#179 - Mareep
Electric
Excluding the Generation I Pokemon families and Legendaries, Mareep is your only other option besides Chinchou for an Electric-type in Gold and Silver, and it's also the first three-stage Electric-line introduced within the same Generation. While most Electric-type Pokemon are as you'd expect quick and can't take a hit, the Mareep line is the opposite with low speed but all-around strong defenses allowing it to actually survive long enough to show off its impressive Special Attack. Mareep can be found early on in the game and is fairly common compared to many Johto Pokemon, and being a three-stage line which is always fun to use during the main adventure I imagine it made it onto many people's teams. Mareep is another Pokemon who originally had a slow growing movepool, though it learns moves much faster than Natu, and evolves rather quickly through its forms alongside the Starters, so it won't be as frustrating to use, with Thundershock probably working well enough on its own against every non-Ground and non-Grass Pokemon. Unless you're doing a solo-run, Mareep can just rely on its team members to take care of the foes who are resistant to its Electric attacks.
Mareep doesn't break new ground for Electric Pokemon, as like many of them it's basically a regular animal---electrified. Actually, to be fair, the majority of Generation I Electric-type Pokemon weren't regular animals, but looking back now that we have 721 Pokemon it became the norm for Electric-types and Mareep was one of the best early examples of this trend. Making a sheep an electric type doesn't seem too far fetched, certainly more sensible than an electric mouse, due to how the idea of a sheep conducting electricity through its wool is an easy connection to make, and one I imagine Game Freak would've eventually came around to. Some also believe Mareep is a reference to the classic sci-fi novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep", the inspiration for Blade Runner, though I think it's a coincidence and Game Freak weren't really thinking about that when they created the Pokemon. The movie, at the very least, which I think cuts out the stuff about electric sheep from the novel seems to be popular in Japan---the ending theme of the movie, "Vangelis", seems to have inspired the level theme of "Scrap Brain Zone" in Sonic the Hedgehog. The English name, which is more or less the same ideas as the original name (Merriep), is believed to be a reference to the classic "Merry Had a Little Lamb" nursery rhyme, though perhaps coincidentally if rearranged it spells "ampere".
A pretty simple Pokemon, Mareep is basically the 1:1 counterpart to our sheep, kept on ranches in some of the games where presumably its wool is sheared for various uses such as clothing. When the wool rubs together, static electricity builds up causing it to double in volume, and since it's more staticy during winter, this works to Mareep's advantage by protecting it from the cold. The most interesting elements of Mareep are its colorful horns, which sadly don't really change throughout its evolution as you might expect (i.e. turning into ram horns), and its long tail with an orb at the end that is said to glow when it's charged with electricity. Mareep is a cute Pokemon, but I imagine how much you like it is based on how much you enjoy actual sheep. I've never been a big fan of either, and as far as Electric-type Pokemon go I've never really favored the line.
Mareep is a Pokemon who tends to be shown as more or less a "natural animal" in the show, appearing on ranches and such since the show can't just use sheep to help set the scene and such. Its first focus episode in Johto, Mild and Wooly, was all about herding the Pokemon and a pretty standard Johto filler simply focusing on the Pokemon's traits. You'll notice Johto started doing this more, simply writing a whole episode around the Pokemon's PokeDex entry, whereas Kanto often ignored it in favor of using pretty much any Pokemon it wanted for a variety of plots regardless if it really fit. I kind of like both styles though, and in any season a nice mix is key to me.
#180 - Flaaffy
Electric
The evolution of Mareep at Level 15, and the first "true" middle-form Electric Pokemon. The Mareep line evolves really fast, faster than the Starters, yet are able to hold their own throughout the entire campaign so they're pretty great Pokemon to have on your party, though Flaaffy doesn't really shine until it evolves. If there's one Pokemon I want to have a branch-evolution, it's Flaaffy. I don't really care for its evolution going "weird", and for years I've wanted to see a more traditional electric ram evolution for it to counter Ampharos. You already have a perfect name too: Ramzeez, But now this dream might never come true because of Mega Evolutions, yet I still hold onto a sliver of hope that Game Freak agrees with my assessment. Anyway, Flaaffy is my favorite member of the line, though as I said they're not my favorites so consider that a mild "cute" from me.
