Beedrill2001 Presents : Let's Talk Pokémon

#945 - Grafaiai

Oooh, talking about a current gen pokémon, how exciting!

From the first time I saw Grafaiai, I just knew it would have a spot on my team once I got Scarlet for Christmas that year.

Grafaiai, in case you didn't know, is based on a species of lemur with a really long middle finger hailed from the island of Madagascar called an Aye-Aye.

Aye-Ayes are one of my favorite animals, so you could imagine how ecstatic I was to see Game Freak design a pokémon based on them.

I can't help but find Grafaiai unusually cute, and I really want to get myself a plush of it someday.

Plus I find the fingerpainting aspect of Grafaiai a pretty interesting and unique design choice.

One thing I find kinda funny about Ken Sugimori's artwork of Grafaiai is that at first glance, it looks like it's biting down on its painting finger like Eren from Attack on Titan.

All that say however, having used one in my initial playthrough of Scarlet, I found Grafaiai to be...an honestly mediocre pokémon.

Stat wise, Grafaiai is a pretty competent mixed attacker, having 95 base attack and 80 special attack, along with a great 110 speed.

Its defense and special defense though...aren't that great, them being a base 65 and 72 respectively.

Also, I admit to not being that big a fan of its poison and normal type combination.

To me, one of poison's best qualities is its resistance to fighting (especially because Scarlet and Violet have a pretty difficult fighting type Team Star boss), which normal of course takes away without offering much usefulness in return besides an immunity to ghost....and that is fine I guess.

Grafaiai's first ability is Unburden, which doubles its speed when a held item is used up.

While a good ability for slower pokémon, Grafaiai is already fast to begin with and wouldn't really appreciate losing a held item in exchange for an unnecessary speed boost.

The other ability is Poison Touch, which has a 30% chance to poison the opponent whenever Grafaiai uses a physical attack.

I've always had a soft spot for abilities that cause status ailments because you don't have to use up a move slot to inflict them, and Poison Touch is no exception.

Grafaiai's hidden ability is Prankster, which gives priority to non-damaging moves.

Prankster is a wonderful ability even if Grafaiai is already fast, but is honestly more built for competitive battling than just playing through the game casually, so I'd say Poison Touch is the best choice for Grafaiai when taking that into consideration.

Move wise, Grafaiai primarily learns normal, poison, dark, and bug moves, along with some other coverage attacks like Dig, Acrobatics, and Low Sweep.

Grafaiai actually has a signature move called Doodle, which gives it the ability of your other pokémon during a double battle.

While interesting in concept, this is pretty much a move strictly for competitive play only, as the number of double battles you have in game is negligible to make you consider Doodle a worthwhile move.

Despite me being disappointed at how Grafaiai performed when I used it on my team, I still can't help but consider the artistic lemur one of my favorite pokémon introduced in Scarlet and Violet.