be Slip Jackson??? Idk, metaphors or smth)

Buddy and Vespa are the Coomer and Bubby relationship <3. Its a little hard to determine which one they correlate to though,, unfortunately, although Vespa and Coomer are green, I think Ive landed on Buddy as Coomer; they care a little more about others than they let on, are very transgender and buff, have double vowels in their name, etc. (It would've been so fun to have Buddy as Bubby though, maybe I'll change my mind later)

Vespa and Bubby continuously threaten the main character with bodily harm and are very competent, chaotic <3

RITA IS TOMMY I WILL NOT CHANGE MY MIND,, EVERYBODY THINKS THEYRE YOUNGER THAN THEY ARE, VERY COMPETENT AND KNOWLEDGEABLE BUT FREQUENTLY UNDERESTIMATED, SILLY GOOFY VIBES,, NEED I SAY MORE

As for side characters,

We have the Ruby 7 as Sunkist!!! Sentient, all-knowing, non-human

Either Puck or Nick would be Darnold? Probably Puck because of their established friendly relationship to Rita/Tommy

Jet might be Forzen? I really want to include him but unfortunately there aren't any more characters in HLVRAI. I might have to go through the actual Half Life lore and see if I can include any established characters from there lol. I don't remember much about Forzen except he's related to fighting, so that's the only similarity I can make to Jet lmao

And finally we have Sasha as G-man. Shady leader of a shady organization that is probably committing war crimes. I don't know what to do for the G-man + Tommy father-son relationship here honestly

This will be updated later when I finish reading through the Half Life lore and have better character concepts >:)

[ultraericthered]

Anime Update V2 52

Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 - Man, if I didn’t know that this anime was mercifully short, I’d probably have dropped it at around this point, and that’s NOT because it’s quality is bad in any way. It’s because it just so grim, bleak, and uncompromising it is in how it depicts realistic tragedy, tragedy born of unfortunate but natural circumstances beyond any person’s ability to foresee or control. It’s a touchy subject for any work of fiction to address, so this anime doing so in such a raw and real-feeling way does have to be commended. Also, now “M/ELDOY” is beginning to sound more and more like a cruel joke.

Hunter x Hunter - Aaaaand of course it wasn’t Ging who Gon and Killua got sent to meet, but instead Kite, who I very vividly remember from the first episode of the 1999 anime but can’t recall much from him in this version before now. He saves the boys from something called a Chimera Ant, which is basically if an ant was not so small, and tells Gon more about his past and how he came to meet Ging, who is still The Worst. What they don’t realize is that elsewhere, the Chimera Ant Queen has been nesting, and is trying to give birth...

Fruits Bakset - Two episodes that continue where we left off in terms of focus on Yuki’s character arc and preparations being made for the school’s Cinderella production. Almost every piece of Yuki Sohma lore that’s been presented to us in a fragmented way throughout the series now all comes together here, and along with it the truth behind Yuki’s feelings for Tohru that seemed to awaken in him back at the end of Season 1: Yuki looks to Tohru for a warm, loving, nurturing mother-like figure to be a presence in his life, despite them being peers. He explicitly states he loves her strongly in a way that is not romantic, but more akin to how a child loves their mother. Given the genre and the whole illusion of a “love triangle” between Tohru, Yuki, and Kyo, this is something hardly anyone could’ve seen coming but in retrospect it makes perfect sense.

A nitpick I have here is that two pretty obvious details got left out of Yuki’s reminiscing: his meeting with Haru, and the entire existence of the Prince Yuki Fan Club. Touching upon the latter would’ve been especially interesting since in theory, their very existence is a rebuttal to everything Akito ever said about Yuki, but in practice they not only reinforce the view of Yuki as something more or less than just a normal human with normal human feelings, but it’s all built around a fangirl’s image of Yuki, a Yuki Sohma who does not really exist. Yuki had to have felt that if they got to know the real him and his Zodiac secret, that club would’ve been over in an instant. The poor guy. :(

