I regret to inform you that the yearly article about the wonky handling of Genders in Pokemon has become a trilogy, and it’s all thanks to this thing, Enamorous.
Enamorous is a mistake and an iteration on one of Pokemon’s greater mistakes (in my entirely subjective opinion). Back in Black/White, they were introduced as another example of mythic figures in the space that were Actually, Really, Quite Real Pokemon that you could interact with and catch because you were really good and cool and interesting, something that every generation has had. In Generation 1, they were legendary birds, with Articuno, Zapdos and Moltres. In Generation 2, they were legendary foxes, with Entei, Suicune and Raikou. Generation 3 gave us the Regis, which were Regirock, Regiice and Registeel. This is how Pokemon writers establish mastery, they provide the context by reciting meaningless lists.
Anyway, each of these generations had Pokemon that were a mix of good (Zapdos, Suicune), interesting (Raikou, Moltres), or pretty bad (Articuno), and they showed up in tournaments as reflected that. These Pokemon have good stats (a base total stat value of 600, which is very high), they have good types (usually, Articuno and Moltres aside), and they tend to have access to good moves that let them do their job well (Articuno notwithstanding).
Then we got the genies, and in Black/White 2, we got a new ability that let us shapeshift the genies into different forms that reference a different classic Asian mythology. That’s cool and all but one of the Pokemon in question is Landorus-Therian, a pokemon who has been important in every single metagam it’s ever shown up. It’s so good that other ground types and other flying types really need to work hard to get attention. It is omnipresent and deeply frustrating to me, just because I find anything that’s Too Good for Too Long to be irritating. That’s not to say the other two aren’t good, just that Landorus-Therian is omnipresent, while the other two genies are just extremely common. In doubles tournaments, you’re not as likely to see (say) Thundurus thanks to living in a similar space to something like Regilecki, but just on raw numbers and qualities, these genies are all very good and you should bear them in mind.
With Pokemon Legends: Arceus, we got a new addition to this family of Landorus-Therian And Two Others. Enamorous. Enamorous is an always-female, flying-fairy type Pokemon with the same stat total as Landorus-Therian. She does more or less all the same things, with the same pair of forms, has access to an enormous pool of good moves, and she can use those moves well. She also can be a turtle and a snake at the same time, which is way cooler and I like it a lot better than I like the ‘weird mean looking genie’ look.
Now this isn’t the Intrusion of Gender. There are plenty of gender-locked (and gender-less) Pokemon that exist in Pokemon, what’s the big deal here.
The big deal is that this is a tournament-competitive Pokemon with a fixed gender and potentially, access to the ability Cute Charm. Cute Charm is an ability that means when you hit a Cute Charmer with a physical attack, if your attacker is a different gender, they have a 30% chance to be given the status ‘infatuated.’ An infatuated Pokemon has a 50% chance to not be able to attack the pokemon they’re infatuated with on the next term, and I don’t just mean ‘it might attack the wrong target’ I mean ‘it will sit there and not do anything,’ losing you a whole turn.
Now, a very reasonable counterpoint here is, what are the odds? Really? How likely is it? You need to hit an Enamorous physically with an attack on a male Pokemon that then has a 30% chance to get infatuated and if it is, it’s a 50% chance to lose an attack if it has to attack the Enamorous. That’s not a lot, and if you don’t physically attack what are the chances it comes up. You can’t even guarantee that the Enamorous has Cute Charm! It might have Contrary!
This kind of pressure doesn’t have to be common. It’s just that before, Cute Charm was a functional non-presence in any competitive format. It wasn’t that Pokemon at a competitive level didn’t have access to it, though every competitive Pokemon in any format had better options. You could put Cute Charm on your Sylveon, or you could have Pixilate, which makes every attack it makes better. You could put Cute Charm on your Jigglypuff, or you could have the incredible defensive tool Friend Guard, which protects your teammate for half damage. The few Pokemon for whom it was a best option ability weren’t very worrying, and even those who used it for some reason don’t have a reliable gender, so it’s effectively a 50%/50% chance on whether or not you can protect yourself against it at the team-building stage of the game.
Simply put, up until now, Cute Charm has always been not quite worth thinking about.
But now it’s not. And worse, now it’s on a Pokemon that has ever possibility of being present in any given tournament. It doesn’t have to be super common! It doesn’t have to show up in every round of your nine on the way to the top (or really three to drop and milkshake), but if out of the fifty-four Pokemon in that space, there’s a reasonable chance any one of them is an Enamorous, and you didn’t plan for that, then you’ve presented an angle in which you have a 15% chance to give up an entire turn.
Maybe.
This is a tiny optimisation, but it’s not nothing, and the nature of Pokemon tournament competitive play is one where players are already refining processes for maximum optimisation. Pokemon have to have IVs, they have to have moves, they have to have the right nature, they have to have trained properly, PP-up’d properly, and for some people, they have to be shiny, which is an extra layer of rarity. Adding gender to this is just another thing, and I imagine for some trainers who find this very easy for some reason or another this is easy. You just always make sure your physical attackers are girls, which makes sense. They’re called broad shoulders because they’re for women after all.
But for some, it’s an extra layer of irritation and it didn’t have to be here. We didn’t need Pokemon to smack of gender.