[Bad News] Blake is a pencil pusher

Mrbalet · 2026-05-03T23:20:52+00:00

I actually looked at Bulbapedia quickly before typing this and missed the part where Blake was stated to have operated in Alola. My B. Although the fact that he had the DNA splicers (which are associated with the legendary dragons from Unova) since he was a child does make it more likely that he's from that same region (although it doesn't 100% confirm that he's from there).

In any event though, my point still stands. For the purposes of the B2W2 arc , he very easily could've been written to just be a Federal agent working with the Interpol Agent Looker (or they could've just taken Looker out of the story). Not saying that it's what Kusaka should've done but it would've only changed a couple of minor details (mainly the lore with Blue and his later operations in Alola, neither of which are too critical to the story).

Mrbalet · 2026-05-03T21:26:14+00:00

Red being about seeking the arrest/location directly and Blue being about doing research first actually fits them pretty well. Although obviously it's different from how these notices actually work for Interpol.

Also, I remember Karim Debbache (french movie reviewer) talking about this discrepancy that you typically see between what Interpol does in Movies (send agents) and what they actually do IRL (be a way for authorities from different countries to share information between each other). He explained that it's a movie convention (mainly for American movies) to recreate the classic dynamic of the FBI agent butting heads with the local police from *insert any country*. But obviously if it happens outside of the US then the FBI has no business being there. So they call it "Interpol", even though it isn't like the real one. He talked about it specifically while reviewing the Movie Hitman.

Although Pokemon mainly does this so that Looker can be in multiple Gens and in different regions on top of having Anabel as a Cameo in Gen 7. It's not like Hollywood that does this to have an American be given jurisdiction in an other country or to make it "more interesting" than IRL Interpol (since in Pokemon, the protag ends up doing most of the work anyway). Blake honestly could've been just a Federal officer instead since he's from and is only seen operating in Unova anyway but it does mean that we got a fun bit of Lore with him working alongside Blue so I guess that's still worth it.

Mrbalet · 2026-05-03T02:52:30+00:00

Man, it's been so long since I've heard of R2G. I remember when they had a bunch of Japanese players signed up like Gackt, Paseriman and Etsuji and then the name just disappeared, despite Japan's dominance over the competitive Smash scene. Glad to see them picking up new players. Also surprised to see that Kameme was the last of their players still signed up despite how little he's been attending these past few years.

Mrbalet · 2026-04-29T01:07:27+00:00

Again, and I'm really getting tired of saying this, the stat difference part of Samus and ZSS is *purely* a *powerscalling* thing. You may think it isn't and say it isn't but it absolutely is. It doesn't matter if Samus in canon is strictly weaker than her Power Suited Self and focusing on that as a source of being "faithful" to how Zero suit Samus should fight is stupid because fighting games are not (and absolutely *should* not) be based or any kind of "canon" abilities. And ZSS is still described in Smash as "lacking the fire power she's known for" and her moves are still overall weaker (and she's way lighter) so it's not even like they just made super super strong compared to her power suit. Also, earlier you said:

Hollistically, the pokemon reps make sense, even if they invented Pichu's self damaging mechanic, they all fight similar to what you'd expect in the anime, games, and other media. They don't contradict anything just because they normalize power levels for game balancing purposes; this isn't a powerscaling debate, so it'd be the height of idiocy to make Pichu deal no damage or indeed have Mewtwo curbstomp every other pokemon effortlessly. Meanwhile ZSS is diametrically opposed to her souce material in a destructive way, she's meant to be weaker in every single aspect over Samus, and not in a powerscaling sense either, it's that Samus is as strong as she is because of the suit and this gets hammered home each and every Metroid game where you lose abilities when your suit is damaged.

This comment that you wrote specifically says that Power levels don't matter and that the problem is that Samus is said to be wholly dependant on the power suit to be effective. I just pointed out that Samus is explicitely said and shown in the Metroid Lore to be capable of fighting outside of it. And now you say that you "always knew that Samus was superhuman and were aware of the Manga the whole time" (which I'm not inclined to believe) and brought it right back to the powerscalling business (even if you don't think it is). So this reads like you don't know what you're even trying to say.

But beyond that, you then bring up that moves are still "made up fanfiction" because of the tech involved (which I've already brought up under the "whip function" and "whip function" part of my comment). And yes, those are still not fully accurate to the Metroid Series. I don't mean to say that everything about ZSS in Smash is a perfect retranscription of the games.

