#ghosttypes

Oricorio’s English name references the orioles, a family (or rather, two unrelated families, one native to the Old World and one to the New) of brightly-coloured insectivorous songbirds.  Her names in other languages are more generic references to birds and dance, and her actual design probably draws, if anything, not on the orioles but on Hawaiian honeycreepers – another family of brightly coloured songbirds, most of them in various shades of yellow and red.  Like “Darwin’s finches” in the Galápagos Islands of Ecuador, Hawaiian honeycreepers are famous for having rapidly adapted from a single basic form to fill a wide variety of different ecological niches.  Some have short, thick beaks that can crush seeds, some have long, thin beaks for spearing insects, and others have curving beaks for sipping nectar from flowers, hence the name “honeycreeper.”  The technical name for the phenomenon is “adaptive radiation,” and it’s particularly common on remote islands, like the Hawaiian archipelago, where there may be a large number of unoccupied ecological niches for a species to diversify into.  Oricorio, accordingly, has four forms, which individuals can switch between by feeding on the sweet nectar of special flowers that are unique to each of the four main islands of Alola.  The different colours of the flowers correspond to the meanings of each of the islands’ names in Hawaiian: yellow flowers on Melemele, pink on Akala, red on Ula’ula, and purple on Poni.  Wild Oricorio can be found wherever the flowers grow, and mimic their colours, but also gain different costume-like features that evoke a distinctive style of dance from the real world, characteristic of particular regions, with personality traits to match.

Each form has a different type: Electric/Flying for yellow, Psychic/Flying for pink, Fire/Flying for red, Ghost/Flying for purple.  The yellow, Electric-type, Melemele Oricorio is energetic and cheerful, with puffs of feathers like a cheerleader’s pom-poms on the end of her wings – a North American style of dance, associated with giving energy to others.  The pink, Psychic-type, Akala Oricorio is laid-back and relaxed, with a long skirt and crown of pale feathers that bring to mind a Hawaiian pā’ū skirt and lei, the paraphernalia of hula dance, which is linked in modern pop culture with tropical relaxation.  The red, Fire-type, Ula’ula Oricorio is proud and passionate, with frills of feathers like a flamenco dancer’s long dress, and white curlicue feathers that evoke hooped earrings, evoking the intense traditional dances of southern Spain that are now a shorthand for burning, desperate love.  Finally, the purple, Ghost-type, Poni Oricorio is calm and quiet, with fans of feathers at the ends of her wings like the sensu fans used by geisha in old-fashioned Japanese dances that still evoke tradition and ceremony.  We’re also told that the purple sensu Oricorio’s style of dance famously reminds immigrants from Kanto of the traditional dances of their homeland, just to push home that these styles are meant to have geographical and cultural resonance, as well as emotional connotations.  Their different styles of dance are said to have corresponding effects on onlookers; the pom-pom style dance giving energy to friends, the pā’ū style dance lulling and slowing enemies, the baile style dance “causing its enemies to combust in both body and mind” (ouch), and the sensu style dance “sending the minds and hearts of its enemies to another world” (ouch?).  Those four distinct personalities and the magical effects associated with the dances link Oricorio’s core theme of dance with the characteristic traits of her four possible elements – Fire-types are passionate, Psychic-types are sedate, and so on.  This is quite important, since Oricorio otherwise has relatively few connections to those elements (as we’ll see later).

The point of all these different styles is probably to emphasise that Alola is multicultural, like the real Hawai’i, where American, Japanese and Polynesian (and to a lesser extent Iberian) culture are all important parts of the regional identity.  We should probably imagine that, for the people of the Pokémon world, all those styles of dance and their paraphernalia are based on Oricorio’s dances and plumage (in the same way as, for instance, the Roman alphabet actually comes from the Unown).    There is something a little bit odd going on here, though.  Hawai’i’s multiculturalism is essentially a legacy of colonialism, of American, Iberian and East Asian interference in, and immigration to, the islands.  The real-world dance styles that Oricorio is based on – with the exception of the Polynesian pā’ū style – are relatively modern imports to Hawai’i.  But Oricorio is not native to Kanto, Unova, or Kalos (the closest region we have to Iberia so far); to our knowledge, she is found only in Alola, and her different forms have specific niches that relate closely to the floral ecology of the four major islands.  It seems reasonable to think that the four forms all originated right here, in the Alolan archipelago, and that the resulting dance styles were also adapted by humans in Alola.  Should we turn it all on its head and imagine that in the Pokémon world Alola was not colonised, like Hawai’i, but a coloniser – an ancient maritime power whose kings had a ship in every port and a finger in every pie?  Did Alolan sensu dancers introduce the forms they learned from Oricorio to Kanto and Johto centuries ago?  Does the stamp of Oricorio’s intercontinental influence represent the last remaining trace of an ocean-spanning empire that left different shards of its cultural heritage all over the Pokémon world?

