Analysis of Types: Chapter 18: Fairy-type: Part 3: In-Universe Symbolism and Mythology

What is Fairy-type's role, really?

The Legendaries & Their Role:

Life:

Xerneas:

Xerneas is based off the four stags of Yggdrassil, with elements of Cernunnos thrown in. Xerneas's rainbow coloring is a shout out to the rainbow bridge, which connects the realms of Yggdrasil. Xerneas' feminine depiction and its blue coloring seems to be a reference to the Woman of the Apocalypse, particularly those depictions that equate her with Virgin Mary and some of the saints.

Crystals:

Diancie:

Diancie, like its minion Carbink, is based off a carbuncle and a diamond. It is based off the rare pink diamond, which is pink colored due to iron in it. Its princess design is probably based off RPG enemies that are generally depicted as the royalty of their minions and serves as a shout out to the French royalty.

Land Spirits:

Tapus:

All Tapus are called the Land Spirit Pokémon. They are based off the Hawaiian pantheon, and they look like Hawaiian dolls that represent their gods, with their iridescent eyes. Their status as the Guardians of Alola is reminiscent of Latis' status as Guardians of Alto-Mare. Their signature move, Guardian of Alola, is a shout out to Doshin the Giant, a god game published and partially developed by Nintendo.

Magitek:

Magearna:

Magearna's Soul-Heart is composed of Infinite Energy, ie. life force of Pokémon. It is effectively a synthetic Mega Stone, while Magearna's body is a Poké Ball and its Fleur Cannon is a junior sized Ultimate Weapon. Its status as a robot with life is an allusion to Pinocchio and other living toys from fairy tales.

The Trainers & Their Role:

Valerie:

Valerie is a Furisode Girl who came from Johto. She is an otherworldly person who thinks she is a Fairy. She is basically an in-canon furry.

Mina:

Mina is an old Trial Captain whose mind is off somewhere else. She is far too lazy and clumsy to have a proper Trial, and even in the post-game she forgets to have her Z-move in her team. She is basically an in-canon druggie.

The Overview:

The Legendary species are generally stuff based on creation, life and destruction. You know, common Celtic stuff.

The trainers themselves are generally depicted as unfitting to their region, and their minds are generally in somewhere else. Somewhere nasty, probably. Which is also fitting, considering Fairies are basically 11-dimensional abominations.

However, since most Fairies must be cute and photogenic, there hasn't be a nice, good cosmic horror here, or even an absurdist monstrosity like NGE Angels or PMMM Witches. But, in time, they shall come.

Editor's Note: This is the end of Type Analyses for now. There will likely be another one of these things once we get another type in the next two decades. I'll probably own more stocks than Pokémon games by then, though.

Analysis of Types: Chapter 18: Fairy-type: Part 2: The Design Philosophies and Archetypes

So, what are Fairy-types, really?

The Purpose of the Fairy Type:

Fairy-type was designed to be the girly type of Pokémon, and serving a generic cleric role. To this end, Fairy-type was granted a large Special Defense, and lots of nice resistances to the physically offensive types. Fairy-types was also designed to push back against Dragon-types, and also Dark and Fighting-types, and allow Psychic and Grass-types some resistance to Bugs, while giving Poison and Steel more offensive breach.

Fairy-type also served as a major coverage type for both physical and special species, particularly those species who couldn't get other type coverage besides paranormal moves or animalistic moves.

The Aesthetic Archetypes of Fairy Types:

Most Fairy-types are White or Pink, though in general they have pastel coloring. Archetypically, Fairies can be divided into following groups:

Mythical Beasts:

These are species based off either myths, or are animals and plants with some magical power. They are generally in variety of Egg Groups.

Pixies:

These are species based off common fairies and other vague species with fairy characteristics. They are generally in Fairy Egg Group.

Enchanted Item:

These are species that mimic existing objects, or are existing objects animated by magic. They are generally in Mineral or Amorphous Egg Groups.

