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  • 10 Cutest Dark Type Pokemon That Are Endearingly Edgy

    10 Cutest Dark Type Pokemon That Are Endearingly Edgy

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    In the world of Pokemon, many different designs hold unique charm and appeal, making them quite adorable in the eyes of fans. Traditionally, Dark Type Pokemon wouldn’t be categorized among these other ‘Mons as cute, but even these edgy little beings can be cute and cuddly.

    We’ve rounded up ten of the most adorable Dark Type Pokemon that perfectly combine edgy and endearing below, so what are you waiting for? Grab some Pokeballs and try to catch these critters before they run away!

    Galarian Zigzagoon

    Image Source: The Pokemon Company

    Look at this spiky fella, he’s like the panda-fied version of the original Hoenn-native Zigzagoon design. From that zig-zagging mouth, tiny sharp teeth, and the tongue hanging out like a cute puppy dog, this punkish Pokemon has quite an adorable appearance.

    First released in Pokemon Sword & Shield, Galarian Zigzagoon arrived with characteristics of a raccoon-dog hybrid, which creates this super lovable balance of ‘total gremlin’ and ‘best friend in the world’. According to the Pokedex, this spiked buddy is known for running in zig-zags, and can be an absolute menace, purposely charging into other Pokemon to start a fight and wreaking havoc. Welp, this little guy sure has the punk rock attitude, that’s for sure!

    Zorua

    Zorua in the Pokemon anime.
    Image Source: The Pokemon Company

    Zorua is a very beloved Pokemon to many fans, and for good reason. Not only does this Dark Type fox have a very mysterious, shadowy appearance, but it also has endearing, lovable features, and a charming, mischievous personality that add character to the little critter. Zorua has tiny, stubby paws, a cloud of dark fluff around its neck, an edgy tuft of hair with red highlights, big, expressive eyes that add to the tricksterish appearance, and tiny eyebrows to emphasize the chaotic expressions this trickster plasters on its face.

    Zorua is the perfect partner for any prankster, as this guy loves to use its illusionary abilities to transform into copies of other Pokemon and even people, enabling it to play tricks on those around it. It may be a tad mischievous, but damn, this fox’s smug smirk is more than enough to tug at my heart.

    Maschiff

    Maschiff in the Pokemon anime.
    Image Source: The Pokemon Company

    Look, Maschiff may not have the big sparkly eyes, or lovable lopsided puppy grin with a big tongue sticking out, but this doesn’t stop this Dark Type doggo from being super adorable. Maschiff looks like that one super chewy, grumpy puppy who just can’t wait to hook those teefs into its next bone or toy, tail waggling the entire time.

    Truth be told, Maschiff here is all bark, no bite — always carrying a scowl in an attempt to appear intimidating and make opponents take it seriously. However, according to the Pokedex, even crying children will burst into laughter upon looking at Maschiff’s face. D’aaw, this chonky boi is secretly a big softie at heart; how could one not love that?

    Morpeko

    Morpekoin the Pokemon anime.
    Image Source: The Pokemon Company

    Look, if there’s one Pokemon we can all relate to on a spiritual level, it’s Morpeko. This adorable Electric/Dark Dual-Type rodent usually carries a soft yellow color palette, with friendly eyes, and a big, cheery smile. However, upon getting hungry, Morpeko’s personality switches, changing to its ‘Hangry Form’ — taking on a purple coat with bright red eyes. Much like a Snickers bar, Morpeko here relates to the phrase ‘you’re not you when you’re hungry.’

    Honestly? I respect it, Morpeko, because we’ve all entered Hangry mode from time to time. However, despite this being the more feral of the two forms, this critter is adorable even when fuelled by anger. Just look at his little scowl, and balled fists in that stance….someone get that dude some food and cuddles, ASAP!

    Poochyena

    Poochyena from Pokemon
    Image Source: The Pokemon Company

    Another bitey pupper joins the list with Poochyena, a wolf-like canine puppy Pokemon known for its large, sharp fangs and persistent nature. Poochyena here has big, bright eyes, tiny paws, a cute red nose, and fluffy, spiky fur on its back and tail. It tends to bristle this fur to try and intimidate foes….aw, you’re trying so hard to be a big bad dawg, lil’ guy. I’m sure Poochyena and Maschiff would get along perfectly fine and perhaps even be best buddies, too. Who wouldn’t want an adorable, bitey boi dog duo on their Pokemon team? Dark Type Doggos for the win!