…or is this just the kind of subtle nonsense that happens when you create a particularly anthropomorphic Pokémon without thinking through what it would imply about human culture in the Pokémon world?

Such a question, dear readers, this meagre blog is hardly adequate to answer.

We are, however, reasonably equipped to answer the less speculative question of whether Oricorio is actually any good.  Oricorio seems at first to be a pretty rubbishy fast and frail special attacker.  And… well, in singles, she kind of is.  She’s got good, but not excellent, speed and special attack, average defences, and a movepool that makes me sad.  To elaborate – with one exception, the only special attacks she learns are Flying attacks and Hidden Power, and of the Flying attacks, Air Slash is below average in power and Hurricane is below average in accuracy (barring appropriate weather support).  Heck, she doesn’t even have any attacks of her own secondary types on her move list – except for her signature move, Revelation Dance.  This is a respectably powerful special attack with no secondary effects, but one interesting property: its type changes to match the type of Oricorio’s dance style, Electric, Psychic, Fire or Ghost.  In principle it’s a cool little trick that links Oricorio’s in-game tactics to the central features of her design.  In practice, it means that, although Oricorio technically has Electric, Psychic, Fire and Ghost attacks, she can’t have them at the same time, which is what she would actually like, because there’s no way to change her style mid-battle.  In some ways, Oricorio would be better off without Revelation Dance, since it would force Game Freak to give her actual attacks from each of her possible types.

The support options are a bit more inspiring.  Oricorio has Baton Pass, respectable speed, and a few useful set-up moves, including Agility, Calm Mind and Swords Dance, and she probably wouldn’t be terrible at passing buffs, although her defences leave something to be desired.  With Calm Mind, Baton Pass, Revelation Dance and either Agility or a Flying attack, she can help out a more competent team member without being totally helpless herself, although there are probably better Pokémon out there for the job.  She can use her speed to Taunt other support Pokémon, and she can heal herself with Roost.  U-Turn lets her dart out of danger, although it’s largely superfluous on a Baton Pass set, and probably not much good on a more straightforwardly aggressive set either, since Oricorio pretty much needs a turn or two of Calm Mind setup before she can do a worthwhile amount of damage.  There’s not much else to give her more variety.  Even Swords Dance can’t really enable a proper physical attacker set, since Oricorio’s base score is not impressive and her movepool basically extends to Acrobatics and Steel Wing.  But don’t worry – the best is still to come.