Re:ZERO - I sat and watched three episodes straight this time, since they were all following one continous thread. Well, last time I’d said I wished this arc had kept its focus on the different campaign camps of the Royal Selection. The very next episode, we get to see more out of Krusch, Priscilla, and Anastasia! Yes! The scene with Anastasia and how Subaru got totally played by her was particularly amazing. What an absolute girlboss! The action from there continued to be solid, with us meeting Otto, getting to see the mysterious and deadly white whale, and Rem sacrificing not just her life but her existence in the memories of everyone who’s not Subaru. And then Subaru returns to Roswaal’s mansion where he sort of inadvertedly kills Emilia with his shadow magic, which was horrifying. Then Beako shoves him out into the cold somewhere, which was sad. And then Betelgeuse and his cultist buddies show up again, which was great  ‘cause that guy is just impossible not to enjoy watching. Finally, Puck shows his true self again, killing both Betelgeuse and Subaru, who is laughing mad as he freezes to death while hearing Puck’s rebukes.

And then, of course, came the moment - the famed “from zero” part with Subaru and Rem. Which I feel two ways about because on Subaru’s end, it is absolutely gutwrenching and breathtaking to see. The guy is at his lowest and makes his most pathetic bargain (”I’m giving up on Lagunica! Run away with me, Rem! We’ll live out our lives together elsewhere! Please!”) and when denied yet again, he breaks and lets out the tirade of self-loathing that had been building up inside him for who knows how long. When this tirade is met with unconditional, selfless love from Rem and her telling him all the good points to him that she’s come to like about him, that have made him a person whose life is worth something, who has made a positive difference in places and can yet still do so in a grander capacity if he were to pick himself back up and “start from zero”, Subaru slowly but surely has a change of heart and mental state, and it’s so beautiful. But on Rem’s end? This is a definitely a case where I feel the payoff to something is theoretically so good that the faults in the build-up to it actively hinder it. It’s not that it’s even written or executed poorly, but that earlier weaker writing just hangs in the air over it like a bad fart. Cute as Rem’s whole planned-to-the-last-detail image of what a life of her and Subaru together as a couple might be like was, everything she went on to say would’ve had that much more weight and power to it if her love for Subaru was not as heavily and explicitly romantic in nature. What also would’ve improved the scene would be if it wasn’t just Rem, as it only is just Rem because earlier writing in this arc had conspired to make it just Rem even when it made no organic narrative sense. Ram should’ve been here too, as unlike Rem she wasn’t just blunt and indifferent with Subaru before, she’s been downright mean. So to hear her of all people join in with her sister in telling Subaru the things about him that they find worth loving would’ve made for an even stronger, more compelling case to Subaru that his character and efforts aren’t all rotten, worthless, and scorn-worthy. That even at his lowest, he’s not hopeless, not beyond redemption, not undeserving of any love and kindness. ‘Cause as it is, just Rem did not entirely do it for me, so it feels off for me to just have to assume and accept that it did do it enough for Subaru. (The one thing I’m most glad about, though, is that Emilia was kept out of this moment. Her being there, or worse still her being the one to talk Subaru out of his funk and “save him with her love” would’ve spat in the face of Episode 13′s ending scene and sent entirely the wrong message. So I’m glad “I love Emilia” is all her role in this part was.)

Subaru ending this on an Endeavor-esque “watch me!” claim/boast suggests he’s definitely not changed yet, but he has gained more clarity and an extra dose of perspective that could shape the sorts of changes within him yet to come, so I do look forward to seeing that.

Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works - Just continuing to see and hear more detail than the Studio Deen anime ever gave us.

Symphogear GX - More has been clarified about the new enemy. Carol is an alchemist who wants to use her power to annihilate the world as vengeance for a mysterious something that befell her late father. Not only does she have three strange doll people serving as her minions and using alchemy as well, but they’ve now been shown to create “Alcanoise”, beings that resemble Noise but aren’t quite. Was also really interested to see more what Kirika, Shirabe, and Maria’s deal is these days - the former two are on probation and get to attend school even while serving to make amends for their terrorist crimes in the F.I.S, but poor Maria, she’s basically lost her entire life to the American douchebags who manage her career as the only means of keeping a clean image and not being locked up. Hope Tsubasa ends up helping her with this, as they seem to be bonding.

