UB-03: Lighting or Xurkitree

I'm glad they're letting me calm down now; if our next UB was like, a big giant flea or a banana slug I might have needed emergency CPR. In fact, from here on out, the UB's leave behind any obvious animal roots, and while I'm certainly glad we got Buzzwole and Pheromosa, I'm gladder to see these interdimensional beings get more abstract.

Xurkitree is a pure electric type, and as you can see, it resembles a collection of electrical wiring in a roughly anthropomorphic shape, though its anatomy is really closer to a cephalopod or even another "jellyfish," with multiple tentacles sprouting off the same globular "head" or "body," or maybe it's both. I appreciate that this spiky, crystalline core sort of represents a big electrical spark, the frayed copper fingers are rad as hell and the "zip ties" are a fun little touch, though its conceptual art refers to those things as leaves. In fact, Xurkitree's name across almost every lanuage includes some reference to a "tree" or "plant," it learns a number of grass-type moves and it's said to "enter a tree-like state" by plugging its cords into the ground and drawing energy from the planet.

You would think, then, that this weirdo would be an electric/grass type, a combination we could have sorely used outside of just lawnmower Rotom, but I guess Xurkitree is meant to be something stranger than just a very odd-looking vegetable, an entity that sort of "acts" like a plant in its own very, very different dimension.

All in all, I really like the idea of an electric type made out of electrical wiring, and I really like what they did with that idea, a strange and stylish monster that, despite an eerily man-made appearance, still comes across as something otherworldly...and if you've read my other reviews, I'm sure you already know how much I adore its completely lack of eyes or even any face at all. Take THAT, Golbat!