Tag: Phoenix

Pokémon Top 5: Favorite Flying Types

Konichiwelcome everyone to yet another amazing list of amazing little creatures called Pokémon. In the previous top 5 we discussed my favorite five bug types. Lets swoop from the sky as we are super effective against bug types.. with the flying type. This list was super easy to make unlike some others. While I love the flying typing, I don’t really like flying type pokémon all that much. I don’t hate them either.. I just feel very neutral about nearly all of them, those who remain make my list!

Rules and Honorable Mentions

We have been over these rules for a few times now but for any newcomer, here is my set of rules. I always use them to point out two honorable mentions as well. The key in this all is diversity. So a dual type will only make it on ONE  lists of it’s typings. Say I like Slowbro than it would be on either my water list or my psychic list, never on both. Since the flying type is primarily used as a secondary typing this applies to SOOOO much pokémon for me. Charizard will be in my top 5 fire types.. since I find it more a fire type than a flying type so it is disqualified here. Rowlet is one of my favorite starters ever.. but I count it more as a grass type since it is the grass starter.. so it will be featured on another list.

Normally I will go by their primary typing as their main type.. but if I think a pokémon is more akin to it’s secondary typing.. like Corviknight  it will not feature here either. The biggest honorable mention and yet another spoiler for a future top 5 is Ducklett. A Water flying type.. with a pink shiny! I love ducks, I love pokémon.. I love pink..it’s perfect!

Another rule would be that I can only use one entry per evolutionary line. While I am allowed to pick my favorite of a series, I will take their entire line into account. For example I really like Ledyba, but I really dislike Ledian.. since the line has no future it will get a demerit and Ledyba will not make it on this list. I want to showcase pokémon in multiple situations.. which is also why legendaries do not make it on this list very often.

The final rule is that the pokémon has to actually feel like it’s typing. The biggest offender in this for the flying type is Gyarados. While I love Gyarados I can NOT see him as a flying types. Sure he can fly in some games and he can conjure up storms and such but the flying type is not the AIR type. With the most iconic storm (early gen)  storm moves being twister…which is a dragon type move. Gyarados is NOT a flying type it is a Water Dragon.. not a water dark either .. a water dragon.. Game Freak can tell me all it wants.. but Water-Flying is just wrong.. so obviously it doesn’t go on the flying list.

Flying Type Number 5
Chatot

For whatever ungodly reason The Pokemon Company’s policy on flying types goes a little something like this? “Is it a bird? “  If your answer is yes that pokémon is a normal/flying type. In some cases I agree, like pidgey, spearow, hoothoot and Pidove.  They are very basic animals and that gets the normal type for it. Sure! However my beloved Chatot has the head of a music note, and the tail of a metronome. It’s super colourful and has this neck collar like those coats those testosterone boys and fake tan girls wear during winter. You know the one with a dead Zigzagoon in the neck area?! Nickleson?! Not sure.. I skipped that trend. Chatot is such a weird pokémon that did such a unique thing in the world of pokémon that because of it’s sheer quirkiness quickly conquered my heart.  It is also one of the pokémon that makes the strongest case to the sound type.. a typing I hope will someday come to the game.

Chatot’s design is based on music stuff crammed onto the body of a parakeet and the design does feel truly unique and really like a pokémon. It has terrible stats and according to it’s pokédex entry is a true pacifist. It has a tongue in its beak that the same as a human tongue, having the same level of control over it as well. Thus it can mimic human speech or other pokémon cries. Which it does to befriend the pokémon to make sure it doesn’t get attacked. However this action would become one of the strangest moves in the entire pokémon series. At least for Gen IV and V. In Diamond and Pearl , Platinum , Black , White and their sequals Chatot could mimic YOUR voice. It’s signature move Chatter allowed you to record your voice and based on it’s volume it would have a better chance to confuse. 

Of course this led a pokémon with only a 410 base stat total to be banned from pokémon competitions because people used it to make it should racist slurs and curse words in tournaments which is a big no no! Which lead  to Chatot being one of the weakest pokémon ever to be banned. Nowadays the move no longer has the ability to record your voice but just confuses 100% off the time.. A confusion that bypasses substitutes with a moveset that is completely catered to getting around those pesky plushies.

It has decent speed, and decent special attack and with some EV’s in those stats Chatot can become something your opponents have difficulty dealing with. I have only used it during some Romhack playthroughs but I was amazed at how good it was for Nuzlocke like situations where it can come in to confuse your enemies, set up some stat boosts during this and then keep on confusing it’s opponent. The set I enjoy playing most is with Chatter, Double Team, Work Up and Synchronoise with a healing berry. Usually with a spore or paralyse user on my team as well.

