#026 - Raichu

RAICHU

IN SHOW

Though Raichu has been in a lot of episodes of the show, the first and only Raichu to appear was the one owned by Lt. Surge. He was a powerhouse that had been evolved at a young level just so he could be powerful. This Raichu easily defeated Pikachu the first time they faced off, and made Ash question whether or not he should evolve Pikachu to compete. Most other Raichu that have been seen have been background characters either demonstrating the evolutionary power of evolution stones or in background/filler fights. But Lt. Surge’s Raichu is the only one that ever strongly affected the plot, almost making Raichu the pokemon mascot and not Pikachu, and the only one anyone ever remembers.

WHY YOU WANT A RAICHU

Raichu looked cool, though not really intimidating or the powerhouse that we expected. He can learn a variety of TM’s, and even the HM Flash which can be helpful later on in the game as you begin to encounter dark and dangerous caves.

WHY YOU DO NOT WANT A RAICHU

First of all, Thunderstones are hard to locate, so even having the chance to get a Raichu can be a tedious chore, unless you decided to go through the process of catching one, which doesn’t make much sense when you already have a Pikachu you could evolve. Raichu was supposed to be a tough badass, but he didn’t learn any moves at all. Because of this he suffers from ‘exactly the same but...’, but in this case instead of the move set being only slightly improved on there is actually no change. Because Raichu will not learn any moves. At all.

IN SUMMARY

Raichu seems like a really cool idea, and it might just be because Pikachu is so popular. How many times did we wish as kids that Ash would finally take the plunge and evolve Pikachu, because we had been told that Raichu was stronger and would have a bunch of powerful moves. But the games were a huge disappointment because Raichu didn’t learn ANYTHING. And maybe it was because Thunderstones were so hard to come by that it was supposed to take a long time for you to be able to evolve your Pikachu so there was no real need for Raichu to learn any moves, but if you caught a wild Raichu you would have to rely solely on TMs. And some people would catch a Pikachu and not even look at it until they had a Thunderstone and could get the cool evolution. It’d be a shame for those people because their pokemon would never actually be worthwhile. EVER! When we were young we had no way of knowing whether or not a pokemon would learn moves. There was no book on the subject and no website that would give us a list. So people would evolve a young Pikachu, have a pointless Raichu, or catch a Raichu, and level it hoping that eventually it might learn something. Sadly you would get to level 100 and realize that you had levelled up a useless pokemon, and wasted a slot on your team that could have actually been held by a useful pokemon.

I’m done ranting now.