Your most sentimental ‘mon(s)

[terashards]

i love hearing the stories behind people’s most sentimental pokemon so i figured i’d ask you all about yours! you can talk about just one or as many as you’d like. maybe there’s a pokemon you’ve had since you were really young and transferred up through every generation, maybe there’s a pokemon traded to you by a close friend, that kind of thing!

i’ll talk about mine later in the thread everyone else go first lol

 

[WholesomeCryptid]

ooh i have a couple pokemon that fit under this category for me! i think though the primary one is Typhlosion, my first ever starter in Heart Gold was a Cyndiquil i nicknamed Blaze that i got very deeply attached to very quickly and that i used to basically solo the entirety of game with by over leveling the crap out of it. Blaze was my best friend and i even managed to get it to level 100. It's really a shame i don't have the cartage Blaze was held on anymore...

Other important pokemon to me include the Zoura you're gifted in B2W2 that led me to developing my love for Zoroark i have now, Banette due to it being a pokemon my older cousin traded to me as a gift, and the Eeveelutions which i was just generally obsessed with as a child (i watched so many eeveelution AMVs hahaha).

 

[staticmoth]

Ditto for sure, I've always liked this lil goo guy and I'm very happy its getting some spotlight with Pokopia!! ;u;

A friend of mine traded me his Azumarill when we were kids and I used it on my first run through of Emerald. I lost touch with this friend ages ago and I lost a bunch of my Pokémon when I moved from Bank to Home, but ABBY the Azumarill survived and I think about him a lot.

This one did not survive the carnage, but my first shiny ever was a Carvanha. I've used Sharpedo on a number of playthroughs of the Hoenn games after this one. I just think its neat.

And Slowpoke for various reasons... its goofy lil face has gotten me through some tough times. c':

 

[Mothmallow]

I'm very attached to snivy for generic first partner of your first game reasons, even if it's not my favorite anymore it's still dear to me. Another Pokémon I'm sentimental about is bayleef, not because I ever used it (actually didn't get a chance until Z-A!) but because I remember catching an episode of the anime as a kid and thinking it was the coolest thing ever. Big part of why I got into the series

 

[Dragonbunsu]

So before I begin, I had half a decade's worth of sentimental mons and memories around 2018 but lost those games and the mons contained within so any individual mons I do mention are essentially just "reincarnations" or reclaims of past mons I lost.

Mawile: I always liked this mon ever since seeing its design once but it wasn't until XY came around when I made one of my many attempts to dip my toes into doing pvp, and Mawile was one of the first mons I actually bred in the XY era who went on to be my most used Mega in most given teams. I remember naming her Onihime (Ogre/Demon Princess or something?) and bestowed the name on the one you catch as part of a sidequest in Z-A. A lot of old friend circles even associate this mon with me to this day.

Primarina: I started with Johto and generally pick Water starters bc I like water as an element in vibe but Popplio line especially struck a connection to me that never faded. I got a lot of flak for preferring them over Sylveon by a number of people but I didn't really care bc Primarina resonated so much with me. Reclaimed as a shiny later last year, and she came with a personality mark to boot. Unfortunately, I no longer remember the name I gave to my original Primarina from Moon so uncertain what to name the reclaim.

Dragonite: Side effect of Johto being my starting game but I always loved this thing's design when I first saw it even before playing the games. When I first played SoulSilver (after somehow stumbling on a copy in Wal-Mart when they shouldn't have been in stock period), I made the decision to impulse buy it since I wanted to experience Gen 4 after returning with White. My memory is mostly a haze but one of the few clear things I did recall was going through the effort of training the Extreme Speed Dratini from the ground up before even facing the Elite Four for some reason. I don't think I'd even try doing that again these days but that turbo grinding is prob why I look at Dragonite fondly.

Deoxys/Jirachi/Starmie/Clefable: Lumping these together bc I'm kind of into outer space and astronomy stuff and these were essentially the first confirmed extraterrestrial mons (or suggested for some). Deoxys and Jirachi had their films to help leave an impression on me even if they were bad but I was awed by Jirachi's cute design and was outright enamored with Deoxys. Starmie and Clefable, I don't remember when they became sentimental for me but chances are it was some past playthroughs I don't recall much of. It's partly why I haven't given up completely on my shiny hunt for Deoxys despite nearing 10k resets.

