Okay, time for easily the most popular starter Pokemon ever. The Charizard family has an impossible level of hype to live up to already, but to be quite honest I don’t think the first two stages of the family even come close. Charmander is, all things considered, a cute Pokemon and fun design. However, it’s an incredibly plain take on a baby fire lizard, and struggles to distinguish itself as much more than a stepping stone on the way to having a Charizard. It is shaped like a friend and stands as a more than respectable starter, but unlike Bulbasaur and Squirtle who maintain a solid amount of their own niche and appeal over their evolutions, I can’t say the same about Charmander. All is in service to Charizard with Pokemon promotion, and sadly I think that’s really to Charmander’s detriment here because it just hasn’t escaped Charizard’s shadow at all.

Everything I said about Charmander is really brought into focus with Charmeleon, and everything about Ivysaur is quite neatly contrasted. Charmeleon unfortunately suffers from all the worst aspects of middle stages feeling like a stopgap before getting the reward of the final stage and while Charmander is merely overshadowed by Charizard, Charmeleon is utterly dwarfed. If Charmander is a stepping stone, then Charmeleon is a speed bump taken at a dodgy angle. The move to make it more menacing is of course very warranted and I like its single horn, but it’s baffling that it goes off hue with a darker red that neither of its relatives replicate for seemingly no reason, the claws development is also lost in translation as they become smaller again when evolving, and overall it just comes off as a very plain, bony cartoon lizard at the most cynical viewing. It’s nice and works for the purposes of building suspense at least, but remains an unfortunately mediocre low point here amidst the Kanto starter designs.

However, we now move onto Charizard, and I can confidently say that while it’s probably my least favourite of the three final stage Kanto starters, it absolutely deserves the love it gets from fans (the love it gets from Game Freak may warrant some scrutiny, but at this point I’m desensitised to it). It brings Charmander’s nicer colour scheme back, expands on Charmeleon’s burgeoning horn with a more defined two horn arrangement, adjusts its face to be more emotive and fierce, and of course adds fantastic wings with a lovely blue and orange colour contrast that my brain – permanently altered by years of Irn Bru exposure and consumption – can’t help but love as a way of really drawing attention to the wings being the star of the show. The pot belly makes its proportions as a winged draconic creature a little weird, but it’s a charming and well realised design nonetheless. None of this is particularly high concept: it’s simple and caters to simple needs, but a design like Charizard is absolutely necessary for a series like Pokemon and Game Freak absolutely stuck the landing in designing something with fantastic broad appeal. At the end of the day, it’s a cornerstone of many trainers’ teams and I can’t blame them for it at all. Good job, Charizard.

No, one Mega Evolution is obviously not enough for Game Freak’s special child. It definitely needed 4% of all Mega Evolutions to itself. Don’t be silly.

Now as everyone knows, Charizard receives unconditional love and support from Game Freak at all costs, and this has manifested in the creation of two whole Mega Evolutions and a Gigantamax form. Mega Charizard X very much caters to the fantasy of having a Dragon type shiny Charizard, with black scales and blue flame in gloriously over the top splendour. It’s a ridiculous, indulgent design but nonetheless I think it comes together really well. Mega Charizard Y, meanwhile, is a more subdued but still very nice design. It’s slimmer and more aerodynamic, with larger and more torn up wings and winged arm blades I’ve always quite liked, but is otherwise a lot more loyal to Charizard’s original design. I think it avoids the pitfalls of Mega Venusaur and positions itself well as something of an “apex Charizard” without going to the silly lengths of X. Gigantamax Charizard is more similar to Mega Charizard X in how it drums up the hype of Charizard as some unstoppable beast of flame rather than having any notion of subtlety. The wings of fire looked ugly to me when I first saw this design, but look surprisingly good animated and I have to say that Gigantamax Charizard has really grown on me. Despite feeling like misplaced blind fanservice as the final boss of Sword and Shield, it’s still very cool, and in that sense it really sums up Charizard as a whole.

Final verdict: 8/10 – A lot to like here, but the earlier stages let it down and it’s a little too milquetoast to stand with the all-time greats.