Eureka Seven - Captain Juergans and his troops seem to have been utterly defeated for the time being. Eureka continues to just be so weirdly adorable just by being the sheltered, brutally unfiltered alien girl she is, Renton continues to be a personification of cringe, and still not much is known about the Gekko State other than Holland being a crass, apathetic manchild and Talho being a tease. What I was most impressed by was how much I ended up feeling for Renton’s grandfather, who is a very flawed, not particularly pleasant to get along with old man but you can tell he does have love for his family in his heart and cares more than he’d admit. The worst part came at the very end - the debut of three children who Eureka “parents.” Uh oh!

Gintama - This was a pure “stays-in-one-place and is nothing but comedy, other anime references and fourth wall jokes” episode that also just happened to be a milestone episode and a hilarious one at that, so it was also much better to watch in its original language than in that Hulu dub, which was just so atrociously handled that it couldn’t be bothered to provide a fitting voice to the Ryuk cameo at the end!

Oh and boooooooo! Bring the first OP and “MR. RAINDROP” back!

[mini-kkukkungie]

This is probably not so very important? But I just finished a game and it was a very great game but, when I looked up if anyone has made fan content for the game, nobody had? Which made me a little sad. So, I wanted to give a review for the game to see if it can spread more awareness to how wonderful the game is! Or, perhaps, how wonderful the creators are because they're releasing another game! The game I played is called

            The Monster Brothel

It's a text-based R18 Choose Your Own Adventure game where you can make choices that eventually lead to your ending. The background story is that there's this house in your town called Madame Marigold's House of Respite and it's a house shrouded in mystery. Except, I think, it also has a reputation of being a brothel. However, every so often (I'm thinking once a year), the house holds a sort of party and welcomes people in (though apparently others are welcome in any time). The playable character is invited after years of longing to be invited (because they're curious and for no other reason).

Below the cut are some pros and cons to the game as well as my overall final opinion.

So, it's a game you do pay for which isn't always fun but, if you think about it, you're supporting the creators which makes me feel just a little bit better about it. Plus, it isn't that expensive, just $5.00. The only complaint I have about that is that it's a pay per month thing? My suggestion is to pay for the one month first and then pay more if it takes you longer to complete the game. I say that because I paid for the three-month subscription (thinking that it was a huge monolith of a game) but, because of my habit of hyper fixating on things, I knocked it out in like two to three days. You could also just support the creator on Patreon which is really cool! You get extra content for the money you're giving AND you get to play this wonderful game. Not only that but you can also see content for their new upcoming game.

The price aside, I think it's worth it if you put the time into it. The story is really gripping and I was very entranced by it.

The characters are all very lovable and very seductive. I found myself completely falling in love with them. There's a part of the website where you can see drawings of them and all of them are wonderful and amazing. They're all drawn by the lovely @doe-eyed-monster-draws whose art is just so well drawn and detailed. The drawings are accompanied by lore about that specific monster or about that specific person. It’s all very facinating. The characters also have kinks in the profiles so that you know exactly what you're dealing with when you pursue the character's story. It's a good idea. If you have a specific kink you want to see, you can browse through the characters to see where you can find that kink. If there's a character you want to pursue, you can check if their story includes a kink you're very much not enthusiastic about.

And, man, after playing this game pretty thoroughly, I'm sure there's not a single kink they've missed. There's something in this game for all the monster fuckers out there.

My all-time favorite character is Puck (which wouldn't be a surprise since I'm pretty sure he's been dubbed the main character seeing as his face is the first one you see on the mobile site). I'm always a sucker for charming bastards like him. Like a lot of popular male characters, he has a sad backstory and you're exactly the playable character that helps him.

Not to say that the playable character is the usual useless one either. In fact, I was surprised by how sassy and strong-willed the playable character is (since I'm so used to playing games with weak-willed damsels in distress). The playable character does meet some distress here and there (they have a penchant for getting into sticky situations, literally and metaphorically) but they're rarely saved by other people. The playable character is clever and smart and doesn't let anyone stomp over them unless they want to be stomped over.

