#psychictypes

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.

  Most of what we know about Hoopa comes from a dialogue with a backpacker in the library of the Parfum Palace, which will apparently be activated if you speak to him while she is in your active party.  A vaguely humanoid Pokémon with two large bull-like horns and a wispy lower body, Hoopa appears to get her name from the three golden rings – hoops, if you will – that she wears, one on each of her horns, and one about her waist.  These things have the power to distort space and create wormholes that Hoopa can use to move objects (and people!) from place to place.  Hoopa herself can also travel through the rings, and uses them to make surprise attacks against her opponents from all directions with her signature Hyperspace Hole technique.  The rings can even distort their own sizes, allowing Hoopa to fit larger things through them… supposedly, up to and including entire islands when she achieves her “full power” (more on that later).  Hoopa is a mischievous Pokémon, and primarily uses her space-warping abilities to screw with people – she likes to steal things and send them to distant places.  She supposedly has a lair in the middle of a desert somewhere, filled with all the gold and other precious treasures she’s stolen from powerful rulers and aristocrats over the years.  No-one has ever been able to find this place, possibly because it’s not really a place at all, according to conventional human understanding.  If Hoopa’s power lets her warp space – not merely teleport as other Psychic Pokémon do but actually alter the physical distance between two points – perhaps Hoopa’s oasis and treasure pile have never been found because she has hidden them, folded them into a sort of pocket of space that doesn’t obey normal geography and can’t be seen or accessed from the outside.  I have no idea whether this is really within her power or not, but it seems like a logical extension of the way her wormhole abilities are said to work, and it certainly fits with her crafty, mischievous personality to have a clever way of concealing all her loot.

  To illustrate the way Hoopa tends to work, a story is told about an unnamed organisation that tried to “manipulate Hoopa’s power for their own benefit.”  Who these people are is left vague, though I think it’s probably reasonable to infer that their group’s name began with the word “Team.”  Moreover, I’m inclined to suspect that their motives were less than noble – Hoopa uses her powers to steal, and it seems likely that anyone attempting to “manipulate” her had motives equally nefarious or more so (rather than, say, seeking to reverse-engineer Hoopa’s space-warping abilities into new forms of travel or storage).  Unfortunately for them, Hoopa apparently had no need of a plucky young Pokémon trainer to join forces with her at the eleventh hour and defeat the bad guys against all odds.  The moment she got wind of what our mystery antagonists were up to, their money and equipment started to disappear mysteriously.  Eventually, confused and frightened by these events, they boarded themselves up in their headquarters to wait it out… only to find, when they emerged, that the entire building had been moved to the middle of a huge desert!  The fact that Hoopa chose to put them in the desert is interesting, since her own lair is supposed to be in a desert.  Could it be the same place?  If so, was this not merely an act of self-defence but also Hoopa’s greatest heist ever – not just to steal from a group of thieves but to steal the thieves themselves?  Regardless of Hoopa’s exact motivation, it seems to be implied in the story that her enemies did manage to make it out of the desert and return home, where their group disbanded and was never heard from again.

  While I’m not really fond of trying to pick out specific mythical inspirations for legendary Pokémon, since I believe that they more often aim to channel general archetypes than individual characters from specific mythologies, I would not be the first person to have seen shades of Arabian djinn (singular djinni, whence the English ‘genie’) in Hoopa.  The wispy lower body and gold jewellery fit reasonably well with depictions of djinn, particularly modern imaginings, and the horns wouldn’t be terribly out of place either.  Certainly Hoopa’s penchant for theft and mischief accords well with djinn, who are sometimes equated with demons, although there is no shortage of supernatural creatures from mythologies around the world who enjoy playing tricks on humans.  Also, for me at least, the tales of her hoard of loot hidden in the middle of the desert are reminiscent of nothing so much as the story of Ali Baba and the treasure-stuffed cave of the Forty Thieves, from the Thousand and One Nights, the standard ‘big book of Arabian mythology.’  I think there’s enough in there to suggest that the designers may have had one eye on that part of the world, at least when putting together Hoopa’s appearance.  Data extracted from the recently-released demo of Alpha Sapphire and Omega Ruby indicates that Hoopa will have some manner of powered-up form as well, a frighteningly powerful Psychic/Dark attacker, and in terms of her physical appearance, the change is quite dramatic – Hoopa is surrounded by six disembodied arms, each apparently reaching out of a hyperspace ring, and another ring sits in her belly, opening into a void.  The six arms make this Hoopa more evocative of a Hindu deity – but then again, since she retains her horns and wicked talons, and gains an arrowhead tail, contributing overall to something of a ‘demonic’ appearance, perhaps it would be more appropriate to look to the Hindu gods’ perennial rivals, the demon asuras.  This form is presumably the “full power” described by the backpacker studying Hoopa who features in her event.  It seems like it’s probably not a mega evolution, because it has slightly different level-up moves to Hoopa’s regular form, including a new signature move called Hyperspace Fury, which seems to be similar to Hoopa’s existing Hyperspace Hole technique but is a Dark-type attack rather than a Psychic-type one and is significantly more powerful.  I don’t think there’s actually anything in the game mechanics that makes it impossible for a Mega Pokémon to have a different level-up set – just much more annoying, in all likelihood.  This form also gets a slightly smaller stat bonus than other Mega Pokémon do (although, so does Mega Alakazam – probably as a result of Alakazam’s normal form also getting a slight increase to special defence over his generation V stats).  What exactly is involved in attaining this ‘full power,’ assuming it’s not mega evolution, is currently unknown, as is the case for Zygarde.