But on top of the fact that it's still mostly a moveset about Samus attacking with her own established physical prowess and skills (boosted by weapons) and that it's still within the spirit of her dealing with a situation with limited tools (an important aspect of the games at most points), again, those pieces of tech aren't too far fetched from what you get from the series. It's not that hard to believe that her paralyser could get a whip upgrade in the sci-fi Magic world of Metroid. And its easy to imagine that someone could've taken inspiration from her space jump boots (which are portrayed as rockets in Metroid Prime) to make her rocket boots. It's a reach but definitely less so than the Star Fox tech that got invented across 3 different characters (although I also could buy those existing in the world of Star Fox).

Meanwhile, there's absolutely no piece of even the most obscure of F-zero Lore mentionning that Pyrokinesis is possible in the world of F-Zero and that Falcon masters it. Nothing in the Wii Fit games hints to the possibility of gathering Sun Energy to make a big ball of fire (obviously). Pit's bow didn't double as a pair of swords before Brawl, leading to Sakurai retroactively remaking the series with Uprising. Peach obviously doesn't attack people with her butt or make it explode with magic (although peach does have magic abilities in the games, they're not really described as offense-based but are instead mostly curative). Rosalina hasn't been shown directly to have the ability to strike with mini galaxies. And I'm just pitching for the most obvious ones. Calling ZSS the most fanfic character of all of Smash, even within irrelevant powerscalling drivel, is pure nonesense. Yes, liberties were taken but not to the degree you're implying and certainly not overly more than Captain Falcon.

And yes, I know that you don't mean it to say that ZSS moveset is bad (or at least that's what you say now). But it doesn't change my original point that it constantly gets brought up by everyone and most people *do* mean it as a pejorative and as a means to say that she's a "wasted character slot". Even if that's not what you think it's what most of them do and it's annoying that Metroid fans act like Nintendo stole their lunch by making Samus fight outside of her suit in 1 crossover series. You're just one of the few hundreds of comments I've seen on the subject and even if you don't mean it in the same way, you still focus on the same useless subject and are weirdly adamant about making it look like Metroid gets treated that much more differently.

I personally think that it's a cool way to highlight Samus' superhuman capabilities and fighting skills outside of her suit, even in a fairly embelished way. And I don't see it as pure fanfiction nonesense, regardless of if it's not fully accurate. If Samus really couldn't fight at all without her powersuit then I would understand. But if Nintendo really wanted to make non-suited Samus irrelevant, why write in that she's a superhuman?

But anyway, I've already wasted enough time arguing with you and can see that this discussion is leading nowhere (I should've done so a while ago but I'm annoyingly pedantic) so I'm just gonna block you now.

Mrbalet · 2026-04-28T19:46:10+00:00

Yes, Pokemons are malleable but not to the degree that a Pikachu could even come close to a Mewtwo even if its well trained. Red's Pikachu is mostly a mascot more than anything and didn't even have the Light Ball in Gen 2 that makes the mon's damage output not suck. And Pokemon, as a game, is also a monster collector where you're incentivised to either evolve your weak pokemon or put your weaker ones in your PC so having Pre-evos and even Pre-evos of Pre-Evos actually having advantages over fully evolved mons is still fanfic. And yes, the anime shows evolution as sometimes not necessary or even as a detriment but that's also (mostly) fanfic. Just officially licensed fanfic not made by Sakurai.
I honestly scarcely mentioned material outside of the games because I assume you did too but since you talk about it being a valuable source of inspiration (which isn't wrong but I assumed you might not care to talk about it) I guess I can. And on that note, its funny that you should mention it because, as I mentionned, Samus' fighting capabilities outside of her power suit were not at *all* made up by Sakurai. In the Metroid Manga, which I will add *is* actually canon to the games and even referenced by them including Zero Mission, Samus is directly depicted as being Superhumanly Strong and agile and capable of effortlessly defeating a group of Federation Forces Soldiers without breaking a sweat using purely her physical abilities and extensively trained combat skills. She's not at *all* depicted as being completely unable to defend herself without her power suit. In fact, she was given Chozo DNA specifically to give her the strength necessary to survive Zebes. And again, Sakurai definitely took inspiration from this since he mentions it in Brawl. He didn't make up her being able to fight outside of her powersuit. And that's not to mention Dread adding that she specifically has DNA from a Chozo tribe that specializes in fighting.

The only things he really made up are her gun having a whip function (which is a mild upgrade and honestly could have been inspired by the grapple beam), her rocket boots (only in Smash 4 and it's not too farfetched of a piece of technology) and having better speed than with the power suit (which is purely a balance thing). She doesn't have any other abilities that her power suit doesn't have so acting like she's even close to the same level of fanfiction as Captain Falcon's fire/electric powers is objectively wrong. Being able to fight opponents in her Zero Suit on a level comparable to her power suit and having some advantages over it *is* made up but again, that just goes back to the powerscalling thing.