Kommo-o: This one was more accidental and started via Showdown. I ended up replacing someone mid season in a draft server and didn't have much to work with. I don't remember much but it was mostly half of my wins being because I ended up getting off a Belly Drum + Salac Kommo-o bulldoze sweep without meaning to. Ended up being gifted a shiny Jangmo-o from a friend in my Ultra Sun cart before 2018 but since reclaimed this shiny. Although I never did get around to nicknaming them bc I didn't get a chance to bestow a name on the original (or can't, given it was a trade).

Metagross: I encountered a stray marked Metang in the Polar Biome back in 2024 and decided this was a sign to try ribbon mastering it. I didn't accomplish that (and prob never will, bc Master Rank ribbon is the only one left and uh... there is some complications there) but going around three different regions/games trying to get ribbons on the thing was going to leave an impression in some form. As for their Mark, Alloy's is the Nighttime/Sleepy mark so fitting a lethargic depressive like me gets an equally sleepy mecha.

There is a few others I could list but I cannot really articulate the potential walls of text for that bc its near 4 am for me and idk what I could say for them to do it justice. Honorary mentions: Volcarona, Lugia, Kyogre, Hydreigon, Magearna, Buneary, etc.

 

[Will_of_D]

First time I played Sapphire, my Kyogre was shiny on the very first encounter. I was playing on the school bus with my friend and somehow knew what shinies were and freaked out. I instantly threw my masterball and named my pink Kyogre PINKYO, a Chao name recommendation from Sonic Adventure 2 Battle.

PINKYO will always be near and dear to my heart

 

[Proxima Centauri B]

First time I played Sapphire, my Kyogre was shiny on the very first encounter. I was playing on the school bus with my friend and somehow knew what shinies were and freaked out. I instantly threw my masterball and named my pink Kyogre PINKYO, a Chao name recommendation from Sonic Adventure 2 Battle.

PINKYO will always be near and dear to my heart

Wow that is some luck to have a Legendary be shiny on first encounter(IMO it is worth saving the Master Ball for reasons just like this.)

My sentimental Pokemon is Lugia as the first Pokemon I liked and still do to this day.

 

[RichestAirPirate]

Marshadow.
My first game was Moon and I got a Marshadow to play through the whole game with. It didn't obey me for like 50% of the game but it was still there. I used it the whole way. And I loved it. Also around this time, I remember watching I Choose You a lot, so you could tell how much Marshadow meant to me.

However, a certain incident had someone delete my Moon save file and you KNOW I was upset. That was a mythical Pokémon that I just lost along with many MANY other team members. Of course, I got over it in time but I still looked back at that moment and feel a little... sad.

Fast forward about 9 years. Legends ZA Mega Dimension releases. Information about it is coming out. And I reading up on who got added to the game... and... Marshadow's in the game?

For the entire time I was playing Mega Dimension, the thought of obtaining Marshadow was in the back of my mind. It was a little motivation for me to keep playing, despite how repetitive the DLC can kinda get. Ultimately, I beat the DLC and made a beeline for the right side quest. A special cutscene and battle later... it was mine.

There's plenty of other Pokémon sentimental to me. Rhyperior thanks to one I had as my buddy in Pokémon GO (Shoutout to you RYNO!), Latias being an unexpected shiny also from GO, Sneasler for being love at first sight, Dusk Lycanroc for being by my side since my first Ultra Moon run, but Marshadow means a lot to me and remains one of my favorite Pokémon to this day.

 

[Archaic]

So I've told this story before, but the very first catchable wild Pokémon I encountered in Pokémon Silver was a Shiny Weedle.

I'd played through Blue with a mono-bug team, and had developed a public association with those bugs through various forum RPGs at the time, so catching that Pokémon set me on doing a mono-bug run again in Silver.