  Any conversation on the subject of using Hoopa is of course entirely theoretical at this stage, since Game Freak hasn’t yet admitted that she exists and we have no idea how that alternate form works.  However, we can certainly pick out several points from what we already know.  Ghost/Psychic, first of all, is something of an unfortunate type combination to be stuck with in the world of X and Y.  Ghost and Dark attacks are both far more popular now than in the past, in the wake of the elimination of Steel’s resistances to them, and Hoopa’s unique type combination saddles her with double-weaknesses to both.  Poor speed and defence – even by non-legendary standards – also make her a sitting duck for attacks like Pursuit, and her high attack stat isn’t much use to her, as her physical movepool is nearly nonexistent.  It’s not all bad, though – Hoopa enjoys fantastic special attack and special defence scores, and has a decent array of special attacks to choose from, including Shadow Ball, Psychic, Psyshock, Thunderbolt, Charge Beam, Energy Ball and Focus Blast, as well as the aforementioned signature move, Hyperspace Hole, which is weaker than Psychic but never misses, and ignores Protect and Detect.  Calm Mind is in her movepool, but seems inadvisable on Pokémon with poor physical defence and no efficient means of healing.  She gets Trick Room, but unfortunately isn’t that slow and can’t make the most effective use of it.  Overall, she seems to be a little on the weak side for a legendary Pokémon, partly because of an unhelpful stat distribution that emphasises a skill (attack) that she can’t really use very well anyway.  The alternate form only continues that trend, with most of her bonus points from the transformation going into attack, to further improve all those devastating physical attacks she has like Phantom Force, Return, Brick Break and… uh… Thief, and stuff.  The change to Psychic/Dark is, on the whole, probably a positive – losing Ghost-type immunities is painful, but they probably wouldn’t have been worth the hassle of those Ghost and Dark weaknesses anyway.  It also adds Dark Pulse to her movepool, although to be honest you’re probably just going to be using Hyperspace Fury for her Dark attack anyway; as far as I can tell the only other new thing in there of any consequence is Knock Off, which… well, it’s a physical attack, and Hoopa’s physical attack stat is going through the roof no matter what you do, so hey, may as well roll with it.  She’s certainly not going to be bad, though – I mean, her special attack goes up as well, and at that point she’ll be tied for sixth-highest in the game, behind Mega Mewtwo Y, Attack-form Deoxys, Mega Rayquaza, Primal Kyogre, and Mega Alakazam, so… yeah.  She’s gonna be nuking stuff.

