Sunday, October 10, 2010

30. Nidorina


SO MANY NIDOS I'M ALREADY SICK OF THIS























wait what is this I don’t even

I went poking around looking for stuff to write about Nidorina, and I found a few things. One was a rather inappropriate series of images involving a talking Nidorina and Pikachu. Another was the character sheet above. It is from a site called Aqua Bunny.

At first I thought it was weird that there was such a devoted site for Nidorina, like even weirder than a site about Pokemon sprites. Maybe there was a site like that on the internet for every pokemon, but I didn’t think so; this was a serious outlier to normalcy I was looking at. But then I started reading it. And going through its fanart. And it all started to make sense. Nidorina is awesome. I am indoctrinated. I take back everything critical I said about these pokemon.

There’s a certain reaction we have when we see someone, say, making up fictional characters based on fictional creatures, designing them, attributing them personalities and backstories. That it is emotionally immature, indulgent, eccentric. “Just remember if you become obsessed with something you stop making sense to other people." But here I am, writing a pokemon blog, and every minute of it thinking, “What am I doing I am horrible I am writing a pokemon blog.” So part of me admires those people who can pursue their fandom so far that it becomes impractical, devoid of incentive, and yet show no insecurity about it. It’s a good thing the world is still a place where people can have creative hobbies that don’t need to pander to others.

So there is indeed a lot to say about Nidorina, despite her lack of frills and utterly average stats and abilities (seriously, her stat distribution looks like this:









), but not a lot that hasn’t already been said by whomever runs Aqua Bunny, who actually knows things about animation and puts me to shame with this look through time at the evolution of Nido artwork, and informed commentary about which ones are best. My god, what have I done

The Winner:
Nidozard




wait no
Diamond and Pearl





Gold’s pointing dog pose amuses me. A lot of these sprites, including that one, seem to have trouble with Nidorina’s foreleg, like they can’t decide if you should be looking at the underside of its paw, or at its knee, with the paw bent out of sight. There’s something odd with the perspective going on there. R/S and FR/LG exemplify this, as that paw is the sole difference between the two.

Most of these choose to depict Nidorina as pretty hostile, so might as well go with the one that does it the best. Of the ones bounding forwards, Silver’s isn’t bad, but D/P’s is less top-heavy and has arms of actually functional length.

6 comments:

  1. I find the idea of the Aquabunny Nidorina fandom to be very, very disturbing. Especially the Nidozilla thing. Nothing against fans of the Pokemon, but that is very strange. And it's just a little unsettling to see one of my childhood heroes Nidofied. 8I

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  2. Haha, I just happened to find this by chance, no lie, and reading this bit, it looks like you get it. Granted, Nidorina's my favorite Pokemon, but it's really a site for the whole Nido family. But the point is to make them both interesting AND to do things that no other site spends the time to do, because, why not? Japan's certainly not making the effort to make Nidos interesting, someone's gotta do it. Least that's my reasoning.

    As for the comment above, I hardly think a Nidorina fan following is all that disturbing, really. It could be a dirty site. Or a mean spirited one. :X The site is focused, yeah, but... wouldn't you kind of expect that? It's kind of like, why go to a Mario site and expect anything else? :D I'm not as obsessed as it may appear, it's more about the want of doing something others aren't using characters I like. Plus, context helps. I mean, really helps. Read some of the commentary on the site, because you'll totally miss the point viewing it face value (and a lot of people do so, no one would be alone in that, and big hint, the message I'm trying to send has nothing to do with Pokemon). I didn't create Nidozilla on a whim, and most of those characters date back several years, I didn't make them all up at once. I just keep track of them because I keep track of everything, heck I haven't even forgotten the stories I've written when I was in kindergarten. :P

    Sorry this comment's kinda long and rambling.

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  3. Hey no problem, thanks for commenting!

    I guess at first glance it seems like an oddly specific fansite, like if you were browsing Mario sites and found one that focused extensively on Thwomps. But then you see its creator has designed a whole GAMES section and has links to other projects, and you think "Man, this guy means business"

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  4. Yeah, I hear you. To be fair and truthful, though, my inspiration came from Starmen.net.

    The fact that there could be a fan site that possibly kills every other fan site out there, EVER, in terms of anything imaginable based off of more or less one game for several years (keeping in mind most ignored Mother and Mother 3 hadn't come out yet) makes any other effort look half assed, hahaha! And other franchises have libraries of games and the fans can't even pull together long enough to provide a minimum effort sock puppet show. I'm using extreme exaggerations but my comparison to starmen.net still stands. And to their credit, the Sonic and MegaMan franchises have their large scale hacking scenes, which I consider a big deal.

    So yeah, to put it frankly, I do mean business. It doesn't entirely justify it being a Nido only site, but it does explain why I go all out. I just happen to think like the big boys do.

    And in my defense, I do think it has a lot to do with it being characters no one would expect. I mean, if I put this kind of effort into a Pikachu, (God forbid) Eevee, or Meta Knight or Mario only site, it'd seem a little more natural because it doesn't go against the grain. Now, if I did Qwilfish, Stantler, Floaty the Drifter (from Kirby's Dream Land 2) or as you put it, Thwomps, yeah, people are gonna be thrown one and wonder "...why?" And it's sites like that where if there is no substance, then it does feel kind of hopeless, but if there is, you have to dive in to find it, it's not going to jump out at you. That's a lesson I kind of wish everyone understood.

    So how 'bout that Nidorina? :P Let me actually participate in your blog and state that I liked the one from Silver and the ones from the 3rd gen. Mostly because they, at the time, seemed to be cute, refined versions of Nidorina that the initial art concept seemed to aim towards. Even as far as three generations in, they completely ignored the anime's take on Nidorina, thankfully. I can't say it enough that she wasn't ever intended to turn out that way (she was still supposed to look monsterish, but in a Bulbasaur-Ivysaur cute kind of way).

    The current sprites make her look contradictorily mean, but at least it's still not the awful hag/pig/pug look the anime and early sprites gave... oh snap. I think I've solved it. I think I know why the anime designed her the way that they did. *cheesily* Thanks pokemonspriteguy!

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  5. NIDOZARD! :D!!!!! oh wait no diamond and pearl haha.

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