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Ok, I'mma blow everyone's mind: hisuian forms are designed to be the opposite of the original forms Samurott goes from a Samurai, very loyal, respectful and honorable, will not attack a foe in a disrespectful or disadvantageous way, to a "ronin", a traitor that used its "sword" for the evil and was dispatched, its signature move leaves the opponent in a disadvantageous position Decidueye went from a long-ranged camper to a physichal fighter, more similar to Japan's archers that could use a sword Typhlosion went from a ruthless, eruptive and constantly angry fighter to a chill medium that wants to accompany the dead souls in their way to the other world Voltorb's happy instead of angry Electrode's angry instead of happy (they still kill themselves) and they both are more natural, being plant types whereas the original versions lived in factories. Also, the hole in their head has a purpose: it fires seeds into the air to replant zones. They are bombs OF LIFE INSTEAD OF DEATH. Original sneasels are social and attack in group using surprise attacks, that's why you have the dark type there, however, the new hisuian sneasel is more lonely and will fight honorably, giving it the complete opposite fighting type, makes sense it has a new evolution based on that. Hell, even skin colour and moment to evolve are the exact opposite! Lilligant is more delicate and used to humans nowadays, but its hisuian form is made to fight, more ready to the outer world, like the two lilies they're based off EVEN growlithe and Arcanine are based on different dog-lion japanese stone statues (yes there is more than one type), being the kantonian forms based off of the koma inu (literally lion dog) while the new/old forms are based off of the STATUES of the shiisa, not the animals themselves (they also look a bit more like tigers to me than lions but I don't think that's intentional) Sliggoo and Goodra, pretty easy, they're happy and slugs, they were sad and snails Braviary, not a lot to say, but it goes from physichal to special, and from phisically seeing things happening now thanks to its good eyesight to "seeing" in a more spiritual way, maybe even predict the future to some extent. Basculin white line (is it even a regional form?) is more chill. That's pretty much it, basculin's boring Quilfish (not sure if spelled like that) is actually based on a whole different animal: a sea urchin. It's more sedentary, based in poison more than just quills and, people hate it because it's poisonus while the original version is poisonus, but not hated (bit farfetch'd, I know) Zorua and Zoroark... Now these ones are interesting. Before getting into simbolism, its only weakness is its original typing, so there's some contrast there. They both received hatred from humans, can create illutions and hate humans, how can they be opposites? Well, the Hisuian ones DIED and their hate grew and grew because of not being in contact with humans and not knowing their good side like the dark-types did, and that hatred became, slowly, them. They just wanted to annihilate the enemy so much they would ignore their own pain, while the other ones just joked around and were a tsundere type of mad

Wow, such character development! Grunty Boi has gone from a real annoyance to Mikey, to seemingly friends. Hope to see their friendship grow and prosper.

As a kid, when I picked Typhlosion, I felt bonded to him. We were both loud, obnoxious, fiery, and he truly felt like the perfect Pokémon for me. As a 22 year old, working 50 hours a week, paying bills, trying to get through life, Hisuian Typhlosion is meant for me. He looks tired, and fed up, but does his best anyway. Typhlosion will always be my partner. No matter how tired he looks

Theory: the hisuian starter's shinies are the same as the regular starter's because shininess is a recessive gene. This means that in the future, when these hisuian forms no longer exist it's that in the newer regions the recessive gene of the shiny was more favored and thus adapted. It's like how five fingers is actually a recessive gene but majority of the population has five fingers

Theory: When Laventon brought over the starters they were forced to adapt to Hisui in order to survive, leading to their new formes. But they still had DNA or genes from their formes of their native region, leading to their shiny forme representing their native forme. Because it must be rare to find a starter pokemon in the hisui region with its native forme, as is finding a shiny.

I used to be SO obsessed with Ingo and Emmet back in gen 5. Actually seeing Ingo in game blew my mind, I had so many emotions. It's sad enough that he doesn't remember his twin brother, but can you imagine how Emmet must be feeling about how Ingo must have just vanished one day? Breaks my heart. Top tier character. But Adaman is my favourite character by far. In Mikey's words... Forgive me for simping but he is SO FINE.

the love for ingo is so deserved, he was so interesting and cool. he felt like one of the only characters you can connect with deeply. he’s definitely one of my favorite pokémon characters of all time

I always thought that carnivine needed a new form or evolution. Yeah, it’s already from sinnoh, but I always thought it could be explained as “it evolved into the carnivine we know today” or something. Plus, carnivine has ALWAYS been thrown to the wayside and really needs something new.

