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Normal-type Reviews: Hoothoot & Noctowl

We’re back for the Normal-type reviews, and today we’re going to focus on Hoothoot and Noctowl, early-game birds that are ironically nocturnal! If you are ready with this one, please proceed.

Selected Fan Art (Artist: BrokenHAX)

Owls are cool birds. Not only do they have some neat talents and abilities, they are also quite cute to look at. When you think about it, an owl’s face looks quite similar to cats, meaning that they look cute due to the same reasons a cat’s face look cute. Owls are also associated with wisdom, possibly because of their solemn stance and their similarity in look with an old man. Our Pokémon now are obviously based on owls, and they are the early-game bird Pokémon of Johto.

As a first, Hoothoot and Noctowl are based around the idea of nocturnal birds, like real owls. In Generation 2, the day-and-night system was introduced, with quite a few Pokémon becoming active during the night, becoming open for capture. The lining around their eyes look like they are insomniac, which happens to be an ability they have. There are advantages in being nocturnal, such as hunting for food that only appears at night, such as rats. Not only that, there isn’t much competition with other bird that are normally active in the day. To this day, these owl Pokémon are still the only nocturnal bird Pokémon.

Being nocturnal, owls’ abilities are optimised for the quiet and dark nights. This is because their eyes are large and more able to see in the dark, and have wings that allow for silent flight. Likewise, Noctowl is said to be adroit in hunting at night thanks to its brilliant eyesight in the dark and silent flying. Hearing is another thing owls are skilled at using to hunt, and while Noctowl isn’t said to hunt through hearing in the PokéDex, it is plausible for it to be the case.

The eyes of an owl are fixed in place, and they cannot shift them. Normally, this would make it difficult to hunt, but owls have an interesting trick up their sleeve: their heads have a wider range in rotation. Not only can they twist their head to look behind, they can also twist their head upside-down, thanks to having more neck-bones than people. This allows them to more easily view their surroundings for something to catch, or to catch something threatening and scram. The way Hoothoot and Noctowl apply their head-turning abilities are significant. Hoothoot, having a clock-based motif, moves its head based on a rhythm, and its head positions are consistent based on the time of the day. Noctowl turns its head upside-down when it engages in complex thinking, which is clearly based on the idea that owls are a symbol of wisdom.

Hoothoot and Noctowl are very different from other early-game birds in respect of their battling potential, so it’s not just the habits that they are different from the daytime birds. This is because the stats on these Pokémon are more biased on the Special side, are slow and have high HP. Its ability to learn Psychic moves is also uncommon among them, no doubt because they are considered wise. Because of this, Noctowl functions differently from the more Physically-oriented early-game birds. Since Noctowl’s stats are on the low side and more defensive, it isn’t primed to be a competitive battler. It does have the appeal of Tinted Lens, which at least ensuring that they are not easily resisted (Rock/Steel is the only type combination that resists their STABs).

I always thought that Hoothoot only has one foot, since it is always depicted as standing on one foot. If it weren’t for doing a review on Hoothoot, I would have held on to that misconception. The reason it only has one foot shown is that it hid its other foot. Usually, birds with long legs like the flamingo would stand on one foot at the time, so it is odd that Hoothoot does it too. It’s not strange if you remember that Hoothoot resembles a clock with a stand. It did show both feet in the episode “Fighting Flyer with Fire” in the anime, and after looking at Hoothoot’s one-foot-stand, seeing with two feet looked unusual.

Speaking of the anime, there is one instance where Ash captured a shiny Pokémon, which are quite rare you only see them once in a while. The Noctowl is the shiny, and because of that, it became the attraction in that episode (“Fowl Play!”). Essentially, it was the target of pursuit, but it outsmarted its pursuers through the power of hypnosis, but after a rescue from Team Rocket, it allowed Ash a chance at it, which he won, so he got the only shiny Pokémon in his platoon so far. This once again shows a marked difference between Noctowl and other birds. In this case, being a shiny capture makes it different from the other birds Ash captured.

Every early-game bird always have something to differentiate itself from the others, but of them all, Hoothoot and Noctowl have a lot of things that are different from the norm, making them stand out the most. The owl is also quite an appealing bird, and I would say that Hoothoot embodies their qualities better than Noctowl, I guess because Noctowl’s eyebrows are too straight up to look cat-eared, though neither is exactly there. Still, they are based on owls, so they are awesome in their way.

Hoothoot’s TCG Card

With Hoothoot’s tendency to show only one foot at a time, it leaving tracks in the snow like this is quite an endearing sight. It shows that such a bird is capable of playing and having fun. Now the question is: does Hoothoot use one foot and hop to create the tracks, or does it hop on the snow while constantly switching feet?

Noctowl’s TCG Card

By shrouding its face behind its wing while looking at the viewer with its large eyes, Noctowl is being mysterious. The Pokémon also looks a little unsettling when the moonlight shines on it, giving it a slightly glaring look. What would be even better is that its head is rotated upside-down like owls are able to do, since such an intense rotation looks unnatural (to people, that is) as to become eerie.

Uproar

It would be strange to represent this move for a Pokémon that thrives in silent hunts, but this move also discourages sleeping by waking everything up, which fits into their insomniac nature.

Uproar has the distinction of being a move that prevents sleeping and waking them up, even for your opponents. However, the damage will only affect opponents, which is good, because once this move is used, you cannot do anything else until the user calmed down. This move could also act as an alarm for any trainer or Pokémon when they need to wake up, so this move isn’t just used for battling. However, the fact that it is very loud and has a continuous effect means that you need to calm the user down.

The initial power of this move used to be really low as to make it not so useful. In Generation 5, its power is raised from 50 BP to 90 BP, which makes it a bit more useful, but not useful enough, compared to the likes of Outrage, Petal Dance and Thrash. Still, it doesn’t confuse the user, so that’s good. It would be better if it has the ability to ignore resistances (but not immunities) to properly balance the drawback of this move’s forced continuous usage, since Hyper Voice is undoubted superior for its similar properties without the forced usage and accidentally waking up opponents.

Overall, Uproar is useful in certain respects, but a slight disadvantage in battling for being a Normal-type attack alongside forced continuous usage.

That’s all for today’s article. I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I have writing it.