While I was naturally happy to see the fairy pastry dogs and the olive tree line as I went through the index entries, my interest rose quite a bit more when I suddenly saw 4 pictures appear at once in entry number 113 since entries with multiple pictures were rare, especially those with more than two pictures. It appeared that aside from Oricorio another bird with 4 versions has appeared. The bird was called Squawkabilly and it looked like a parrot that actually had an honest-to-Mew black pompadour-looking crest on its head.
Squawkabilly was listed as a normal/flying type and apparently had 4 forms that each had a different colored plumage; Those colors were green, blue, yellow, and white, though I was not sure yet if the difference was just visual. I knew that unlike with Oricorio the difference in plumage color did not cause a change in Squawkabilly's typing since that would have otherwise been listed beneath their respective pictures. Nonetheless, a parrot with its exaggerated hair/crest style was attention-grabbing enough, and I could see people capturing all 4 just to have them for that.
Anyway, I proceeded to go through the entries again after a final look at Squawkabilly. The next few Pokemon were all old acquaintances, so I directly moved on the moment I saw their pictures. It was not until entry number 126 that I stopped skipping ahead and took a few moments to actually appreciate the Pokemon in the picture. This was the first pseudo-legendary/apex species listed so far, or at least the first one I recognized; You know, in case one of the new Pokemon lines that appeared so far happened to belong to the apex grade as well, though I honestly did not think that was the case.
Still, after taking in Gible's picture and then that of Gabite as well as Garchomp, which I had to admit I appreciated for a few extra moments, I prepared myself to start spamming the mental skip button again. Yet, entry number 129 happened to be on a new Pokemon, so I stopped to scrutinize the picture. Frankly, to me that looked like a small white stone block with orange eyes that rocked a large brown rock afro with another small white stone block sticking out of the top of said rock afro. Oh, and the afro happened to have a white stripe circling the middle.
Regardless, after having gotten used to Pokemon like Geodude and Nosepass, a white stone block with a brown rock afro was not hard for me to accept either. Nacli was listed as a pure rock type, which was rarer than one would think. I fully expected the next entry to be on Nacli's evolution, which it was, though I still had to stare at the picture for a few moments since Naclstack just looked quite a bit different than what I expected. If I had to describe it I would say that it looked like a quadrupled made up of cubes and stone blocks, with a rock acting as a toe I guess at each cube that made up its legs/feet. Honestly, if not for its back which had a rock that was not "properly" cut, I would have thought Naclstack jumped to Pokemon straight from Minecraft.
The ensuing entry was unsurprisingly on Nacli's final evolution, though I had to say that I was happy to see that Garganacl fit my aesthetic sense more than Naclstack did. Garganacl was essentially a bipedal rock transformer, or a Zord, or a Gundam if one liked those shows more. I had to say that it definitely looked cool, at least in my opinion it did, and I would definitely be interested in adding some to Utopia if for nothing else than to let them act as cool-looking guardians in the future dungeon/castle/labyrinth conquest challenges I was planning.
I was sure that Garganacl together with Golurk would make for an impressive/imposing-looking guardian duo when one had to beat them to move beyond a certain door or to the next floor. Yet, that would require me to get my hands on them in the first place, so I stopped the daydreaming and moved on to the next entry, which turned out to be on Wingull. Since it was a known Pokemon I began to skip again, and I continued doing so for quite a bit until I stopped and stared at entry number 160. Honestly, even though I had seen Primeape's entry just now, I had not expected to see a picture of Annihilape after moving on to the next entry.
It was simply because I had not expected the paldeans to add Annihilape into their PokeDex even if they knew of its existence. The alliance had so far opted against adding Annihilape into the global and the national dexes after all. Annihilape's generally uncontrollable nature during the first few decades or even centuries after its evolution from Primeape had the higher-ups decide against revealing its existence to the general public, and since one could count the number of Annihilape appearances/evolutions that took place within Alliance territory using the fingers of one's hands, a rather small number of people within the alliance actually knew of its existence.
This was something the people in the know preferred since everyone involved was aware that there would be people who would disregard any given warnings and still try to let their Primeape evolve, causing untold amounts of damage in the process once they inevitably lost control of the Annihilape. I was absolutely sure that any government would choose to do the same, which was why I had not expected to see Annihilape listed in the Paldean Pokemon Index.
The fact that they did actually list it had to mean that they had found a way for Annihilape to stay under control, which was something I was definitely interested in. Even if I could not head to Paldea for whatever reason, I could still use the research that they have no doubt documented to replicate it. I would definitely be publishing that method since I felt that Annihilape was a cool Pokemon and that it deserved some fame. I kinda regretted that I had not dug deeper into my super library after hearing about Annihilape's existence, but the documented uncontrollable nature of Annihilape for the first few decades or even centuries of their existence had made me assume that there were no methods to help them keep their control straight after evolution.