Oricorio’s most interesting feature is the unique Dancer ability, which immediately copies any “dance” moves used by another Pokémon (Oricorio still gets her regular turn).  In singles, this is situational at best; mostly it makes Oricorio an interesting switch-in to some Dragon Dance or Quiver Dance sweepers, since they won’t be able to outrun her.  In doubles, on the other hand, this ability allows Oricorio to really shine and do all kinds of ridiculous stuff.  You see, Oricorio will also copy her partner’s dances, letting her piggyback off their setup moves, particularly Quiver Dance.  Strictly speaking you could also try this trick with Swords Dance, but again, Oricorio’s poor attack stat and physical movepool advise against it.  Special mention here goes to Volcarona, who can buff Oricorio with Quiver Dance and give her free attacks with Fiery Dance, or to a pair of Oricorio (if you’re allowed two Pokémon of the same species on a team, which you often aren’t) who will copy each others’ Revelation Dances.  Lilligant is also an interesting option here – with her Own Tempo ability, she’s immune to confusion, so you can get Oricorio to disrupt your opponents with Teeter Dance without harming Lilligant, and Oricorio will copy both Quiver Dance and Petal Dance off her.  Practically the only downside is that you have to actually use Lilligant.  Some credit should also go to Pheremosa and Ribombee, who, along with Volcarona, learn Quiver Dance and are faster than Oricorio, ensuring that she gets a special attack boost before her own first attack.  In any case, if you can set Oricorio up to get a free Quiver Dance, she rather suddenly becomes an extremely threatening special attacker with quite solid special defence.  Her movepool is still weak, with just Air Slash or Hurricane, Revelation Dance and an appropriate Hidden Power (Ice for a pom-pom Oricorio, Grass for a baile Oricorio, or Fighting for a pā’ū or sensu Oricorio).  However, she’ll now have the power to bludgeon enemies into submission even through resistances, and with the right partner she may also be able to cheat out a bunch of extra Fiery Dances or Petal Dances.  In any turn-based game, the power to just get extra turns for free, even in such a limited way as this, can be tremendously game-breaking, to the point that I actually sort of understand how limited Oricorio is in other ways.  She’s rubbish in singles, and I don’t think there can be any changing that, but a good dance partner in doubles can let her steal the whole show, and with better defences and a good movepool she might become downright unstoppable.  Take her for a spin and see if you can make her work – just remember that Cresselia’s Lunar Dance kills her instantly.

If you pay any attention whatsoever to this blog for any length of time, one of the first things you discover is that I like Grass-types.  The Grass-type has been my go-to starter for my first playthrough (and most subsequent playthroughs) of every generation since the first.  Rowlet’s fate was bound to mine by destiny long before I ever laid eyes on him.  And I’m basically okay with this.  Rowlet isn’t really in contention to unseat Bulbasaur and Turtwig as my favourite starter Pokémon, but he’s fine.  He’s easy and fun to use in a playthrough, we’ve never had a birdlike Grass-type before, it doesn’t hurt that he’s just objectively adorable, and in abandoning his Flying-type Decidueye becomes the very first Ghost-type starter Pokémon ever, which is neat.  Rowlet and Dartrix are clearly barn owls, with the barn owl’s distinctive pale heart-shaped face, whereas Decidueye is maybe more of a hawk owl, although I wouldn’t read too much into that.  Comparisons to Hoothoot and Noctowl, who seem to be horned owls, are in order, as one of my usual criteria for evaluating new Pokémon is “is this actually new?” and I think the answer there is… probably???  Part of the problem there is that Hoothoot actually has a much more clearly-defined and interesting “personality” than Noctowl, with his heavily stylised cuckoo-clock aesthetic and metronome-like rocking from side to side (actually though, as long as we’re here, why doesn’t Hoothoot get Metronome?  I mean, I get that Metronome was still super-exclusive when Hoothoot was introduced, but they gave it to Snubbull and Chansey as an egg move).  Noctowl is kinda just a big owl that does owl things.  Rowlet, Dartrix and Decidueye are a bit deeper than that, which I generally tend to think is good.  Decidueye’s arrows and archery are an odd touch, but as with Talonflame, you can link birds and arrows conceptually via feathered fletching, so that makes sense.  What might not immediately makes sense to some of us is the switch from Flying to Ghost when Dartrix evolves, and this gives me an excuse to begin one of my patented Bull$#!t Lore Digressions™, so let’s learn some more about owls.

