Alternate Samurott Design

Another stab at what I perceived as a failed final evolution for a starter. I only started with X/Y (albeit having played Red in high school when it came out), but upon learning of the normal Samurott design, I was horrified. Well, a little disgusted. Apparently, it was also a thing when it was released. People didn’t like it then either. On a related note, I’ve discovered there’s some sort of trope in Japan that dictates that if you have a design meant to imply a relation to any military leader, make it look like a horse, or at least give it four legs. Because leaders ride horses. But that’s stupid. Don’t ever do that, kids. If you want to convey something is a samurai, guess what? Draw a samurai, then make it into another thing.

Anyway. That’s what I did. You know what I find frightening with this design, or the normal one? The female Samurott. Rock that facial hair, ladies.

One fault of making it a normal bipedal design is that Pokemon, in terms of design theory, HATES two things: the human body, and cool things. Hey, if your pokemon is sort of cool? Let’s slap some flowers and bows on it. Looking too human? Eh, make its hips stick out like it has love handle cancer, or its carrying entirely too many seahorse eggs in a flesh pouch somewhere. But ignoring that, depicting a samurai on a pokemon means two things: human-like figure and looking cool. Needless to say, this design would NOT fly for GF. But seriously, to convey armor you need a lot of visual zones. (Stuff everywhere.) That means the possibility of design clutter in a handheld game. I tried to minimize it, then decided to leave a couple extra things anyway, because. Hey. It’s Samurott. Who cares?