#119 Seaking

This guy was angrier the last time I saw him.

There’s a lot of boring, generic fish Pokemon. In Generation 1, Seaking is easily the worst of the group, because it’s an evolution. Goldeen set the template, and instead of evolving in any meaningful way, Seaking just gets a different coloration, slightly different shape, and a bigger horn. It’s just… boring.

And yet, it somehow became a meme.

Because there’s nothing else to talk about with Seaking!

I just wanted to get out of the way because there’s nothing to Seaking.It’s boring. A (now-ancient) meme from 2007 is the most traction this thing has ever had with anyone, and they had to draw angry eyebrows onto the fish to add to it.

I’ve been staring at this page for hours because after bringing that up I can’t find anything new to talk about. Like, nothing. I only have a series of thoughts that I can’t really form into proper statements. So, I’m going to go ahead and do that. For the rest of this first section, enjoy my first ever stream of consciousness about Seaking.

This is what you get for being so boring!

Seaking is a darker shade of orange than Goldeen. Seaking’s fins have dark spots. The back of Seaking looks like a Butterfree’s wings. Seaking’s horn is commonly depicted as spinning, much like Rhydon’s horn in the Pokemon Stadium games. Seaking is fat. Seaking has Goldeen’s lips. Seaking has two sharp fangs. I wonder if Seaking is secretly a vampire. I bet if Seaking was a vampire it’d be cooler. What could they add to Seaking to make it more vampiric?

First it has to stop jobbing to Poliwrath.

Vampires are cool. Vampires are also immortal. Like, real immortal. Not that fake immortal, like a lot of people like to claim. I think Hitler said he was immortal at some point. That obviously wasn’t true. I think. Maybe the plot of Wolfenstein has some basis in reality though, and Hitler is still alive out there. Would it sitll be considered living if he’s in a robot suit? Or is that a form of death. I think he had some voice clips in 3D.

He was speaking English though. Maybe it was just a lookalike. A stand-in. What if that wasn’t actually a robot suit, and was just power armor. That would’ve been insane. It’s a good thing BJ Blazkowicz saved the day on that one. What if Hitler was a vampire? What could have stopped him then?

A lot of things, probably.

How do we really know that Hitler wasn’t a vampire anyway. There’s so many ridiculous versions of vampires that have cropped up through the annals of history that I sometimes wonder if there are real vampires. Just like, immune to sunlight. And don’t need to drink blood.

Like, what if everything we know about vampires is wrong? What if all of us are vampires? What if the only non-vampires are the people who can’t handle sunlight, and have to drink blood to survive?

What if Seaking was a vampire?

And what if Mozart was still alive?

DID YOU KNOW?

Once again displaying a staggering amount of laziness, Seaking is just a couple more goldfish put together to make a new one. I know that might sound like a weirdly specific thing to complain about, but a lot of future fish Pokemon are basically variations on their animal. Aside from the horn that isn’t even that big, Seaking is not.

Fancy!

Unlike Goldeen’s basis, the stuff that Seaking comes from is unfortunately significantly less pretty. This time the species of fish that Seaking’s body is based off of is called the Azuma Nishiki. They’re a type of Veil Tailed Goldfish, just like the Tosakin that Goldeen is based on. Unfortunately, they don’t look much like Seaking, aside from their shape.

That’s because their coloring is likely based off of a second fish. The Shubunkin.

I can see the resemblance from here!

And then there was a horn. And some sharp teeth. It’s still got that fluttery wispy tail though, making me think it’d be difficult for it to attain any sort of real speed and actually do well in a fight.

Seaking is useless. Don’t use it if you can help it. There’s so, so many better Water types. Go find a real Goldfish, and play Pokemon with that instead. It won’t affect you in battle, and it looks cooler!

USING SEAKING IN BATTLE

stats via pokemondb

I literally just said don’t use Seaking. What are you doing reading this? Stop!

If you’re just skimming though, I’ll go ahead and tell you how to use Seaking, should you want to. Seaking still has the wonderful ability Lightning Rod, and an okay-ish amount of bulk. It’s no longer got access to Eviolite, thanks to being fully evolved though, so you’ll want to attach a Life Orb to it for extra power. Generally, the sames moves as before work too. Aqua Tail or Waterfall for STAB, Megahorn, Knock Off, and Drill Run are good options for attacks. If you want to sacrifice coverage for power, Drill Run can be removed in exchange for Return, but I’d rather have Drill run myself. Throw EV’s into Attack and Speed to do the best you can with what little you have at your disposal.

In normal, singles battles, Seaking is phenomenally useless. It has a very low Attack Stat, so its decent-ish coverage combined with Lightning Rod will no longer make it worth considering. I will say though, that it has managed to find some use in Doubles, and the VGC meta in years past. I don’t know much anymore, but thanks to Lightning Rod it can neutralize Electric attacks from your opponents, or even absorb them from your own side for Special Attack boosts to fuel Surf or Ice Beam. In addition, things like Soak, and Horn Drill are nice little wrinkles to its moveset that are completely useless in singles battles.

I don’t know how well it still holds up today, but I can say this much. Don’t use Seaking in singles.

ARBITRARY SCORES

APPEARANCES: 1/5
Dumb. Generic. These are some words that come to mind when discussing Seaking.

DESIGN: 1/5
Awul. Boring. These are some more words that come to mind when discussing Seaking.

BATTLE: 1/5
Seriously. Stats people. A little lesson in minmaxing could have saved Seaking.

WHAT HAS SEAKING: DONE/TO YOU?
I don’t know but I hope it goes away and never returns.

OVERALL: 1/5

Male Seaking still have a slightly larger horn!