15. Beedrill

There’s something about Beedrill that has always underwhelmed me. Weedle’s good, Kakuna’s good, but Beedrill… just isn’t as cool as Butterfree, for whatever reason. It’s stuck with the same awful Bug/Poison typing, and while Butterfree starts right off the bat learning cool psychic and spore attacks, Beedrill pretty much has to make do with the same lame moves until getting Twin Needle at level 20—at which point you’re busy fighting stuff like living rocks and armoured psychic seastars, quickly losing patience for your special needs early-game bug pokemon.

Beedrill’s supposed to be the more mean and intimidating of the two, but it’s not even that scary-looking. And I mean, I’m afraid of bees. Have you ever been stung in the eye by a bee? Well, neither have I, but if you’ve seen Matthew Broderick in Election, you know it can really spoil your day.

Should have used a Repel there, Ferris.

Maybe it’s just too cartoony—its body is plump and round and school bus yellow, instead of sleek and dangerous-looking like all the scariest bees and hornets, or like those thread-waisted wasps that look like they could kill a horse:

As you can see, insect stingers aren’t scary when they’re big and blunt, like Beedrill’s dunce cap hands; they’re scary when they’re long and sharp, as above—or better yet, as on the freaky-as-hell ichneumon wasp:

(But don’t worry, that’s not technically a stinger; it’s an egg depositor, for injecting parasitic larvae into an animal so they can eat it from the inside out :))

So maybe I’m just doomed to be disappointed by all Beedrill sprites—especially when you factor in the legs, which I guess are supposed to be bipedal, but don’t look strong enough to hold up anything bigger than an actual bug. Except on the Red/Blue sprite, that is, where they appear to be sexy lady legs.

The Winner:
Silver




I have to give credit to the most recent DS sprites for making Beedrill look more angular, like a wasp or hornet. But they still don’t seem all that threatening; I mean, D/P’s karate pose only serves to draw attention to its decrepit little limbs.

HG/SS’s is pretty good, but I think Silver’s takes the stale, half-eaten cake solely for its use of perspective. That’s right—that’s how easy it is to impress my caveman brain. That stinger is coming RIGHT AT ME.

But maybe that’s all Beedrill needs: the illusion of interaction with the viewer. That’s what really makes bees scary, come to think of it; there’s nothing all that impressive about one trapped behind glass, with its attention directed elsewhere.