Mudkip is the Best Pokemon

TLDR:  Mudkip is the best.  ‘Nuff said.

Which is the best Pokemon? We here at At The Buzzer do not take this question lightly, as you have seen the past few days. There are so many of them now that this question requires a ton of research to answer, and as you also may have seen, we often draw from our own experiences, and biases, to come to a conclusion.

First, let us define what “best” means.

Mudkip vs all the pokemon

Both Shaun and Jason defined “best” as the Pokemon that has the most bad-ass qualities and capabilities of human harm.  Their (losing) entries are Metagross and Mewtwo.  We’ll get to that in a moment.

Chris chose a bit of a different definition – in his scenario, while Piplup is capable of killing you, he allows you to live.  He is effectively an overlord.  I find myself unable to call his entry a complete loss.  More on that in a moment.

Let me explain – while evaluating their entries for the best Pokemon, since they largely chose to imply that the best Pokemon would have direct influence over our lives, I assumed they were no longer within the video game.  All of the disbelief I suspend in order to play the games has been unsuspended.  It can even take off the dunce cap.  Additionally, in the case of Mewtwo and Metagross I decided to assume that based on the way they were analyzed in their respective blog posts, they were at war with the human race.  Not an unreasonable assumption – I’m pretty sure if they were mauling hordes of humans, the armed forces would get involved.

Mudkip vs. Piplup: Long live the king

First, Piplup.  In the real world, it would just not be possible for him to generate the water within his body to create an adequate “hydro pump”, or for his beak to grow five times its size.  That doesn’t matter.  He would become the human overlord anyway.  However, he wouldn’t be a tyrannical overlord, it would be more of a symbiotic relationship as shown in this diagram:

Mudkip vs. Mewtwo: The power of science

Now, lets talk about Mewtwo.  This “most badass Pokemon of them all” is well known for his movie introduction in 1998, Pokemon: The First Movie – Mewtwo Strikes Back.  The movie was an incredible display of power for this Pokemon, being quite relentless and effectively unbeatable.  In fact, he only really gets hit once during this movie.

Oh hang on a minute…  he got hit in this movie?  Wait, you say he’s actually been beaten by other Pokemon?  How is he the best Pokemon, even using your own definition?  Hmm…

Anyway, on to the analysis.  As mentioned, in this movie he does perform quite adequately in battle, but the fact that he was struck in the movie is quite telling.  If he were to suddenly decide he wants to destroy the human race, the human race would fight back…  and win.  Even in the Pokemon world it has been proven that Mewtwo can be caught off guard.

According to the U.S. Census, the total world population at the time of posting is over 7 billion people.  For lack of a better resource, I used the Wikipedia article, “List of countries by number of military and paramilitary personnel” to come up with a starting point on the total members of the resistance.  Based on the incomplete list, the current worldwide active military personnel totals to over 20 million.  Of the remaining 6.98 billion people, I assumed that roughly 5% would flip the fight-or-flight response coin and come up with fight, which should be drastically low-balling – or conservative, as we say in the business.   Based on statistics of a Gallup, NM poll in 2009, roughly 39% of US households have a gun.  The average persons per household in the US was 2.59 in 2009.  Based on my math, there are probably around 72.5 million armed people in the world who would be willing to face off against this threat to humankind.  72.5 million people…  against one.  How many do you think will catch him off guard?

War of attrition aside, lets examine Mewtwo’s battle capacity.  He is quite effective in battle, but we’re in the real world now, and any time you do work on your environment, you use up energy.  Even if it is using the mind.  I have no doubt that he does have quite a powerful mind, and he has become quite efficient at using it, but the laws of physics do not bend at this level.  There is proof in the linked video that Mewtwo is lifting at least 9 Tauros – it is difficult to estimate the distance, but it seems fair to say that it would be at least 20 ft based on the Team Rocket members throwing Pokeballs from a nearby cliff.  Using the average mass of a bull to estimate the mass of a Tauros, the total potential energy stored in the Tauros by Mewtwo’s telekinetic powers is about 157 kcalories, and that was just roughly 10 seconds of his day.  Back on the war of attrition, he is now expected to do things like this frequently and with no resting periods.  If he does this once every 5 minutes (probably would have to do it more often in war), he would burn almost 1900 kcal an hour – over 15,000 kcal in an eight-hour work day, and war doesn’t have a punch clock.  Has anyone ever actually seen Mewtwo eat?  My guess is he doesn’t have the diet to sustain this kind of activity.  Not to mention lifting a few Tauros would seem like a cakewalk compared to all-out war.

Lets assume that he is by some means able to get the food necessary to perform these minor attacks – in engineering, fatigue failure is described as failure that occurs after many repetitions of alternating loads.  In this war, he is going to use a ton of energy going from attacking, to attacking a different way, to attacking, to attacking a different way, and so on and so forth.  In my opinion, there is just no way that any brain of human-like intelligence, regardless of being superpowered, can handle that kind of load without fatigue failure (i.e. it is going to break and shut down).