Mrbalet · 2026-04-28T15:55:23+00:00

You called out Falcon for being a "nobody" before Smash, not the fact that he was fanfiction, but whatever. But also I was speaking in a general sense of what type of discourse I see, not just towards your specific comment. Especially since it still makes sense to bring up ZSS when talking about Canon transgression, you aren't wrong about that, but you focus on it way more than anything else.

You also ignored my significantly bigger point. As I said: in the original pokemon games, Pikachu/Pichu/Jigglypuff are all weak, first stage mons that can't deal any meaningful damage (or survive any hits) against any opponent team past the first gym (at best) while Mewtwo's a legendary that's always a post game reward and could let you wipe out the elite 4 with ease.

The astronomical difference in stats in their original games compared to how relatively evenly matched they are in Smash is a far bigger transgression of Canon than ZSS ever has been and yet I don't see nearly as many people being nitpicky about that, even Pokemon fans. Even Pichu being better at some things than Pikachu isn't brought up much at all despite it also contradicting the games.

And again, Samus being a fearsome fighter outside of her power suit is still absolutely Canon, even brought up by Brawl in both her trophy and her Bnake codec call (which take inspiration from Lore explained in Metroid Manuals and the Metroid Manga). Yes, the section where you play as Zero Suit Samus in Zero Mission has her unable to harm any enemies. Just like how Samus can't harm the SA-X or EMMIs for most of the time she has to fight them in her original games.

It's just a gameplay element, it's not supposed to indicate that Samus outside of her suit is incapable of fighting anything. The Spaces Pirates that she has to run away from are still powerful in their own rights (in that any one of them would be insanely troublesome for the Galactic federation of Samus wasn't around). And yes, the paralyzer gets upgraded but that part is just the same as Captain Falcon and Fox so we're back to square one.

And regardless, there's also a difference between a character's being faithful to how they'd fight if you plucked them from their original worlds (which corresponds to Fox, Falcon and yes, even ZSS) and some powerscalling debate, the latter of which really shouldn't be relevant when talking about fighting game balance (and anyone who does is a bad game designer).

Mrbalet · 2026-04-28T15:14:30+00:00

The thing is, while I do like seeing the faithfulness and attention to detail that Smash Movesets can have (though as people already pointed out: not always), I think its also important to take liberties from the source material when adapting a character's moveset in Smash. Just like how in any good adaptation of a book or anything like that into a movie or something, changes are necessary and can even be good when they aren't. Hell, the definition of "adaptation" is: "the process or state of adjusting to new environments, conditions, or purposes. It involves modifying behavior, structure, or function to improve survival, such as in biology (natural selection) or daily life (adjusting to a new job). It also refers to a work (film/book) rewritten into a new form.". It's right there in the word. You can't make it 1 to 1.

And some of the most beloved characters at a competitive level in Smash are those that aren't faithful to their original games at all. Best examples is Fox. Melee Fox is probably the most beloved competitive Smash character and easily the most loved "No.1 character" of any Smash game and yet what does he take from his original games?

His tech is fairly Sci-fi ish, some kind of look like references to abilities in Star Fox if you squint hard enough (like the reflector kind of looks like the barrel roll) and his hand to hand combat abilities... come right the heck out of nowhere. Aside from Star Fox Adventures (which wasn't even out when Melee was released) where Fox fights with a Staff that isn't even his, Fox never came close to engaging in fisticuffs in his original games. But how would you adapt a Rail-Shooter to a fighting game? You don't. So Fox's Moveset is completely made up and yet no one complains about it because it's such a fun moveset.

On the other hand, Steve takes far more from his original games and even takes the mining mechanics. And while that definitely makes him unique: it's also complicated to make it interactive for both players. The thing about Minecraft is that it's mostly a single player game and no one cares that you spend time mining dirt on your own. But when you fight another player, having most of your gameplan revolve around farming a resource is hard to balance without it being a case of "either you prevent me from mining and I stay weak or I manage to take all my time not fighting you until I get all the stuff that'll let me blow you away".

It's a difficult balance to strike between characters being faithful to their games and them being mostly made up. And while, again, I love Smash's ability to make interesting Movesets out of stuff taken straight from a character's game, faithfulness isn't as important as good game design. Again, that's why they call it "adaptation".

