Now reading...
Normal-type Reviews: Sentret & Furret

We’re back for the Normal-type reviews, and today we’re going to focus on Sentret and Furret, a couple of unrelated animals that are somehow related by evolution! If you are ready with this one, please proceed.

Selected Fan Art (Artist: francis-john)

Both Sentret and Furret are animals that are not related to each other in real life, yet they are related as an evolutionary line. This occasionally happens, as seen with Remoraid and Octillery, and the more recent Dewott and Samurott. Even with the mismatched species, they are still related in a way. For Remoraid and Octillery, weaponry is something they have in common. For Dewott and Samurott, they share the samurai motif. As for Sentret and Furret, their common ground must be their long tails.

The tail of Sentret and Furret are so integral to them that their heights count their tail. For reference, Sentret is 0.8m (2’ 07”) while Furret is 1.8m (5’ 11”). If these are their heights and the tail isn’t counted, you can bet that both Sentret and Furret will be gigantic Pokémon, but thankfully they aren’t. Sentret is even standing on its tail, which shows how strong its tail can support it, let alone allow Sentret to stand with it. Since Sentret is small, standing on its tail is important for it to scout things with the extra height. Being nervous and largely defenceless against predators, safety is important among their kind. If no Sentret could scout, it will be in panic and become insomniac, so it surely prefers to have some company.

Furret, on the other hand, is clearly a predator. This much is clear as Furret is based on a ferret, a carnivorous animal. Indeed, Furret is said to hunt and capture prey for food, especially its choice favourite: Rattata. Since real ferrets eat small animals, this doesn’t come off as unusual. Maybe Furret could eat other animals as well, as long as they are small.

With a slender body, Furret could easily enter narrow passageways. On top of that, it is agile at it despite its short limbs. This is quite advantageous for sneaking into narrow spaces for protection. In fact, this is where its nests often are, as they have been proven to be safe from others. Perhaps they could be useful in navigating narrow spaces to bring something to the other end or to chase Pokémon away, much like how real ferrets are used for their ease in travelling through narrow passageways.

By comparing the PokéDex entries for Sentret and Furret, there seems to be inconsistency on how they live. Sentret is said to live together watching out for each other as if they are continually hunted (otherwise, they can’t sleep). Furret, on the other hand, will wrap its offspring with its long body, as if its offspring is not necessarily like Sentret. Though this seems inconsistent, you could make a connection on how this works: if Furret is around to guard Sentret, Sentret is more secure, but without them around, they will be more fearful. As having a group is required for survival, there is possibly one for both Sentret and Furret, and possibly others.

This early-game two-staged mammal Pokémon is strange in a sense that Sentret is from an animal that is lower in the food chain than its evolution Furret’s animal of origin. This is like a rat Pokémon evolving into a cat Pokémon (admittedly, that would be cool to see). It’s true that there are cases where animals commit infanticide to eat their offspring, but when there is a Pokémon that could feasibly eat its pre-evolution and still makes sense in terms of a food chain, [B]that[/B] is funny or tragic, depending on your point of view. If you apply real world logic into Pokémon, not even Furret is a source of relief for Sentret as it could be hunting it instead.

It should be noted that Sentret is named after a ferret or weasel in all languages, yet doesn’t look anything like it. That might mean that Sentret was initially unrelated to Furret until later on, where Furret gets priority on what the family is called. Even though the connection between the two Pokémon might not be planned as such, the irony found in the evolution is something I fancy about this line. Since this is Pokémon, a kid-friendly franchise, evolution relatives are like family, so they will definitely be friends, like the lion and the lamb who drinks the same water.

When it comes to battling, Furret is mediocre. Its best stats are HP and Speed, and while the Speed is not bad, its Attack is not quite high. It could still use its myriads of Physical attacks to make use of it, though. There are quite a few moves one might not expect Furret to learn. Follow Me is one such move, even if Furret has low defences to properly use it. Me First, Baton Pass and Trick are other moves that it gets, and while they have their uses, they’re not breakthrough moves for Furret’s viability. Its abilities are, while befitting its scouting and squirmy nature, are not the best abilities (Frisk is the most useful of them all).

Initially, I thought that there won’t be much to write about these Pokémon because they don’t look all that special, besides their big tails, but as I think about them, I realise that they are stranger than they seem, the main point being that they are a prey-and-predator evolutionary line. This makes the Pokémon drastically more fascinating than I thought. This goes to show that even early-game Pokémon could have something significant like the others, so consider my assumptions wrong.

Sentret’s TCG Card

You can make up the basic characteristics on Sentret, yet this version of Sentret looks rather uncanny, as if its style deviates from the conventional one. For one, it looks blocky, particular at its bottom. The positioning of its tail also makes it look like a standing post rather than an ordinary tail (granted, Sentret’s tail is not exactly ordinary either…). Finally, its eyes are creepier than Sentret’s simple dotted eyes if you look close enough. Either this Sentret is crying or it suddenly has white in its eyes with thick eyebrows. Instead of a cute Sentret reporting for sentry duty, we got a stern and creepy one.

Furret’s TCG Card

The tunnel in which Furret burrows through looks wide enough for it to cross. I don’t think the tunnel is that wide though. Instead, the reality of the situation is from the perspective of Furret, who merely feels that the tunnels have a lot of breathing room to speed through, whereas the tunnels are actually narrow to navigate for any Pokémon or person who has a similar width as Furret since they are not built for crossing narrow tunnels.

Follow Me

As a Pokémon that could stand on its tail, Sentret is able to stand out and thus draw any enemies to it. Furret is a little similar in that it is tall, but the difference is that it doesn’t stand on its tail. Of course, this move is chosen to represent this family because they are the only Normal-types that learn it. This move is more associated with Clefairy, but as mentioned in Minimise’s article, it converted to Fairy-type.

As a move that redirects, this move is useless in Singles and Rotation battles, but in Doubles, Follow Me has much more merit because of the ability to redirect any potentially threatening move used by the opponent, which allows a teammate to go about executing a key move without interference.

Unfortunately, Furret doesn’t make a good user of this move, mainly because it is relatively frail. There are of course good users of this move. Jirachi, with its high defences and resistances, could bear with certain attacks, and Togekiss’ good Special Defence is another good candidate.

Another alternative to Follow Me exists, which is Rage Powder. Compared to Follow Me, many of its users are useful in taking hits, such as Amoonguss’ useful resistances and good defences, and Volcarona’s decent burn chance. The only difference is that as a powder move, there are Pokémon who are immune to its effect.

Overall, Follow Me is a very supportive move, but the user must be able to take the brunt well.

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