Sadly, I later lost my shiny Beedrill, together with the entire contents of my Box 1 (including all of my other Level 100 Bug Pokémon) after I rented out a copy of Pokémon Stadium 2 from the local video store that had both a faulty Transfer Pak, and a Bad Egg deposited on the cart. I basically never played Silver again after that, outside of abortive attempts to recover my Pokémon using a borrowed Action Replay. In memory of those Pokémon, I've kept up the tradition of mono-bug runs on my first playthrough of games set in Kanto and/or Johto to this day.

 

[c la fet]

I feel sad reading people's stories about losing their beloved mons ;_;
My most sentimental Pokémon is my Turtwig (well, now it's a Torterra but I've evolved it rather recently so in my mind he's still a Turtwig) from Platinum. I put his nickname on the stone during the Shaymin Event.
If I lost the cartdrige where he's stored I don't know how I would feel...

 

[Will_of_D]

Wow that is some luck to have a Legendary be shiny on first encounter(IMO it is worth saving the Master Ball for reasons just like this.)

My sentimental Pokemon is Lugia as the first Pokemon I liked and still do to this day.

Yeah I'm glad kid me realized that that situation is exactly what the master ball is for!

If Lugia is your favorite, which color scheme do you prefer: The modern blue and white or the black, blue, and white colors from gen 3?

 

[terashards]

omg i posted this and then i had to dip and now i have so many lovely sentimental pokemon stories to read. hell yes

It's really a shame i don't have the cartage Blaze was held on anymore...

sometimes with lost childhood mons i've seen people replay the game with a pokemon of the same name to sort of "bring them back to life" if you ever had interest in doing something like that...! (update as i read further: dragonbunsu did similar!) blaze is so what i'd name a cyndaquil as a kid, i love that lol. their name and ability match

(i watched so many eeveelution AMVs hahaha).

btw same i think that's the majority of what i watched on youtube 2007-2009 as an elementary schooler LOL

but ABBY the Azumarill survived and I think about him a lot.

the female name on the boy azumarill makes me wonder if your friend caught a girl azurill and it got the 1/3 chance to magically transition into a boy when evolving into marill since that was still a glitch that existed in gen 3 lol. anyhow i love him

going through the effort of training the Extreme Speed Dratini from the ground up before even facing the Elite Four for some reason. I don't think I'd even try doing that again these days but that turbo grinding is prob why I look at Dragonite fondly.

training a dragonite before the e4 is hard even if you get the dratini much earlier in the game from the game corner... that's dedication LOL. i know my extremespeed dratini happened to roll jolly nature last time i played soulsilver and so now it's just been sitting in the box for a million years until i maybe decide to use him for the battle tower one day... maybe.

I ended up replacing someone mid season in a draft server and didn't have much to work with

i am very attached to mienshao because of a prior draft league experience so i really resonated with this!! a pokemon surprising you in draft league is one of the coolest ways to get attached to a mon imo

First time I played Sapphire, my Kyogre was shiny on the very first encounter.

that's actually insane, if only you were an adult and could have bought lottery tickets the same day

Sadly, I later lost my shiny Beedrill, together with the entire contents of my Box 1 (including all of my other Level 100 Bug Pokémon) after I rented out a copy of Pokémon Stadium 2 from the local video store that had both a faulty Transfer Pak, and a Bad Egg deposited on the cart. I basically never played Silver again after that, outside of abortive attempts to recover my Pokémon using a borrowed Action Replay. In memory of those Pokémon, I've kept up the tradition of mono-bug runs on my first playthrough of games set in Kanto and/or Johto to this day.

that sounds absolutely devastating but i'm glad you're able to keep the tradition alive at least! maybe one day if you ever get a nostalgic itch you could shiny hunt weedle in GS via eggs, which would be a relatively fast way to get it done. though of course it might not be the same depending on your mindset...

I put his nickname on the stone during the Shaymin Event.

that's so sweet oh my god

 

[Nicolas721]

Shoutout first of all to all 71 team members across 13 games, It would be hard to pick between all of them and they are always my most used mons in the game even in the postgame. They always stay in their home games. But I must single out my first one, Mate the Swampert, which I traded away to a copy of Fire Red that got corrupted. I'll never forget you. Others that marked me in some way or another...