One thing that bothers me about the Mareep line which I brought up before with Spinarak-to-Ariados is how they change color during every step of their evolution. I don't like this, because I think it detracts from the main element of the design: Mareep losing wool. By making the body and wool different colored through the evolution cycle, it takes away from people noticing the decrease in wool as the main evolutionary element as the first thing they'll notice instead is the change of color. Though I guess there'd be an issue with Mareep's body being dark blue, which would look a bit weird as it evolves into Flaafy and Ampharos thus losing the electric-colored wool and not being as obvious in its Type, though I think making Mareep's body a dark yellow like Ampharos and leaving its wool the same light-yellow color would've been the best design decision. I mean, even looking at Mareep, you'll notice the tail and horns don't match its body color like the ones of Flaafy and Ampharos do, perhaps suggesting at one point it was colored yellow, but what's done is done. Coincidentally, the other "normal" three-stage evolution in Johto also goes through a pretty rapid color-change throughout all of its forms.
While Mareep was basically a regular sheep, Flaafy looks a bit more "Pokemon" due to being bipedal, though it's often seen sitting down suggesting that it isn't particularly skilled at bipedal locomotion which its low-speed would probably support. It has lost most of its wool, though this is due to natural causes as opposed to humans shearing it---the rest of its body has grown a rubbery hide that protects it from its own electricity, but on the downside even downy wool won't grow, leaving it effectively naked. The remaining wool it does have, though, is actually an even better conductor of electricity than before, and I imagine may be deemed as better quality wool than Mareep's, but with less of it to go around I imagine Flaaffy wool prices in the Pokemon World are quite high and it's reserved for the social elite.
Flaaffy never got a focus episode in all of Johto, and in fact I'm not sure if it ever appeared in that season outside of the Raikou Special. It's most important moments came in Hoenn where it got a focus episode where it worked at a pharmacy using its powers to create medicine, and was the object of affection for one of Brock's Pokemon. I remember this episode only because it was hyped as an evolution episode for one of Brock's Pokemon, yet that Pokemon was incidental to the plot and it was pretty much all about Flaaffy and Ampharos. Flaaffy also appeared in the episode "Whiscash and Ash", one of my favorite episodes in the entire series as a Pokemon belonging to a legendary fishing master.
#181 - Ampharos
Electric
At Level 30, Flaaffy evolves into Ampharos and with its all-around good stats, especially its Legendary-like Special Attack, it'll likely prove a valuable party member for the rest of your journey. Ampharos was arguably the best non-Legendary Electric Pokemon during Generation II, though some might say Electabuzz or Jolteon hold that role, however with a bigger focus on hitting your opponent as hard and as fast as possible in later Generations, Ampharos has lost some of its luster due to its low Speed which makes it vulnerable to speedy Pokemon packing Earthquake. Generation VI came with a Mega Evolution for it, but as we'll see in a bit that didn't work out as good as Ampharos fans may have hoped. Most people seem to absolutely adore Ampharos, and will swear by it on that alone, but I've really never been a fan.
My issue with Ampharos? I don't like how they pretty much abandoned the sheep theme. Yes, some people will defend it by saying it's meant to be a shaved sheep, but if you saw Ampharos on its own without knowing it had evolved from a sheep-based Pokemon, I seriously doubt you would go "oh, of course, it's a shaved sheep!". Sometimes Pokemon going through radical changes can be cool, like Magikarp to Gyrados, but I think Ampharos is a sad abandonment of a Pokemon line's motif that was perfectly workable and shouldn't have been suddenly dropped in the final, natural form. A lot of people think Ampharos is adorable, but I've always found it more goofy than cute, and it pales in comparison to Flaaffy in my opinion. In its defense, though Ampharos drops the wool motif completely (outside of still learning moves utilizing it like Cotton Spore), it does carry on the light-up tail motif that it's had since Mareep, and finally brings it into focus as the main element of the evolutionary line. Ampharos' tail is said to be so bright it can even be seen from space, and used in the past as a beacon like a lighthouse---Ampharos has a connection to lighthouses overall as in Gold and Silver, it's responsible for lighting the Olivine City lighthouse (Olivine may have been chosen as a dub name to resembe "ovine", aka a sheep) and its English name has "pharos", the Greek word for "lighthouse". Why a sheep ended up becoming the lighthouse Pokemon, I don't really have an answer for that.