Flying Type Number 4
Noivern

In Kalos we could basically find a better version of Chatot in the form of Noivern. So this once more is a pokémon I think should get the sound typing rather than it’s Dragon Typing.  The Dragon Typing does make it very sturdy and gives it some good resistances it also becomes super frail to ice Offensively it has about the same stats as Chatot but Noivern gets a lot more speed and a lot more moves, so it is a better monster.. without the iconic move. Bat dragons are also kind of cooler than a Parakeet.. yet at the same time it is kind of edgy! I do like myself a bit of colour and cute.. but I really gotta admire this design regardless. It looks strong and fierce and like a flying type! It feels like it could be a Jojo Stand if it had some mechanical parts.

Noivern has a great roll in the X&Y anime or XY&Z I guess but  that always helps make a pokémon more coveted. We see so much of it’s personality and Noivern is great. One of my favorite Ash Pokémon ever. The Kalos Region was my favorite when it comes to Ash adventures and him having cool pokémon like these really helped. While the one Mister Ketchum owned seemed sweet enough it looks mean so let’s look at the pokédex entries.

Apparantly nothing can defeat it when fighting in the dark, it can use echolocation to find you.. these waves are so strong they can turn boulders to pebbles. These same waves can be use to weaken their opponents as it will use it’s fangs to finish it’s prey off! That’s more like it! However ONE pokédex entry makes it seem like a sweetheart yet again. While it is always being described as cruel and vicious giving one a nice ripe fruit of the flavor that it likes will make it instantly tame… nawwww who is a big hungry night sky killer!

Now in combat Noivern is a bit weird. By far it’s best ability is infiltrator. Which allows you to bypass substitutes. However it’s moveset is mostly soundbased.. which bypasses substitutes.  I mean I still run it with BoomBurst because it offers a nice guaranteed neutral move, Draco Meteor, Hurricane and Dark Pulse with Choice Specs as a item. When it’s available to me in playthroughs of Rom Hacks or Fan games I prefer to give it an assault vest so I can capitalize on the Dragon Type resisting just about everything except for Dragon Fairy and Ice. Dark Pulse can be replaced by Flamethrower so it can cover its main weakness, it WILL outspeed virtually all Ice Types but I found going with the dark pulse to be nicer so it can deal with psychic types or ghost types that outspeed it and deal neutral damage.

Flying Type Number 3
Ho-Oh

Ho-Oh is my favorite legendary bird and one of my favorite legendaries ever. There is just something about the way it was build up from the first episode to the anime before meeting it in Pokémon Gold at the top of Tin Tower. I am not sure why, but Moltres never really felt like a phoenix to me.. I love phoenixes, is that the corrupt plural? Phoenixci ? Just Phoenix?So I was happy to be given a proper one! Pokémon Gold is my favorite pokémon game so I am sure that helps as well. It doesn’t help it is the rainbow pokémon either! And just look at the design it is so much cooler than Lugia’s! Who wants a white fish bird when you can have a phoenix.

It loves other pokémon and brought back to life the three legendary dogs, it is said to bring about happiness to everyone who own one of it’s feathers. It is even said to live near a rainbow! It is so cute!  Fire and flying is an excellent defensive typing only being weak to water, electric and rock type moves. Resisting Steel , Fairy and Fighting type moves  it resists some of the most competitive typings being immune to ground which is yet another dominant typing. Another sign that this pokémon can play nice with a lot of people! It doesn’t seem to like rock types very much though, being 4x weak to them. His weakest stat his physical defence is also exploited by the fact that rock type moves usually are physical. I guess there is no brown in the rainbow! Does that also mean anime girls never throw up rocks? In that case I might be doing something wrong.

Ho-Oh as a legendary really benefits from the very healthy post game in pokémon Gold and Heartgold, there is still an entire region to run through so the legendary is actually useful for more than the pokémon league alone. Which makes it al lot more viable than other pokémon. The fact that it is a physical fire type also distinguishes it from its peers. Sacred Fire, Brave Bird, Recover, Zen Headbutt is a nice set to run on this beast, yet because it is physical it is also one of the best fly users. You can take the HM to zip around and still have it deal massage damage. It has superb special defence and it it’s special attack is also good enough so you can run it as a special attacker.

