#104 - Cubone
Ground
Well, we all know nobody really cares about this Pokemon in terms of how it performs, it's all about the lore, but Cubone is another pure-Ground Type. Unlike a lot of recent Pokemon we've covered, Cubone actually appears fairly early in the adventure, and the fact it has a neat story behind it I think likely gained it a lot of fans who wanted to give it a chance because they felt sorry for it. You know, given its backstory, I actually think it was kind of a bad choice for Game Freak to make it a common Pokemon in Generation I---when Generation II came along, of course its lore was going to be completely destroyed, but at that point in time I feel like Game Freak should've made only a single Cubone available after completing the Lavender City event, to really hammer home its role as the "Lonely Pokemon".
So, I really didn't want to get to this Pokemon, because I have to admit a really unpopular opinion---when I first played through the Lavender Town saga, I found it dreadfully boring and didn't care whatsoever about Cubone's dead mom. Even today when I can better appreciate what Game Freak was going for, which in that recent Lavender Town thread a lot of folks pointed out was pretty unique for RPGs at the time, this whole plotline never really affected me whatsoever. I'm not an emotionless guy by any means, as a kid there was numerous episodes of the show that made me cry, but for some reason sad moments in video-games just don't do anything for me, it's hard for me to get over the barriers present in the medium. The letter scene in Grandia is one of the few times I can recall in recent years that a video-game has actually made me tear up, if you know which scene I'm talking about, but that's pretty much it. Pokemon has had a few "sad moments" since, like N's goodbye in Black and White, but that scene didn't do much for me either---hell, I thought the game really made N out to be a punk and found it odd how he acts like your friend at the end after he'd been harassing you throughout the entire game. Yeah, I'm ready for the pitchforks...
If you break it down, the Cubone plotline is rather weird and confusing for a variety of reasons. I looked over the plot summary of the events to refresh my mind, and I noticed an oddity I never picked up before---that the whole reason Team Rocket apparently headed to Lavender Town was to collect the skulls of Cubone to sell for money. Does that mean the actual skulls of Cubone, or the ones that they wear which is the skull of their dead mother, which presumably is only there because Team Rocket killed it? There's kind of a weird paradox going on in the description of events. The game makes it out like they only killed just one Marowak (who itself presents additional problems as we'll soon discuss), but with all the Cubone I guess in reality they actually killed multiple yet only one remained as a ghost. Or perhaps the ghost is basically a combination of the souls of all the Marowak they killed? If you really think about this plotline it kind of bothers your brain, and to be honest the weirdness of it is probably why it's never really got to me emotionally. And then Generation II came along with breedable Cubone and yeah, the whole thing kind of blew up in Game Freak's face. But hey, let's be fair, they definitely tried to make a touching moment in an otherwise pretty silly and lighthearted game working with very simple limitations and staying within the boundaries of the game's set-up, so I think everyone can, and perhaps should, overlook the oddities present in the story and enjoy it for what it is. If you don't emotionally connect to it, that's fine, but I can admit I can see why a lot of people like it especially if you can relate to having lost a parent.
There's been much debate about what's under Cubone's skull---including a certain Pokemon I'll bring this point back up with when I get there---but I realize that's perhaps the point. Cubone isn't actually meant to be a single Pokemon species, but rather it's representative of all the Pokemon who lost a mother due to the evils of the world. Thus Game Freak gave it an ambiguous appearance who has a body-shape that resembles the "saurian" Pokemon who made up a lot of the Generation I PokeDex, and basically was kind of the blueprint body-shape seen commonly in the prototype drawings of Pokemon when it was simply "Capsule Monsters". Likewise its mother's skull is also a rather generic skull shape, bringing to mind the classic "cow skull" seen commonly in cartoons whenever there's a desert scene, leaving the appearance of its mother ambiguous as well---or, at least, I imagine that was the intent. I'll get more into it with Marowak, but I really think making Cubone's mother a specific Pokemon was the biggest flaw in the storyline and something Game Freak should've thought over more.