Japan is a rather limited language with a ton of homophones, and thus Kanji is vitally important to distinguish the meaning of similar sounding words. The Japanese Pokemon names are written with katakana, which merely represents sound, not meaning, and thus Pokemon names that are made from Japanese words could have multiple interpretations, and in general Japan seems to take advantage of this when it comes to wordplay---how this relates to Ampharos, or as it's known in Japan as "Denryuu", is that its name could mean "electric current", or even "electric dragon", and thus because of that last interpretation fans have for years wondered if Ampharos was meant to be a dragon. It really doesn't look like one, so maybe it was just a play on words and not meant to be seen as actually a dragon Pokemon, though Generation VI seems to have settled this issue by finally giving it Dragon-type moves and a Dragon-type Mega Evolution so, yeah, the sheep became a dragon. Once more, I don't really get it, and I don't think it's based off any Japanese mythology, or any mythology, though if you think about it, does this mean Ampharos in a way is basically the Generation II Gyrados, a creature of humble beginnings which changes to a pseudo-dragon upon evolution?
Ampharos' Johto appearance was based on the NPC one from Gold and Silver, so basically all it did was sit around sick. But Ampharos has had a fairly successful career in the show, with a decent role in every series---used by Wattson in Hoenn, had a focus episode in both Diamond and Pearl and Best Wishes, and recently in XY is owned by Clemont's dad, Meyer, though so far that one hasn't done anything notable yet, but given that Meyer is capable of using Mega Evolution, may play a bigger part in the future...
#M181 - Mega Ampharos
Electric/Dragon
Mega Ampharos was one of the initial six Mega Evolutions revealed in CoroCoro, and really stuck out---the other Mega Evolutions were for Mawile and Absol, unevolved Pokemon who had a decent following and fans had been begging for evolutions for them for years, and Mewtwo, Lucario, and Blaziken, big-bad mascot Pokemon that had been extremely popular since their inception. And then Ampharos a popular, but otherwise uneventful fully-evolved Pokemon whose Mega Evolution looked absolutely ridiculous. Some folks probably liked how it seemed Game Freak weren't above having a bit of fun and lightheartedness with Mega Evolutions, though others felt Mega Ampharos' "lazy design" proved how poor an idea Mega Evolution actually was. Mega Ampharos is one of the few Mega Evolutions one can actually use during the main adventure in XY as you're given one by a man at Azure Bay near where you can catch a Mareep, and thus fans of Ampharos could put one on their team once more and take things to the next level. Mega Ampharos finally becomes part-Dragon, however this may be seen as a downgrade as it doesn't learn many Dragon-type moves to take advantage of, and it add multiple new weaknesses such as to Fairy. While every other one of its stats (bar HP too) see a decent increase, especially its Special Attack, it gets even slower, which means it may not last long enough to truly show off its magnificent new style. As far as Mega Evolutions go, it's fairly average, and with ORAS adding more Megas to compete with its use has gone down, though like all Mega Evolutions there's really no reason to stick with the old Ampharos outside of an aesthetic choice.
Ampharos is one of the simplest Mega Evolution designs, it's identical to Ampharos in height and weight and all that's really changed is its luxurious mane, tail, and slight modifications to its belly and ears. It always has a really "oblivious" look to it as well, which makes it look like it's posing for a L'Oreal commercial. I guess the hair is meant to represent the hair that Eastern dragons are often depicted as, a sign of wisdom and power, though some think it's meant to make it look like a god and possibly as a reference to the Golden Fleece from Greek mythology, but it's a pretty odd design that I still am unsure what Game Freak was going for exactly. Personally, I didn't have much personal stock in Ampharos to be offended by a pretty weak looking Mega Evolution, but I so wish they took this chance to bring back the sheep motif---I guess it sort of has wool again and what could be seen as ram horns, but it's just not good enough in my opinion. This is another Mega Evolution I don't have any strong feelings about either way.
Mega Ampharos has only had a cameo so far in the Mega Evolution Special, but since Meyer, a reoccurring character in XY, has one, and also has another Pokemon capable of going Mega, I bet we'll see him use Mega Ampharos during the XY&Z season, probably to help defend Kalos from the evil machinations of Team Flare.
