THE WEEDLE FAMILY

So, Weedle. I…don’t have much to say about this Pokemon. Between the two caterpillar lines in Generation 1, Weedle was always the one I liked less. While it has the unique trait of being a bee larva (and not looking anything like one), that’s really all that sets it apart from anything else. It doesn’t have the same charm of Caterpie and I’ve always personally found it very bland and uninteresting.

Fortunately, it gets better. You know what I was saying, about how I liked the Caterpie line more than this one as a kid? Funny, this line has the opposite pattern to the Caterpie line for me now. While I love the first two stages but don’t love the last one quite so much for Caterpie, when it comes to Weedle I dislike the first stage but love the last two. Kakuna is a great and distinctive design, and tends to be what comes to mind when I think of a chrysalis (next to a monarch chrysalis!). Since I love it so much, here’s a little fun fact that you may or may not have known-

See the little tie-shaped thing on the front of Kakuna’s chest? You’d be forgiven for thinking that was just a center piece for its plating, like the human sternum, but that’s actually two somewhat ambulatory, scythe-like claws! This detail hasn’t really been brought up with Kakuna since generation 1, but I’ve always thought it was neat- especially since I’ve since learned that a lot of pupae are still somewhat ambulatory in their inactive state. Beetle pupae can wiggle their abdomens if they’re picked up!

On a side note, Kakuna has a really neat and semi-realistic evolution in the anime that I think you need to see:

They stick to trees like actual pupae, and then emerge as fully-formed adults later down the line. The only difference is that there’s light emerging from inside the shed Kakuna shell as it’s happening. That’s rad as hell. I wish more Pokemon just “grew up” like this instead of just glowing and shapeshifting.

Beedrill is wonderful. I always forget how much I love Beedrill until I see it again. It's a fantastic stylization of realistic insect anatomy into a streamlined creature. It's got a nice palette, a nice assortment of shapes, some very cool stylized wings and a great contrast between the organic legs and the simpler body. Overall it's an excellent design, though I do have a couple of complaints with it.

The first complaint is that Beedrill’s “drills” don’t look all that great on this insect body; they look kinda tacked on. There are two things that could’ve been done here: curve them to make them look more organic, or give them spirals to make them look like actual drills. The second problem I have is that Beedrill is way too yellow. It doesn’t look so bad on the Sugimori art, but it’s a lot worse on the sprites- it’s not #FFFF00, but it’s still pretty bright, and if you know me, you know I hate bright yellow.

This is actually why I much prefer Beedrill’s shiny palette over its normal one. As a shiny, Beedrill’s bright yellow exoskeleton gets swapped out for a much more aesthetically pleasing lime green. I know some people might dislike this shiny, but I love lime green; it’s one of my favorite colors, so for me, this is a lot better. The blue eyes are a nice touch, too, but I think it would’ve looked just as great still having red eyes- they’re complementary colors, after all!

Now we come to Mega Beedrill, which for quite some time I thought was a step down from standard Beedrill (though not a huge one), and it's for one reason- that awkward abdomen shape. Taking it completely in isolation, it looks pretty bizarre, those concave curves looking unnatural and- as many people on the Internet have joked- almost popsicle-like. But then, while browsing Beedrill's Bulbapedia page, I saw an anime screenshot that made it all instantly click together in my head:

Seeing Mega Beedrill in this pose makes an otherwise odd design choice make so much more sense. The abdomen is designed so that the lower legs (which themselves have been turned into another set of stinging appendages) can fold into the abdomen and turn its body into a giant stinging missile. This is a creature that's so hyper-evolved towards flying and stinging that it no longer needs to walk, and its body is designed specifically for the purpose of making itself as streamlined as possible. That's actually so kickass, and now that I properly understand this design, I like it so much more.