This is, however, where I have to address one of the unfortunate (or maybe fortunate?) features of the game. One of the things the writer has done is change the gender of the playable character often throughout the game. One wonderful encounter with Puck makes the playable character a trans man that uses a packer but the epilogue of the game (which features another encounter with Puck) features a playable character who is a packless woman without any dysphoria about her private parts. This is very confusing and can prevent the player/reader from really connecting with the main character. I, myself, as a person who doesn't favor being either a Male or a Female, didn't mind the gender changes at all. I ended up enjoying all of the scenes, whether the playable character was a woman or a man. This might not be the same as everyone else.

Another complaint I had was that the game wasn't very... fluid? I don't exactly know how to word this but, maybe, it would be easier to give specific examples. Giving exact examples is going to reveal certain events in the game, though, so I give fair warning. There's going to be spoilers if you keep reading. They’re minor though and the spoilers don’t spoil any endings.

Basically, when you're finally invited into the house and you receive your welcome, you're given a lovely silver pin and then you can make a choice as to where you want to go in the house. You can choose to curiously gaze at a willow tree nearby which prompts Puck to invite you to the party near the willow tree. If you pick certain choices, you will eventually leave the party at the willow tree. When you find yourself coming back to the willow tree, however, it will prompt the same event all over again. Puck will act as if he hadn't met you before and everyone will act as if they had never even seen you.

This discontinuity can be irritating, especially when you get confused by the plot because of it. 

There's a mushroom that the playable character can have a fun time with (for those who favor tentacles over limbs) and, afterwards, they're found by one of the employees of the house (who is oddly not listed in the character page or so I think?). The employee of the house then leads the character to Marigold who gives them a task. If the playable character follows the task, it leads them to a wonderful mothboy (mothman???). Except, you end up not talking to him about the task at all. Instead, he talks to the character about how they're turning invisible like a ghost? It's very confusing to say the least.

Also, if the playable character goes exploring into the woods, the event will state that they've run away from the willow tree party? Except, sometimes, that's not the case at all. I had come across the woods once while exploring the mansion grounds and had been confused at the mention of the willow tree party since I hadn’t even checked that out yet.

The most annoying one is a part where they require an item. The playable character either has to have the fairy boon or the curse. I thought that having one would result in one thing and then having the other would result in a different outcome. I was mistaken. Instead, having the curse only lead to the exact same thing as having the fairy boon. It was annoying because 1.) I had to do a lot to get the curse and 2.) the result still described the scene as if you had the fairy boon.

I managed to sleuth out the true storylines after playing so thoroughly, of course, but it does take away from being able to really immerse yourself into what you're playing. It can also make you have to repeat events more than once if you don't have an item you need or if you want to read every single scene in the game.

I don't think this discontinuity is the fault of the creators, though. As someone familiar with creating CYOA games, it's hard to make a scene for literally everything in the game. If you make too many paths, the storylines can get tangled up or get so big that it'd be hard to keep track of. A good shortcut to prevent this is to reuse certain scenes. Knowing that makes the repetitions much more tolerable in a sense. It’s also hard to really double and triple check pathways since there might be so many of them so it’s easy to imagine why these mistakes happened.

There’s also another thing about the game. Specifically, the writing. I enjoyed the writing thoroughly and I thought that it was really great. All of the sex scenes were absolutely enjoyable and I loved the plot and how the story unfolded. However, the game does rely heavily on the pictures of the characters in the Characters page of the website. 

One of the stories that I loved the most involved the werewolf pack. There were descriptors for them but, when it came to Julio, the leader of the pack, and his human form, it was a bit lacking. I get that since the game probably wants to focus on the monster aspects so it isn’t really a big complaint. It’s just that the game has this habit of being extremely descriptive in some places and then not that descriptive in others. 

Maybe that’s just me, though, since I am much more used to big long CYOA games that take forever to describe even the smallest things. I’m not saying that the writing is bad. I really did enjoy the writing. However, I know some people who enjoy those really long CYOA kind of games and so, if that’s you, I just wanted to give a warning.

I do think, however, that, despite these cons, the story itself is wonderful and certainly worth the $5.00 you'd spend (and perhaps the $13.00 I had spent). It really is an enjoyable and arousing game with a complex and interesting storyline that you can't help but want to follow. The music is immersive and the writing is good (though there are one or two grammar mistakes) For monster fuckers and for people who love stories about faeries, its certainly a delight. The writer is good, the artist is great. Why not support and get to read an intriguing and enchanting story too?

the game's tumblr: @geekinglikeaboss

[kiribbeanplays-blog]

Character Critiques - Machop Family

From brains and back to brawn, the Machop family is next to review!

