Pokemon of the Week #15: Beldum, Metang, & Metagross

Publish date: 2024-07-06
In the World of Pokémon, there lives a vast number and variety of amazing creatures to befriend and collect. Every week, we will be focusing on a single one of these Pokémon or evolutionary line and talking about what makes it special. This week, we will be going over an evolution line that's near and dear to my heart, the Beldum family.
The Beldum evolutionary line represents technological evolution. It evolves from Beldum, which is essentially a sentient robotic arm with a claw, where the head is the arm's ball and socket joint, into a floating robot with two arms. Fittingly, Metang's Pokedex entry states that it evolves from two Beldums fusing.
From Metang, it evolves again into the pseudo-legendary Pokemon, Metagross, a four legged larger robot said to be evolved from two Metangs fusing together. Numerous Pokedex entries for Metagross actually state that it has four brains that work together in a neural network that allows Metagross to breeze through complex multivariable equations, and analyze its foes.
Metagross's Steel/Psychic typing perfectly reflects this concept. The Psychic aspect is exemplified by the four brains in a neural network, while Metagross's robotic nature exemplifies its Steel typing.
Despite appearing to be inorganic, however, the Beldum family are, in fact, organic, and do actually eat.

Metagross's Pokedex entries are inconsistent about the exact levels of Metagross's intelligence, but in all entries where Metagross's intelligence is mentioned, it is compared to a supercomputer. I figured I'd spend a little time going over some supercomputer trivia, just so you all get an idea as to just how smart that is.
The speed at which a supercomputer can calculate is measured in FLOPS, or floating-point operations per second. In June of 2016, only a few month ago, China developed the Sunway TaihuLight, which achieved a maximum speed of 93 petaFLOPS. (peta = 1^15, or one quadrillion). That is blazing fast. Perhaps the inconsistencies as to whether Metagross is smarter than or as smart as a supercomputer stem from the fact that technology, even in the Pokemon world, is ever evolving. An interesting thought, to be sure.

The Beldum family has appeared numerous times in the anime, under the ownership of Morrison, Tyson, Anabel, Steven Stone, and, most recently, Alain.

Metagross is a phenomenal physical attacker and defensive wall, albeit slightly too slow to act as a good sweeper. Until Gen VI, its defensive typing left it only weak to Fire and Ground. However, with the type changes in Gen VI, Metagross is now weak to Ghost and Dark, as well. In exchange for the added weaknesses, Gen VI blessed Metagross with a Mega Evolution that increased its physical attacking and walling capabilities, as well as its special walling capabilities, but, most impressively, boosting its base speed significantly. With a single Agility or Rock Polish under its belt, and access to Tough Claws boosted physical attacks like Meteor Mash, Zen Headbutt, Hammer Arm, Thunder Punch, and Ice Punch, Mega Metagross is a versatile physical sweeper that is poised to wreck opposing teams.

Here are some questions to consider to get the conversation rolling. You don't have to answer all of them or any of them in your post as long as you're staying on topic and within global forum rules.

If you have any suggestions for Pokémon you'd like to discuss in the future just leave your ideas at the bottom of your post. Make sure you give your thoughts about the current Pokémon first!

Previous Pokémon of the Week:

ncG1vNJzZmiapaGvorPAq5uepl6jsrV706GpnpmUqHyxu8qepKimXaSzbsDHnmSwnZWgenKBjJucpZylonqusdOapaBlnZrBorPRqKqsZmJmhXOEj2g%3D