Bulbasaur, Ivysaur, Venusaur

I’ve been wanting to start writing again for a while, and I didn’t know where to start. I’ve always thought it would be good to get my thoughts down about various major inspirations for me as a sort of reference library for myself, while also hopefully being entertaining for other people to read. And I’ve been sort weirdly focused on Pokemon a lot lately. And then I found Bogleech’s blog and it was inspiring. So why not - let’s do a review of every pokemon. I’m going to probably go in numerical order and keep families together so I’m not writing like just one paragraph per post. Might also group multiple families that I’m just not that excited about together (as we’ll quickly see here) to help keep things moving quickly cuz there’s SO MANY POKEMON and it would be cool to ever be current with my reviews.

So here we go…

Bulbasaur wasn’t my immediate favorite starter. I think part of that was because I got Red Version first so I just went with Charmander. My brother got Blue and got Squirtle so we didn’t really see Bulbasaur much at first. I was a little unexcited by how it was the “easy” pokemon to choose in that version too, but when I beat the game the first time and started over, I tried it out and immediately fell in love. I was never super clear what kinda creature it was - I knew about those horned toads but it never really looked like a frog/toad to me. Love bulbs tho, and always liked weird dinosaur dudes so it very much fit my vibe as a kid and til now.

Ivysaur is the HOMIE tho. I love this weird creature so much. The weird palm vibe plus the fangs just improves the design Bulbasaur has going for it. While Bulbasaur is a cute baby, Ivysaur looks smart - like a cat that knows just how much bullshit it can get away with before you’re gonna kick it out. Ivysaur definitely knocks over vases while making direct eye contact, but knows how to be just cute enough that you’ll forgive it.

I always liked Ivysaur more than Venusaur, too and always had a hard time evolving it. Ivysaur really shows off that “it’s basically a dinosaur but a with a twist” design that so many of the first 151 had. It also shined in Smash Bros where it always looks so fucking cute I can’t even handle it!!

It just has so much charm. I also love that the Pokedex makes a point that Ivysaur is able to stand on its hind legs? At least until its flower gets too heavy. It never really seems to matter for anything in game, but at this point it sorta seems like a flex on the most recent few gens of starters that it could have stood up but decided to stay on four legs. Kinda like Skeledirge in that respect. Gotta love the increasingly rare quadrapedal starter lines.

Venusaur goes hard. Like I said - I am a bigger fan of Ivysaur, but Venusaur has definitely grown on me. It’s like an overgrown version of the others - like the feral hog version of if you let Ivysaur out and it didn’t come back. Big Jungle Energy. It’s one of the starters I would trust the least. Like most of the time, it seems fine - but if you forgot to feed it, I could totally see it just swallowing you whole without thinking twice.

I also absolutely love the terrifying bloodshot eyes it gets in Pokemon Stadium. That gives this pokemon a major boost in my book, design-wise.

It looks absolutely unhinged, like overgrowth made manifest. The more I think about Venusaur as this huge powerful reptile (amphibian?) crashing through the jungle, ancient and powerful, the more I love it. It’ll probably never beat Ivysaur, but it has a lot of my respect and admiration.

Also that time it was a giant ancient tree in the comics was wild.

As far as Venusaur’s other in game forms - Mega and Giigantamax look pretty much just like slight variations on the base version. “What if it had vines? Or like a bigger flower?” They don’t seem particularly inspired but they also still look like Venusaur so they’re still cool? I guess?

All in all, this first pokemon family is among my favorites in the whole series. Super cute, super weird, and would be super nice to have around. Kinda weird to give literally the first review the gold, but whatever - they deserve it.

And you know that’s right.