Machop is one of the more difficult cases for me to review. As I’ve mentioned in past articles, my childhood had an incredibly strict definition of what makes a character worth even looking at. Originally, I didn’t care about Machop nearly as much as the fire-spitting not-really-a-dragon, Charizard.

Fortunately, my tastes have expanded as I’ve grown older. It took several years, but I’ve finally grown an appreciation for Machop and its evolutions.

Unfortunately, Machop still doesn’t rank very high in my book. It’s an okay design, but it’s cursed with artistic choices that make it feel downright clunky - at least to me, personally.

On paper, Machop’s core concept is highly amusing. It’s a child-sized, muscular lizard-man that can hurl a hundred adult humans without so much as breaking a sweat. A few Pokédex entries mention that Machop will casually use Gravelers as dumbbells (which are approximately five and a half times heavier than Machop). I love the mental image of a Machop plucking a confused rock monster from where it stands - not for hunting purposes, but just for exercising its muscles.

I have no problems with the ideas behind Machop. It’s the visual design that bugs me - but not even the entire thing. There are only incredibly specific details that I deem “clunky.”

Luckily, there are plenty of images I can use to illustrate my point. With that, I’ll go down a short list of what I think “doesn’t” work on Machop’s design, followed by what I feel is more fitting.

Firstly, I’ve never cared for Machop’s “vanilla” feet. What appear as short and stumpy limbs in Ken Sugimori’s art is actually the result of foreshortening. In profile, they’re actually boring, featureless loaves of bread that look like how I used to draw feet as a child.

The foreshortening accidentally creates a greater, visually striking shape. I think Machop looks more interesting with abstract, almost hoof-like feet. It’s a little bizarre, sure, but in a good way.

Secondly, while I don’t hate Machop’s general body shape, I also think it looks better in older artwork. There was a time Machop practically had a beer gut, with various degrees of exaggeration depending on the artist who drew it.

Especially with the Pokémon Pinball: Ruby & Sapphire sprite, I argue that Machop can look downright unsettling with such weird proportions. It injects an extra indescribable alien feel to the rest of its design.

Oh, and this Japan-exclusive Battrio puck? Everything about it looks bad.

This is by far the worst Machop art I’ve ever seen. I’m at a loss for words. Just… don’t make it look like this.

I may only have a couple (arguably minor) problems with Machop’s design. However, when this character is so minimalistic, every detail counts. A simple change of its feet or belly shape stand out sharper than a character with many smaller details.

Machop isn’t an awful design, but a couple personal gripes prevent it from being something I’d consider great.

Also, can we take a moment to admire Machop performing armpit farts in Diamond and Pearl?

If you’re going to make a lizardman monster, why not go all out and make it as humanlike as possible?

Machoke may simply look like a cartoony human wearing a lizard mask, but that could be taken as a complement. I grew up watching a lot of cheesy-awesome science fiction media, where monster designs like these are commonplace. Because of that, Machoke feels like a loving parody!

I mean, Machoke looks like something Captain Kirk or the Robinson family fought against. It’s brilliant!

Unlike with Machop, I have little to no complaints about Machoke’s design. It’s another simplistic design, but all the little details fit nicely.

I love how Machoke’s crest doubles as a mohawk. The triangular “Anime eyes” add to the cheesiness of its design in an endearing way. Most of all, I like how the red stripes on its arms help highlight its muscular build.

Although, those stripes gain a creepy factor the more I analyze them. Are they just red tattoos, or visible blood vessels? Or is it torn skin because Machoke is literally ripped?

Eugh, what an eerie thought. Since the Pokédex doesn’t go into detail about this topic, it’s safe to assume they’re just markings.

I only scratch my head over one part of Machoke’s design: the obvious belt and pants it’s wearing. I get that the belt symbolizes Machoke’s love for martial arts. From a lore standpoint, however, it’s confusing. Do all Machoke sew their own garments? Where do they get the belt from? More importantly, how does Machop spontaneously evolve pants onto its body?