I love how Volo teaches the player the backstrike technique then literally tries to stab the player in the back with Giratina lol.

This was one of the most calm and fun talk between mike and grunty boi ever lol

I chose oshawott when I started legends arceus and my female hisuian samurott is 100% my ride or die pokemon, she has gotten me out of so many tough spots with just how good ceaseless edge is(I named her onna btw if anyone is curious) so far she's the only pokemon I've nicknamed besides the alpha infernape I got decently early(via alpha chimchar) and I named him Bruce lee

I was actually enamored by Origin Dialga when I first saw it - it gives off a sort of creepy, otherworldly vibe like some kind of eldritch abomination and I freaking love it. Palkia, on the other hand... yeah. It's very near and dear to my heart so it was such a crushing letdown.

I think Volo is S tear simply for the fact that they made Cynthia’s ancestor a power hungry tyrant- plus his battle was the best in the series and it was really fun watching him go full on anime villain out of nowhere.

18:20 Fun fact, since Goomy doesn't have a Hisuian form, its shiny is exactly the same. Which means if you were to evolve your shiny Goomy, you're quite literally nerfing its colors back to normal and giving it a bronze/poop shell 23:48 I personally call those 3 Bootleg Team Rocket, because that's the feel they gave me. Lacking the talking cat. And Wobbuffet. That's why they're bootleg.

If someone had showed me Hisuian/Origin Palkia before Legends Arceus, I would have thought it was some meme lmao.

What of the best Grunty Boi bits ever. I love how friendly they have become and the thought of them hanging out out side of the ads is perfection

The Growlithe arc honestly expanded my love for Growlithe and Arcanine. Palina and Iscan are my favorite wardens.

Seeing Ingo in game was awesome. Did not expect to see such and underrated character get brought into the limelight

I don't know if this has been said yet or not, but I LOVE Hisuian Typhlosion. Not only was it my first official starter ever, but I love this design and the added ghost typing. What I love about this design was how much it reminded me of an amazing overlooked character from My Hero Academia, Hitoshi Shinso. I loved everything with this Typhlosion and had an absolute blast using one on my team!

My favourite is Hisuian Zorark The misspelling was intentional, AMELIA

I like how Michael went from being genuinely annoyed by Grunty Boi, always wanting him to leave- to now actually accepting his presence He went from “ugh why are you here”😑 to “what’s going on today?”🤔

I kinda hate how everyone calls shiny snails poo. It’s transforming an iron shell to a copper one, that’s so cool

When you started talking about shiny hisuian sneazle I thought "I wish I hadn't evolved it" well so did you

"I'm not gonna talk about battle viability" 20 seconds later: Fire/Rock type is HORRIBLE

I really like Ursaluna's shiny. I got one shortly after the first credit roll and I disagree on it not being different. It is very noticeably different from regular ursaluna and I was very happy they didn't go with the green that Ursaring has.

I love hisuian typhlosion. And I do have to respectfully disagree on the C teir. You don't have to agree with me but I think it should have been at least a B

Volo being Cynthias ancestor and evil is amazing. :)

I actually think Goodra’s simplicity makes a lot of sense. The real difference between a snail and a slug is just the shell. Theyre both basically just mollusks in the end but one of them is rockin the drip on its back. I think Hisuian Goodra on his own is super cool but since Goodra already existed its easy to just see it and think they just gave it a shell and called it a day. I think itd be cool though if they did something similar to Vivillon and gave Hisuian Goodra a bunch of different shell types and color schemes as if each Goodra grew its own unique shell.

I like how Ingo had one of the best AI in the game because he is from a future where he grew up with battles.

Avalugg's "shovels" are based off of snowplows I believe, that have blades like that used to push snow to the side.

My problem with Hisuian Decidueye is that I know it’s supposed to look like a Japanese warrior of some sort, but to me I just see a scare crow.

Your respect for decidueye pleases me

I really got caught off guard by volo's betrayal arc, but as soon as that happened i was like "he's gonna use giratina, he was talking about giratina, that was not for nothing. He's gonna have giratina" and he didn't have it on his main team which lead to the coolest, most badass moment in all of pokemon

I think they are planning to complete Scyther's evolution themed with the Rock-Paper-Scissor. Rock(Kleavor), Scissor (Scizor), so I'm expecting a paper-themed evo in the future. Maybe it's a coincidence but it's awesome.

