Ogerpon
Today we have Paldea's answer to the tradition of powerful, usually bipedal one-off legendaries like Mewtwo, Deoxys or Genesect, and in typical fashion, it has a fairly menacing appearance...or does it?! What we first saw of this grass type had this spiky, sinister face with shiny crystalline eyes and a jagged, beaklike mouth surrounded by fans of tough looking leaves, the kind of face you might put on a plant themed Decepticon or Super Sentai ninja critter. But it doesn't really match this thing's body, does it? The body has a cartoonier green shrub for a torso, two-toed rubber hose legs and big puffy green things where its arms should be, kinda shaped like inflated butterfly wings or a giant bow.
Ogerpon's gimmick is that it's actually wearing a mask, which hooks on to a black, thorny wooden frame around its true face, a simple orange ball with little fangs, bright anime eyes and green leaves on top, a little like a persimmon. It's cute I guess, though somewhat cluttered; the mask isn't supposed to match its true form, no, but its true form still feels like unrelated shapes stuck together in an unnatural arrangement. It's just alright, really.
Ogerpon's default "Teal Mask" makes it a pure grass type, while the "Hearthflame mask" makes it a grass/fire type, and resembles a fiery oni-like figure with blue lips and jutting tusks. I actually like how the masks have a plasticy look to them, like those cheap vintage Halloween masks you wear with the flimsy elastic band.
The grass/rock "Cornerstone Mask" is just a chunky, rocky grey slab with a sort of "tiki" style face, or at least what cheesy American tourist traps believe is "tiki" style. I feel like this is the ugliest of the four.
The "Wellspring Mask" (no prize for guessing the type change) might be the coolest looking, sort of like a pale noh mask with a blue "hairdo" in a heart shape, and what appear to be closed "eyes," except the "eyes" on these masks seem to be the glowing crystal pieces, and here, those are in the shape of two tears running down the cheeks. Notice the masks even have little greyish flecks, like chipped paint. A nice little detail!
Ogerpon is the arch nemesis to the nefarious "Loyal Three" in our last review, which means that the "villains" in this setup match the animal friends of Momotaro, while the "hero" references Momotaro's wicked Oni adversaries. I guess that's neat! I really like the underlying principle of this Pokemon, even if something about its design feels a bit off to me.
On a final note...I totally messed up and misnumbered that last review as #1013, when Okidogi is actually 1014. I can never change this, because doing so will wipe the Disqus comments. Sorry!
Ogerpon is the arch nemesis to the nefarious "Loyal Three" in our last review, which means that the "villains" in this setup match the animal friends of Momotaro, while the "hero" references Momotaro's wicked Oni adversaries. I guess that's neat! I really like the underlying principle of this Pokemon, even if something about its design feels a bit off to me.
On a final note...I totally messed up and misnumbered that last review as #1013, when Okidogi is actually 1014. I can never change this, because doing so will wipe the Disqus comments. Sorry!
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