Misty’s Psyduck and Iris’ Axew

[Paulisthebest]

Both of these female companions of Ash have Pokemon that are in their 1st stage, have developmental problems but when the going gets tough breaks out this god-like endurance and power to overtake their opponents.

I was watching an old episode from Pokemon Master Quest yesterday “Just Add Water.” The one where the underwater Water Gym Leader Dorian battles Misty and Ash, at the end of the episode Psyduck goes “psycho” and beats TR with its Confusion and Psychic attacks. Earlier in the episode the poor duck almost drowns and rushes to the surface.

It got me to thinking about how Misty wants to be the best Water type Pokemon Master and Iris wanting to be a Dragon Master but both have Pokemon that have issues.

Misty had some of the most BS wins not saying Iris hasn’t had her fair share but let’s just look at these two Pokemon in particular. Similar to Gohan from DBZ, these Pokemon are almost useless until they get ticked off or beat up. In Psyduck’s case it needs to get headache and for Axew well it needs to take a beating.

Outrage/Giga Impact has been Axew’s power moves along with Dragon Rage while Psychic moves are Psyduck’s best moves.

Axew had trouble with Dragon Rage at first but eventually controlled it. Psyduck can’t swim nor stay underwater…

Axew wants to evolve to its final stage and even though one episode almost had Psyduck evolve in the Orange Islands it was a dud. Iris barely trains the tiny dragon but somehow it has the ability to beat nearly impossible odds and win matches.

So, which of these Pokemon has the worst development?

 

[Karamazov]

Mod note: Before you post, please remember to debate about the Pokemon, not their Trainers. You can talk about Iris and Misty, sure, but the thread is about Psyduck and Axew, which is what the discussion should be focused on.

 

[Chiss]

Psyduck was more annoying. At least Kibago was cute.

 

[Hidden Mew]

I'm going to go with Axew. Both Pokemon do have deus ex machina moves/powers that have given their trainers undeserved/cheap victories at times, but Axew just bothers me a lot more. Aside from learning to control Dragon Rage, it hasn't really earned any of the other moves its learned and even then, Dragon Rage hasn't really helped it out that much in battle. Plus, given the reactions to Axew learning both Outrage and Giga Impact from Iris and other characters, I think that they're trying to make it look like Axew has come a long way, despite doing pretty much nothing but be a cute hair accessory and when faced against an opponent that is stronger than itself, it can only do significant damage with a new deus ex machina move. If it needs to have these overpowered moves to do anything to a strong Pokemon, then I don't think that it counts as development, especially when Axew hasn't used Outrage or Giga Impact since it first used those moves, as far as I know at least. Despite the overpowered moves, Axew is still no closer to evolving than it was when Iris first got it. It's still pretty weak, so it easily has the worst development out of the two.

At least with Psyduck, they weren't trying to make it look like it had developed every time it won with its psychic powers and it was more comedy relief more often than not anyway. I don't think that they were trying to develop Psyduck during the course of the original series considering there were very little, if any, attempts to train its psychic powers so that it wouldn't need to get a big enough headache. They tried to teach Psyduck how to swim in a Chronicles episode, but that was still primarily for comedy relief and if I recall correctly, wasn't even necessary to resolve the conflict of that particular episode by a certain point. It made sense to keep Psyduck in the comedic role, although having it actually evolve into Golduck would have been awesome, so I don't think that they really went for development for Psyduck.

 

[Karamazov]

Surprise surprise, look who's coming to BW's rescue.

I'm going with Psyduck; Axew did work hard to learn Dragon Rage, and that storyline ended well. And although the rest of his development is rushed, confusing or bad, it's better than nothing. Which is my issue with Misty's Psyduck: he was a funny joke character throughout the show, but there wasn't enough effort put into making it a great battler or changing its personality or views. Psyduck could have had added quite a bit more to the show (for better or for worse) if Psyduck got more of a storyline and some growth.

We know what Axew's story is supposed to be: he grows strong and evolves. But what about Psyduck? If he got development, what would the end result be for him?

I'm a believer that a bad (or better said, awkward) development is better than no story at all.

 

[weeaboo_girl84]

*blink*

Psyduck has less votes than Kibago..........why exactly? Sure Kibago does VERY little to deserve his victories, but BSduck has done absolutely nothing and it's been shown countless times that he's a complete wimp.....

How the heck does Psyduck even manage to get a headache almost every time he battles? Sounds too convenient if you ask me.

 

[Caseydia]

I never understood Psyduck's strength back in OS. Whenever it used confusion, it's power always beated it's opponent. Since it barely ever was trained I never knew confusion could take out your opponents so easily. I did however didn't like this. I wanted to see more regular battles with it without the use of confusion all the time but that barely happened. But it couldn't swim for crying out loud and that made it even worse.