Flying Type Number 2
Togekiss

A slightly less amazing special tank of the sky is my penultimate favorite flying type. Togekiss. Togetic was a lame evolution of an adorable pokémon that just felt lackluster, keeping the pokémon off my team during my Gold playthrough. By the time I obtained a Heart Gold Cartridge .. things changed though because now the little bugger could evolve. Togekiss is the perfect little Egg-Angel a girl could wish for.. Maybe it’s more an Angelic-Egg than the other way around though. It’s design is rather unique and feels adorable trough all three steps, the fact that it evolves to friendship and shiny energy .. really make it a pokémon I really dig. The white red and blue composition with its abstract shape make it feel like a Mondrian painting. It has the lamest shiny though.. instead of white with a blue gloss it is white without a gloss more pure white. 

It’s one of the happiest Pokémon in terms of lore as well. Misty eventually leaving Togetic behind was one of the saddest moments I saw in the anime but reading Pokédex entries warms my heart again. So Togekiss is such an improvement.  The Jubilee Pokémon is the pacifist pokémon. It will never show itself to people seeking conflict. Yet when you respect other people and animals rights it will share it’s blessings with you. How cute! It will even bring you gifts if you are a sweet person. Think of all the gifts we good get just by being nice to each other! So not only is the design is sweet, this pokémon would actively make you a better pokémon. I am pretty sure that pokémon battling counts as conflict though so .. it gets a bit confusing from there! Since it is actually quite useful in battle and it needs battle to level up.

Like I said before Togekiss is quite tanky on the special defence side of things. Equipped with the abilities like  Serene Grace and Super Luck you can build some various sets build around landing critical hits or special effects. Mostly Serene Grace and Special Effects make this pokémon quite nice to use. Land Flinches more easily with, Getting a Burn to half your opponents physical attributes. It can become really good with moves like Ancient Power and Stored Power combined with Serene Grace as well. Moves like Wish to give it reliable recovery are always good on it as well. You can have a lot of fun with this Angelic Egg! Fairy Flying is a great offensive typing  and no slouch defensively either. It has a fair few weaknesses but it’s immunity to Ground and Dragon can get you a long way.

My Favorite Flying Type
Archeops

With distance Archeops is my favorite flying pokémon! I LOVE this pokémon. It is my favorite fossil Pokémon ever, it would be my favorite rock type but I chose to elect this as flying type rather than a rock type. While I get classifying dinosaurs as Rock types, the fact that all fossils except for the Gen VIII ones are all rock types makes me distinguish them by secondary type. Thus Archeops to me counts as a flying type. It is based on the first bird and is a mix between dinosaur and a bird and I love that design. It makes for such a good fossil pokémon. It is really funny to me as well.

So while this pokémon is the predecessor of all birds it isn’t a strong flyer. It can’t take off at will it needs a running head start, it can run up to 25 miles per hour and flies slower.  So .. down hill you might be able to catch up to it on a bike.. else on a simple scooter. However with a speed modifier of 110 this thing is quite fast in game. It’s best move is a flying type move which according to it’s lore is a weaker attribute of the pokemon. I like my clunky pokémon and this to me is the pinnacle of clunky . It’s fly animation also is so adorably choppy! It is the perfect way to amalgamate types like Rock and flying! It’s shiny is bad but that goes for most things on this list.  I like Ho-Oh’s and Chatot’s fine but the rest is meh. Archeops I really love for how it battles though.

Archeops is one of those negative ability pokémon people can make fun off. Along with Slaking, and Regigigas it has one of those as well. As a result it’s base stat total is a very respectable 570 though , but in Archeops case it’s stats get cut in half as soon as it gets under half HP. Before that moment it has an amazing 140 attack stacks and 112 special attack.  Which means this barely flying bird can hurt! It is usually run with the move acrobatics. A base 55 power move that grows a lot stronger if Archeops doesn’t hold an item. This essentially means that in normal playthroughs this thing is a monster! I had an Archen (the pre-evolution) named Flock in Black and White. Flock was named because it was a flying rock. I loved Flock so much that I actually bred it’s offspring to use in Pokémon Y.  It’s son Minairal became was the first level 100 pokémon I ever had. I just had so much fun using it naturally leveled up to level 100. Acrobatics, Rock Slide, Dragon Claw and Fly made this pokémon nearly the only one I used. If Minairal is so fun to level to max.. I bet it deserves my number 1 spot.

Yet another type has been charted! More pocket monsters received love! We are now only at 1/3th of the pokémon type list journey! Next week the Electric type will go up! Who is your favorite flying type?! Do you use this type a lot?
Tell me all about it in the comments! Until then! Fly you fools!

X-Men: Dark Phoenix. Can my Money Rise from the Ash as well?