The In-game Archetypes of Fairy Types:

Early game Fairy-type: These are the most common group of Fairies. They can be powerful but hard to raise, or weak but easy to raise.

Cleric: These are species that are based off clerics. They are often nurses of their region.

The Stat Archetypes for Fairy Types:

Special Wall: The dominant archetype for Fairy-types. These are species with huge Special Defense and okay HP.

Balanced: These are species without much orientation towards anything. They tend to have nice stat boosting moves.

Bulky Offense: These are species generally oriented towards Special Defense and Attack.

Annoyer: These are species that are focused on abusing their speed to use status moves.

Cleric: These are species that use their defenses to support their party.

Analysis of Types: Chapter 18: Fairy-type: Part 1: The Retrospective

So, what is the Fairy-type?

While Fairies existed as fantasy tropes since time immemorial, they have rarely been significant. Fairies have existed either nature spirits, local deities, or small magical creatures to be exploited with. However unlike the most of the other species in this realm, Fairies seem to be popularized by two games, one being SMT, where Fairies exist as early-game magic users, Touhou series, where fairies exist as early mid-bosses and mooks, and Legend of Zelda, where fairies are the most important races in all of Hyrule. The most conventional archetype for fairies is not the Shakespearean version of middle sized magical sprites with ridiculous sex drives and world shattering menstrual problems, or earlier Gaelic fairies who are just absurdist monsters; but rather Tinkerbell from Disney's interpretation of Peter Pan.

The latter is also where Pokémon takes most of its inspiration from, but Fairies also serve another role. Historically, Dark-type was opposed by Psychic-type, but Psychic-types are more oriented stage magic and modern espers than what Pokémon franchise wanted to be, white mages. With the absence of a proper cleric class, with or without a divine association, Normal and Psychic-types had to be used for this role. But as Dark and Ghost evolved into proper dark arts types, there needed something to combat them. In addition, there needed to be some way to reverse Psychic-type's decline. As for other reasons why Fairy-type was created, we will get into them right now.

The Pre-History of the Fairy-type: Fairy Egg Group:

Historically, Pokémon has always had species designed for female fans predominantly. Clefairy and Jigglypuff are the most famous ones of the early era, as Clefairy was intended to be the franchise mascot, and Jigglypuff serves as a historical secondary mascot of the first generation. However, though these species had powerful movepools, they did not have powerful stats, especially in the first generation when the franchise was so heavily focused on physical types.

These initial cutemons were Normal-types with immense variety of moves. The idea was that these species, with their vast capabilities would climb up despite their statistical issues, or at the very least would manage a role in the in-game teams. This compensation did not work, so, GameFreak created two new mechanics, one was the genders and gender ratios, and the other was Egg Groups. Adding a breeding mechanic seemed to make sense, as it would create tons of cute babies, fire up girl trainers' motherly instincts. The new gender ratios would also showcase which species was more feminine and which weren't, which allowed the franchise to utilize more generic gender stereotypes, to please both sides. Predictably, Male-only species got better due to offensive orientation of the metagame.

This, of course, did not pan out as planned. Movesets might break Pokémon, and breeding chains may make silly species relevant once or twice, but they do not make Pokémon. And true to this fashion, Fairy Egg Group, was one of the limited Egg Groups, requiring Field to be its intermediate. The third generation set out to fix this, by first granting Fairy Egg Group more stuff to work with such as the awesome Breloom, but also created Contests, where Pokémon would exclusively compete with their movesets. This was expected to fix the cutemons' lack of power, and grant them a new flamboyant design. However, GF saw that initial contests were, while fun, were also far too repetitive with lack of competitiveness. So, instead of fixing this problem, they added in a dancing rhythm game and a dress-up feature. These characteristics ultimately lived on DLC nonsense Pokémon Musicals, which ultimately broke the Contests until they were brought back as regional fluff.

