Mankey Family
I have an important confession before this article begins: I don’t give high praises to the primate order. With the exception of Strepsirhines (lemurs, galagos, etc), tarsiers, and a few species of monkey, all other primates are habitually the ugliest creatures in my eyes.
There’s no deep-rooted psychology that explains why I feel that way. I think that apes and most monkeys are flat-out disgusting, both in looks and behavior. It’s an instinctual reaction, and I apologize that I can’t explain it any better.
(On a side note, there’s no need to make the joke, “Oh, so you think humans are ugly, then?” Because yes, I do think we’re uninteresting animals compared to what rules the jungles and oceans of the world).
I felt it important to bring this up, because I’ll have an inescapable bias against every monkey or ape character I review – not just in my Pokémon articles, but any Character Critiques that I write in the future.
So when a Pokémon like Mankey is a monkey I actually like, you know the artists over at Game Freak have done something great.
Mankey’s anatomy is chuckle-inducing brilliant. Its face is also its body, with spindly arms and legs branching off of it. Its feet appear developed for tree climbing, but its hands are incredibly primitive. Most of the time, it just leaves its hands hanging limply, more often using them to smack potential threats.
That’s about the only reason Mankey has hands to begin with. Not so much for grasping objects, but to beat up everyone. It’s a highly amusing detail.
To top it all off, this fuzzy ball of limbs is also perpetually pissed off at the world. When it gets flustered (which isn’t hard to do, as even loneliness makes it angry), its comical pig nose will snort rapidly just as you’d expect. Every comedic opportunity in Mankey’s design is taken to full effect.
It’s worth noting that Mankey stands as the first Fighting-type in all of Pokémon! What better way to kick off the typing than as a symbol for martial arts itself? It’s a clever little reference that I didn’t catch until recently (and I’m a little ashamed that it took this long).
I’m genuinely impressed that Game Freak got me to like a monkey. There’s a narrow window of primates I find impressive, and Mankey fits in snugly with my standards. Kudos, you giant angry Tribble!
Two Thumbs Up!
In the middle of writing this review, I found a beautiful screenshot from the Anime. Look at how bizarre Mankey appears when too much definition is put in its arms and legs:
It’s so gross, but also downright hilarious to look at. Why did the artist need to give a grouchy fluff ball such fabulous limbs?!
While Mankey won me over with its silly charm, Primeape… unfortunately does not.
The biggest reason shouldn’t come as a surprise if you’ve read my previous articles. Primeape is the end of the line for Mankey, when it feels more like a middle-stage evolution. With only a couple minor changes, it’s virtually the same thing as before. So far, only Dugtrio has managed to make lightning strike twice with a copy-paste job.
It’s a real shame, because I would treat Primeape differently if it was the pre-evolution to something else. Imagine if Mankey eventually became this magnificent beast in a similar fashion to feeble Weedle growing into the killer Beedrill. Until it reaches that stage, however, it only gains hairless limbs (and loses the tail because it’s an ape now, harhar). Primeape would be a hilarious evolution in that context, acting as a cop-out before the real punchline of the joke.
Instead, Primeape is just “Worse Mankey” in my eyes. I hate that it lost its tail. I can’t stand the boring humanlike feet. The plain black bracelets don’t add any extra flair to the design like they think they’re doing.
The one thing I do like about Primeape is its boxing glove-shaped hands. I’ve seen brawler characters where the artist(s) simply slapped on bright red boxing gloves and called it a day. Depending on the rest of the character’s design, they can stick out like a sore thumb and feel out of place. Primeape, however, approaches the concept as an organic shape that its hands naturally take. It communicates the boxer motif without resorting to literal boxing gloves being tacked on to its design.
Update:
Years later, it has occurred to me that Poliwhirl (two articles later) uses this idea. I don’t know why it took so long to connect the dots, but here we are. It only adds another strike against Primeape in this review.
It’s too bad this refreshing take on an old symbol has only ever been used on “Worse Mankey” (at least in the Pokémon universe). I’d love to see it reappear on another character with a little more effort behind it.
As for its Pokédex entries, Primeape… is still Mankey, but somehow “angrier.” The only difference is that it can spontaneously die from an overload of stress. An interesting detail that was added in Sun Version, but it’s nothing that really redeems the character, either.
There’s nothing wrong with designing a creature that grows up into a marginally enhanced version of itself. My argument isn’t that a Pokémon must undergo a dramatic metamorphosis by its final form. But when there are so many Pokémon that manage to toss something different into their designs, change up their body shape, or do anything other than “The artists just made it bald in a couple spots,” Primeape is a truly dire evolution to Mankey.
TRASH