  Inkay and Malamar look like phosphorescent deep-sea squid or perhaps some kind of cuttlefish, though they’re not actually Water-types and in fact they may not be aquatic at all, since you only ever encounter them on land and they have no water-related powers.  This is far from the only misleading thing about them.  As Dark-types, Inkay and Malamar specialise in deception, and as Psychic-types, they possess the intelligence and mystical powers to be uniquely good at it (appropriately enough for Pokémon based on some of the most intelligent invertebrates on the planet).  Adorable little Inkay confuses opponents and drains their energy by flashing the haunting bioluminescent patterns on her mantle, giving her the opportunity to escape while they are unable to fight.  The ability to influence and control the minds of others is not extremely rare among Psychic Pokémon – Hypno can do it, Grumpig can do it, Gothorita can do it, Beheeyem can probably do it – but Inkay’s evolved form, Malamar, supposedly excels all others, enchanting opponents with a combination of complex gestures and those mysterious flashing lights, until they dance to her tune alone.  Unlike Inkay, Malamar doesn’t employ her powers mainly in self-defence – her hypnotised prey are commanded to walk right into the grasp of her tentacles where she can start to consume them with digestive acid.  They’re designed to appeal in very different ways, being recognisably related but moving from a cute, wide-eyed pastel-toned baby to a sinister, monstrous adult with a vicious beak, a malevolent glare and a dark, forbidding version of the same colour scheme (Malamar gives me major flashbacks to Ursula from Disney’s The Little Mermaid) – both Pokémon you might want on your side, but for very different reasons.   Do Inkay dramatically change their personalities and outlook upon evolving, or are they hiding Malamar’s nasty, scheming side all along?  Evolution reverses Inkay not only in temperament but in physiology, so that rather than floating with her tentacles dangling below her mantle, Malamar instead stands on her mantle with her tentacles waving above like the snake-infested hair of a Gorgon.  The reversal, along with their signature move Topsy Turvy, gives Inkay and Malamar their species designations, ‘the Revolving Pokémon’ and ‘the Overturning Pokémon,’ respectively – though I think it’s also worth bearing in mind the less literal meaning of ‘overturn’: to upset, to overthrow, to abolish.  The verb ‘revolve,’ too, is a cognate of ‘revolution.’  As we’ll see, overthrowing order is something Inkay and Malamar are rather good at.

  Worth more than a little discussion is the anime episode featuring Malamar, A Conspiracy to Conquer – skip this paragraph to avoid spoilers.  In this episode, a mysterious cloaked woman calling herself Madame X uses her Malamar’s extremely advanced hypnotic powers to take control of Jessie and James (who, incidentally, have largely returned to their bumbling old selves after their brief flirtation with competence in the Unova series), prompting Meowth to flee and temporarily join up with Ash’s party.  Madame X and Malamar eventually take control of Pikachu to add to their dangerous ‘Pokémon patrol,’ as well as Ash’s current companions in the X and Y series, Clemont, Bonnie and Serena, before eventually being stymied by Ash and Pikachu’s magical friendship bull$#!t.  The twist is that ‘Madame X’ is in fact just a brainwashed Officer Jenny, and the real villain is Malamar herself, who has built some kind of terrible doomsday device in an abandoned radio telescope station, intending to use it to take over the world (all this is translated for us by Meowth).  Now caught in the act, Malamar decides to blow up the weapon and flee to begin her work anew elsewhere in Kalos.  Well.  So much for “Pokémon do bad things because master bad.”  This is actually not the first time the anime has featured a decidedly evil Pokémon (one thinks, certainly, of the manipulative Togepi from Where No Togepi Has Gone Before, who shows that such things are possible even in the most benevolent species), but it’s definitely unusual, and I think Malamar is unique among non-legendary Pokémon in the scale of her villainous ambition.  Even Mewtwo had his angsty backstory reasons for trying to take over the world, and also had arguably benevolent motives towards other Pokémon (or at least, those he didn’t view as traitors and collaborators) – if Malamar has any such redeeming motivations, she doesn’t bother to explain them.  The end of the episode hints that we haven’t seen the last of this Malamar, and I certainly hope we’ll learn more in the future.  The natural ability to dominate the minds of others would presumably create a fairly callous outlook in many members of this species; if a Pokémon were going to try to take over the world, it makes a certain amount of sense that it would be one of these ones.  On the other hand, most Malamar obviously don’t (well, one hopes not; maybe the others just hide it better), so it’ll be interesting to see if this particular Malamar has a backstory to explain her tremendous ambition and cruelty.