In this time, there has been a few things going on. One was the ongoing decline of Psychic-type. In addition to being reduced to a gimmick type, Psychic-type had another unfortunate thing going for it. Its color. Psychic powers were generally represented with pinkish auras, so we ended up with a type that is pink colored. And of course, Pink is the Gurrl color. Actually, for Gen 2, Normal-type was the Pink type, but since GF decided to retcon that, we ended up with Psychic as the girl type for a while. To this end, Psychic-type was given several cleric moves like Healing Wish and Heal Pulse, and GF really tried to make it a White Mage-type, but that failed miserably. So, the alternative to that would be to make a companion type to Psychic-type that would serve as an upgraded version of the type, similar to the mechanic between Water and Ice.

Another was the shift in the metagame, both in-game and in-competitive. The traditional poster-boy was Dragon-type for this change, but Fighting and Dark have improved drastically from the previous generations, while Poison floundered as time passed on. The presence of Dragon-types in the competitive was not an issue, but their presence in-game started to cause issues, as Dragon-types were designed to work for late-game, but were soon found out to be usable early-game as well, though overpowered. This shift was caused by a shift in GF's design, as GF now wanted Dragon-type to become a primary type of the metagame, and thus in TCG Dragon became its own type. However, since Dragon-type did not have a weakness to anything but itself in TCG, something needed to be done. In addition, rise of Fighting and Dark allowed more masculine species to come out, with several punk, biker and Fighting-type classes getting a significant presence in-game. Something needed to change.

The History of the Fairy-type:

And lo and behold, Fairy-type was created. Designed to be a Specially oriented type that would serve as Steel-type's equivalent for Special-types and the new Dragon-killer, Fairy-type immediately found home in many new and old species. Some of the early specifications of the type were for specific reasons. Its interactions with Fighting, Dark and Bug were designed to help out Psychic-type, similar to how Ice-type's effectiveness against Grass-type was designed to help Water. Its weakness to Poison and Steel was designed to buff two physically defensive but offensively lacking types. Its immunity to Dragon-types was designed to block Dragon-type's powerful STAB moves, which was their crowning achievement.

Many abilities Fairy-type had were taken from its parents, Normal and Psychic. Cute Charm was granted to this type as Fairy-type inherited Normal-type's cuteness. Sweet Kiss and Moonlight were taken from Normal-type as well. Many Fairy-types also gained Psychic-type moves, particularly either one of Psyshock or Psychic, as well as Grass-type moves, due to Fairy's role as a support type for these types.

In the seventh generation, Fairy-types were granted tons of new species, though mostly on the mediocre side statwise. These new species exploited Fairy-type's status as a cleric type, and made Sweet Veil and Telepathy, latter of which taken from Psychic-type as naturalized abilities for Fairy-type.

Sadly, no new common Fairy-types have not been introduced, and the new Abilities did not see much distribution. But previous generations' signature moves found new homes.

The Overview of Fairy-types:

Fairy-type is regarded as the best type of the current metagame. This is obviously untrue, they are the second best type in the game. Fairy-type, much like Ice-type in Gen I and Steel-type currently has the ability to make any terrible species good. This was intentional, as many Fairy-types have mediocre and balanced stats, due to their early history as a subset of Normal-types and their post-secession history as nature spirits and early-game species. Despite this, Fairy-type already has several species with tremendous BST.

Fairy-types are also great for coverage, when they are available. Because they are intended to replace to Ice-type and pre-Gen 3 Psychic-type, Fairy-type moves remain somewhat rare, available to only few low stat but powerful species, and early game fodder. This might change soon as Fairy-types get a similar distribution to Psychic-types in the current generations, but whether that will happen or not depends on how the type will evolve.

Analysis of Types: Chapter 17: Steel-type: Part 3: In-Universe Symbolism and Mythology

What is Steel-type's role, really?