Now with Axew is alittle bit of a mystery. It's understandable with it's wins. But just like Psyduck it's barely trained and always seems like it's the joke of the day. But it's battles were atleast more enjoyable and less sue-ish.

 

[Sith Droideka]

While Psyduck's development (or lack thereof) was indeed bad, Axew's was worse. "How, Sith?" you may ask, and I'll respond, "Simple, [insert your name here]. Iris' quest has actually had a major focus, and she is pretty much a co-protagonist (although not like Dawn), so the worrying deus ex machina of Axew's learning, and having it work from that point on, is worse than the comedy relief character from a sidekick never actually learning anything."

In other words, Psyduck is obvious comedy relief. Axew is not. Therefore, Psyduck never gaining character development, especially in the early show, is not that surprising. Axew, on the other hand, wants to be a Haxorus. And yet, his/her "progress" consists of learning Dragon Rage (not too bad) to learning Outrage and Giga Impact (seriously?). Without, you know, evolution.

"They are, however, both DEMs. I'll agree with that."

 

[pokemon fan 132]

They aren't even comparable. Psyduck main role was to serve as comic relief, no one really expected that he will receive some serious development. Writers never intended for him to go through some notable growth, learn new techniques and evolve during Misty tenure on show with main reason behind existence being to provide humor, tension and add fuel on fire when irritating its trainer giving extra spice to dynamics. And boy does he did that job well(i miss that duck).

Not to mention it was established from start how Misty Psyduck is anything but ordinary coming of as extremely clueless and dense, giving out impression that hes completely useless until headache comes on scene unleashing its true strength. Strength which happened to be lot more powerful than we saw from ordinary Psyduck with one shot knock outs being believable if we presume how headache increase his telekinetic powers by large margin .

Making him delicate case in itself that every trainer would probably have trouble in pulling out his strength on surface, with Misty several times trying to teach him how to battle or swim in chronicles but with no success. Granted if writers intended to treat Psyduck seriously it could allow for some fantastic development reflecting Misty growth as trainer, but as of right now he was always treated more like bringer of comedy and secondary mascot .

Axew on other hand was meant to serve as catalyst through which Iris would grow as trainer with his growth and evolution eventually serving as testament to that. Yet writers royally screwed things over collecting dust in Iris hair ever since Dragonite was caught.

He barely developed over course of BW series with only believable growth coming through learn of dragon rage. After that he didn't showed any real indication of growing forward, and learning some of most powerful attacks out of nowhere like Outrage and Gigaimpact without build up or training prior to that making things even worse. That wasn't something i would call development but more writers shortcut to have pokemon come to some point without much effort and work put into it which is bad writing. At least Psyduck lack of development can be justified through primary purpose of serving as comic relief, and obviously smaller experience in writing in anime early years.

But with Axew there is no justification behind poor treatment he got during this two years. He almost never trains with those mini duels against Scraggy giving out impression like they are more recreation than actual training. He still acts relatively insecure and incapable of releasing his true power through battles unless he is put under bad situation resolving issue through plot armor and his dream of evolving in powerful Haxorous will likely stay only that. Just a dream which never got fulfilled.

Perhaps i may sound like hypocrite with this but regardless of Psyduck DEM wins and barely any development which i felt was missed opportunity im less disappointed, because i knew he wasn't intended to develop not expecting alot from it.

However from Axew i expected a lot. Because he was supposed to grow forward with Iris serving as parameter through which her path toward becoming dragon master would be measured. He was supposed to evolve, go through training, battling and growth just to witness how most of this didn't happened remaining at static point.

So in my opinion Axew got worse treatment than Psyduck. As awkward as this may sound.

 

[weeaboo_girl84]

They aren't even comparable.

Yes they are, Misty fan 132.

 

[Mareepy]

Axew, the reason is that Psyduck is never meant to be a powerhouse or a strong battler, and he doesn't have a goal to prove anything. Psyduck is just a comedy relief.

Axew have the goal to evolve and prove Iris' progress to become a Dragon Master, but he has proven nothing till now, learning Outrage and Giga Impact out of no where is no development. He dreamt of evolving but did not progress at all.

 

[weeaboo_girl84]

"But hes just COMEDIC RELIEF" isn't a good excuse for why Psyduck was handled horribly. Look at Oshawott, for example. He doesn't get any random undeserved power ups and he's mostly comedic relief.

Kibago never said he wanted to evolve either. He simply had a dream about evolving, and woke up. I don't remember Axew being asked if he wanted to develop and evolve.