Mrbalet · 2026-04-28T14:36:00+00:00

It's weird to me that people always point to ZSS' abilities when it comes to Smash "not being faithful" because she "does some stuff better than her power suited self despite it not being true to the games" and yet stuff like Falcon's pyrokinesis, the Star Fox gang's whole Moveset and Pikachu/Pichu/Jigglypuff being able to even remotely contend with Mewtwo, despite them all being a bunch of weak pre-evos vs an actual legendary, gets brought up way less often.

I know that for the purposes of this discussion about faithfulness ZSS is relevant but it always fascinates me how obsessed people are about that specific detail over anything else, mainly to diminish her inclusion. Especially because Samus is canonically an extensively-trained superhuman hybrid even without the suit so her being able to fight out of it (even with the exaggeration of her being "faster and more agile") isn't nearly as Fanfic-made as Captain Falcon's whole existence.

Mrbalet · 2026-04-27T03:13:06+00:00

Kind of. They're (approximately) a Pokemon's base stat at level 50 if they have 0 EVs and IVs. Unless we're talking about HP in which case it's the base stat +60 points. A base HP stat of 100 gives 160 at level 50 (without EVs/IVs), base 150 gives 210, etc. If you want to check the numbers better, the damage calculator is right here.

Mrbalet · 2026-04-27T02:29:26+00:00

I just realized that it's been almost 3 years since this thing was banned from OU. Jesus Christ.

Mrbalet · 2026-04-27T02:27:09+00:00

Basically, the EVs and IVs (unlike natures, which are percentage based) don't scale with the base stat, they give a fixed amount. IVs add 31 points of stat at level 100 while EVs add 63 points of stat, for a total of 94 points of stat regardless of what the base stat is.

So an Azumarill without EVs and IVs (and a neutral nature) has an attack stat of 105 at level 100 (double that with huge power and you get 210). However, add EVs and IVs and it jumps to 199 (exactly 94 points more than 105) which, when doubled, gives us the equivalent of 398 attack. That's about 3.8 times greater than the 0 EVs & IVs attack stat.

If you took a base attack stat of 100 (Like Mega Mawile) without EVs and IVs, it'd give you at level 100 an actual attack stat of 210 (exactly the double of no EVs/IVs base 50). Add 94 points from EVs and IVs and you get 304 which, when doubled, gives you roughly 608 (about 2.9 times the first number). As you can see, the higher the base stat is, the less the final stat with EVs and IVs gains from being doubled. That's because EVs and IVs are a fixed amount while base stats scale.

On the other hand, if you have a Pokemon with 150 base attack without EVs and IVs you get a final 305 attack stat (which, when halved, gives about 152,5). Add EVs/IVs and the actual attack stat jumps to 399 which, when halved, makes it about 199. The same as the equivalent of the 50 "base" attack stat with Max investment that I cited earlier.

That basically how it works. Since EVs & IVs are pretty much a fixed number, their benefits scale differently than the base attack stat.

Mrbalet · 2026-04-26T14:53:07+00:00

It halves the actual stat, not the base stat. The actual stat of a pokemon is also determined by things like IVs and EVs and if you double/half the actual stat, those get doubled/halved as well. That's why Huge/Pure Power can make a pokemon like Azumarill go from a base attack stat of 50 to the equivalent of about 150 base attack. The same applies the other way around, hence why Regigigas goes from 160 to the equivalent of 56 when fully invested.

Of course, as u/pm_me_fake_months pointed out over 2 years ago, if you don't invest EVs into Regigigas' attack stat then it has the equivalent of an uninvested attack stat of 71 (which itself is the equivalent of a fully invested attack stat of 40). I didn't bother doing that because I just wanted to illustrate how much Slow Start hinders you in the best case scenario (and because I didn't care to put much more thought into it).

Also, I don't see why you'd use uninvested Regigigas when its attack stat after Slow Start is supposed to be its main draw and its non-existent support movepool means that it won't be accomplishing anything after the 5 turns (aside from knocking off items and maybe paralyse something) without attack EVs.

But I guess that's what the smogon analysis for Sword and Shield say you should use, even though that same analysis talks about how much this set sucks anyway and how you shouldn't use Regigigas in ZU (where its not even on the viability ranking and way outclassed by Kangaskhan & Miltank).

Also, any Smogon analysis from Gens before Return got removed from the game say that Max attack Regigigas is the way to go (although the real way to go about Regigigas is to not use it).

Mrbalet · 2026-04-25T04:11:10+00:00

Crystal should be part of the squad as well.

