Today’s review looks at another of Kanto’s Grass/Poison lines and one of the first branching evolution families the series introduced outside of the Eevee family, with a pretty staggering contrast between the original end result and the later introduced one.

While Bulbasaur had a little legwork to do to make itself into a proper starter with an animal inspired design, Oddish is perhaps a more honest reflection of how many Grass types start out, as our first purely plant-based Pokemon: a happy sappy chappy. Yeah, Oddish doesn’t have too much going on aside from just being a small, undeveloped plant that’s mostly defined by its bulbous blue head with green leaves sprouting on top, apparently being based on myths surrounding mandrakes. I said this before with Venusaur, but this evolution line too is based on the Rafflesia flower (which they must have really loved in development) and unlike Venusaur who maintains some leaves later on, Gloom and Vileplume put their corpse flower front and centre as eventually the only plant on display, making it weird for Oddish to have these leaves at all (though it may also take inspiration from myths surrounding mandrakes which make these make more sense). Nevertheless, Oddish is very cute in a way I find absolutely delightful and a very solid run at a first stage plant Pokemon destined for greater things. One other thing I found out while looking through Bulbapedia for this review to see if I was missing anything about the evolution line was that some Pokedex entries include a supposed scientific name for Oddish in “Oddium Wanderus”. I adore this so much, it’s stupid in the most delightful way possible and I’m a little sad that the rest of the evolution line doesn’t do anything with this.

Gloom is one of those evolutions that appears to evolve a Pokemon by, at least to some degree, breaking it a bit. Oddish’s leaves are wilted and overtaken by sickeningly bulbous Rafflesia seeds and this once merry little creature appears to be consumed by a vacant gaze and mild amusement with its own heinous stink and drool. The change is pretty drastic from Oddish while maintaining the central charm, looking a lot blobbier to fit with it being a more gross and less conventionally cute creature, but I really like the more chaotic plant mass on top of Gloom’s head a lot and this in conjunction with it being pretty much permanently slobbering some kind of sickly nectar really goes full tilt into gross out design in a way that even other Poison types don’t really approach. Of its line it definitely does the best at conveying that this is an intensely toxic creature first and a plant more by circumstance, and I think that’s to its benefit.

Vileplume is, once again, a fairly standard blue blob shape with a plant growing on top, but now as a fully grown Rafflesia. Vileplume is one of those Pokemon that has a complicated relationship with being properly proportioned in sprites, as the way it’s depicted as an almost rounded cube like blob isn’t exactly consistent with how its flower is angled in sprites, but aside from a handful of very early sprites looking patently ridiculous it’s always a reasonable amount of artistic leeway on display that is generally to Vileplume’s benefit. Vileplume continues a trend of simplicity but as a big obtuse flower monster, with a fascinating flower put front and centre, I just really like it and think its evolution line is simply fascinating. Vileplume definitely dials back Gloom’s tendency to horribly slobber everywhere which is a little shame, bringing back more of Oddish’s whimsy, but all its horrible stench is now focused around the fact its flower, in full bloom, has the foul stink of death itself for up to a mile, making Vileplume more sinister in a way with its control of its power being focused through the flower making it feel more refined. Vileplume may be lacking in physical details for things like limbs, body, and facial features, but as a “true” rafflesia Pokemon when Venusaur only borrowed inspiration from it, it works really well. It still should not have Chlorophyll as an ability though, I’m standing by that one.

As part of our first branching evolution family covered here, Gloom also has the option of evolving into Bellossom instead. Bellossom also has the unique, if underwhelming, distinction of being the only Pokemon that loses a type upon evolving without gaining a new one in return. Ultimately for all of this I have to ask quite simply: why??? Unfortunately, Bellossom is an extremely boring design and the distinction of it losing a typing is largely to its detriment. It completely throws away everything interesting and lovable about its pre-evolutions and Vileplume, it gets way smaller for no reason, and takes on a bizarre out of nowhere hula aesthetic that feels really tacked on, and all of this comes together to make it feel like it shouldn’t even be a part of this family. The vague idea of a poisonous plant expelling its toxins upon evolution and becoming friendlier is an interesting one, but the execution falls flat completely, as nothing about Gloom as a design is actually preserved here at all when it just turns into a fundamentally different Pokemon. In a sad twist of irony, it’s also just categorically worse than Vileplume too: despite being positioned as a more defensive counterpart, losing the Poison typing is absolutely damning for its defensive utility and leaves it as a completely hopeless pure Grass Pokemon with nothing to do and a design that has nothing to say. It would be a mediocre Pokemon by itself, but as a counterpart to Vileplume and an iteration on Gloom it’s flat out bad. Overall, a resounding disappointment.

Vileplume Final Verdict: 9/10 – a fantastic gross-out Pokemon line that stays simple but really utilises its horrible flower aesthetic well and has nice cohesion
Bellossom Final Verdict: 2/10 – a dreadfully out of place inclusion in this line that is boring, forgettable amidst a sea of bog-standard pure Grass types and it loses what made its relatives so special