It wasn't till Origins that the story of Cubone was animated, and while I haven't got around to fully watching Origins, I gotta say the decision to actually show Cubone in a flashback alongside his living mother, wearing the skull, kind of highlighted the problem with the storyline. I get that they probably couldn't just make a helmetless Cubone design since The Pokemon Company probably doesn't want to "ruin" the design, but why not have the flashback take place from Cubone's point-of-view, thus getting around that issue and upping the emotional connection you have with the Pokemon where you're literally watching its mother die through its own eyes? Anyway, in the main anime, they (wisely?) didn't bother trying to adapt the Cubone plotline, and from what I recall the show has never said Cubone is wearing the skull of its mom, it's simply a lonely Pokemon due to having somewhat of an antisocial personality as shown in "Pikachu's Vacation" where it was part of the gang of bullies who picked a fight with Pikachu and friends. It's really never got a focus episode whatsoever, and the only big role was Giselle's in "The School of Hard Knocks" where it lost to Pikachu to hammer in the point about not relying too strongly on Type Advantage.
#105 - Marowak
Ground
Marowak is the evolved form of Cubone. I am currently using this line in a Nuzlocke of Pokemon Y, one of the few Pokemon I have left after Korrina's Lucario wiped out everyone else, and I gotta say---this Pokemon kind of sucks. Now, Marowak does have four things going for it---in Gold and Silver it got a unique Hold Item known as the Thick Club which doubles its attack, and in fact in Gen II could cause its Attack to wrap back around to being quite low, and it has three signature moves Bone Club, Bonemerang, and Bone Rush, although two other Pokemon are able to learn that move now. But all of its other stats are actually pretty bad, including a surprisingly low speed which doesn't mesh at all with its design or nature, and its move-set is pretty one-dimensional. In my Nuzlocke, unfortunately Marowak didn't come with a Thick Club, so it's a really weak Pokemon who basically lacks any coverage, but on the other hand it's the best I have at the moment, and I've actually grown to appreciate it. Of course in Generation I, it was probably even worse without Thick Club existing and even less moves, so if you let Cubone's sob-story get to you and decided to use one, you probably made a big mistake. I'm pretty sure every other fully-evolved Ground-type Pokemon in Generation I except Onix is probably more useful than it is.
Looking over Marowak's PokeDex you realize it's not even really a regular evolution, rather it seems to simply be a Cubone who was able to overcome the sadness and turned into a revenge-bent warrior. Marowak isn't too much larger than Cubone, about the weight and height difference between a toddler and a pre-teen, and visually doesn't change much at all, the main evolutionary element being its mother's skull fusing to its head. One part I think was rather neat about the older design was that in the original backsprites, it appeared to have bony spikes running down its spine, but this element was dropped and it never appeared elsewhere in the first place---probably something a Mega Marowak could bring back. The older PokeDex entries treated Marowak as an unusual mutation of Cubone, its violent nature and use of bones being the result of childhood trauma, while some recent entries have seemed to try and reconcile this with the fact you can breed Cubone bone and all, claiming that from birth they're known for being bone-wielding savages. Like I said before, don't try to think about this too hard.
I said it before, but I think it was a big mistake to make Cubone's mother actually a Marowak, as it goes against basically everything we're told about the Pokemon. I really think they should've left Cubone's mother ambiguous---you couldn't catch it anyway, so why did they need to make it specifically a Pokemon? Couldn't they have created a generic sprite and given it generic moves to leave it up to the player to decide what Pokemon the mother was, which seems like it was the original intent behind Cubone? Well, perhaps there were technical constraints that may have caused an issue though in going with my idea, so they had to make the ghost share an I.D. with an actual Pokemon or else it'd cause various glitches or waste space---I'd love to hear Game Freak go into detail about certain points in the development of Red and Green like this one day, because it does seem like the original plotline got changed a bit to fit in Marowak. In fact I wonder if originally Cubone wasn't part of the plot either, and it was just a generic Pokemon who lost its mother---but they decided to use that idea to create a new Pokemon family? Outside of its unique plotline, is Marowak even that popular among fans? I always felt it was kind of a forgettable Pokemon outside of the ghost plot, and I don't remember any kids actually using one...and without that plot, I wonder if it would've completely disappeared amidst all the other Generation I Pokemon who were memorable in basically every other way?
All the dead mother stuff was dropped from the show, and Marowak's first appearance was "Bad From the Bone", which I mentioned before in Doduo's entry is one of the least memorable episodes for me personally among Kanto. I remember it starred Marowak, some dude lost his badges, and it actually featured actual Pokemon TCG cards making a cameo. The only other Marowak I remember of note was a pretty cool one in the Hoenn League who had a fight against Ash's rival Morrison, one of the first times we had a League Battle focused on someone other than Ash.