So by Jason’s own rubric for analysis, Mewtwo is not the best Pokemon:  he would be both incapable of being a badass (unless he was also wolfing down a bunch of Krispy Kreme burgers) and defeated even if he was.  It’s science.

Mudkip vs. Metagross: Fear incarnate

Jason is also quick to point out that Shaun is “clueless” and a “heretic” when it comes to choosing the best Pokemon, when in actuality Shaun’s choice of the best Pokemon is easily a million times more frightening to me (a seemingly appealing trait when choosing the best).  That being said, there are a few things to note:

• Off topic, but on Metagross’ flight capabilities: it turns out Shaun was right.  Jason pointed out that Metagross cannot fly, and it is true Metagross is incapable of using the move Fly in or out of battle.  However, he is capable of using the move Magnet Rise, which enables him to levitate using electromagnetism for five turns, and cannot be hurt by ground moves.  Yes, levitation is different from flying, but it is also important to point out that the Pokedex entry for Metagross in the Heart Gold and Soul Silver games reads: “It folds its four legs when flying. Its four brains are said to be superior to a supercomputer.”  Research team ftw.

• Being of the human race, we have the proud distinction of being the only living species who has harnessed the power of fire. We know how to make a fire. We also know how to put out a fire. Ironically, if we chose to set Metagross on fire, then tried to put it out with dirt, both actions would hurt it. Somehow I’m not wetting my pants.  However, I realize that this is not a very realistic scenario.

Realistically, Metagross is incredibly frightening – few people know that he has a mouth on the underside of the main body that he uses to devour prey.  He has four brains that is said to be equal or greater to the intelligence of a supercomputer, with the added benefit of having willpower and manipulable limbs.  Add it all up and you have what Shaun only mentioned in passing – a machine on-par with those found in the Terminator movies.  On the other hand, having supercomputer “intelligence” isn’t really all that impressive, as a supercomputer isn’t really intelligent – it is nothing more than obedient.  It cannot do more than what it is told to do.  This might be why they haven’t already taken over the world.

Moving on.  So Metagross uses electromagnetism to navigate the skies.  My physics education never had the opportunity to even get rusty on electrical stuff like this (see my post on the antenna regarding signals), but from what I do recall it would seem that Metagross would electrically align particles within his own body to attract or repel nearby objects – this means that while he would be able to hover well, and with the supercomputer like mind, very likely capable of achieving great altitude.  However, this is also something that could be used against him.  All it would take to beat him is to encourage him to use this ability nearby a magnetic device that would cause a thermite reaction on contact – no more Metagross.

Anyway, this is why both of their choices fail to measure up on their own rubrics.  I was able to find a real threat to humanity based on my initial assumptions, however.  Are you ready for this?

Mudkip vs. Pikachu: Game over

That’s right.  In my opinion, if Pokemon were suddenly made real tomorrow, the biggest threat to the human race would be Pikachu.  Why?  First of all, he doesn’t have the problem Mewtwo has in that there is only one – there can be several hundred, thousand, even millions of Pikachu in the world under certain circumstances.  And you know what?  There would be, and that would be our downfall.

When Pokemon was originally coming out in 1996, I had already been excited for months.  Was I excited to be playing the game?  No, I was excited to have a Pikachu of my own.  I had been reading the comics that came with my subscription of Nintendo Power for almost half a year, if I recall, which turned out to be comics of the first few episodes of the anime.  Pikachu was the one Pokemon that I had wanted at the time.  And what would happen if suddenly Pokemon were real?  You better damn well believe I’m getting my own Pikachu.

But that’s the problem.  I’m not the only one.  Hell, some people will get several.  Several people will get several.  Those several Pikachu will start breeding.  Suddenly those several people getting several Pikachu will have several several Pikachu.  Do we know how to spay/neuter Pokemon?  Will PETA even allow us to find out?  Lets do the research.  In the meantime, several more Pikachu have been hatched, since it only takes 2,560 steps to hatch one.  How much food do they eat?  How much food is left?

Before we even know it, resources are scarce – some Pikachu will remain loyal to their trainers, but some are going to outlive theirs.  The rogue Pikachu will likely form an alliance of their own.  Now the loyal Pikachu have to choose between their trainers and their species.  For a while, the trainers will have the Pikachu battle, but eventually the Pikachu will be picking fights with humans in the battle over resources.  And guess what?  Cuteness is going to win.  I know I’m not going to have the heart to fight one.

In the end, it isn’t the oppressive capability of the Pokemon that will cause 2012.  It will be the silent apocalypse that we create for ourselves.

Recap: Mudkip is the best Pokemon

So in conclusion, Mudkip is the best.  ‘Nuff said.

…  I don’t know what you’re talking about, my argument is perfect.  A + B + C = shut up, Mudkip wins.