I have been a avid fan of the 90’s x-men fox-kids cartoon. While a big Patrick Stewart fan I have never really liked the early 2000’s x-men movies. I am in the McAvoy professor X camp ever since the opening scene of First Class. Even after I saw Logan. I even casually liked X-Men Apocalypse. So imagine how happy I was when Dark Phoenix was announced , the movie that would tie in one of the best cartoon arcs with the professor I liked most of them all. Yes I liked McAvoy X more than the animated one. Now that the movie is finally out on Blue-Ray I finally got a chance to see this one (did not have the money to see it in theater before).  Now that I’ve seen it I really wish I did not spend any money on it.

What Happened?

I really don’t like to be overly negative about a franchise that I so far have really liked. So I would like to start of with something positive…………..Man that would have been nice. If I could say that at least the action was good or how it is neat that the costumes pay tribute to the classic comic look. I guess McAvoy’s and Fassbender’s acting is solid…enough. I genuinely tried to be invested in this movie but everything felt off to me. How did this turn into such a dumpster fire?  The ingredients for greatness are there, they even had some great subplot ideas , but nothing is ever used. This movie is not about the X-men at all. It’s all about Jean Grey and the actual X-Men that are in fact still X-Men are just present. There is no team, this is a movie about clashing ego’s and division, which could still wok had they not focussed on that one singular character and made other characters actually compelling.

I knew this movie had received lackluster reviews before watching this , but so did Apocalypse and I enjoyed that, even on second viewing. I reviewed basically all the McAvoy X-movies well above the general critic reception. This movie gets a 23% on Rotten Tomatoes and I still think that might just be a bit to lenient. I actually found this movie to be unwatchable. How could this have happened to such a beloved series of mine. 

Dark Writing

Well let me start with highlighting how atrocious the writing of this movie is. We begin with an exposition scene on Jean, how she lost he parents in a car crash. The plot twists that follows about 45 minutes in is already clearly telegraphed here. One of the parents survives..but of course is afraid of Jean and gives her up to Xavier. We do not see this yet but we do already know it is going to happen. Meanwhile the doctors are talking to each other over a 8 year old Jean fading in and out of consciousness wondering how to tell Jean her parents are dead..which is not true. So the drama of this scene has been amped up, while in actuality they would not even have to deal with that situation. The sheer negativity of kid Jean in the scene where she first moves too Xavier’s school for the gifted added to that already telegraphs we are in for a rough ride. 

Twenty minutes in we see an interesting conflict forming though. Charles is now a hero as his X-Men save the day where they can, working with even the president himself. Now that he is being praised Charles pushes his X-men to risk themselves so he could get more praise, much to his sisters Mystique’s dismay. During a mission Jean, who now like all other X-men can breathe outside of our atmosphere, explodes by solar energy but turs out to be okay. Charles gets to shake hands with some big wigs and loves the outcome of events while Mystique sees they nearly lost a team member.
Two camps form, do the X-men have to sacrifice themselves for the weak and those who formerly hated them or do they also need to look out for themselves. While this is a weird route to take Charles Xavier I sort of liked it as it made him more than a standard good guy. The brother sister rivalry rising again could be very interesting….and it is completely discarded after an event about 35 minutes in. After that it becomes the big character betrayal show. Beast wants to murder someone,  Charles refuses to take responsibility for his actions and becomes a self righteous sack of excrement , Jean claims she can’t stop killing, while she only had one incident of her dark side harmed people. Magneto has become an shinng example of self control and so on.  I wondered if this was supposed to be set after Apocalypse or if this was like a universe of it’s own. Which is never a good thing.


Except for Hank (beast) Charles and Jean all characters are paper tin. Mystique has some good lines but those never go anywhere in the end. Of course there is also the aliens who want to take over the world using Jean and the Phoenix form, but without any effort these Aliens can already pose as high level security people throughout the entire movie… so  I am not sure how they would be unable to achieve the same feat trough subterfuge. They are very powerfull on their own regardless, but fine. Jean can’t read their minds out of plot convenience, which again feels supercheap and as we ping pong around allegiances we see some pointless action scenes leading to a cringeworthy ending that once more is very untrue to the very natue of the x-men and the school for the gifted as established earlier. Ouch that was rough.

Dark Looks

Luckily the random flight suits they found have been replaced by actual x-men uniforms that do not look edgy this time. In fact it resembles to look the x-men had back in the earliest days of Scott and Jean.  Nice? No they do look very tacky, I liked the look of the first-class suits, which also referenced the traditional design but this felt cheap. Like as in.. lets not waste money on this so lets hoist them in a cheap overall with an x on it. Everything felt so budgety.. Scott wears his visor off missions instead of his sunglasses, which dehumanises him , Mystique looks very much like a cheaper makeup job and even beast’s blue face felt off. It is hard to describe how cheap and proppy things felt. Take scots vizor for example, it’s nice they gave him a visor but they made it silver.  Which does not match his outfit, or even regular clothing all that much.