I'm not defending Kibago or anything, I just don't get why people are so quick to call Axew out and say "oh but Psyduck is fine"

 

[CynthiaLover]

I'd have to say Axew. Now, I'm not going to go down the path of "Psyduck is comic relief and Axew is not", because, obviously, that's not a good enough argument. So here's my argument.

The early days of the Pokemon anime were never really fleshed out a huge amount to begin with. Many of the main characters' Pokemon barely got any character development. Examples include Brock's Geodude and Onix, Ash's Pidgeotto, and Misty's Starmie. We know very little about a number of the main cast's crew in terms of personality and characteristics. For example, the most we know about Pidgeotto's character is that it would follow Ash's instructions to the letter and challenge any foe, regardless of danger, upon command. That says something, but not a lot. Psyduck is along those lines. While both Misty and Iris have had clear goals (Water master and Dragon master, respectively), Misty's has been sidelined a lot more, while Iris' is the focal point of her mission. That said, let's keep going.

Psyduck was, yes, I'll say it, a comic relief character, but so is Oshawott and TR (at least during AG and DP). That being said, comic relief doesn't define Psyduck perfectly. Let's look at the Psyduck species first. Psyducks are well known for having headaches and those headaches, in turn, can open up strange events. Since the Psyduck family like is very capable of learning Psychic attacks, and we've all see how their headaches can create various outcomes, it's only natural that they use Psyduck's bad headache problem to begin with as a form of, I guess you could say "development". However, as I said before, the OS was vague with character development to begin with, and with Misty's bad tendency to be a cheerleader more often than not, it's only natural that her goal would be more heavily pushed aside in favor of Ash's. Brock had the same treatment; it wasn't until the end of DP that his breeder goal evolved int a Pokemon doctor goal, his, you could say, true path. Misty's goal was often overshadowed by Ash's goal, as being a Pokemon Master the whole purpose of the games and anime to begin with. Backtracking to Psyduck, because it was poorly developed to begin with, it was only natural of the writers to use the Psyduck species natural chronic headaches as a device to make Misty's Psyduck seem "special". So, in Psyduck's case, not only was it comic relief, but the fact is the species natural headache problem was more believable, it would have the uncanny tendency to "unleash" it's special powers when the headache got so bad it caused some sort of effect on the quacker's brain, thus keeping in connection to the species natural tendency.

Axew, on the other hand, is Iris' progress meter and focal point to her mission. Many years have passed since the early anime, and the Pokemon world has gotten much more complex and sophisticated. However, it appears bad writing is still present. Axew has had very little focus, despite being the main focus of Iris' mission. The wimp of a tusked dragon has gotten as much development as Geodude, Onix, or Starmie. In short, very little. While, yes, Axew is young, so is Scraggy, and he's proven to be far more capable and developed than his "big brother" has. Axew is the very reason Iris is on her journey, and so far, the closest he's come to achieving both his and her dreams is the dream he had back in "Dreams by the Yard Full". As we can plainly see, with the BW series starting to wind down, Axew has remained a living hair ornament since the very beginning. Out of all of Axew's learned moves, only Dragon Rage is somewhat believable. Iris and Axew actually tried to master it, only to have fail multiple times until that one desperate attempt where Axew finally pulled it off. Truthfully, I still miss the "Dragon Sneeze" joke. Moving on, Axew's other learned moves: Outrage and Giga Impact, are far less believable as a form of development. Both moves he pulled out of nowhere during a desperate situation. While, yes, other Pokemon have learned moves at critical times (Buizel's Water Pulse, Staraptor's Close Combat, Gliscor's Giga Impact, etc), they, at least, worked very hard to achieve their goals on behalf of their Trainer. Axew just magically pulled out two ridiculously powerful moves out of thin air with little training and effort. We haven't see these two moves used since then, as Axew has, once again, returned to his position as a living hair accessory. Looking at the Axew species, while yes, they are capable of learning those moves, they are not that ridiculously overpowered so that learning those moves actually has some form of benefit. While both the Pysduck and Axew species are fairly weak, at least the fact about Psyduck's headaches make a better path for such an event to occur vs. randomly using a powerful move at the right moment. There was no development before and after those moves came to be, unlike Psyduck, where Misty would, sometimes, purposely try to provoke a headache to "unlock" that hidden power. Iris and Axew have done little to deserve such honors, despite that Iris' goal has been more heavily defined over Misty's.

So, long story short, Axew has had the worst development compared to Psyduck. At least, in Psyduck's defense, the anime was very bad at character development and personality identifications during the early years. In this more well-honed time of development and sophistication, Iris and Axew have no excuse in being the worst traveling companions to date. That's my two cents, feel free to spend it however you like.