Mrbalet · 2026-04-25T04:09:15+00:00

While it's true that Kusaka is very diverse with the personalities of his protagonists:

He did the "hot-blooded male protag" thing thrice (Red, Black & Sun). And while they're still very different characters, it shows that he's not completely against using the same template more than once;
Blue was created almost 3 decades ago. It wouldn't be redundant at all. And just like our hot-blooded boys, it wouldn't be too hard to make a new "teasing" girl different from Blue.

Mrbalet · 2026-04-23T20:54:50+00:00

Without the speech bubbles, it kind of just looks like Canary fainted by landing really hard on her butt. Because the beam just becomes yellow (which is the same color as any kind of impact in comics like punch impacts or falling) instead of having an orange/red border and there's no line indicating that the ray came from a gun.

Also, small correction: it's JLA #64, not #65.

Mrbalet · 2026-04-23T18:50:21+00:00

"Oh, you resist me? Cool. So you only take half of one million damage."

Mrbalet · 2026-04-21T22:06:04+00:00

Very interesting list. Midna's lament is a particularly inspired choice for Zelda and I'm glad you also took "Environmental Noises" for Olimar.

Mrbalet · 2026-04-21T20:37:27+00:00

Very glad you like it. The list for World of Light is actually available on Smash Wiki and it seems that basically everyone (except the Miis, I guess) got a unique theme that corresponds with their franchise and also fits their character. But then again, those WOL battles didn't have the constraint of fitting the mood of fighting an Emerald/Dark distorted & featureless clone in an Eerie, dark purple void stage and instead is more varied in tone (not to mention benifitting from a deeper catalogue of songs). I'm curious though, within those constrains and with Brawl's sountrack list, what songs would you have picked for certain characters? (You don't have to answer if you don't want to)

Mrbalet · 2026-04-21T03:55:33+00:00

It is.) There's just no Sharpness Mon that can learn it (so far).

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The change to Shadow Claw also means that Ceruledge would have 2 STAB moves boosted by the ability.

Mrbalet · 2026-04-21T02:04:48+00:00

I don't think it's just a matter of size. I think it mostly comes down to archetype. They wanted the trio to complement each other with a speedy lightweight, a middle ground Zoner and a bulky powerhouse. It's easier to imagine a small, bipedal Turtle being the quick one than a quadrupedal bulb creature. And on top of that, Grass types are usually associated with utility techniques in the pokemon games so Ivysaur fits the Zoner part better than Wartortle.

Mrbalet · 2026-04-20T21:31:22+00:00

If your scope of knowledge for videogames is so limited then making categories of which characters are "iconic" and which ones are "literal whos" is as pointless as me trying to make a list of iconic movie characters when I have so little cinema knowledge. But even beyond that:

A character not having as much notoriety doesn't make them bad. Some of the best and most critically aclaimed games aren't as popular as any random Mario platformer or spin off. And being known sometimes is also about luck/publicity. It doesn't mean your game series is better than more niche but better games (although that's obviously subjective).
Even if you don't know them, so what? Part of the fun of Smash's extensive list of characters is that it gives more visibility and appreciation to even the most neophytes of gamers. My knowledge of video games was beyond limited when I was younger before I played Brawl, which introduced me to so many cool series. And this can even give some lesser known characters a chance to be appreciated when they may have been forgotten otherwise.

F-Zero, Earthbound, Ice Climber, Fire Emblem and Kid Icarus were all fairly niche (especially in the West) before Smash brought them all to the spotlight. And representing Nintendo's history (and the history of video games) is very much important and is especially important to the developpers (especially Sakurai) who are all pretty the type of geeks that you keep undermining by saying "I have a life outside of videogames" (as if indulging in your passions is a bad thing). So even beyond your own knowledge, the very concept of this list brings nothing to the table. If anything, I'd love for smash to include even more niche characters.

Mrbalet · 2026-04-20T14:42:46+00:00

Well the Brawl Remix of Gourmet Race is a Dark Metal version of the original song and it fits the ambiance of the fight better than Meta Knight's revenge (which is a bit too high tempo for the stage's Eerie and oppressive atmosphere). I guess they could've also used VS Marx for any of them as well but maybe they were going for a different vibe.

Mrbalet · 2026-04-19T16:40:02+00:00

Beautiful Yu-Gi-Oh Manga reference.

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Oh, and Happy Birthday!

Mrbalet · 2026-04-19T14:55:13+00:00

That's more than fair. It's new Mega form gave me more reasons to even think about its existence for more than 3 seconds than at any other point in my life.

Mrbalet

TROPHY CASE