Now, after far too long away from this, we move onto one of the Kanto Pokemon that, if not among the most iconic, is definitely among the most pervasive. Tentacool is a Pokemon that appears in almost every game in the series as a very common encounter in large bodies of water and catches a lot of flack for that alone, but unlike a lot of other series staples this one has a fair bit more creativity behind its design and a good bit more flair, so these will be fun to talk about.

Tentacool is a nice start here. It has a reputation as something of a recurring local pest Pokemon in the same vein as Rattata and its ilk, or perhaps even more notoriously alongside its Hoennian neighbour Wingull. It appears in the wild in every region except Unova and Paldea (where a mysterious interloper resides instead), is basically never hard to run into, and in game has a pretty slow start before it can be that useful. However unlike similar Pokemon I think its design, while still skewing to the simple side as most early Pokemon do, feels a lot more thought out than them. As some kind of hybrid of jellyfish and Japanese cartoon depictions of martians, Tentacool does a very good job of looking like an uncharismatic, slightly creepy alien being floating in the seas; creepy alien vibes are all too fitting for a jellyfish so the blend works fantastically here. While in more modern art of this evolution line the inlaid red gem-like orbs look mostly vestigal, they are occasionally referenced as something that the Pokemon fire beams with to accentuate that alien vibe. Of the three evolution lines that have received a bizarrely similar, unrelated counterpart in Scarlet and Violet (no I’m not going to call them convergents), Tentacool is probably the least connected to its doppelganger Toedscool. There isn’t really any indication that the Pokemon live near each other like Diglett and Wiglett or have similar but distinct origins like Sinistea and Poltchageist, but they are bizarrely, inexplicably the way that they are. Toedscool won’t be looked at in full for a while but it renewed my appreciation for the original Tentacool and the absurdity helps with the alien vibes a lot. I do hope they cross paths in the games soon though, it would be nice to see the games make a bigger deal out of Tentacool as a consistently pesky but pleasing Pokemon.

Tentacruel is a great iteration on Tentacool that turns up all the things that Tentacool does well into something that feels both natural and suitably alien. It’s still very recognisable as a stylised jellyfish and the added tentacles means it does a much better job of communicating that than Tentacool did, despite Tentacool looking probably more accurate. Its bizarre beak-like structure feels pretty weird and tacked on, but also just kind of works. It looks nothing like a squid’s beak which would be the closest point of comparison but it just feels right as a threatening looking element of its design, and gives a bit more substance to the lower half of the design rather than just being dead air and tentacles. The red gems shining vividly really come into their own here as well. They look good on Tentacool but really define Tentacruel and add even more flair with the flowing blue helm structure Tentacruel has for a head. I’m not sure quite what the purpose of its lower body being a featureless black orb is though. It seems like just being a shadowy body with eyes peering out from under the distinctive blue helm was the idea, but we’ve long since aged out of that being the case with the advents of animation and 3D taking that away from Gen 1 sprites. Additionally it’s just a little irritating that Tentacruel supposedly has 80 tentacles but is never depicted with more than 10: it appears it may just retract some but it still feels like a missed opportunity. These two little abstractions are also a little hard to take seriously when the very similar (and outstanding) Toedscruel sticks to a more literal understanding of Tentacruel’s body plan with 10 mycelia and features on its lower body. Despite that though, Tentacruel is a fundamentally very solid Generation 1 design I’m happy to see finally got some love, and I like it a lot.

Final Verdict: 8/10 – despite some quirks owing to abstraction that has since been lost in translation, these two are a great fusion of the mundane and the eerie in a Pokemon that gets just the right amount of flair for a common encounter while many of its contemporaries hold back too much.