The development of Mikey and grunty’s relationship is amazing narratively

MandJTV: Change the shiny, make it different from the old one. Also MandJTV: Keep it the same as the old one! Everyone:

So one of the pokedex entries on the sneasel line (I think its Johotonian Sneasel) says something about how its disposition is influenced by changed in the earth and air. My guess is modern Sneasel and by extension weavile are supposed to be the result of anthropogenic climate change and pollution. Smaller and meaner to better survive.

I feel like hisuian samurott is going for a “corrupted samurai” idea, which is cool, except it’s not that much different. The proof of this is that hisuian samurott will fight dirty and do whatever it takes to win, unlike regular samurott, who fights fairly, according to the Legends Arceus website. Perhaps this change in behavior (and thus typing) was caused by the harsh and unforgiving nature of horde battles in this game

I think that if they make a lot of changes with regional forms people will complain more. Also I think Origin Palkia looks great

Every time Kamado showed up during your playthrough, I expected at least one Daniel Day-Lewis reference. He looks just like DDL in Gangs of New York :D

I personally liked the colors of the shiny Goodra line. Changing it from Iron to copper is pretty clever imo

I just love how Gunty Boi went from "I am here to steal your earbuds!" to "Hey Mikey I just found out about this cool co-op game, let's play it after trivia!"

Hi Mikey, I had gotten my Legends Arkoos merch yesterday and wanted to inform everyone that it is definitely as comfortable as you said it was and very stylish

"I'm not gonna talk about battle viability" immediately complains about two of the pokemons types

Shiny Samurott is literally one of the best, it's sooo sick

What would have made more sense (To me) is give Sneasel, the Snorunt treatment. Make it evolve with the Razor Claw during the day, but it MUST be Female to evolve it ditch the Hisuian Sneasel and just give this to the regular Sneasel available in the wild, but give Sneaseler the Ice/Poison-type instead.

I already have the volo backstab spoiler but avoided probably everything else. But something i realized is volo teaches you the backstrike method then backstabs you. It took me so long to realize

I was a little disappointed that Goodra didn't retain the original shiny colors, but Hisuian Goodra is one of my favorite new regional variants

fun fact : dialga has the thing on its neck because it’s main move is roar of time and palkias is special rend Palika uses its Hands to use its move and dialga uses its larynx aka its voice bos in its neck so arceus took away palkias hands and gave dialga a neck collar

One detail that I love about Ursaluna is that on its forehead there's a moon and the mud on it looks like clouds. Also oddly hints that you have to evolve it during a full moon which is probably why they did that

I hate how most people don't like Hisuian Typhlosion. Although I'm a bit bias because I like the color Purple and Ghost/Fire is my favorite type combo

Michael: "Basculin has a bad shiny." I actually feel insulted, since that was one of the first shinies I ever caught. It was in Pokemon Black. One of my greatest memories of that game.

My boy Typhlosion :C I love him so much, seeing him that low saddens me when he's the best thing to come out of this game Opinions are opinions and we each have our own tastes. But if anyone else wants to know, we love and support Hisuian Typhlosion in this household!

To be honest, I really liked the Hisuian samurott, It deserves a A tier in my list at least.

Hisuian Typhlosian looks so sleazy. It looks like he would scam you from a van in a Walmart parking lot.

At first i felt the same way as mikey, i didnt care for most of the hisuian forms because they didnt feel different enough. But after thinking about it a lot and going into the design inspirations they actually make a lot of sense. The hisuian forms are showing a more true “evolution” rather than traditional pokemon evolution that is more like a metamorphosis. All of the hisuian forms of old pokemon are showing us how those pokemon lived back before the sinnoh of gen 4. Goodra are sad scared snails, but after they migrated away from the harsh hisui they didnt need their shells and are now happy slugs. Voltorb and electrode are grass because of wooden pokeballs, but as technology advanced so did they. Sneasels used to be solitary creatures and relied on their poison and fighting skills. They evolved into sneaslers who are great climbers to traverse the mountains, but instead of migrating or dying off, they changed with the land. It’s possible their prey became immune or at least resistant to their poison, or the harsh landscape made them need to band together to surivive, forcing them to rely more on sneaky tactics rather than poison and honorable fighting. It’s not that sneasel needed a form or new evolution because of gameplay, its more that the games needed sneasel to have a form for worldbuilding. I could go through most of them off the top of my head but I wont so this doesnt get so ridiculously longer than it already is.

I absolutely love hisuian goodra. I love its whole shy personality and how it literally comes out of its shell with modern goodra.