The Legendaries & Their Role:

Frozen Magma:

Registeel:

According to Regigigas' entry, Registeel is made of magma, which has cooled down. Magma tends to have high iron, which is why Registeel is Steel-type. Its elastic design showcases elasticity of metals.

Comet:

Jirachi:

Though Jirachi is a personification of Tanabata festival, it is also a personification of comets, and their supposed wish granting abilities. Comets tend to have rich and rare metals inside of them, which is why Jirachi is a Steel-type.

Time:

Dialga:

Dialga is the personification of time. Its Steel-type seems to allude to hardness of diamonds, and Dialga's association with diamonds seems to be a reference to use of quartz in clocks. Its Steel-type might also represent the durability of time.

Heat Transfer:

Heatran:

Heatran is based off magma like Registeel, but unlike Registeel, Heatran remains hot. Heatran is based off magma dome and concept of heat transfer. Metals have the highest potential for heat transfer over all elements, hence why Heatran is a Steel-type.

Cyborg:

Genesect:

Genesect is based off a prehistoric bug but it was enhanced by Team Plasma to become a biological weapon. In its current form, Genesect is a full blown cyborg, and its unclear if its Megalo Cannon existed before it was changed or not.

Sun Corona:

Solgaleo:

Solgaleo is based off the alchemical lion, which devours sun to purify metals.Its association with Steel is also a reference to both sun's metal core, and meteor's metal, as its signature move is called in Japanese Meteor Strike alluding to how meteors are fueled by sun before impact.

Princess Kaguya & Issun-boshi(One Inch Samurai):

Celesteela & Kartana:

Celesteela is based off the myth of Princess Kaguya and Kartana is based off Issun-boshi. Kartana's Steel-type comes from the steel used for a sword's blade, and Celesteela's Steel comes from the steel used for spaceships.

Robot:

Magearna:

Magearna is based off a katakuri robot, early clockwork Japanese robots. Its maid-like appearance is also likely a reference to Renaissance era early robots and the origins of the terminology.

The Trainers & Their Role:

Jasmine:

"The Steel-Clad Defense Girl" Jasmine is a shy, kind girl who serves as the antithesis of her type. This is because she used to be Rock-type trainer. She later serves as a Coordinator for DPPt.

Steven:

Son of Mr. Stone of Devon Corp., Steven is the ultimate wet dream of fangirls. Unlike other Champions, he actually does stuff, such as giving you Devon Scope, helping you in Emerald, giving exposition etc. His interest in Steel-types stem from his family's interest in valuable gems.

Byron:

Father of Roark and friend of Riley, "The Man with the Steel Body!" Byron mines in the Iron Island to train himself and sell stuff outside through the ports of Canalave. He has a hearty laugh.

Wikstrom:

The sole knight of the series, Wikstrom has a very complicated way of speech, but he is chivalric and kind.

Molayne:

He is the cousin of Sophocles, so he is nerdy as him. He serves the PC developer of Alola, and as a mid-boss. As a friend of Kukui, he exposes his disguise as Masked Royal during their talk.

The Overview:

Despite being a late-type, Steel has a very large distribution of legendaries that cover all elements about the Steel-type, from elasticity and heat transfer of metals, to its use in robotics and prosthetic organs, to its use in weaponry and transport to purification of metals. It is likely that rather than new archetypes, we will see these ideas repeated in the later generations.

In Steel-type trainers there seems to be three major groups, the shy and introverted nerds, the bold and boisterous manly men, and sharp people like Steven. All three major groups showcase an element of steel, the first group showcases Steel-type's defensive side and association with armors, the second side showcases Steel-type's offensive side and association with minerals, and the third side showcases the Steel-type's association with purification and machines.  

Analysis of Types: Chapter 17: Steel-type: Part 2: The Design Philosophies and Archetypes

So, what are Steel-types?

