Next up we have another fairly plain design given a second chance through a regional form: the Rapidash family.

Ponyta is competently designed, albeit just too plain and uninspired for my liking. The prompt of a flaming horse with fire for a mane isn’t a terrible one by any means, it’s just unfortunate that Ponyta feels like it really does nothing to iterate on this. To be honest I think most of my animosity towards it comes from its notoriety as one of the only Fire types of Sinnoh and being pretty paltry as a team option in those games, though the poor translation of its fire into the 3DS era of Pokemon games did it no favours. It’s pretty cute but other than that I think it really drops the ball as just being too bland.

Galarian Ponyta, despite its aspirations clearly not being the highest in the world, does a lot to adjust the body shape of Ponyta and embellish the design in ways that just work better in a 3D environment. The vibrant, fluffy mane and tail, softer shape language, and more expressive face all work in tandem to make something that feels fresh and new despite deviating fairly little from the original conceptually. This form does have the distinction of one of the worst reveals in the series’ PR history, with the utter drudgery of the 24 hour live feed of Glimwood Tangle not making for anything interesting despite how “realistic” it was purported to be, but oh well. I mention this because during that video a tail-less version of Galarian Ponyta was seen, speculated by some at the time to be based on Tam O’Shanter’s horse from the famous Scottish poem by Robert Burns, but it seems that was ultimately just an error in the trailer. Oh well, tangents aside this one’s pretty good.

Rapidash suffers from all of Ponyta’s problems and rather than fix a single one of them it decides to throw out the elements that made Ponyta cute enough to be a little endearing, just for good measure. The eyes really do a lot of damage here, lacking Ponyta’s wide-eyed whimsy renders Rapidash without much charm to distract from the more underdeveloped aspects of its design. The lack of any features on its beige, flatly coloured hair other than the fire just makes it look naked and underwhelming, and the Fire being so prevalent and blazing really works against it in most art as it loses some of Ponyta’s softer, more stylised fame in favour of a shapelessness to its defining features. Rapidash is one of those designs that really suffers in 3D, though it just about works in Legends Arceus, but it doesn’t really work in most games before that either. Overall this one really doesn’t stick the landing.

As if a reaction to that exact criticism, Galarian Rapidash is bestowed with splendourous, flowing hair of vivid colours that play well off its pure white body very well. The horn having its own distinct colouration and increased size commits more heavily to this and its pre-evolution being unicorns rather than just plain old horses, which is a fantastic fit for a magical forest in a UK-inspired region, and its proportions are adjusted a bit to make it more visually appealing, particularly in the face. It’s a fairly standard design but it just kinda works as a nice, if not remarkable regional form, that fixes a lot of the problems with its original form. For the life of me I can’t justify why it only gains the Fairy typing upon evolution, though.

Kantonian Final Verdict: 3/10 – a drab, unfortunate mess of a design that had some potential
Galarian Final Verdict: 7/10 – nothing remarkable, but just thoroughly pleasant