It is a universally understood fact that dragons are supposed to be cool, at least in theory. Perhaps this is why the recent reveal of Mega Dragonite in Pokémon Legends: Z-A hasn’t sat well with at least some of the fandom: the souped-up version of the tangerine wyvern is as cute as it is goofy.
Some aspects of these criticisms are easy to understand: Mega Dragonite now has two sets of wings, and the bigger ones are fixed atop its head for some reason. Wouldn’t it have been better for the existing wings to change, especially when they already seemed too small for Dragonite’s massive figure to begin with?
“Just slapping some wings on and calling it a day is so lazy and a huge missed opportunity for a cool callback to Dragonair,” reads one comment on the Pokémon Presents stream that originally announced the evolution. “The giant head wings was the wrong trait to pick,” it continues.
The format undoubtedly impacted some of the reactions here — the livestream lasted just over 24 minutes, and some fans walked away feeling like it wasn’t very exciting overall. The top comment on the video, which has more than 25,000 upvotes, says, “This could have been an email.” To sit through that entire thing just to get one dorky mega reveal likely didn’t help the way people received Mega Dragonite.
There are plenty of people who love the new Dragonite design; you can scroll through social media sites like X find tons of awesome artwork and excited fans. But there’s also a contingent of fans who are disappointed by the vibe of mega Dragonite. It appears that granting Dragonite angelic wings, a giant pearl, and emphasizing its kindness in the ‘dex has moved the wyrm more into kawaii territory.
Before the evolution, people thought of Dragonite as a fierce monster. In the original Pokémon Red and Blue games, Lance, the strongest member of the elite four, emphasizes the Dragonite family heavily. He’s got two Dragonairs — the evolution that comes before Dragonite in its evolution chain — and one Dragonite. Every single one knows the move Hyper Beam, which, while not terribly useful in the competitive scene, is definitely considered a powerful move both within the fiction and for average players.
A memorable introduction like that does not set the stage for a creature design that looks like it would be right at home alongside Hello Kitty, based on some of the reactions Dragonite has been receiving. “Dragonair is so majestic, it’d be cool if Mega Dragonite was a bit closer to that,” another comment on the stream reads.
As a longtime Dragonite fan, I get where the negative reactions come from. But the Dragonite that exists in people’s minds doesn’t quite match the one that Game Freak and The Pokémon Company have been building over the years. Just because it looks like Charizard doesn’t mean Dragonite is supposed to occupy a similar “edgy” space. In the anime, Dragonite has a wonky sounding cry that makes it sound like a large oaf. Both the illustrated versions and the modern game versions of Dragonite emphasize its curvy round shape, which quietly gives the creature a softer vibe than the one he had when he was composed of jagged pixel art. This doesn’t mean Dragonite can’t be a capable monster with an awesome vibe, but it’s clear that there’s a difference between the Dragonite that exists in people’s heads and the one Game Freak envisions based on the divisive reaction to the mega version.
Another reason some people can’t take Mega Dragonite seriously is because of the implications. All mega evolutions happen through the use of stones, right? So far, the games name all the stones after the Pokémon while appending “ite” to the end. So you’ve got stones like Gengarite, Mewtwoite, and so on. The existence of Mega Dragonite implies that we’re going to be using an item called “Dragoniteite,” which, I’m sorry, already sounds like a meme. There’s a reason people were discussing this 11 years ago, when mega evolution was originally conceived — the naming convention is ridiculous in this context. Some theorized that the “ite” convention probably killed any chances Dragonite would ever get a mega evolution at all.
Hilariously, people are jumping in to these decade-old discussions to inform people what Mega Dragonite’s stone is actually called, and to rub it in the faces of people who thought it would never happen. Here’s a recent reply to one post, posted a whopping 12 years ago, that vehemently argued we’d never get a Mega Dragonite: “Well this aged very nicely.”