About the shiny goomy line- One of my first shinies, in-game it’s actually a very pleasing shade of gold. It was probably the lighting that made it look like that shade in images but in lighting it is amazing (Just my opinion, just trying to explain the difference with the game’s lighting)

I have a theory that the shiny colouration of the starters are what led to them being their normal forms in the respective regions. The shiny starters could have bred to a point where the normal (hisui) starters were becoming extinct. That's why in different regions, they have different forms.

Honestly, I'm happy Samurott's change wasn't too drastic. I like the original design, and I love how H-Samurott's more of an unfair, not honorable fighter which is a complete opposite of its Unovan form

What bothers me about sneasel is that you still find it in the snowy areas of the game even though its type changes to poison/fighting. What they should've done is switch croagunk and sneasels locations so that you find sneasel in the marsh areas and give croagunk a type change to dark/ice and make it be found in the snowy areas and give it a new evo like they did with sneasler.

I was a big fan of how the shinies of the Arceus starters were the colour schemes of the original starter and it's interesting to me that you feel so differently!

Michael: Dancing fighters would’ve been cool to see Ludicolo: am I a joke to you?

I honestly love Sneasler's shiny form. Probably the next thing I'll hunt for.

I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS VIDEO, thanks for always giving us top tier quality content Mikey

Am I crazy for liking the subtlety of Samurott and Typhlosion over the drastic 180 of Decidueye? Feels like everyone I've seen loves the new Decidueye and hates everything else. Me on the other hand....there was nothing remotely indicative of Decidueye. Maybe if Dartrix showed some distinct progression It'd have grown on me more.

Okay but Arezu gets A-tier if you have the modern Team Galactic outfit because she's the ONLY ONE WHO CAN GIVE YOU THE ALL-IMPORTANT BOWL CUT!!! Also Lian/Clay's hat is passed down through the generations to the strongest Pokemon trainer in the family.

Hissui Zora and Zorroark are my favorite new mons! They also have a great typing!

I agree with some of the others that these exchanges between Mikey and Grunty Boi just keep getting better. Today we also had the friends mix-up which was an interesting callback, and did anyone else notice they apparently do trivia together now too?

So fun fact, green and magenta (the colors of shiny male basculegion, are actually complimentary colors. Now what does this mean, if you take a pigment of green, and a pigment of magenta and put them on a black screen, then they will create white light. Inversely, if you take magenta ink, and green ink, and place them on a white canvas, they will create black ink. This comes down to the science of color theory, both in how it affects the additive color wheel (RGB, which is the colors used in tv and monitor coloring, which is light based), and the subtractive color wheel (CYMK, which is the ink based coloring system). Green is the additive version, and magenta, the subtractive version. Depending on the medium, you could get white (additive), or black (subtractive), just by combining those two colors together. All this to say, that from a factual standpoint, those two colors actually go together better than you think that they do.

I love the fact that grunty boi and micheal are essentially besties now

I feel like I might be the only person who loves Ursaluna. I was worried when I first saw it's model but seeing it animate and exist in the world has just made me love it so much. Also it would look amazing in the anime!

I feel like hsiun avalugg being ice ground would have been much better for it

I noticed and personally liked how each shiny of the starters was intentionally a nod to their original colors. Typhlosion wasnt a good shiny but I liked the original color theme for them.

You are my best friend now for making my channel mascot in s tier

The moment he put decidueye in S their I just said YES MIKEY YES! Cause decidueye has always been my favourite starter since sun/moon and the hisuian form just put it on top!

Overqwil is my weakness in this game! It looks so stupid I can only love it 😂 Also Cyllene made me uneasy the whole game. She might be nice, but the whole resemblance to Cyrus just never made me able to trust her.

10:06 Relatable, I also used an Alpha Hisuian Goodra named OHKO and I loved it! Also, the battle 'glitch' happened a lot to me too, so we're relatable Micheal

I love the bandits and how you can see which clan two of them were from. Clover got diamond clan boots, while Coin got her pearl dress. I remember noticing it while taking pictures of their facepaint, and thought it was really neat.

Mikey: I'm not going to judge pokemon based off of competitive viability. Also Mikey:I don't like Arcanine, it's a fire rock type so it's really weak.

My opinion on Decidueye is COMPLETELY opposite. It was one of the starters I wanted to choose, until I saw the evolution. 😅 And I just beat Kleavor! It's very slow going with both full time job and child, but I'm really enjoying it so far!