Still, there was no need to cry after spilled milk. I just had to make sure that I looked into it now, so after I made a mental note to research how the paldeans did it, I moved on to the next entry. I skipped past the Meditite line and also the Riolu line, though my eyes did shine a bit when I saw the latter. That shine turned into a sparkle when I saw a picture of Charcadet in entry number 165. It appeared that the fire knight line was native to Paldea, and as I expected the next two entries were on Armarouge the psychic fire knight, and Ceruledge, the ghost fire knight.
Honestly, for a moment I envied the people of Paldea for having those available, but that quickly went away by the thought that the same was going to be true for Utopia as well in the future thanks to my ghost cave adventures. After skipping past the Barboach line, I got to see yet another entry on a new/paldean Pokemon, though honestly, this one looked rather underwhelming. Tadbulb was a pure electric type that looked like a yellow light bulb with a brown face and neck area. Its face looked like a smiley and it had a tadpole-like tail that started with the same brown as the face but ended with the same copper color as the disks that separated its tail and neck.
The only really impressive thing was that it appeared to be levitating in the picture which meant that, unless one managed to ground it or hit it in the air with a long-range ground move, Tadbulb had no weaknesses just like Tynamo. At least it had that going for itself, though after moving on to the next entry I could not say the same for its evolution Bellibolt. Bellibolt retained its pure electric typing, but other than that it looked like it had nothing else going for itself. It looked like a large/fat green frog-like being with a loudspeaker on its belly. The only thing that drew my interest for a bit was that it had an open-mouthed smile with two dot eyes above its loudspeaker while also having what appeared to be a proper eye on each side of its head.
Honestly, while I was looking at Bellibolt I was starting to realize that I was still prone to judging a Pokemon on its looks if I had no other information available. I had thought I had gotten rid of that superficial/shallow thinking but it seemed it had just gotten buried and now it was resurfacing. I had to try and work on that again, though I doubt it was going to be easy since the first attempt seemed to have failed. Regardless, after that little bit of introspection, I moved on again, and after being surprised at the Goomy that showed up, I began skipping again, though it only took until entry number 177 for me to stop since it was on yet another new Pokemon.
The picture showed a tiny bird that had a mostly black head with a yellow crescent-shaped mark beneath the beak that went a bit beyond its green eyes. Its underside/belly was grey while its wings were yellow at the top and black at the bottom. Interestingly enough, its orange talons/feet seemed to be webbed, and it had a split tail similar to Taillow. Wattrel was actually listed as an electric/flying type which made it the first common bird Pokemon to have that typing. I was discounting non-common variants like my electric Spearow, and the form changer Oricorio. As for Emolga, that one was not a bird, so it didn't count since I said common bird Pokemon. Zapdos did not count for the same reason.
Regardless, I eagerly moved on to the next entry to see how Wattrel's evolution looked, and I was okay with it. They actually had two pictures of Kilowattrel; One where it looked normal, and one with what looked like an inflated throat sac. I honestly preferred its normal looks, but overall Kilowattrel had my okay, though for some reason the first thing I thought of when I saw it were the seagulls in Finding Nemo. Anyway, I moved on to the next entry before skipping ahead since it was an old Pokemon.
That happened quite a few times until the 189th entry, which had me look at the two pictures in disbelief. I could not believe that Paldea had actually found an evolution for Dunsparce called Dudunsparce, which actually seemed to have 2 forms. Not only was its species name questionable, but the same was true for its two forms. Dudunsparce essentially looked like a Dunsparce with a second slightly smaller belly portion. Well, or a third even smaller one since the difference between the two Dudunsparce forms appeared to be that one had two segments/belly portions, while the other had three segments.
Finding a trainer with a Dunsparce was really rare since they were not seen as all that strong, so even normal type specialists usually did not add the pure normal type into their teams. However, I was pretty sure that that would change once it became public knowledge that Dunsparce could evolve since I was confident that Dudunsparce had to be decently strong since Dunsparce itself already had a racial value of 415 and I did not think that the evolution increase would be below 80. I thought that it was more likely that the increase would be higher than that.
The question I had was whether the difference in segments had any impact on Dudunsparce's total racial value or if it was a purely visual difference, though its weight and length obviously had to be affected as well. I guess I would get the answer to that when I began to look into how the Dunsparce in Paldea managed to evolve, and once I learned about the method I was going to write a paper on the topic to share it with everyone else. That meant that I would have to get myself a Dunsparce or two to first test and verify the method myself before I could publish it. Otherwise, things would look suspect if I came up with something like that without any reference points, especially if I ended up releasing the Annihilape evolution method as well.
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