• Linoone in Emerald-My first capture.
• Rayquaza in Emerald-I caught it with the help of a friend so it feels special and I name all Rayquazas after him. Also he was caught in a Great Ball after 50 Ultra Balls failed.
• Gorebyss in Emerald-After all the trouble you have to go to get its item and evolve it obtaining one felt like an accomplishment.
• Shiny Unown in Platinum-My first shiny.
• Genesect in White 2-My first event and mythical.
• Milotic in White 2-A Pokemon I wanted to have in my Emerald team but never found Feebas so it felt fulfilling to catch it here.
• Unown in X-A Pokemon born in HGSS that crossed time until it found its home here.
• Jirachi in Alpha Sapphire-One of my favorite mons, finally receiving one felt amazing.
• Politoed in Ultra Moon-I tried to use SOS chains to obtain one, never showed up but shiny Poliwag did, so I took my chance and evolved it trading with my Sun game. Also one of my favorite mons.
• Arceus in Legends Arceus-Not my first one but both the process of obtaining it and using it in its game was great, love how it can change type depending on the enemy's move, and that final fight was memorable.
• Ursaluna in Violet. A shiny Teddiursa appeared in PLA and I chose to evolve it and send it to Violet to live some adventures. And it was very useful in raids.
• Galarian Slowbro in Shield Nuzlocke-The team member that lasted the most and was extremely reliable.
• Garganacl and Oinkologne in Violet Nuzlocke-Both lasted through the whole game and were useful against everyone.
• Meltan & Melmetal in ZA-After 7 years they're finally available in a main series game! Which means I caught them all.

 

[Frozen Fennec]

Meganium - Pokemon Gold

My original starter Pokemon and the one I used throughout the entire playthrough of Gold even though it was difficult at times. I also recall loving having Ampharos on the team because I found it adorable, those two mons bring such wholesome memories to mind of having days I just listened to some music in Olivine City or Mt. Silver and just roaming around Johto and Kanto.

Gardevoir - Pokemon Sapphire and later games

Probably one of my favorite mons in the entire series sans for Mismagius and almost any game I have one on the team if I can, their wide moveset has always been so helpful with various battles, also brings a lot of good memories since they helped me beat the Hoenn Elite Four for the first time after struggling for days.

 

[lisianthusakura]

My older sister @Blanc traded me her two most precious childhood Pokemon, a Chandelure (Nobori) and an Eelektross (Kudari), a few years back, and it meant very, very much to me. (I have more Pokemon from her, of course, but those two in particular mean the most!) She EV and IV trained them almost to perfection in XY a long while ago (I recieved them at the same age she had hatched them, which made us smile!), and I used them on a new playthrough... well, rather, they sat in my party the whole game, and I didn't use them until the Champion battle! They accompanied me through Shiny Hunting a bunch of her favourites (Nobori has Flame Body, which is especially helpful), and through me compiling a whole Living Dex in XY... and were also in my party for another Moon playthrough. I think it'll soon enough be time to get them properly transferred over to Switch, since I've been wanting to replay Shield... but I'd only have Nobori, the Chandelure, so I'm not sure. I specifically made sure to catch a Chandelure and Eelektross to use in Legends ZA, though! (Their names are Shiro and Aqua, which are references to something secret.)

I don't really have any other Pokemon like that aside from those two, though, but maybe someday. It'd be nice. I like my ZA team lots, though.

 

[Dubious Disc]

since i can't play the games myself, my sentimental pokémon don't come from having used specific mon in-game, so their origin stories are kinda different d:

my biggest one is probably carbink, one of my friends in high school associated me with carbink for some reason i don't remember and so it kinda became my signature pokémon at the time. we had so many memes and inside jokes about carbink, it's a mon that holds a lot of memories for me even though my identity is just the porygon line nowadays, there's still a little part of me that's always associated with carbink lol.

apart from that, i'm very prone to developing attachments to the pokémon my friends like, since it ends up reminding me of them. in the past this was stuff like yamask and sableye, which were my friends' trainersonas' partner pokémon, and more recently it's been venipede and scolipede c:

 

[#1 Shedinja Fan]

When I first started Pokemon Ultra Sun, I got Litten (I love cats) and I immediately named him Harold. From then on, be it in fangames, Showdown, even in other games, I always named my Littens Harold. It was like Harold himself was following me between games. <3