Tag: Sunflora

Hey little monsters, I am back! Well sort off! Thursday we have to say our final goodbyes to grandpa and friday the cremation will take place so we might see a missed blog. What blogs I get too before the goodbye I would like to dedicate  in his memory. Back when I was the age of an actual Pokémon Trainer (10) grandpa had this beautiful garden. It was a boomerang shaped garden with the greenest and softest lawn I ever saw and beautiful flower beds. All around the boomerang shaped edge (north side) there was a seven feet earthen soundwall he planted sturdy but beautiful plants on. Dead in the middle, for a large part of my life but changed near the end of them living their,  there was a big waterfall made in the middle of that hill leading up to a body of water where I played with my toys or read some of the amazing books they had hidden in their old timey attic. So today’s topic is in honour of that garden.
Princess Pinkie’s top 5 Floral Pokémon!

Floral Pokémon Number 5: Cherrim

Subjects… first a disclaimer, this isn’t my top five grass Pokémon, this is my top five of flowery pokémon. They fit in the garden theme better and they would be something grandpa would have liked over some of my other picks. He hated owls and leapfrogs so it wouldn’t feel right. This means we aren’t limited to a single type either… but since we are talking about flowers… 80% will be.  My first pick would be Cherrim. The evolution of the pokémon Cherubi is one of my favorite floral Pokémon mostly because it resembles me a lot.

While Cherubi is like the cutest cherry you’ll ever see, not including any strippers you might meet going by that name, Cherrim is a much more complex beasty. It has two forms, it’s overcast form in which it hides it entire body behind some large purplish bell shaped flower petals and its sunshine form. Once the sun comes out Cherrim transforms into a happy little dancing pink creature that wields the power of fire.. sort off..it’s still a regular grass type but it has access to fire. If being pink wasn’t enough for me to identify with it , I am also one who hides her true happy but geeky and childish self from the real world a bit. At conventions and when blogging I put up Sunny Day and can transform into my Sunshine Form. You can see how Cherrim is to finally be itself throughout it’s design and that is a strong concept. The versatility in it’s color scheme is also quite amazing. Starting out as a red orb.. it becomes a purple flower to move into pink blossom with a yellow happy little sunshine face.

It’s a flower fit for a queen…or a princess and Cherrim is definitely something I still want to run on my team on playthrough of a fangame or something special. Speaking about cherries… remember when I told you about that waterfall? There used to be a tree there in my youngest days. One day I would ask what sort of tree it was.. and grandpa tricked me into believing it was a cherry tree. He wanted me to eat some fruit.. and I was very picky then..so he told me it was a very special cherry tree and he just plucked the fruit, while giving me a bowl of cherries. A few visits later when I was nagging to grandma about getting come candy (they had a LOT of candy in a cupboard I found out about) when grandpa came in and this time the tree had given other fruit. Instead of giving me candy he gave me an apple. I was amazed by it and gladly ate the ..at least I assumed…magic apple. He never told me what tree it actually was..it always remained the magic cherry tree. When I knew better, but the tree had to be cut down (it was sick and a risk to the garden or something) and I felt blue  he came in with a big chocolate bar.. telling me i’d never believe what the tree dropped for me right before the end. So a transforming cherry seemed a nice fit on this list.

Floral Pokemon Number 4: Sunkern and Sunflora

Sometimes a princess can fall in love with a pauper and that I did, a few years AFTER Pokémon Gold and Silver actually released. Sunkern is a little seed pokémon that transforms into the jolly sunflower pokémon Sunflora when exposed to a sunstone. Both quite basic in design they aren’t all that special at first sight. Yet Sunkern is actually quite well known in the Pokémon Community. It is known as the weakest pokémon ever, and this is factually true. Sunkern has the lowest stat total of any of all the 920+ monster. Now for balancing reasons you might think that Sunflora must be a beast then? Raising the weakest Pokémon to get the strongest? Nope! Sunflora is the weakest evolution final evolution ever.

This is exactly what endeared me so to it.  When in my early tens playing this game I just saw an average looking pokémon that would not fit on my team, I tried it because I liked Sunkern.. but I could not use it so it ended up in my box without thinking much more of it. Years later when I found out it was so weak I became endeared to it again. Rooting for the underdog and all, but it also became a good metaphor of Pokémon to me.