The Purpose of the Steel Type:

Steel-type was designed to be the ultimate defensive type. However, because other types have lacked in defense over time and the metagame shifted significantly to offense, Steel-type is currently the only defensive type. This is of course a huge pressure on the type, as it means if you want to have a proper high tier balanced or more defensive team, you need a Steel-type, just like how you used to need a Rock-type in Gen I to sponge Double-Edges and Hyper Beams. It is possible that as more types are inevitably introduced, the metagame will shift towards even more offense, leaving Steel-type to be even more important.

Steel-type also serves as both the machine and the mineral ore type the franchise needed. If Steel-type didn't exist, and when it didn't exist, the mechanical species had to be put in Electric-type, while mineral ore species were put in Rock, and in some rare cases Ground. Steel unified these two groups, and this allowed the type to be the bridge of these three very different types.

The Aesthetic Archetypes of Steel Types:

Steel-types are predominantly Gray colored, with some being Black, White or Blue. Aesthetically, the type can be divided into following categories:

Mechanical:

These are robotic species that have metallic bodies. They are generally in Mineral Group and are genderless.

Armored:

These are species with steel parts or steel exoskeleton. They are generally in organic Egg Groups like Bug, Human-Like etc.

Mineral Ore:

These are species based off mineral ores, magnetite, and regular minerals with metal parts. They are generally in Mineral Group, but they tend to have genders.

The In-game Archetypes of Steel Types:

Early-game Steel-type: These are species encountered in late-early game. They tend to have balanced and low stats or three stage species.

Mid-game Steel-type: These are species with relative min-maxing. They are the most common group for the type.

Late-game Steel-type: These are generally focused on two stat groups. They tend to be in rare type combinations or have high BST.

The Stat Archetypes for Steel Types:

Dual Wall: One of the less common archetypes of the type, these are species that proficient in both defenses. They often focus on Dual Screens or Trick Room.

Mono Wall: The dominant archetype for the type, these are species that are focused on one defense over others.

Bulky Offense: These are species that are generally oriented towards defense and offense at one group.

Balanced: These are species without any stat orientation. They use their type combination and abilities to annoy or damage opponents.

Stat Booster: These are well balanced species with stat boosting moves to damage opponents or defend themselves.

Tank: These are species with dual or mono defensive options, but are really focused on offense over others.

Analysis of Types: Chapter 17: Steel-type: Part 1: The Retrospective

So, what is the Steel-type?

All good RPGs have some sort of all out defensive archetype or class to serve as their defensive unit These units tend to have insane immunities, resistances or simply have access to good armor. In the original Final Fantasy the Warrior class served for this role. Historically, this role was fulfilled by Rock-type, but because Rock-type was destined as the first boss of the original game, it was doomed. Some resurrection of this idea was needed, as otherwise the metagame would have been far too offensively oriented, and in the generations Steel-type declined, that's exactly what happened.

Most classic RPGs also featured machine-based enemies. This was due to the influence of Star Wars, a massively popular science fantasy series that helped the popularize the sub-genre. Various games like Ultima and Final Fantasy tired to add this feature in their fantasy games, as pseudo-scientific elements like Psychics in science-fiction have declined as the we understood our world better. Outside of this, there were other reasons, which we will get on shortly.

The Pre-History of Steel-type: Metal-type:

Despite Pokémon's status as an Urban Science Fantasy, there hasn't been a machine or metal based class. Other RPGs had their Machine classes, Metal Slimes, Iron Giants and whathaveyou. The only species in the original games that had metallic parts was sadly Magnemite and Magneton, so to fix this issue, the franchise needed a new type. This also extended for Iron Ore based species, as those also didn't exist as any mineral ore was made into Rock-type or Ground-type.

There were other reasons why this was type created as well. One was color, as while the original games had Rock-type with gray color, the real color of the type was actually bright brown, as showcased by Sudowoodo of this generation. So, Steel took the role of the gray type from Rock-type.