Well, no matter the mystery, I’m kind of glad that Machoke isn’t buck naked instead. Based on personal observation, we humans instinctively get nervous when staring at nude, crotchless aliens that share the same anatomy as ours. I guess it’s because we’re such self-conscious animals.

Even if it breaks continuity, we have to clothe these fictional creatures to break the awkwardness. The blue cats in James Cameron’s Avatar are a perfect example of what I mean (they reproduce through their hair, which is always exposed. What exactly do they have to hide at the bikini line?).There’s no proof that Machoke’s belt was added for this reason, but I think it’s fair speculation.

Moving on from that overanalysis, there’s still discussion to be had in Machoke’s personality. At first glance, it’s nothing unexpected; as a bodybuilder, Machoke loves to constantly flex and showcase its muscles. It’s easy to assume that Machoke would be a hotheaded narcissist, right?

As it turns out, Machoke is quite a humble Pokémon. It loves to work out, but isn’t explicitly competitive. Its waistbelt is designed to restrain its full strength, or else it’d be an overwhelming powerhouse. This may suggest that Machoke always ensures a challenging but fair fight against its opponents. Despite its obsession with training, Machoke actually shows impressive sportsmanship.

In addition, Machoke takes immense pride and joy using its strength to help others. Most commonly, it lends a hand at construction sites. But other instances, such as the Anime, illustrate Machoke helping little old ladies carry heavy baskets around. I absolutely adore the “gentle giant” concept going on with Machoke!

I’m just about ready to wrap up this (surprisingly lengthy) review on Machoke. There’s just one more minor topic I want to discuss.

In the past, I’ve brought up how several idle animations for Pokémon were very different back in Stadium and Colosseum/XD. Machoke in particular has always stuck in my memory as having the most contradictory idle movement ever.

All that talk about Machoke looking tough, but actually having a sweet personality, is not illustrated here. The way it’s hunched over and swaying its arms makes Machoke look more like a gorilla. It feels more like a primitive killing machine, rather than a collected brawler.

Compare this animation to Machoke’s generation VI+ sprite:

This is one of the times I actually approve a stiffer, subtly-moving idle animation. Machoke is standing its ground, but also keeping that calm and modest demeanor talked about in the Pokédex. This feels much more in-character than the older animation. I’m glad that Game Freak went with this decision.

Machoke’s prominence in the games and TV shows has helped flesh out its character over the years. I may not think about this Pokémon a whole lot when discussing the franchise, but I can talk a surprising amount about its design. All in all, Machoke is a solid character.

I didn’t think things could get even more cheesy awesome after Machoke, but Machamp has proven me wrong.

This four-armed, duck-faced muscle man looks like it could show up as an adversary for WWE. It even has a rash fighting spirit to go with its looks.

Japanese culture seems to love comically muscled superheroes. Think of Alex Louis Armstrong from Fullmetal Alchemist and Hildebrand's father in Final Fantasy XIV. Machamp is another one of those wacky, purposefully over-the-top characters, often wearing little more than their underpants.

I’m puzzled that I never liked Machamp as a kid. I tried (in vain) to watch as many Power Rangers episodes as I could, so this campy Pokémon should have been right up my alley. Alas, I instead ignored it for being “too ugly” or something.

I know I’ve been bashing my childhood in these articles as of late, but come on, past me! Look at what you’ve been missing!

What’s really sold me with Machamp is its appearance in Pokkén Tournament. I’ve yet to play it myself, but I’ve seen its wonderful animations through Youtube videos.

This is everything I was hoping for when I made the previous WWE connections. The way Machamp struts its musclebound prowess, gleefully poses like a superhero, and throws temper tantrums when things go awry are absolutely perfect for its character. Best of all, Machamp incorporates all these comical human behaviors while keeping that “mutant animal” aesthetic just like its other fellow Pokémon.

Funnily enough, I originally didn’t expect this Character Critiques to be so glowing. Machop’s family - and especially Machamp - were Pokémon I’ve never given much thought over. But now, I’ve realized how much Machamp embodies the appeal of the cheesy-but-awesome media I’ve always loved.