You start out with a little sprout and need to give it love to make it great. In Sunflora’s case you need a LOT of love to accomplish that.  People oftenly look down on Pokémon and how “weak” it is. ‘Oooh turn based combat is so 1990’s…’ ‘Oooh they use crappy textures the game should look like breath of the wind’. Pokémon is like sunkern and sunflora itself.  Yes there are better functioning games out there, better designed and better looking. Even now that Pokémon has evolved it still falls behind the pack when it comes down to graphics and maybe even gameplay. Like a Sunkern , it will never be NEEDED on your team. You don’t have to have played a Pokémon game to be a gamer, you use  sunkern and play pokémon because you love it. A lot of trainers in the game tell you a true pokémon trainer doesnt just use the strongest pokémon but use the pokémon they want to use and Sunflora has been designed with this very idea in mind, and who can resist that smile.

Floral Pokémon Number 3: Budew Roselia and Roserade.

Probably the most generic top 5 pick you’ll find on this list is the rose Pokémon. Roselia being my absolute favorite of the evolutionary line, but cheers to the baby pokémon budew for all the misery it put me through to train it up.  Budew is a little sprout that can finally blossom into a Rosellia if you befriend it enough and level it up during daylight. To evolve Roselia into Roserade you need to find a Shiny Stone.. one of the rarer stones to find in the Pokémon world. Which encapsulates the idea of growing your own flowers perfectly well.

I can not do it! In dutch we say those who are good with plants have green fingers..well that must mean mine are black with death. I am so bad with plants I even managed to kill plastic ones. I once won some hyacinth with a lottery and decided those would be my babies.. I gave them love and attention plenty of water.. and they grew! So fast! So fast that their heads became too heavy for their stems and they snapped and died. Luckily Pokémon gave me a  evolution-line where I could not mess up (Although Budew fainted a lot) . The difficulty to raise it reminds me of an actual plant so for some weird reason Roselia is the pokémon I identify most as a grass type because it reminds me of how difficult it is.

Roses where grandpa’s favorite gardening project for a very long time, during a time we used to visit them a lot so I saw the process he had to get trough. They had their own little fertilizer and he clipped acces leafs so it would not have to work to feed all those leafs. I was not allowed to play around them. My my little pony ball was banned from entering the rose area and whenever I asked to help with the roses my attention was diverted elsewhere… which in hindsight was good because of my touch of death. It is funny, while giving someone roses is seen as something very romantic , every time we see people depicted taking care of them, they are slightly toxic grumpy folks and this cartoony stereotype I found out to be at least semi true. Which makes it funny that roselia is a grass and poison type to me.  When the designers made Roselia they could have focussed on the romantic aspect of roses, maybe nowadays making it a grass fairy type. Yet instead we got the reflection on how it is to raise the flower, so I have to wonder. Did the designer have a grandpa like mine?

Floral Pokémon Number 2: Floette

A pokemon that is not a grass type? For Shame! Why put it in this list Pinkie? ‘The pokémon technically isn’t even the flower it just holds it’! That is Princess Pinkie to you!  Even though I know Floette is holding a flower it’s never found without one..like how spoink would not make sense without his pearl Floette would not make sense without it’s flower so it is on this list.
Unlike the previous two entries on my list the other two forms are not included. Though cute and fine they aren’t as iconic and symbolic as Floette to me. Flabébé  is the name of the base form and using a Shiny Stone Floette can evolve into florges. Whose “hip’ design I find somewhat disagreeable making Floette a single entry. Floette is just a cute twin tailed fairy like creature clutching tight to one of five possible coloured flowers. Technically six but one is quite obtainable through normal means. 

