When it came to predictions for Super Smash Brothers "Ultimate" DLC, three recent installment of veteran first party franchises always stood out between both fighter passes: Fire Emblem Three Houses, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and Pokémon Sword and Shield.

3 Houses? We got Byleth
Xenoblade 2? We got Pyra and Mythra
Sword and Shield?... we got a spirit event. This is the first game to also not feature a new Pokémon stage, from neither Gens VII or VIII.

It's seems rather... coincidental that the newcomers mentioned beforehand were not only swordfighters, but "Male Gaze" women (except for Male Byleth, but when it comes to FE, the female avatar ALWAYS gets attention), while the other well-stabilished first party franchises got only PNG images. And I'm not just talking about Pokémon; The Legend of Zelda only got a new BOTW stage and a revamp for Link, but no new characters. No Impa, no Skull Kid, no Ghirahim, no Champions, NOTHING, aside from Young Link returning even though he's pointless at this point.

I think I can see why people think that Sakurai has a bias for anime swordfighters, but this is not just bias, it's FETISHISM at this point. And he may try to divert the guilt to Nintendo when it came to Byleth, but what makes you think he's not lying? And even if he was telling the truth, he seemed a bit too compliant on a character he was supposed to be hesitant to include.

Anyway, as for this image, this is somewhat a reaction to Sword and Shield getting a pass on this game when it comes to fighters. And while the games ARE controversial, they were also the 5th best selling Switch, and yet FE 3 Houses got a new fighter despite not even making it in the top 10 of that list. Some people, myself included, were rooting for Rillaboom, since it would complete the "basic type tiangle" for starters, who was lacking a fully-evolved grass starter (it was originally Decidueye's call to complete that cycle, but that was BEFORE Ivysaur returned and Incineroar became the Gen VII rep instead), while othere were rooting for Cinderace since they consider him cooler (I admit that his Scorbunny form is among my favorites, but his final form being based on a soccer player kinda turned me off from him, as it's a common stereotype for a Brazilian to like that sport, which is not the case for me), whereas other options like Toxtricity (who has gathered a rather large fanbase from the games) or Urshifu (not only to represent the expasnion for Sw/Sh, but alos because of his unique battle style mechanic)... but in the end, we got nothing. The spirits don't even feature most of these Pokémon aside from the pre-evolved starters!

Back in 2020, when SSBU was getting flak for adding Byleth, out of spite, I wanted to add a Gen VII Pokémon to the Fight Cloud Network, mostly because I didn't want to go with an obvious choice like Pikachu to represent the series (althoguh I did eventually gave in and added Ash's Pikachu on a later date). My original choice was Scorbunny, who at the time didn't have his final evolution revealed, and also because he was the first of the Galar starters that Goh obtained on Journeys (BTW, when I first researched about it, I saw on wikipedia that the series was a soft reboot of the Pokémon anime, now that Ash won the Alola league. But later on, that claim was removed, and it appears to be just another season of the main series, although it doesn't focus entirely on Galar like you'd expect. Although despite this, I ended up using the release date for Sw/Sh, which came out just 2 days before Journeys, to place the Pokémon there), but after I asked around some friends on Twitter (like ), they suggested Rillaboom instead, and I complied. And that resulted in this: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/35042116/, which has been kept ever since.

As the second fighter's pass was advancing, I was slowly hoping for a Gen VIII Pokémon to be somewhere on the pass, since it was commonly predicted just like a Xenoblade 2 rep, but now we're here and the final fighter is yet another "keyblade" fighter with a counter as a down special.

If the Pokémon turned out to be Rillaboom, I would have to replace it on the FCN, since the whole reason for it to be included was, like I said, out of spite. And it looks like that spite will continue, just like the Gorilla Pokemon's spot on the Network. Which led to this image.

Charlie Brown is mostly here because he and Rillaboom are supposed to have a friendship arc together in the FCN's campaign (like the friend storis from Disney Heroes; I have yet to develop the details of it yet), but it could be also because fo their status as "losers" or something.

Once again, I went for a manga-inspired coloration. If I ever decide to make a FCN comic, I would make it manga-inspired, complete with the reading being right to left (mostly because the western comic book industry is decaying faster than a spoiling banana); this was also an attempt to mimick Mato-san's style on the early Pokémon Adventures volumes, in which the characters appeared chibi/simplified pretty often, even in serious scenes.

Coloring Rillaboom would have been easier of there was already one in the manga, but so far we only have a Twackey, which is Henry Sword's (Victor's Adventures counterpart) Twiggy, who have yet to reach his final stage. I had to use Twiggy's color scheme as a Twackey and sort the colors in Rillaboom's body. I would probably have to update it once Twiggy evolves once again.

Charlie Brown was easier, however. Since he mostly wears yellow, which is always represented as white on the manga, he pratically didn't have to be colored at all, aside from his shoes.

Well, I guess we now have to wait 4 years or so for the next Smash (if there IS one) to see if we get a new Pokémon, and even then it's probably from Gen IX or something. That leaves Gens IV and VIII the only ones without a proper fighter in Smash (Gen III is TECHNICALLY represented by the Pokémon Trainer, which uses his FireRed and LeafGreen getup, which are considered Gen III games despite being remakes of Gen I). I guess I should also have Sceptile and/or Zoroark as well...

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