Another reason why Steel-type was introduced as a Rock-type ascendant was that other types had some sort of ascendant types to them.  Water had Ice, Fire had Dragon etc. While Ground served as the ascendant of Rock-type, Ground was much more focused on offense. Something more focused on defense was needed.

The History of the Steel-type:

The first few Steel-types were disheartening. The most successful ones were Skarmory and Steelix, which existed as large physical walls that would be companions to Blissey, the ultimate Special wall. Other species were powerful, like Forretress, Scizor and Magneton, but underutilized, as they had no offensive options, or in Forretress' case, used largely for support. In addition, many of the early Steel-types were overtly min-maxed like Rock-type, with no species with good Special Defense or HP.

The few Steel-type moves were Steel Wing and Iron Tail, both inaccurate moves that served as both as signature moves for Steelix and Skarmory as well as major coverage moves. And Metal Claw, the only move Scizor had besides Steel Wing, was both inaccurate and weak. Nonetheless, these few moves made sure Steel-type would be a major coverage type.

The second batch were insufficient. There were two major Legendaries, Jirachi and Registeel, and a major pseudo-legendary, Metagross, which was so powerful the developers made it unavailable in the wild. Another major species was Aggron, a badass looking species with unfortunate quad weaknesses, and Mawile, which for this generation was a complete joke.

The second batch of Steel moves continued to suck. Meteor Mash and Doom Desire were unreliable signature moves, Iron Defense was mediocre like any defense boosting move, and Metal Sound was just a gimmick. Clear Body was an interesting ability, but it didn't mean much for the type.

The fourth generation was when Steel-type truly shone, however. Steel-type enjoyed the physical-special split fairly well, as it was no longer type dependent on the moves it had to defend against. In addition, the split allowed Steel-type to gain Special moves, which benefit Magneton and Magnezone extremely well. Not all of the new Steel-types were well, but the bulk of them were very good. In addition, this generation made Steel-type much more easily available than any other region, due to mining industry of Sinnoh.

The new moves introduced were a bit lackluster, besides Iron Head and Flash Cannon, both of which became primary moves for the type, and Bullet Punch, which single-handedly saved Scizor and Metagross. Metal Burst and Gyro Ball were unique moves that were very good in situational species, Mirror Shot and Magnet Bomb were sadly useless mid-game moves. Due to newly gained abundance of the type, Magnet Pull became a major staple ability, as Magnezone could now easily trap defensive and offensive cores of other teams.

The fifth generation was mediocre for the type. The type gained significant Pokémon like Excadrill and Forretress, but the other Steel-types in the game were lackluster, even those which were good like Bisharp and Cobalion. Klinklang and its line was one of the most infamous species in this generation, but other Steel-types like Escavalier and Durant gained some support, and Genesect was received well as the sole Bug-type Legendary.

The new moves outside of Autotomize were Shift Gear and Gear Grind, which were signature moves for Klinklang, and Heavy Slam, which was useful on only few species. The new abilities, Light Metal and Heavy Metal, were completely useless. Sand Force was a great Ability, but it lacked much use due to lack of power of the types it contained.

Sixth generation turned Steel-type's fortunes yet again. While the type was nerfed by losing its resistances to Dark and Ghost-types, it gained resistance and effectiveness against the new Fairy type, which immediately became the dominant type of the metagame. The new Steel-types were few but infamous, Aegislash was quite broken and Klefki had an infamous SwagPlay ParaFusion tactic.Steel-type also gained tons of powerful Megas, all of which were significant in some manner if not broken.

There was only one new move, which was King's Shield. It was a signature move.

Seventh generation continued the rise by giving the type powerful species. The common species introduced in this generation were useful, but not too interesting. The Legendaries, on the other hand, were extremely powerful and versatile, though still could be easily defeated... if they didn't get the momentum. Nonetheless, the new Steel-type Legendaries immediately put the type in the top of the food chain, allowing Steel-type to completely replace all previous dominant types.

