1) Pikachu: I have had a stuffed Pikachu for like, 15 years now.
My favorite is also inspired by a really sentimental and well-loved plush!
I have these two handmade Nidoran that I made with my mom when I was a lot younger - I believe they're just over seven years old now, created some time in the summer of 2010 - and I just love them! They're maybe not the most accurate to the design (a bit stretched and
long compared to the rounded Nidoran most people know, haha), but they're utterly adorable.
So obviously
Nidoran is my favorite Pokémon!
Aside from Nidoran being my favorite overall, here's my favorite from each Gen:
Gen I - Still
Nidoran, duh!
Gen II -
Ampharos! I first fell in love with it in Gen VI because of Mega Ampharos, but its Mega only really served to catch my attention - I love normal Ampharos just as much!
Gen III -
Gardevoir! Again, I first started appreciating it in Gen VI - a Gardevoir was the centerpiece of my first serious competitive team. Said competitive team was absolute trash, as I hope you can gather from the fact that it was my first. But it was still really fun to raise the Gardevoir (and rise through the ranks of the Battle Chateau in the process) and it became one of my favorite Pokémon as a result!
Gen IV -
Honchkrow! Diamond was my first game, and you know how just about everyone overtrains one specific team member in their first game and completely misses the point of training a full team? You'd expect that I'd be using the level 50 Deoxys I got from an event the same day I started playing, especially since it would have started obeying after beating Fantina and would have made a ton of
sense for a weak noob Trainer like me to use as soon as I could. Nope!! See, I needed a "team ace"
long before Fantina, because I got super stuck on Gardenia. Enter my brother, who actually understood type effectiveness - and it turned out that that Murkrow I'd caught in Eterna Forest, Foggy, wasn't just worth catching because she was rare
(actuallyIdidn'tunderstandthegendersymbolssoIthoughtshewasmaleatthatpoint), but because, as a Flying-type, she was my best Pokémon to use against Gardenia! And as a ditzy seven- or eight-year-old, I interpreted this as "she was my best Pokémon to use against
everything!" So here we have Honchkrow becoming my ace team member, actually outleveling Cynthia's Garchomp
(althoughtherewasn'tmuchteamsupportsoshefaintedandgotRevivedaTON) by the time I got to the League
(speakingoftheLeagueIthinkIrealizedshewasfemalearoundwhenIwasfightingLucian), and overtaking my starter and
a freaking Deoxys as the Pokémon I decided was worth raising. Definitely a super close second to Nidoran!!
Gen V - There's no story behind this, which is unfortunate because Generation V has such utterly amazing Pokémon all around that I have the hardest time picking a single favorite from it in the first place... but I'm going to go with
Volcarona for design alone! Other favorites here include the Mienfoo and Oshawott lines!
Gen VI -
Zygarde! Okay, let me just make this clear: Zygarde isn't just my favorite Generation VI Pokémon. Zygarde is also
the single best Legendary Pokémon in the series. 50% Forme admittedly took a little while to grow on me, but if XY came out in October, I think it was by that December that it was my favorite Generation VI Pokémon - not necessarily by a great margin at the time, but it escalated as it became pretty much my symbol/my most iconic Pokémon on a number of sites. When its other forms were finally revealed, I loved their designs right away from an aesthetic standpoint, though I was admittedly baffled at first by the seemingly random choices of forms - that certainly didn't mitigate the sheer awesomeness of each one, and 10% WAS LITERALLY JUST A COOL DOG WITH A COOL SCARF, YOU GUYS!!! You know that feeling where you just
want to like something, so you're willing to ignore a few flaws? That was how I felt at first - its forms weren't the awesome Mega Zygarde serpent I was expecting, but they were still
cool, and that was all that mattered. ... And then as soon as I learned the connection to Norse mythology and that they weren't random at all, I became still more enamored. Zygarde has one of the most intricate design origins of any Pokémon, and I could ramble
okay maybe I have rambled is the better word choice here... oops about why they're simultaneously perfect designs, creative concepts
and actually totally logical in-world (you ask "since Zygarde doesn't know about Norse mythology, why did it pick those shapes for its incomplete forms?" WELL a slim beast that relies on sharp teeth and speed rather than crushing force and defense is going to be your best choice if you have very few cells, while being nearly flat gives it the biggest surface area possible to intimidate foes and appear stronger than it is, and continuing with the idea of "appearances," CORE ENFORCER IS THE SINGLE MOST FLAMBOYANT SIGNATURE MOVE EVER and you can't deny that it's
trying to be imposing even when it can't enter Complete Forme). And don't even get me started on my theory on the story in the Scary House-- okay I'll stop.
Gen VII -
Primarina! It was just... exactly what I wanted. The
entire time. And it
just kept getting better. When the SM trailer came out, Popplio was my favorite right away, and I prayed that it wouldn't be a creepy clown and resolved that as long as it wasn't, I would pick it without a doubt. Then all of those leaks happened, fake and real - and Primarina, though we didn't know its name then, was my favorite Popplio evolution out of
all of the leaks and
every fan's prediction art. More boldly, it was my favorite of
any of the starter evolutions, fanmade or allegedly leaked. And then Trials were revealed... and Mallow more or less confirmed it for me: that set of leaks was real. I was
SO HAPPY YOU GUYS. And then when the middle stages were revealed, any doubt I had was swept away and I was now positive Primarina was real. Finally, my focus switched from "is it real?" to "what type is it?" when I came to realize that, considering that nearly all of my favorite Pokémon in Gen VII were Fairy-type
except the Popplio line, I would actually probably do a mono-Fairy run or as close to it as I could get. I figured it was a reasonable guess, though I couldn't help but worry it might be Water/Psychic or Water/Ice or pure Water instead.
AND IT WAS FAIRY!! But it goes beyond just being everything I wanted during the prerelease period - it's also
super fun to use in-game! This is one of the first times that I've felt like my starter was genuinely my "main Pokémon" - even though I did a mono-Fairy run and obviously got a Mimikyu (Mimikyu, for those who don't know, are wont to be crazy-overpowered), Capensis, my Primarina, is still one of my favorite Pokémon to use, especially now that he's been properly EV-trained, given an Assault Vest (and my goodness he is a tank), and been generally prepped for Battle Tree use. He may have fallen behind my Mimikyu in-game, but I actually use him
more in the Battle Tree. I love him so much. Primarina is great.
