Pokemon Legends ZA: Why Mega Victreebel Landed and Mega Dragonite Didn’t
Mid-game spoiler alert for Pokemon Legends ZA ahead! Consider yourself warned.
As official teasers for Pokemon Legends ZA trickled in and fans hyped up, something unexpected happened. Mega Victreebel received a warm reception from Pokemon fans, but Mega Dragonite didn’t. Why?
Mega Victreebel defeating Mega Dragonite seems preposterous! In the official 2020 Pokemon of the year list Dragonite ranked sixth, while Victreebel didn’t even crack the top 30.
So what happened? Why the sudden flip in popularity? Both Dragonite and Victreebel are generation one pokemon, so it’s likely not nostalgia bias. They’re both second stage, fully evolved pokemon. Base form Dragonite’s base stat total is a whopping 600, while base form Victreebel’s is only 490.
To find our answer, we have to think way back to generation III and Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire. Neither of these Pokemon are from gen 3, so why are we looking there? The answer…Pokemon Contests! Ugh, really? Contests of all things? Hear me out.
When we look back at Pokemon Contests we find another official set of stats that GameFreak has given our Pokemon: Coolness, Beauty, Cuteness, Cleverness, and Toughness. So what does this have to do with the popularity of Mega Dragonite and Mega Victreebel? Everything!
When we look at our contest stat chart we can easily attribute these stats to how fans feel about Mega Evolved pokemon… except for one. Cleverness doesn’t really fit most Mega evolved Pokemon. But if we turn that stat on its head we get: silliness! Lots of our favorite Mega Pokemon are total goofballs, and we love them for it.
Spoilers ahead!
Most Mega Pokemon can be described as one or several of these attributes. Let’s take a look at my personal thoughts on the new Mega Evolved Starters, and why I predict all of them will find a good amount of popularity.
Mega Emboar is a burning badass. Both its coolness and toughness skyrocket and you’re left with a really impactful Pokemon.
Mega Feraligatr swims into Legends ZA still looking tough, but the silliness factor goes way up. It becomes a goober you want to laugh at as you battle, with the giant fin on its neck.
Mega Meganium blossoms into a beautiful but also silly tree of flowers, while still remaining cute.
All three of the new Mega Evolved starter Pokemon have distinct strong points when you use the contest stats system. Next we’ll look at some of the older, more forgettable or less popular Mega Pokemon.
Mega Camerupt… exists. But be honest with me, before you did the quest to defeat it in Legends ZA did you even remember it existed? Were you super hyped for it to come back? I didn’t and I wasn’t. There are of course Mega Camerupt fans out there (every Pokemon is someone’s favorite!) but it’s not a widely well regarded Mega. It looks a bit silly, but not silly enough. And it’s not cool enough, beautiful enough, cute enough, or tough enough to make up for only being sort of silly.
But Camerupt isn’t a Pokemon who has great coolness, beauty, cuteness, silliness, or toughness to begin with you say. A fair point! How about if we look at Mega Pokemon who start out on better ground. Mewtwo is cool, right?
As a kid who played generation one, Mewtwo in its base form was the epitome of awesome. Mewtwo is so cool and strong, and you just knew you were going to need to have several Revives handy to take it on. Its Mega Evolutions though? They’re not cool. Mega Mewtwo X and Mega Mewtwo Y took one of the base form’s best assets and tossed most of it out of the window. Mega Mewtwo pumps up its toughness, but that’s not what most Mewtwo trainers wanted. They wanted their cool pokemon to get even cooler. Mega Mewtwo Y is prettier I guess? It’s sleek. But it’s also less cool than the base form. When a Mega Evolution doesn’t lean into the base form’s strengths, it often falls flat.
So to our question at hand, what happened to Mega Victreebel and Mega Dragonite? One got silly and one didn’t.
Mega Victreebel is hilarious. It can’t open its gullet properly anymore, and its lips have swollen up. It’s got a derpy, upside down smile and you can’t help but laugh when you see it. And who doesn’t want a huge bag of poison bouncing along behind them?
Before it evolves into Dragonite, Dragonair is beautiful and svelte. When it evolves is trades high beauty for high silliness, and for tons of Pokemon fans that change just works.
Mega Dragonite did not get sillier when it Mega Evolved. Instead of leaning into one of its most beloved qualities, being a big goofy dragon, it traded in too much of its beloved silliness to look prettier. It ended up as jack of all trades, master of none.
Why do many Pokemon fans love Mega Victreebel and not Mega Dragonite? The answer comes down to this: Mega Victreebel is funny and Mega Dragonite isn’t.
How do Mega Dragonite and Mega Victreebel stack up to your favorite Mega Pokemon? Share your favorite Mega and its best qualities using the site we used to create stat spreads for this article and share them with us: https://chachart.net/radar?lang=en !