Continuing the other day’s trend of nature being really quite grim sometimes, we move onto one of the most ominous Pokemon of the entire generation.

Paras starts out an innocent enough looking design, as an orange cicada nymph with a couple of mushrooms on its back, which if you didn’t know better would just look like a simple, if on the nose, Grass type theming to make its typing stand out from other pure Bugs. Of course, this unfortunate little creature is infected by the mushrooms, inspired by the horrifying cordyceps fungus in real life that’s known for controlling insects and draining nutrients from them in one of nature’s most chilling acts. That fungus in pop culture is most often associated with The Last of Us, but in my view, Paras is a the far more interesting one here (and clearly, I as a Pokemon super fan who has never played a Naughty Dog game would be completely unbiased). This makes Paras something of a tragic figure when used on a team and this holds me back from really wanting to use it, because training it and making it stronger clearly only increases the mushroom’s hold on the poor creature until it’s too late. In more recent Pokemon entries, Paras made a surprise return to prominence being featured in the Hisui Pokedex in Legends Arceus, as one of the few Pokemon not native to modern Sinnoh who exists there without any sort of new form or evolution. In this game Paras has considerable notoriety among fans for being notoriously incredibly aggressive to the point of being a nuisance, but I think this is great theming: the fungus compelling Paras to engage in fights it cannot win just to spread its spores is nothing short of bone-chilling. It may not be the most exciting Pokemon in the world, but its mundanity adds to the horror of it.

Parasect is one of the most tragic evolutions in the series, as the fungus has grown in power to now envelop the Paras’ body and drain the life out of it entirely: leaving the bug’s eyes entirely white and devoid of anything that Paras once was. It’s even stuck in its nymph state, not getting a chance to evolve for itself and only becoming a more effective mushroom hosting body. Evolving a Parasect comes with a considerable feeling of guilt, especially in Legends Arceus where you have to activate its evolution yourself. It is a shame that it’s not changing too much more, though it’s hard to imagine what it could do better without being too horrifying, and its typing is sadly a little bland and poor for in-game, but again it’s difficult to think of what its concept could do better. If a concept like this were added nowadays, it would probably be part Ghost type to represent the spirit of the original Paras, and while evolutions that add the Ghost type have been done brilliantly, it would undoubtedly be stronger, and Ghost is my favourite type, I’m actually very glad that this didn’t happen. Parasect not having a Ghost typing is to me indicative that there is no spirituality or afterlife to this, not even undeath. Paras is dead and gone without even the dignity of passing away in peace and its corpse shambles around in its place carrying on its dire fungal mission to propagate the spores, which to me is even more horrifying than any sort of vengeful spirit aspect the Ghost typing could have added here. This is a surprisingly dark and mature concept to add to a Pokemon that, while not being one of my absolute personal favourites, makes Paras and Parasect a strong standout for how distinct they are among the first generation.

Final Verdict: 7/10 – plain, but a full on Pokemon horror story and nothing if not memorable