 

[Hidden Mew]

"But hes just COMEDIC RELIEF" isn't a good excuse for why Psyduck was handled horribly. Look at Oshawott, for example. He doesn't get any random undeserved power ups and he's mostly comedic relief.

The writers have more experience at handling comedic relief Pokemon now more than they did with Psyduck, so that probably helps. It might also help that Oshawott doesn't have a special feature that unleashes a large amount of power like Psyduck does with its big headaches causing it to use psychic powers.

Kibago never said he wanted to evolve either. He simply had a dream about evolving, and woke up. I don't remember Axew being asked if he wanted to develop and evolve.

I'm not defending Kibago or anything, I just don't get why people are so quick to call Axew out and say "oh but Psyduck is fine"

Axew looked pretty happy at seeing itself evolve through its dreams if I recall correctly and if it was dreaming about evolving into a Haxorus, I imagine that it wants to evolve. I know that dreams aren't always about what we want and Axew hasn't been asked if it wants to evolve, but in this case, given Axew's reaction when it saw itself evolve and it hasn't shown any dislike towards the idea of evolution, I think it's fine to assume that it wants to evolve.

For me, it's not so much that Psyduck is fine in this comparison, but rather that they didn't even try to make Psyduck develop. Admittedly, this does tie into being a comedy relief Pokemon, but they weren't interested in making Psyduck look like it had become stronger over the course of the original series or make it an important mark of Misty's development as a trainer. They were settled on using it for comedy relief, which isn't a problem per say, and to be honest, they weren't really that interested in character development during the original series to begin with, especially with the Pokemon. That's not to say that there wasn't any character development in the original series as that would be a bit of a stretch, but most of the Pokemon didn't have much personality going for it. With Psyduck specifically, it didn't have any development, so aside from a couple of the cheap wins thanks to its deus ex machina powers, as well as where it didn't evolve into an awesome Golduck, I can't really get that upset with how Psyduck was handled since there wasn't any development for its character to begin with and they were perfectly content with keeping it in the comedy relief role.

While I don't think that Axew has had development either, the key difference here is that they're trying to make it look like it has by giving it cheap/overpowered moves like Outrage and Giga Impact to make it look strong, despite how it's basically become a cute hair accessory for Iris at this point, and that just annoys me much more than Psyduck ever did, especially when Axew is nowhere closer to evolving than it was when it was first hatched, which makes Axew's development far worse than Psyduck's non-existent development.

 

[lordbryan567]

Psyduck was all out cute and adorable. Axew was just plain stupid. imo, psyduck added this spicy flavour to the series while axew just was sooo sour. sure, psyduck is a little dim-witted but that makes him cute and likable. axew ACTS cute, which throws everyone off. what i cant stand most if a pokemon acting cute. even politoad was cute, it was in hhis nature. axew is just a crappy excuse to copy politoad imo, which ended in an utter failure. so psyduck in the end will still be everyone's favourite, be it nostalgia or logic

 

[Owain]

Psyduck, he got a headache everytime the battle was important, and never developped, and it even failed on its own purpose of being comedic relief, I wasn't amused by it once.

 

[Paulisthebest]

Psyduck, he got a headache everytime the battle was important, and never developped, and it even failed on its own purpose of being comedic relief, I wasn't amused by it once.

Kind of reminds me of that old show that used to come on Fox Kids or FoxBox; Ultimate Muscle. Kid Muscle only won a match when he got the mark of Ultimate Muscle on his forehead then he'd beat the crap out of his opponents like Psyduck. But before that mark showed up he was as weak and useless as can be and the "comic relief" was apparent. Mainly annoying but you knew what it was for.

 

[Owain]

And when even what he was intended for fails, it just seems sad.


Axew worked hard and actually developed.

 

[Paulisthebest]

Axew worked hard and actually developed.

Not really sure if I agree with that considering the only kind of training it did were those practice matches with Scraggy that would always end in a tie when it used "Dragon Sneeze" if I remember correctly, it may have won one of those matches after it mastered Dragon Rage.

That match with Golet in the Don George Tournament was just a cheap win from learning Outrage (which we've never seen used again since that match). And learning Giga Impact against Cynthia's Garchomp was another example.

So, really I don't see where it grew or worked hard. The only legit example would be mastering Dragon Rage.

Other than that, it just sits in Iris' hair.

 

[Perish Song]

But... Axew's just a baby. I thought the whole point is that he's still kiddish. Psyduck was just sort of a moron.

They don't seem to have very similar roles at all.