Being A fairy type Floette can withstand the foe of any dragon. Having quite good special defences (for a mid tier pokémon) and passable special offence it can measure up to quite a few pokémon on this list even more so if you allow it to evolve. This isn’t a list of battle prowess however because Roselia and Roserade would certainly kick their ass. Floette is the ultimate gardner Pokémon.  Often sought out by royalty to landscape their castle gardens.  Which means it’s a perfect one for a princess like me. It is also kind hearted, it protects flowers dearly and wishes to see them grow and bloom. Flabébé it’s prevolution seeks a flower to call it’s own to draw power from, while Florges the evolution recovers its stamina by basking in the plants energy. Floette follows a different path. It bestows the plants with its own energy to  make them grow. Putting in their soul if it were to protect their own flower beds. This is what every true gardner at heart does and what I saw my grandpa do. Even when his body ached he would try to be there for his dear plants…until he got to old and passed it onto a gardner and after grandma passing away moving away so he did not have to worry about those things anymore. Everyone with a passion for their garden can relate to Floette in some way at least. Having their favorite flower and clutching onto them tightly.

Yet Floette ‘s story goes even deeper.  Floette plays a crucial role in the story of Pokémon X & Y teaching us a lesson about accepting death.
In ancient times Kalos was ruled by a king named AZ. His Floette fought in this war which lead to it passing away. Heart broken by his loss AZ created ‘The Ultimate Weapon’ in order to bring Floette back. That process cost the life of so many soldiers and Pokémon of each site that when Floette finally got back it was devastated at the price that was payed to ensure it’s return that it could not accept AZ anymore and it left him. It left AZ to suffer near eternally ever he waited hundreds of years to be reunited with his Pokémon and his attempt nearly led to the extinction of all life because others would abuse the weapon. It teaches us that sometimes letting go and keeping a memory can be better. Like a flower all life is made to bloom and wither in the end. Without the withering we would not be able to appreciate the bloom so there is always a price to pay. So even if we have to sometimes say goodbye and it can hurt like mad, without it.. life would lose it’s dazzling gleam.

Floral Pokemon Number 1:  Bellsprout, Weepinbell Victreebel

By now it should come to no surprise that I pick one of the ugliest flowers in the pokéverse as my favorite flower. I love my underdogs. Bellsprout arguably is one of the most simple pokémon designs that is just a stone thrown away from being a stick figure. It’s evolutionWeepinbell quite dopey looking and victreebel being full on weird.

Unlike all the others there are no deep stories why I like these pokemon so much. My grandfather did not have any carnivorous plants in his yard, nor did he particularly like yellow flowers. We did not bond over me sharing stories about either. There’s only one pokémon my grandpa ever knew by name.. and that might become a blog post itself and it wasn’t any of these.  This line I just love ..just because. I don’t particularly use it very often nor do I have great tales about DingDong the Bellsprout and how I used it in one of my adventures. Yet every time I see a Bellsprout I feel happy. Everytime I hear Weepinbell say it’s name I have this goofy grin that makes the pokemon seem less derpy than me. When James obtained Victreebel in the anime their interaction became something I totally loved and applauded at like a small child. Bellsprouts magnificent performance in the pokémon league or even when Weepinbell is shown during the pokémon rap it was always a little burst of happiness.

I love it when other people use it in nuzlockes or let’s plays, I love it when it showed up in a pokéball in Super Smash Bros and I can’t exactly tell you why. Maybe that’s why my bond with it is so strong, I don’t need anything to like it I just do and always will. Sometimes when I play Pokémon Let’s go I just take a bellsprout out and let it walk next to me …just to see bellsprout walking.. and I can turn on a game just for a brief burst of that. I giggle and turn the game off again and move onto something else.  Battlewise it’s stats are nice enough but nowhere near spectacular.

It’s definitely usable even in some of the harder fangames but it’s not a pokémon that you’ll see in competitive. Aside from bellsprout itself it doesn’t have great shinies either. It’s a pokemon where objectively there is nothing to love about it, yet i love everything about it instead. In fact it’s kinda like a flower, you can’t REALLY use it, you do not gain a direct benefit from having it, it tastes a lot worse than it smells and smells way less strong than people make you believe and usually scary bugs go near it. Yet when we look at them sitting in the grass, being taken into our home or even if we just see a painting of picture of it we can’t help but feel content.

There you have it readers my top five floral pokémon. I hope you had a good read even if backdrop is on account of something sad. I must say I felt happy doing these posts and getting some stuff out. What is your favorite flower Pokémon?  What’s your favorite flower? Or anything else you want to share with me? Let me know in the comments and I will get back to you!
Remember,
I am not weird, just very pink!
Until we read again.