Owls are associated with the spirit world in several different and unrelated cultures, and there are some pretty good reasons for this.  Owls are night hunters, but more than that, they’re silent hunters – owls’ feathers are softer and smoother-edged than those of other birds, so the flapping of their wings is much more difficult to hear, giving them a ghostly, ethereal quality.  Also, like many nocturnal animals, their eyes reflect light and seem to glow in the dark in a disconcertingly eerie manner.  Not for nothing are owls omens of death in sub-Saharan Africa, of sickness and bad luck in the native cultures of the American southwest, or of catastrophe in ancient Rome.  In ancient Greece, of course – mainly in Athens – owls had a more ambivalent role as the sacred birds of Athena and symbols of wisdom (an association that persists today and gives us Noctowl’s famous intellect and minor psychic abilities).  Even there, though, the sinister scops owl was seen as a creature of the underworld, and the owl’s reputation for knowledge subsequently made it the familiar of witches and warlocks in mediaeval Europe.  In New Zealand, where I come from, the small brown hawk owl known as the morepork or ruru is believed to be an oracle of the future in Maori culture, its different cries portending either good fortune or disaster.  Finally, and perhaps most relevant for us today, on several of the islands of Hawai’i a species of short-eared owl called a pueo is one of the more common shapes known to be taken by ’aumākua, the spirits of a family’s honoured ancestors, who return to serve as guardians and as a link to the spirit world (sharks, lizards and turtles are also common; families must show respect and deference to all animals of a similar form to their ’aumākua).  An owl Pokémon thus becomes an intermediary between this world and the next, a sort of warrior-shaman that protects its trainer from spiritual threats using powers of its own that are more than a little dark and sinister (we see a similar theme with Hoothoot in the anime, where he has the unique power to force hidden Ghost-types to reveal themselves with Foresight).

This “mystic guardian” aesthetic is conspicuously undercut by what Rowlet and Dartrix seem to be doing, because they have more of a “dapper gentleman” style in play – consider the Pokédex line that describes Dartrix as “a bit of a dandy” obsessed with keeping his wings groomed, or their leafy bow-ties (in Decidueye, that evolves into something more like a brooch or the clasp of a cloak, which has a more mediaeval-fantasy feel to it).  It feels like a very odd fit for the direction that Decidueye moves in.  If you had just given me Rowlet and Dartrix, and told me to come up with ideas for a final evolution, I might, after substantial umm-and-ahh-ing, have pitched a kind of James-Bond-esque super-spy-in-a-tuxedo concept.  That seems like a more natural continuation, but easily could have turned out looking rather stupid without some very clever way of unifying the design elements (and if there’s anything this blog should teach us, it’s that I’m not quite that clever).  The self-important “dandy” aesthetic, after a bit of thought, is oddly reminiscent to me of the vain, professorial Owl from Winnie-the-Pooh, genuinely wise (…relatively speaking) but perhaps just as much concerned with the appearance of wisdom as with wisdom itself, and eager to look the part of the sober, intellectual scholar of the arcane.  Decidueye’s own description from the Pokédex tells us that this wise Pokémon is nonetheless easily startled and flustered (try slapping him awake in PokéRefresh and you’ll see what they’re getting at).  It’s still incongruous with Decidueye as mystic archer and night hunter, but it is at least giving me a common aesthetic thread to follow through all three evolutionary stages, something that’s quite important for a starter Pokémon to maintain.  Which is enough for the purposes of this review, I think.

Stats-wise, Decidueye seems to be built as a mixed attacker, with strong offensive skills, but isn’t very fast.  That doesn’t bode particularly well, since he can’t really afford to not max his speed in training, leaving less to split between attack and special attack.  There’s a passable physical movepool here, which includes Leaf Blade, Brave Bird, Sucker Punch, U-Turn, and… I guess Steel Wing if, like, you really hate Alolan Ninetales or something?  There’s also Decidueye’s signature move, Spirit Shackle, which has several advantages.  It’s a reliable Ghost-type physical attack, which a) is a rare sort of attack for anyone to have access to, and b) is something Decidueye clearly needs, c) it traps its target in play with Decidueye (unless the target is a Normal-type or Ghost-type, or has some escape mechanism), limiting your opponent’s options, and d) it fires a spiritual arrow that nails the target’s soul to the ground, which is super badass.  This move is easily Decidueye’s biggest edge; you want to use him to set up critical moments where you can switch and your opponent can’t, then pressure their weak points with one of Decidueye’s teammates, or try to Swords Dance while they’re off balance.  Leaf Blade and Spirit Shackle are actually a pretty solid combination; neither Grass nor Ghost gets a lot of super-effective hits, but Ghost has strong neutral coverage, so basically you’re resisted by all the Normal/Flying birds and a bunch of Dark dual-types.  Sucker Punch is mostly redundant with Spirit Shackle in terms of type coverage, but it’s also Decidueye’s only priority move, and he’s fairly slow and doesn’t have any speed buffs, so at least considering it is sort of obligatory (just remember that it only works on targets preparing a direct attack, so be careful using it against support Pokémon).  U-Turn is just generally a good move, because the free switch-out gives you a lot of flexibility in responding to your opponent’s actions (and especially switches), and it covers your ass against Dark-types, whom Decidueye tends to have trouble with.  Trapping something with Spirit Shackle and then bouncing out with U-Turn is a decent little combo, if you like that sort of thing.  Brave Bird adds a bit more of a sting than Decidueye’s other options, but lacks their utility.  Some combination of four of these, or three plus Swords Dance, should probably be the default go-to.  Decidueye’s kit lends itself to switching in and out a lot, and he doesn’t really have the speed to try and sweep a significant chunk of an enemy team, so I’d be more inclined to slap a Choice item on him than bank on Swords Dance, but to each their own.

