#024 - Arbok

ARBOK

IN SHOW

Jessie’s newly evolved Arbok lasted from Season 1 to Season 6 of the show, and we were all pretty attached to it by that point. We had seen Arbok blast off with the team countless times, and be recruited into some of Jessie’s many schemes. Arbok was still as emotional as it had been when it was an Ekans, crying when it didn’t have the lead role in a movie and relying on Jessie for support. When Arbok finally left the show it was only to protect another group of Ekans and because Jessie forced him to. Arbok was extremely upset, refusing to leave and crying his eyes out when he did. This may not have been the first time we had seen Jessie and James be upset, but it was one of the first times we realized that they did really care for and love their pokemon.

WHY YOU WANT AN ARBOK

Arbok’s picture looks really good. His design was solid, and yes it’s hard to mess up a snake but after spending so long with Arbok we knew what he looked like and the Arbok pokedex picture actually did it justice. He could learn an HM, strength, which is always a nice thing to have. It’s evolution from Ekans actually make sense as they build on what Ekans already brought to the table to give Arbok a good strong look.

WHY YOU DO NOT WANT AN ARBOK

Arbok is a disappointing pokemon when it comes to move set. It actually learns all of the same moves as Ekans and learns them faster so it’s actually a better idea to wait to evolve your Ekans instead of allowing it to evolve the moment it hits level 22. It’s ‘exactly the same but...’ stats approve and that’s supposed to make it a little more worthwhile. It’s hard to see why you shouldn’t just keep your Ekans as an Ekans for the entire game when there’s no real reason to evolve a pokemon, and that was a huge error that the company made. In a game that’s all about levelling your pokemon and making it stronger, there’s a problem when your pokemon is actually a faster learner before it evolves, meaning it improves more in its primary stage.

IN SUMMARY

In all honesty, maybe we should have been expecting disappointment when it comes to Arbok. He was never that good in the show for all that we loved him and we constantly saw him being defeated. So why did we expect any better in the game? Perhaps it’s our own fault that Arbok sucked so bad? We got our hopes up that Arbok might just be awful because of how Jessie trained it and used it, and maybe she just hadn’t tapped into Arbok’s full potential. We would be able to do that because we were the ultimate pokemon masters and all our badges showed that we could in fact train pokemon to be worthwhile even when we were told they weren’t. But the show producers were actually trying to warn us! Arbok was gonna suck, and we had better be prepared. It’s a shame that we weren’t.