My only thing with Palina was that she held a massive grudge and (unless I haven’t seen the end of her story cuz I haven’t finished all the side quests yet) never lets it go even after Irida admits she was wrong and apologizes

Mikey: Mai has no interesting character traits Pokemon: Ok... Here's a whole "DLC" type update based on her.

Personally, I was surprised as I love the new Samurott (it beat 4 out of the 6 frenzied) but hate the Decidueye (Ohkoed almost every battle and only helped against liligant before being 2 shotted)

I like how Grunty Boi and Michael are getting better and better friends lol

I love going up to the very, very top of Snowpoint Temple, then jumping off with Wyrdeer and switching to Braviary to fly around up in the sky. :)

I also love the new Goodra form! And the personality it embodies. Typhlosion is pretty awesome...when the flames come out anyway lol

One thing I really liked about some of the regional variants in this game is how their kits/movesets played into their signature attack. Triple arrows for example paired extremely well with other moves that Decidueye got such as Leaf Blade, Shadow Claw, and Psycho Cut due to its effects which increases crit rate of the next attack and decreases defense of the opponent. In addition, moves like roost on it with the Agile style options really helped make it feel like this archer who balanced retreating with honing in for a KO just like an owl does in real life. Another good example of this is Goodra. It's Steel and Dragon typing along with it's Shelter move which increased it's defensive stats and obscured it allowed for the pokemon to feel like a defensive behemoth that curled into it's shell when attacked, which made it harder to hit as a result. Other random thoughts: My favorite area both storywise and aesthetically was The Coronet Highlands. Just the story with Ingo alone made me love it, but the ruins and all of the various events that occured there made it the most memorable and impactful for me. As for characters, my favorites were Cyllene, Volo, Ingo, Adaman, and Beni. I think people give Beni a lot of flack when his motivations actually make a lot of sense in the context of his story. I loved his twist design, and his not so obvious connection to wally. In addition, his story of the village burning down contextualizes his lingering distrust in you and his loyalty to Kamado quite well. People who don't read his text like to call him a villain when he's honestly more of a secret bodyguard who was just doing his job. It's important to note that it's not completely his intention to battle you, but rather an order from Kamado himself. He even tells the player that despite his personal resentment, he doesn't hate them which is an important distinction too. He's like Oleana to me, but duty bound rather than ambitious. Similarly, I find him a lot more interesting than his boss Kamado, which mirrors my feelings about Oleana and Rose respectively. Volo, well you know why, but he's probably one of the best written plot twists in Pokemon. Ingo has so much crazy stuff in his backstory that I honestly think he's my favorite character. He's just got so much personality and inner turmoil that gets addressed that I really like for future entries. his story leaves the most loose endings which I think could be picked up by later entries quite well. Cyllene is interesting because she's a bit of a contrast to Cyrus. She is pointed at as a potential villain by design, but proves she's a loyal ally to the player by her actions which fits in the theming of the things you go through as a player. Very good stuff. Adaman just feels like a voice of reason throughout the experience, and honestly has a very mature aura to him.

Honestly, I absolutely love the sleepy pokemon. Female basculegion and hisuian typhlosion my beloved

Mikey:I will not be talking about battle viability Mikey 15 seconds later: arcanine is bad because of rock fire

Sinnoh is pretty consistent in giving "incomplete" Johto pokemon new evolutions

Personally I really like the new Palkia, mainly because I like centaurs

I love how Mikey and Grunty Boi went from enemies, to neutral, to now playing trivia together. Yeah, Iscan is a weird guy, I laughed when I saw that his lord was a ghost and how he freaked out. Also, I’ve not read or heard of anyone who doesn’t think that Baggins suck-I’ve actually seen several petitions to have those prices dropped

Y’all remember how we could decorate the poodle Pokémon? I wish we could decorate electrode and voltorb to look like different pokeballs.

Ingo is best husbando and it made me sad he only gets a tiny part in the plot when there's so much to explore there

Yup. I already loved Decidueye, and when I saw it’s Hisuian Form, I loved it immediately, and it became my favorite Pokémon of all time.

My favorite pokemon is Typhlosion, and I agree about your placement of it. Its 3d model's flames look like sea anemones.

The thing about the sneasel and why it got a hisui form, it is meant to represent selective breeding where in this case, the more aggressive sneasel is bred combat overtime sneasels are no longer evolving into sneasler instead they are evolving itno weaviles

I’m just gonna say Hisuian Zorua and Zoroark are perfection.