Why would it be designed that way by Hank, who designs all their stuff why not make it blend. Why did he rebuild the black bird again, after in the last part it nearly killed everyone and it actually killed Havoc. (The Black Bird looks cool though) Nightcrawler’s face has become less detailed somehow and Quicksilver’s slow time scenes aren’t as fun and smart as in the other movies either. The movie makes some weird choices for example Magneto’s powers now no longer have his sound effect of warping metal, now when he and Jean duel, they just hold their hands up and movie magic does the rest. Apocalypse, Days of Future past and even First Class had some rich effects here we see some cheap glows and battles that mostly involve telekinetic throws and the effect that are there are weird. We see Jean EXPLODE insde an exploding space ship and when she falls out unharmed everone is just like… “well thank the writers for that’ while no one wonders why she is not harmed more. Or how she survived floating trough space for a sold minute. Nightcrawler had to have a fsh bowl taped to is suit to survive in space.. luckily there is ducktape and a fish bowl on board of the blackbird… but hey thats writing again. Whle the movie doesn’t look “wrong” I felt it was on a very tight budget on everything which kills any suspension of disbelief. You can not get sucked into a movie when you notice the studio’s budget choices.

Dark Acting

With actors like McAvoy and Fassbender you are sure to have a few good scenes in you movie and they do deliver a solid performance. However the poor writing does present itself in what McAvoy can do with the character. His decisions lead  to a major death and Jean going insane and when confronted by it he refuses to accept his role in this. He even takes the loss very well, which feels like a betrayal of the character. In the scenes where Charles is like this McAvoy plays him apathetic and somewhat arrogantly which feels like both a mismatch to who Xavier should be or to the tone of the scene. It just is not the Charles we have loved for the past three movies. Same goes for Fassbenders Magneto, who now is an bit of a recluse on the small island (and I mean like 100m2 or so small) of Genosha, which is off the american coast now. His pain is gone… he is in control of it now as he accepts it is a part of him. Yet he is very happy to fall of the bandwagon and kill again without much semblance of the plagued man that is Magneto. This man now is a guru of calmth and tranquility. It’s not bad.. I just could not believe it this time around.

Which brings us to Sophie Turner. Lovely girl and I am sure she plays her version of Jean in the way she wants, because she is a solid actress.   Yet Jean here felt so flat to me, I never felt she was in actual pain or actually confused. I never actually saw killing intend in her eyes.. unless it was CG’ed in.and even then that’s mostly due to the color signifying that things ae about to get real. Her shouts, her cries her emotions it all felt very contained and flat. Which before I liked about her acting. I like how Sansa is like that as well instead of all the over dramatic soap stars. This is not Sansa we are talking about though, in fact it’s not even really Jean. We need a rawness, a ferociousness and an unfiltered energy that goes beyond control.
Instead I see Jean who has a really bad time of the month. Jessica Chastain as a villain is a bit of a mixed bag for me.  Since she plays the alien Vuk she can get away with sloppy acting as it just makes Vuk look more awkward and strange. However the route that is chosen is just so easy. It’s like every alien pretending to be human ever.. with maybe a bit more lore dumps. It’s not bad because there is no objective way to call it bad as each mannerism can be defended by..she’s an alien…yet at the same time that same type of acting gives us nothing to like about her either. 

Dark End

So comes an apparent ending to the professor McAvoy age as they have pretty much written themselves in a corner. It saddens me that this the movie that ends the line.  Logan have a great ending to the mediocre Wolverine series and original X-Men movie run and I wish Dark Phoenix could have been the Logan of McAvoy. It had all the right ingredients yet none of the magic. This was a movie not made out of love for the series but to squeeze out on more movie, for revenue sake. It doesn’t do the Phoenix or Dark Phoenix justice, it doesn’t even respect it’s previous movies properly. While I can see people would still like this movie and this is in no way a crutch for other people to hate it, this movie did absolutely nothing for me.


I felt empty while watching it and wanted to turn it off several times. When one of your favorite storylines in the series can’t even keep your attention in a movie , you know something is very wrong. I doubt it will surprise anyone but myself that I have to award this movie the lowest flavor tier. This movie definitely killed the series and I think only a complete reboot can make it rise out of the ashes again.