    Deino

    Deino in the Pokemon anime.
    Image Source: The Pokemon Company

    Adorable Dark dragon-dino? Check! Deino here is perhaps one of the cutest blue friends you could ever wish for. I mean, just look at these two in the image above — while they may not have big beady eyes or facial features to admire, Deino is rather endearing due to the big black fluff that covers its face and neck, making it the cutest emo dinosaur out there.

    In addition to the fluff, deino has cute stubby legs, a stocky body, and a tiny tail that most certainly looks like it could wag when it gets excited. Plus, look at their little mouths and cheeks stuffed full of food as they nom away…that certainly adds some bonus cute points!

    Purrloin

    Purrloin Pokemon
    Image Source: The Pokemon Company

    Let’s just ignore those long pointy claws for a second. Look at this adorable fluffy cat Pokemon! Purrloin certainly fits the Dark Type vibe with its deep fur color, smug expression, and pointed sections of fluff on its face, ears, and tail. However, this Pokemon is also undeniably adorable…and Purrloin here uses that to its advantage! That’s right, the cute act is no more than a ruse.

    Once Trainers let their guard down, Purrloin is well-known for stealing from them, or even worse — attacking, using those pointed cat claws to slash at their foes. However, due to their cute and cuddly appearance, these Pokemon are often forgiven for their chaotic actions…I mean, I guess I can’t blame them. I’d probably be a total sucker for Purrloin, too.

    Umbreon

    Umbreon in the Pokemon anime.
    Image Source: The Pokemon Company

    Look. Umbreon may have intimidating red eyes and a powerful stance, but as one of several Eeveelutions, this ‘Mon has more than earned its rights to the ‘adorable’ category. Somehow, this design manages to balance elegant, mysterious, edgy, and cute all in one, which is quite impressive. The most endearing characteristic of Umbeon is without a doubt the fact that when this Pokemon is under the moonlight or becomes excited, the yellow markings on its body glow. Aww, who needs a nightlight when you’ve got your buddy Umbeon by your side?

    Nickit

    Nickit in the Pokemon anime.
    Image Source: The Pokemon Company

    That’s right, there’s another cute fox friend on this list to give Zorua a run for its money! Much like Zorua, Nickit is also quite the mischievous trickster. However, instead of taking an illusionist approach, Nickit here is a cheeky little thief. This adorable fox uses the soft pads of its feet to sneak on by, and steal and horde food from other Pokemon, lastly using swipes of its tail to erase its footsteps as it takes off. Seriously, this ‘Mon is a full-fledged bandit, and honestly? I can’t help but respect the hustle Nickit has.

    Pawniard

    Pawniard in the Pokemon anime.
    Image Source: The Pokemon Company

    Poor Pawniard here so often misses out on opportunities to be recognized as cute, due to those pointy blades it has sticking out all over its body. However, I can’t help but find this little friend to be one of the most charming Dark Type Pokemon of them all. Look at its short body, big, eager eyes, and almost oversized helmet — Pawniard is like an adorable samurai kid.

    This guy would make the best buddy for adventure, following you around and training to grow strong together. Plus, despite being small, Pawniard sure looks like it could be fiercely brave and protective, making it a great partner Pokemon.

    About the author

    Grace Black

    Grace is a writer and digital artist from New Zealand with a love for fiction and storytelling. Grace has been writing for Twinfinite for one year and in the games industry for two years. She’s an enthusiast of everything spooky, an occasional anime enjoyer, and a die-hard Ghost-Type Pokemon fangirl. Her favorite video games include Overwatch 2, Life is Strange, The Last of Us, Baldur’s Gate 3, and Pokemon – all of which she will never tire of.

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    Grace Black

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  • There’s bleak, and then there’s Netflix’s Nazi occupation thriller, Will

    There’s bleak, and then there’s Netflix’s Nazi occupation thriller, Will

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    Will, Netflix’s imported Belgian movie about the moral impossibility of life under Nazi occupation during World War II, announces itself with shocking bluntness. Within its first 10 minutes, it’s made clear that co-writer and director Tim Mielants intends to confront the grisly horrors of the Holocaust head-on. But it’s also apparent that the film is constructed more like a thriller than a somber drama, and it tightens the screws on its lead character — young policeman Wilfried Wils (Stef Aerts) — in a series of breathless setups with escalating stakes.

    It’s an effective way to pull viewers into empathizing with the awful dilemmas faced by an occupied population, and into bearing fresh witness to familiar horrors. But the thriller genre sets up expectations — climax, catharsis, redemption — which risk trivializing the material, and set something of an ethical trap. Who’s going to fall into it: the filmmakers, or the audience? Mielants is too tough-minded to be caught, it turns out, but that’s bad news for the rest of us. Will nurses a glimmer of hope in the darkness, only to snuff it out completely. This is a bleak, bleak movie.

