Just when the battle begins, Pignite (the orange pig monster shown here) busts in and shows off to his rival Dewott, knocking Watchog out in one move. Well, that was rude.
Like I said before, this one was originally going to be one page, cutting a lot of these panels without dialogue and just having action poses. I thought it might be a bit frantic like that, so I decided to place Pignite's entrance and attack on a different page.
I was not sure quite how to end this at first. I wanted something after Pignite landed his Arm Thrust attack to hammer home the unfairness. I thought at one point that Dewott should be preparing to attack Pignite out of anger. However, that seemed a little violent, and I just wanted to show that Dewott felt cheated for stupid reasons. That is why I ultimately decided to just make the Rock gym comment.
...which brings me to why I drew this in the first place. First off, the blue and orange Pokemon in this comic, Dewott and Pignite, are the evolutions of Oshawott and Tepig, two of the starter Pokemon in the Black and White versions (the third starter, Snivy, evolves into the monster mentioned near the end of this comic: Servine). Oshawott is Black & White's Water-type starter, Snivy is the Grass-type, and Tepig is the Fire-type. Both Oshawott and Snivy remain pure Water and pure Grass throughout all stages of their lives. However, when Tepig matures to his Pignite stage, he adds Fighting abilities alongside his Fire-type (a "Fire-Fighting" Pokemon).
Adding the Fighting-type to the Fire starter was not a new idea at the time, though: Tepig marked the third time (in a row, no less) where this happened. Torchic (the Fire starter in Emerald) first did this in the 3rd generation of the series, and that was novel and clever. Chimchar (Fire starter of Platinum) followed up on that, and while some people thought it may have been repetitive, others didn't mind because he worked and may have (at the time) worked even better than Torchic at the Fire-Fighting job. But when fans found out that Tepig was repeating what was now a trend, they were getting tired of that situation being overdone. At first, I was disappointed, but I was able to at least cope with it.
...until I realized that while Torchic and Chimchar needed to grow into Fighters, Tepig really did not.
You see, in Pokemon Emerald, the first Gym Leader (one of the major bosses of the game) uses Rock Pokemon, and that may throw the starters out of balance normally. Grass and Water Pokemon have an advantage fighting Rock monsters, but the Fire starter (Torchic in this game) would generally struggle against these same Rock-types. Therefore, in order to help even the odds for those who chose Torchic, when she upgraded to Combusken later, she became part-Fighting Pokemon as well. It may seem odd, but fighting moves in Pokemon are actually capable of smashing Rock Pokemon, and rock attacks do not work well against Fighters. Thus, this was a clever move to help make the Fire starter about as good a choice against the Rock boss as the Grass or Water starters.
In Pokemon Platinum, we had basically the same situation: the first boss specialized in Rock-types, so they thought to give Chimchar (Platinum's Fire starter) a way to smash rocks and decided to go for Fire-Fighting again. It was a slightly repetitive, but Monferno (Chimchar's evolution) was only the second family ever to use Fire-Fighting, and it made sense to apply that here. Unfortunately, that logic does not apply for Tepig and Pignite.
In Pokemon Black and White, however, the first boss of the game uses a Pokemon of a type that your starter is weak against no matter what. If you chose Water-type Oshawott, the boss would have a Grass Pokemon; if you got fiery Tepig, he would use a Water-type; you having grassy Snivy meant you faced a Fire boss. That means that (in theory) no starter would really be that much more effective than the others at that point in the game. Then again, while the first Gym in Black and White is clever, it is pretty easy even if your only good Pokemon at that point is your supposedly disadvantageous starter. Let us move on to the second boss, which is actually the one this comic is set around.
I set the comic at the second Gym because this is more likely to be the point where you could upgrade your starter to his second stage of life, as well as where the problem lies. The second major boss of Pokemon Black and White specializes in Normal Pokemon. As its name suggests, Normal Pokemon are kind of meant to be the baseline, so it has a very sparse amount of both strengths and weaknesses. As such, none of the three starter Pokemon's types (Fire, Water, and Grass) have any distinct edge over Normal, and Normal holds no advantage over them. Once again, with just these types in mind, all three starters should be equally effective against this boss.
However, there is one type that can hit Normal Pokemon for super-effective damage: Fighting. We had an early-game boss that each of the three potential partners you start with could naturally handle almost as well as the other two. But by allowing even one of them (or two) to add the Fighting-type and Fighting attacks upon evolution, that balance would be disrupted. Dewott as a Water-Fighting-type or Servine as a Grass-Fighting-type would probably be a more clever idea in terms of flavor, sure, but in terms of game balance, it would be just as disruptive as Pignite being a Fire-Fighter. It really seems like they just decided to slap the Fighting-type onto Tepig's evolutions for no good goddamn reason other than tradition. THAT is one of my major issues with Tepig and his evolutions: Pignite and Emboar.
In short, Tepig and his whole line are probably my least favorite starter Pokemon in any of the main games so far, and having an unfair edge over a boss where your starter is one of maybe three worthwhile Pokemon you have early-game is one reason why. I am considering making a video sometime trying to say more on the subject, but whether I go through with that or not is something I will have to decide.
If you read this far in the "read more" section, I want to guess you are either a fellow Pokemon fan or really curious where I was going with this. Whatever the reason, thank you for watching me nerd out over Pokemon; I really do appreciate it. Also, I hope you liked the comic.
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