  Malamar is a really weird Pokémon to use, with some very funky powers, but that’s exactly what makes her fun.  She’s the only Pokémon with Contrary as a regular ability, which (since hidden ability Serperior still stubbornly refuses to be a thing) means she’s the only competent Pokémon with access to it so far (no, Shuckle does not count).  Contrary reverses all stat changes applied to Malamar – among other things, this means she can increase her own physical stats with the devastating Fighting attack Superpower, prevent Pokémon with Intimidate from switching in safely, horribly abuse the attack penalty caused by Aegislash’s King’s Guard, get a free speed boost from switching in while your opponent has Sticky Web on the field, and intercept Defog (which now clears entry hazards from both sides of the field and is therefore actually useful for some teams) for an evasion boost.  Malamar does have other abilities, but they are silly.  Contrary is great, but it can only apply to Malamar herself – which is where her signature move, Topsy-Turvy, comes in.  Topsy-Turvy takes any stat modifiers affecting the target and reverses them: Swords Dance becomes a steep attack penalty; Agility starts to slow you down; Calm Mind becomes a debilitating mental fog.  Bear in mind that this isn’t the same as putting the Contrary ability on your opponent; they can always cancel out the penalties by reapplying the same moves.  Topsy-Turvy makes Malamar particularly gifted at stopping Pokémon who normally rely on such techniques to make themselves unstoppable, although of course she’ll often have to survive a first strike to do it.  Slow users of Swords Dance, Bulk Up, Nasty Plot, Calm Mind or Curse are vulnerable; Pokémon who favour Dragon Dance, Agility or Quiver Dance, not so much (particularly the latter, who will almost invariably have Bug attacks with which to murder Malamar).  In doubles, Malamar can also combine with a partner who uses Draco Meteor, Overheat or Leaf Storm to reverse the partner’s special attack penalties and produce frightening damage potential.  She has a few other support moves worth thinking about – the main ones are Reflect, Light Screen, Hypnosis and possibly Trick Room if you really tank her speed – but Contrary Superpower is her big trick, and she’s not really a supporter by nature.

  Probably the biggest downside to Malamar is that she’s one of the few Pokémon aside from Normal-types who manage to have no resistances at all – only an immunity to Psychic attacks, which is not terribly useful – so she’s comparatively difficult to switch in safely.  She’s also weak to Bug and Fairy attacks (almost any U-Turn will blow a huge hole in her even after a couple of Superpower boosts, which, considering U-Turn’s popularity, is not a good place to be in), and has no particularly high stats – pretty good HP, attack and defence, passable special defence and speed, but nothing outstanding.  This makes it a little difficult to figure out what Malamar is supposed to be good at – she’s uncomfortably slow for a dedicated sweeper, even if she can switch into Sticky Web, although she does have a very sweeper-like mentality in the way she starts to build momentum after using Superpower once or twice.  Her inability to learn Sucker Punch to deal with faster enemies, particularly special attackers, is painful.  She’s not tough enough to take many hits reliably, and although Sticky Web can help her speed and Superpower will buff her defence, there’s almost no easy way to patch up her poor special defence, so she remains vulnerable, and it’s hard to decide whether to train her in speed or endurance.  On the bright side, Superpower, Night Slash and Psycho Cut give her a pretty solid range of attacks; she may struggle to inflict meaningful damage if she hasn’t had a chance for a Superpower boost, particularly given the low power of Psycho Cut and Night Slash, but at least she’s a fairly dangerous Pokémon for the Fighting-immune Ghost-types to switch into.  The way Superpower combines an attack and a buff for Malamar also makes her an interesting choice for a Rest/Sleep Talk set that slowly builds power and momentum while healing damage, since it leaves her with room for one more attack (probably Night Slash), a luxury such sets can rarely afford.  It’s unfortunate that she’s relatively weak defensively, though – against many opponents, she doesn’t have the endurance for it.  Malamar is very good at dealing with a few specific Pokémon, most notably the deadly Aegislash, and does so in a unique and interesting way, but she’s not exactly top-tier on her own merits and needs to be used with care.  Don’t rely on Malamar to win one-on-one brute force engagements.