Decidueye’s special attack stat is pretty solid, so in theory you can use that to mix things up a bit.  Unfortunately, basically his only worthwhile special attacks are Shadow Ball and Energy Ball/Grass Knot, and if you cut Spirit Shackle for Shadow Ball then you’ve sort of forsaken one of the most compelling reasons to use Decidueye in the first place.  That’s not quite the end of the story; you might be gunning specifically for some big chunky physical tank with a Grass weakness like Hippowdon, who gets stung much harder by Grass Knot than by Leaf Blade even with minimal special attack training on Decidueye’s part.  Also, most human opponents are going to assume Decidueye is a physical attacker, so if you can grab him a free turn to set up with Nasty Plot (which he also learns), you might just be able to catch someone with their pants down.  I’m not sure this is particularly a good plan, and again I’m not encouraged by the fact that he essentially has no third special attack, but the possibility theoretically exists.  Decidueye does have a support movepool of sorts, but you can probably find better Pokémon for any conceivable support role he might try to fill.  Like, Baton Pass is there as an egg move (via Togetic or Oricorio), and again, Decidueye does get both Swords Dance and Nasty Plot, so he has perfectly sound options for using it, but he just looks so unlike my idea of what a Baton Passer ought to be (poor speed, average defences) that my mind sort of recoils from the notion.  Alternatively you could try to ply Roost and Light Screen with some HP training into some kind of weird tanky Decidueye – give up trying to outrun things, since he’s slow anyway, and focus on your defences.  Just don’t tell anyone it was my idea.

As well as a signature move, Decidueye has a unique ability; it’s his hidden ability and isn’t currently obtainable, but I think we’ll probably get it eventually, so we ought to talk about it before we finish up.  This ability is Long Reach, which lets Decidueye treat his “contact” attacks as ranged instead, bypassing enemy effects like Static, Rough Skin, Beak Blast’s retributive burn, and so on.  This… ehhh, I’m not really sure what this is for.  I mean, I understand conceptually why Decidueye has this: he’s an archer, so he should be able to make what would normally be close-range attacks from a distance.  But that aspect of the design is already expressed by his signature move, and by the fact that he can use ranged special attacks effectively.  Most contact effects aren’t that big a deal, most Pokémon that get them have better abilities to choose from, and even when they’re likely to turn up, Decidueye would often prefer Spirit Shackle to Leaf Blade anyway.  I think Long Reach would probably give Decidueye an extra edge against… Wigglytuff, Electrode, Parasect, Bewear, Stunfisk, and (lord help us) Delcatty.  Being able to one-shot Bewear with Brave Bird after a Swords Dance is not nothing, but I suspect the more general Grass-type damage bonus from Overgrow would probably still be more useful, even once Long Reach becomes available.

So, all in all, this is a decent start to generation VII.  Rowlet, Dartrix and Decidueye are nothing amazing; they have a couple of conflicting ideas in their design, and other than Spirit Shackle there’s not a whole lot to be impressed by in their skillset.  They’re still interesting, though; as fighters they are at the very least passable, with an interesting niche courtesy of that neat little signature move, and I cannot stress enough that pinning a foe in place by the shadow is a very cool gimmick.  I got my cool new Grass-type starter, all is right with the world, and I can now review the rest of the seventh generation joyfully and optimistically, without a hint of malice or discontent in my heart.