The only new moves were Smart Strike, which was the only common perfect accuracy move of the type, and Sunsteel Strike, the signature move of Solgaleo.

The Overview of Steel-types:

Steel-type slowly but steadily moved from high-mid tier to the top of all types within six generations. The type is easily the most successful of all types, despite being relatively rare, and has a great variety of coverage moves, despite lacking power. While Steel-type initially started as a defensive oriented type, as Fairy-type were introduced, the type gained significance as an offensive type, as it already was effective against several other types neutrally or super-effectively.

Steel-type's rarity is relatively insignificant because player can find a Steel-type in early game or mid game in any generation, and type is generally that good enough to worth it. Its lack of power remains a hindrance in competitive play, but introduction of Z-moves allows Steel-type to punch in holes quickly.

Steel-type will likely get even better, as it contains several popular species, tons of Legendaries, and several popular trainers, even if they are not abundant in numbers. Outside of another defensive nerf, it is unlikely that the type will crumble. But another defensive nerf, particularly one that will give it another weakness will crumble the type, simply due to abundance of quad weaknesses.

Analysis of Types: Chapter 16: Dark-type: Part 3: In-Universe Symbolism and Mythology

So, what is Dark-type's role, really?

The Legendaries and Their Role:

Nightmare:

Darkrai:

Darkrai is seemingly based off Phobetor, Greek god of nightmares, but its event involving the abandoned hotel seems to imply that Darkrai is actually based off Lovecraft's depiction of Hypnos, Greek god of Dreams. Its design is meant to evoke a ghost, connecting it to ghouls that invade people's dreams that represent sleep paralysis.

Death:

Yveltal:

Yveltal is based off Hræsvelgr and the unnamed eagle at the top of Yggdrasil. Its cocoon is based off an egg and its patterns are based on arteries, while its fluffy mane gives it a vulture-like look. Its red coloring seems to be based off the red dragon of revelation.

Gobbling:

Guzzlord:

Guzzlord is based on a stomach, but its name means Akujiki King, which means eater Meat Eater King, or Disgusting Things Eater King. Its overall design is reminiscent of a black hole, while itself is a generic kaiju.

The Trainers and Their Roles:

Karen:

Karen is based off a generic Beauty, particularly those of the original game. She likes Dark-types because of the tough and wild image they portray, and she is known for her overpowering tactics. In other words, she likes Dark-types because they are edgy.

Sidney:

Sidney is based off a generic Biker, who became successful. He likes Dark-types because he uses offensive tactics and he enjoys Dark-types' aesthetic.

Grimsley:

Grimsley is based off a generic Gambler(Gamer in localization, PI in localization of DP). He is full of pretension due to being a member of a rich family that was ruined.

Nanu:

Nanu is a former cop who used to be Looker's boss. He currently serves as Ula'ula's Kahuna. He is a completely nonchalant cat person who serves as Acerola's main care taker. He doesn't smile, he smirks. In the UB storyline it is revealed that he left the International Police because he failed to rescue a Faller from Guzzlord.

The Overview:

There aren't a lot of Dark-type legendaries, and those that exist are generally associated with Death in some form or another. There isn't a generic vile or wild beast type of Dark-type. Some Dark-type legendaries are also sometimes characterized as misunderstood, while others are characterized as generically evil.

The Dark-type trainers are rather rare, but they are generally stuck in Elite Four structure. This is because Dark-type often appears as a late-game and mid-game species as well as an early game species. Most Dark-type trainers are focused on the aesthetic of Dark-types, except Nanu, who likes their self-sufficiency. Most Dark-type trainers are also incredibly hedonistic in an acceptable level, and self-confident in a calm but rather self-delusional sense.

Dark-type is not properly covered outside of a generic evil type or morally gray type. They generally appear in Knight in a Sour Armor style or Batman style Dark Knight, a Knight of the Night, that is. This makes them rather popular, but they tend to be rather shallow.