   Gold and Silver are the games that introduced the idea that Eevee’s branching evolution is a result of adaptation to multiple different environments, so it’s odd that the two evolutions introduced in that very generation, Espeon and Umbreon, are the hardest to connect with any particular ecosystem.  A possible clue, though, is the stimulus that triggers Espeon’s evolution – close friendship with a trainer – and the suggestion from Ruby and Sapphire that “this Pokémon developed its precognitive powers to protect its trainer from harm.”  I suspect that Espeon arose fairly recently (in terms of evolutionary biology), after humans and Pokémon first began working together, and represents the result of a strain of Eevee who became adapted to domestication, the eventual descendents of the first groups of Jolteon and Flareon who took human partners.  She has telepathic abilities to allow her to sense the orders of her human trainers, and can predict the future to intercept attacks before they happen.  Furthermore, unlike the raw elemental forces wielded by Flareon, Vaporeon and Jolteon, Espeon’s telekinetic attacks are very unlikely to cause ‘friendly fire’ problems; she’s not going to hurt anything she doesn’t fully intend to hurt, making it safer to use her strongest powers around groups of people.  Furthermore, I’d suggest that Espeon isn’t a hunter – early domesticated Pokémon, one assumes, would have been involved with hunting like the first domesticated dogs, but a more predatory type like Jolteon seems better suited to that.  I think Espeon may be a Pokémon dedicated to the defence of the settled communities that developed later in humanity’s history, which makes some thematic sense given the connection between Psychic-types and more ‘evolved’ or ‘civilised’ states of mind.  The other forms are older, and joined with humanity out of convenience; Espeon actually developed with us, changing as we did.

When you want to fight with Espeon, many of the same issues arise as we encountered with Vaporeon, Jolteon and Flareon.  Espeon has extremely good special attack and speed, which ideally make her a sweeper of some kind, but her special movepool is less than stellar – in Gold and Silver, it was pretty much Psychic, Bite, and Zap Cannon.  Her signature move, Morning Sun, provides her with healing, but frankly Espeon is much too frail to be worrying about that.  I guess Charm might help her survive a hit or two.  Like her brothers and sisters, she can learn Baton Pass as an Eevee, but Gold and Silver didn’t really give her anything to do with it.  Ruby and Sapphire changed that.  Espeon only gained three things of value in Ruby and Sapphire: Reflect, Light Screen, and Calm Mind.  Reflect and Light Screen are great, but nothing to make a fuss about – Calm Mind, which increases both special attack and special defence, is what gives Espeon her niche.  Very few Pokémon could learn both Calm Mind and Baton Pass, and Espeon was (indeed, still is) the best of them; her own ability as a special attacker remained limited, but helping others to set up was another story.  Diamond and Pearl didn’t much change what Espeon was good at – like many Pokémon, she gained a lot of new attacks, notably Shadow Ball, Grass Knot and, in Platinum, Signal Beam, but, while useful, these new moves aren’t powerful enough to dramatically change her game.  Meanwhile, the conversion of Pursuit, along with every other existing Dark-type move, into a physical attack spelled disaster for many Psychic Pokémon whose defensive skills were far weaker on the physical side, including Espeon.  For a while there, things looked grim... until Black and White gave Espeon one last trick, the best of all.

  The thing about Espeon’s ability, Synchronise, is that while it’s nice to have, it doesn’t really have great strategic implications.  If Espeon is poisoned, burned or paralysed by another Pokémon that is vulnerable to the same condition, she causes her attacker to suffer from the same effect.  This is a useful defence against a specific kind of attack, but it doesn’t help Espeon much; she’s still poisoned, paralysed or burned as well.  Her Dream World ability is something else.  Espeon’s Dream World ability is Magic Bounce, a truly absurd power shared only by Xatu, which effectively gives her a permanent Magic Coat – all incoming status moves (basically anything that harms a Pokémon without actually damaging it, from String Shot and Worry Seed to Stealth Rock and Dark Void) are reflected back upon their user.  This makes Espeon an utter nightmare for support Pokémon, since she can potentially ruin them just by switching in if you time it right; some moves, like Hypnosis, will potentially take a Pokémon out of the game if you reflect them back.  The fact that Magic Bounce also renders Espeon herself immune to all these techniques is nothing to sniff at either.  The other thing worth noting is that Espeon also gets a couple of new Psychic attacks for variety – Psyshock is a special attack that does physical damage, allowing Espeon and other Psychic Pokémon to break powerful special walls (i.e. Blissey), while Stored Power, an attack that does more damage for every buff affecting Espeon, synergises well with her normal role of Calm Mind passing.  Espeon doesn’t really ‘do’ sweeping – her stats look right for it, but her real talents lie elsewhere.  As support Pokémon go, she’s pretty top-notch; kept away from high-powered physical attackers and partnered with your own special sweepers who need a bit more oomph, Espeon is sure to reward you.