#352: Kecleon

3D art of a regular Kecleon. 

So... I'm back, I guess? I can't promise I'll post as frequently as I used to, but at least I've got a little bit more time on my hands now, so let's dive into the next review.

Kecleon is one of those one-off Pokémon that is... not interesting by any means. It is common knowledge that most species of chameleons have the ability to change their skin color to blend in with its surroundings, and Kecleon is no different. It works as follows: chameleon skin has a superficial layer that contains pigments, and by changing the space between the guanine crystals (guanine is one of the four nucleobases found in DNA and RNA) found in the cells under that layer, a chameleon can easily change its skin color. It's a matter of light reflection: if the space between the guanine crystals is altered, the wavelength of light reflected off the crystals is altered as well, causing the chameleon to take on a different color. The only flaw Kecleon has is that it is unable to change the color of the red zigzag pattern on its belly, making it somewhat visible even if the rest of its body can't be seen. Its 95% invisibility suffices for sneaking up on prey unnoticed and ensnaring it with its long pink tongue, though, so Kecleon has nothing to complain about.

Reddy and Greeny in "The Kecleon Caper", under the ownership of Madison and
Alexa. I wonder how Madison came up with the name 'Reddy', because the purple
Kecleon is obviously... well, purple. 

The only thing that confuses me is the purple Kecleon seen in the anime and the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games. Kecleon is usually green, and shiny Kecleon only has its stripe color changed to blue rather than its whole body to a completely different color scheme. It's a bland shiny and I had rather we got an official purple shiny Kecleon than the current shiny, but alas... purple Kecleon is only observable in the anime, and not even in the Hoenn saga. Kecleon was introduced in "The Kecleon Caper", which is the 48th episode of the fourth season and still takes place in Johto rather than Hoenn, making Kecleon the first Gen. III Pokémon to be seen in the anime. Despite introducing a brand new Pokémon at the time, the episode seems to be one of the most generic ones now that I'm reading through the summary: there's nothing more to it than Ash, Brock and Misty showing off their Pokémon to two strangers and rescuing their Kecleon from Team Rocket. One other way to admire a purple Kecleon is in the Nintendo DS games of the Mystery Dungeon installment, where an old purple Kecleon is seen running the Kecleon Shop with a younger green one. They don't do anything other than selling you shit or buying shit from you, so I guess the purple Kecleon serves no other purpose than being a small aesthetic shake-up.

Kecleon as seen in the Nintendo DS games of the
Pokémon Mystery Dungeon installment. Instead of
beige nails and a beige pettern running across its face,
these features are now mint green.  

And it's not as if Kecleon is a highly competitively viable Pokémon, either. It currently resides in the NU tier, one of the lowest tiers for fully evolved Pokémon on Smogon, and it genuinely takes a genius to make its moveset work. A base stat total of 440 seems decent to work with, but Kecleon's base 120 special defense takes up most of it. I think Kecleon has no business being so specially defensive - it doesn't look defensive by any means; on the contrary, it looks a little like a pushover. Aside from that, though, its special defense is hardly backed up by its HP, which is mediocre at best. Kecleon is also really slow and therefore it has to rely on priority moves like Sucker Punch, which got a nerf in Sun and Moon and only has 5 PP - 8 when you use a PP Max or three PP Ups on it. Its base 90 attack stat means that all of the EVs you have to invest in this Pokémon go to its HP and attack, leaving practically no room for boosting any other stat. The only thing you can do is to run a Brave nature (lowers speed, increases attack) over an Adamant one (lowers special attack, increases attack), just so you can use special moves if necessary. Kecleon has a wide movepool, sporting Sucker Punch, Brick Break, Rock Slide, Return, Drain Punch, Aqua Tail, Iron Tail, Fire Punch, Ice Punch, Thunder Punch, Fake Out and Knock Off on the physical side of the spectrum. For special moves, it has access to popular ones like Ice Beam, Blizzard. Fire Blast, Flamethrower, Thunderbolt, Thunder, Grass Knot, Shadow Ball and even Psybeam and Ancient Power. You can even throw Magic Coat into the mix in order for you to reflect certain status moves back to the opponent. The good thing is that Kecleon can get STAB from all of its attacking moves, no matter which ones you choose, because its hidden ability Protean makes it change into the type of the move it's about to use (e.g. if it uses Flamethrower, it becomes a fire type). That combined with a Life Orb allows Kecleon to hit fairly hard, although there are genuinely much better options for you to choose from.

Is it bad that I think the purple Kecleon is so much more interesting than regular
Kecleon?

Here's the thing, though... while I was pretty negative about Kecleon throughout this article, I don't hate it at all. The problem here is that there's nothing about its flavor or in-game utility that makes it stand out to me, although I have to say I really like its design. It's not as colorful as I hoped it would have been, but Game Freak made that up to some extent by giving us that purple Kecleon, if only sporadically. In fact, I haven't seen it since the Mystery Dungeon games, and I low-key feel kinda sad about that. I always thought Kecleon was weaker than it actually is, being mediocre in almost everything, so I was kind of taken aback when I saw its decent base attack stat. Okay, maybe 'being taken aback' is too strong a term to describe what happened, but at least you can say I frowned.

Long story short, I do like Kecleon, but I wish Game Freak had done a little bit more to make it at least more viable. Now it seems like everyone is forgetting about Kecleon, while it definitely doesn't deserve such a fate.

Rating: 3.5/5