Yeah, what Every said. Doesn't necessarily mean it's related to Absol, though.

Also, I just had sort of an idea; since there can only be one Pokémon that can Mega Evolve in a team at any time, maybe it is has something to do with a limitation of the Mega Bracelet, and the goal of one of the evil teams we might face in the future might be to invent Mega Bracelets that work on more than one Pokémon at a time?

I'm still holding out for a Mega Stoutland. Or Mega Donphan. Hell, ANY of Dune's team besides Champloo.

As an aside, Mega Clefable would be the fluffiest thing ever short of a Mega Altaria.

...They really went Digimon with MegaBlastoise, but then again that was kinda expected. The only thing it'd be missing is armored feet.

As for MegaCharizard, it looks more streamlines and more like a natural flier if you ask me. But, it continues to be Fire/Flying. let's see how that 'staken.

Re: Moon

To be fair on the Digimon, most of the lower-staged forms COULD pretty much be turned into Pokemon with little-to-no tweaking of their designs while coming off as convincing organic creatures (with respect to the relative standards of Pokemon). Case in point:

Guilmon: "Hmm? What do you mean Guilmon is saying his lines wrong, giru? Guilmon is saying his name just like you asked!"

[spoiler]Yes, I know the dub dropped his verbal tic, but I didn't watch that version, so there.

It's more comparisons towards the upper end that get more unbased and annoying, IMO.

My Two Pen Regarding the Direct and Its Aftermath

The announcement of getting Kanto starters along with your Kalos starter caught me off guard, and it's now got me torn between breaking the flow of the game to do a customary "all-local-starters" run or doing a run without breaking the flow of things and letting the cards fall where they may. (Also, hoping that trading doesn't have to wait until the first gym, otherwise that is going to be *annoying* to get all 6 starters onto one file.) The Megas were ultimately expected, but they were kinda vanilla, not terrible, but not spectacular either, IMO, barring Blastoise's, which I don't really care all that much for.

I'm a little curious as to how the "requiring a trainer" thing will be justified in the context of the universe. It's cute and reinforces the series' theme of "befriend anything and fight together with it", but from a world-building sense, it seems somewhat arbitrary for natural organisms to have transformations come about due to symbiosis with lifeforms that according to lore has in the geologic scheme of things only recently begun to interact intimately with Pokemon.

I'm a little disappoint in the revelation of Pokemon Bank and how it works. While the storage and not being tied to a game like Ranch is nice, the whole idea of paying for Pokemon anything as a service as opposed to something you cough up money once for and use as you please is something that rubs me kinda wrong.

Also, tying it to servers on GF/TPC's end means that things are very much in their hands, as opposed to being able to set aside space on an SD card to do a local backup and then make copies of the disk image on one's computer. (I suppose that that's partly due to paranoia of the inevitable system hacks, but still.)

But alas, there's apparently a free trial window around launch... So I'll just need to figure out how to use Pokecheck and clone my G4/G5 buddies to export them to X/Y soon after launch. Or else just run with a completely blank slate for this Gen as I did in G5 (mostly because I was too lazy to migrate mons and didn't know Pokecheck was a thing).

Pokemon Bank has a free trial month when it first comes out anyway. Plenty of time to get your mons transferred.

Comparisons

In most cases I've seen, the whole "Pokemon is like Digimon now" thing sounds like even more whining about how they changed it, now it sucks. And even beyond that, as a joke it's long past overstayed its welcome.

Kanto Starters in XY

I'm curious about this. Especially whether it means the other generations of starters will be given throughout the game. I'm personally going to hope they are, and hope Mega!Blaziken is a hint toward such.

Speaking of Mega!Starters, hell yes at the Mega!Kanto Starters.

And look! Mega!Charizard has Kyurem arms!

Bank

I like the idea, but I'm worried something will go wrong that will put several million Bank'd mons in jeopardy, such as a system hack. And having to pay for it is also a concern. Plus, with it apparently being the "new" way to transfer mons to the new generation, I'm once again worried.

That said, I never did pull my G4 mons to G5.

Mega!Evolution Justification

I'm going to abstain from this discussion until we know whether we need a new justification. We're still getting info, after all.

The annual fee is honestly so insignificant that it doesn't really bug me, but the fact that it could be compromised is a concern.

Also, totally going Squirtle, Chespin, Torchic. Maybe, if I can get it in sooner, Squirtle, Chespin, Cyndaquil.

To be honest, Pokémon Bank is the first thing X/Y related that I'm disliking the idea of. As someone who tries to always complete the Pokédex 100%, I'm a bit worried that completion would be unattainable for those who aren't willing to pay for the service.

Sudowoodo possibly getting an evolutionary relative? Yes please!

I don't really have any thoughts on the Mega!Kanto starters seeing as I'll never really consider using them anyways. Praying for a Mega Gardevoir is kind of not going to happen, though I hope some Psuedos get it.

Also:

Jacob: Allow me to demonstrate what happens when you let a pawn reach the other side of the board. It transforms.

Also about the Pokémon bank thing I'm I think it's unfair to make someone pay for content that isn't extra, and for transfering since I keep everything I don't want to pay to trade them up.

Didn't really say it before, but unless I'm misinterpreting things, it sounds like the Kanto Starters won't be a postgame thing like I originally thought. If that is the case, I'm rather tempted to have Maggie get a Bulbasaur from Sycamore rather than a G6 starter for various reasons.

And regarding Pokemon Bank. I don't think I'll use it quite yet, but I can see myself using it in the future, especially if this does end up being used for future gens like they seem to be implying. And 5 dollars a year isn't quite as good as getting it for free, but it's honestly something I'd be willing to pay. (And I doubt this is the only way to transfer Pokemon over because it's not coming out until at least two months after the game's release, which would be kind of poor design, I'd think.)