    It’s 1942, and Wil (referred to in the subtitles by the Dutch spelling of his name, despite the English title Will) and Lode (Matteo Simoni) are fresh recruits to the police force in the port city of Antwerp. Before their first patrol, their commanding officer, Jean (Jan Bijvoet), hands out regulation platitudes about the police being “mediators between our people and the Germans.” Then he sheds that pretense and offers some off-the-record advice: “You stand there and you just watch.” The ambiguity of these words echoes through the whole movie. Is it cowardice to stand by and watch the Nazis at work, or heroism to refuse to cooperate with them? Are the occupied Belgians washing their hands of the Nazis’ crimes, or bearing witness to them?

    Wil and Lode don’t have long to contemplate these questions. No sooner have they left the station on their first patrol than a ranting, drugged-up German soldier demands they accompany him on the arrest of some people who “refuse to work”: a Jewish family, in other words. The young men are initially paralyzed by the situation, but things spiral out of control, more through desperation than heroic resistance on the part of the two policemen. In the aftermath, Lode and Wil return to work in a state of paranoid terror.

    Image: Les Films Du Fleuve/Netflix

    Mielants, working with screenwriter Carl Joos from a novel by Jeroen Olyslaegers, wastes no time in using this premise to explore the paranoid quagmire of the occupied city. Can the two young men trust each other? Where do their sympathies lie? Wil’s civil-servant father leads him to seek help from local worthy Felix Verschaffel (the excellent Dirk Roofthooft), who boasts of being friends with the Germans’ commanding officer, Gregor Schnabel (Dimitrij Schaad). Suddenly, Wil is indebted to a greedy, antisemitic collaborator.

    Meanwhile, Lode’s mistrustful family — especially his fiery sister Yvette (Annelore Crollet) — want to know more. Does Wil speak any German at home? What radio station does he listen to? In occupied Antwerp — a region where German and French phrases naturally mix in with the local Dutch dialect — an innocent choice of word or of leisure listening comes freighted with dangerous political significance. “There isn’t much on the radio,” Wil responds. “Can you recommend something?”

    Time and again during the movie, Wil uses deflections like this to squirm out of taking a position on the occupation. But eventually, he starts working to save Jewish lives. Actions may speak louder than words, but even in the teeth of a febrile affair with Yvette, Wil continues to keep his words to himself. As Schnabel’s net closes in, Wil’s caution keeps him and his friends alive, but the cost is heavy.

    It’s a bold move to center a thriller about the Holocaust on a protagonist who, on some level, refuses to pick a side. We can only empathize with Wil because Mielants so effectively loads almost every scene and line of dialogue with implicit threat. Will is a tense, dark, frightening movie, filmed claustrophobically in a boxy ratio with lenses that blur the edge of the frame. The acting is intense (sometimes to a fault), and there are frequent bursts of unpleasant, graphic violence as the pressure builds.

    A man with a hat and a pointed white beard with no moustache raises his arms in triumph in front of a burning synagogue. He’s holding a gun

    Photo: Les Films Du Fleuve/Netflix

    But even though Schaad sometimes seems to be doing a weak impression of Christoph Waltz’s Hans Landa in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, Will isn’t that movie, and Mielants isn’t interested in Tarantino’s style of catharsis. At the end of the movie, the vicious, inescapable trap he set for all the characters simply snaps shut. Will shows that under the remorseless illogic of Nazi occupation, survival is collaboration, and resistance is death.

    That’s a miserable payload for the movie to carry, and it’s debatable how constructive it is. Jonathan Glazer’s chilling The Zone of Interest, currently in theaters, shows that challenging new perspectives on the human mechanics of the Holocaust are as essential now as they have ever been. Thirty years ago, Schindler’s List achieved something similar, and just as necessary, through radically different means: It found a thread of hope and compassion that could lead a wide audience into the heart of the nightmare and throw it into relief.

    Will is too burdened by its point of view to manage anything similar. It’s clear-sighted on the cruel compromises of occupation and collaboration, but so fatalistic about them that it winds up wallowing in its own guilt and hopelessness. That’s a dark kind of truth, and not necessarily one that anyone needs to hear.

    Will is streaming on Netflix now.

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    Oli Welsh

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  • 15 dark and deranged Christmas movies we’re dying to watch

    15 dark and deranged Christmas movies we’re dying to watch

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    Zach Nading

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