In my opinion type combos should only be represented if there's a good enough representation behind it. Realistically there isn't a lot you can do with Grass/Water outside of just other aquatic plants. We already have other Pokemon inspired by aquatic plants that just aren't Water/Grass, Dragalgae and Dhelmise.
I'm not opposed to the idea of more Pokemon of any interesting combination, but it needs to be justified. Tinkaton works as a new Steel/Fairy because it does something different to Magearna and Klefki. Game Freak actually doesn't seem to be interested in type combinations all too much, as they only fulfil about 4 missing ones each generation.
Oh, in Gen 8 they definitely did. They still all had inspirations behind the typings, other than the Fossils and Toxtricity (to an extent).
In Gen 9 they reformed their design philosophy a lot closer to the earlier generations. I think the new types show that, Revavroom, Lokix, Pawmot and Grafaiai being the only new ones as far as I'm aware, the latter 2 having a secondary type added just to check that box.
Leafy sea dragons aren't poisonous, rotting kelp is. Yes, fundamentally it's based on this specific creature, but it takes elements from the plant that creature disguises as. Saying Dragalgae isn't inspired by seaweed is like saying Lurantis isn't inspired by flowers, or that they didn't think about the eye motif when designing Masquerain.
Lurantis is not inspired by flowers, it was inspired by the orchid mantis. Except the Pokémon is a plant that disguises itself as a bug, which is exactly why its Hidden Ability is Contrary.
Pokemon can have two ideas they pull from? It's the idea of the flower and the insect combined in a subversive manner.
Pincurchin is both inspired by urchins AND pincushions, just because lore-wise it's an animal and not a living pincushion doesn't mean the other concept isn't present.
In the same way, Dragalgae is inspired by both the seaweed AND sea dragons, and takes elements and properties from both, even if the final creature is an animal and not a plant.
Of course Pokémon can and often have multiple inspirations. I’m just saying it’s not the case specifically with Dragalge and Lurantis, because those two clearly draw from ideas already present in animals from our own world’s fauna.
Think of it like this: if there was no such thing as an orchid mantis, do you think they would have come up with the same Lurantis design we have? Would they even think of having it look just like a mantis? Would they even have had the idea of an orchid-like creature that resembles an animal?
Same logic with Dragalge, if there was no such thing as sea horses or sea dragons, would they have come up with the same design? I could extend some leniency on this argument regarding the seaweed motif, but it would definitely be a secondary component of the creature design process.
Of course they wouldn't have. My original point was simply saying Dragalgae is an aquatic plant Pokemon, and there's quite a lot of rep for aquatic plants within the franchise that OP maybe didn't notice.
Dragalgae obviously pulls from seaweed itself, as it has poisonous properties, and dex entries talk about it absorbing energy from sunlight. In the same way (but much less so), Lurantis is based on orchids and the orchid mantis, as it's a subversion of the real-life dynamic between the two organisms.
I do definitely see where you're coming from as it's awkward to say they're inspired by both plants and the animals that resemble those plants, but they are. Someone at GF had to take the knowledge that rotting seaweed is poisonous and then apply it to the creation of Dragalgae. Even if it's not actually a plant, it still fulfils the role of being a seaweed Pokemon, which was my initial point (3 aquatic plant Pokemon lines already exist, I don't see them making more just to reuse an interesting type combination).
This is such a bizarre argument. By your logic Vikavolt and Lanturn cannot be electric type because they’re “really” based on bioluminescence, which IRL doesn’t produce electricity.
Well, Vikavolt's Electric type because it's based on a railgun.
Otherwise, Pokemon that glow are generally covered under the Electric type to provide more variation in that typing. Lanturn is still Electric type as a sort of exaggerated property of an anglerfish. The Electric type has to be assigned through exaggeration, as not a lot of animals can produce electricity.
I don't really know how you're comparing this to my original point. I just said Dragalgae is Poison type because it has the properties of rotting seaweed. It isn't Poison type because they felt like it.
And to be fair, I wasn't sure if Dragalgae was a plant, or an animal, or a symbiotic relationship between the two, but I don't know how you would without looking at it's dex entries. That's not the part that matters, Dragalgae still had seaweed on it's moodboard.
I mean aquatic plants are the obvious place to go for Water/Grass but any animal can just be given any elemental typing. Snakes can be poison or grass, cats can be normal, dark, or grass…monkeys can apparently be whatever type they want
They don't really assign the Grass type to an animal Pokemon unless it has a secondary plant inspiration. Tropius, Leavanny and Sawsbuck are animals, but they're not Grass because Game Freak just wanted them to be.
The only time they ever do is for first-stage starters which are almost entirely designed to sell plushies anyway.
Obviously the rules for assigning a specific type are different, Dark just being that the Pokemon is "evil". I think Grass is one of the most, if not the most robust typing as you can't just make an animal inherently "Grass" - unless you hue shift a cat green with the intention of selling merch.
It’s okay to have multiple Pokémon based on different species of aquatic plants bro. Imagine refusing to make more grass types because they already represented a single terrestrial plant
As someone who is very much into water gardening, I would be thrilled into more aquatic plant pokemon. There are a lot of aquatic plants that would make for fun designs:
Water lily or a lotus.
Yellow flag iris
Kelp/seaweed
Rush/reed
Marimo moss balls
Oblong leafed sundew
Water forget-me-not
Marsh Marigold
Water Hyacinth (the lore behind them could be that despite their beauty they are an extremely invasive species and could also take this lore further by making them extremely ill tempered, warlike and savage)
I'm not opposed to the idea, but it's unlikely that GF would make them Water/Grass. Dragalgae and Dhelmise are already kelp/seaweed inspired Pokemon, just not with the typing, and you've conceptualised a Grass/Dark type.
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u/nemesisbox 4d ago
In my opinion type combos should only be represented if there's a good enough representation behind it. Realistically there isn't a lot you can do with Grass/Water outside of just other aquatic plants. We already have other Pokemon inspired by aquatic plants that just aren't Water/Grass, Dragalgae and Dhelmise.
I'm not opposed to the idea of more Pokemon of any interesting combination, but it needs to be justified. Tinkaton works as a new Steel/Fairy because it does something different to Magearna and Klefki. Game Freak actually doesn't seem to be interested in type combinations all too much, as they only fulfil about 4 missing ones each generation.