04 | April | 2024 | Plaid Line + PRIZM + Scottie News

By: Julia Yang

These will be based on the anime and not the game since I’ve never played, but you saw the title, let’s just get into it.

Number 10, Pancham

When I say Pancham, I’m talking about Serena’s Pancham from ‘Pokémon XY(Z)’.
I love his personality. He’s sassy, stubborn, bossy, and reserverved. Well, now that I’ve said it like that, he doesn’t seem like the best Pokémon— but I swear he’s an angel.

Pancham’s glasses, his moves, his charm, there’s nothing to not like about this Pokémon if you ask me.

He may be last on this list, but that’s only because I like the 9 others on this list more than him, not because he’s my least favorite of all time.

Number 9, Plusle and Minun

These Pokémon are old but gold. They’re just little Pichu’s with more color and cheer. They’re adorable cheerleaders to support you along the way. You can’t have one without having the other, isn’t that cute?

In the anime, there’s an episode where a trainer is sick and his Plusle and Minun are just on his hospital bed trying to cheer him up by doing their little cheer routine.

This is so impossibly heartbreaking, I love them.

Number 8, Popplio

Popplio is just an outstandingly skilled and talented Pokémon. They’re the destined entertainers of their world, not to mention how charming they are.

Lana’s Popplio from ‘Pokémon Sun and Moon’ is just so fun and bubbly to watch. Popplio usually have a fun, silly, and cheerful personality which makes everyone love them.

The power to create basically indestructible bubbles is also an awesome power to have, like, who thought of that?

Number 7, Grookey

Grookey is basically literally just a monkey with a stick and it’s perfect, I couldn’t ask for anything more from this Pokémon. All Grookey does is just hit things with their stick, and cause trouble. A pretty good Pokémon if I do say so myself.

Number 6, Sobble

Most people either don’t like Sobble or they hate them, but I love Sobble. Sobble are just silly little Pokémon who want to go home all the time, who want to do no harm. They cry and cry, waiting for someone to make them happy again.

The thought of an extremely overpowered move to cry and force others in the area to cry is just a funny thing since Sobble are the scaredy-cats of Pokémon; so emotional, timid, nervous, and all of that with zero confidence.

Number 5, Diance

Diance is just such a stunning Pokémon, and her abilities are incredible. Imagine being able to make diamonds. Isn’t that insane? No wonder why people were trying to track her down. Diance is such a sweetheart in the movie, she just wants to make everyone happy whilst trying to keep herself safe.

Another thing, have you seen her mega evolution form? It’s extremely ethereal.

Number 4, Mew

I’m not sure why, but I’ve always taken a liking to Mew ever since I found out Mew was a Pokémon. Mew is just an overpowered baby if you really think about it— like Jack Jack from ‘The Incredibles’ movie. If you don’t know for some reason and are reading this article, Mew’s power is to become any Pokémon of its liking. Mew has every single Pokémon DNA in its body, allowing it to become the Pokémon and do/use whatever the Pokémon does.

This counts for legendaries and mythicals too. Now you get the scale of its power, right? Insane.

All of this power given to this playful and unintentionally dangerous Pokémon— and don’t even get me started on its passive abilities. This Pokémon is such a danger, I love it.

Number 3, Chespin

I want to make this very clear. When the name ‘Chespin’ comes out of my mouth, I’m only talking about Clemont’s Chespin, I couldn’t care less about any other Chespin.

Clemont’s Chespin is like Grookey, but 10x better.

He’s effortlessly funny, he’s sarcastic, he’s relatable, he causes trouble, and he’s expressive. We have all of this information about him, but he can’t even say anything other than his name. That’s how expressive he is. I’ve loved him since day one.

The best Pokémon personality to ever exist.

Number 2, Zeraora

Zeraora’s backstory is what gets me— its purpose for wanting to live is what gets me.

Zeraora— in the movie ‘The Power of Us’— is the guardian of the surrounding forest. Swearing to protect the nature and wild Pokémon inhabiting it due to humans/trainers burning it down in the past.

As long as Zeraora had lived, that forest would never be touched by mankind.

Zeraora is a Legendary Pokémon, making it extremely rare and difficult to catch. Throughout the movie, we see Zeraora getting hurt as a result of Pokémon hunters wanting to catch the all-powerful Pokémon of the forest. They never catch Zeraora of course, but they always get close.
Anyways, Zeraora is a fantastic Pokémon with a fantastic story, I’d highly recommend watching ‘The Power of Us’.

Number 1, Hoopa

Words cannot describe how much this Pokémon means to me. I believe Hoopa was in the first Pokémon movie I had watched, so it holds a very special place in my heart.

Hoopa is an extremely playful Pokémon with a curse of having its larger and more powerful form have an evil presence in it. Hoopa shows throughout the movie, it doesn’t want to hurt trainers and Pokémon, all it wants to do is impress everyone and have fun.

Hoopa has the ability to make portals with it’s hoops, isn’t that fun? I’d enjoy having Hoopa around anytime. Hoopa could turn big after the curse is gone, and we’d have a jolly time together.

Hoopa just seems like an extremely fun and exciting Pokémon to be around, and I think we all need a Hoopa in our life.

I believe fun and troubling Pokémon are the best, but I think we both have figured that out by now.

I hope you enjoyed reading my ranking with reasons.

By: Lila Dingmann, Serafina Zambreno, and Erin Moore

Over one lifetime, the gender wage gap adds up to $500,000. If women were paid as much as men, the female poverty rate would be cut in half. There is a 44% income gap between senior men and women. However, the wage gap is still denied by a large portion of the world.

Women experience sexism in a variety of forms in their daily lives, yet because they don’t see, understand, or relate to it, many men deny its presence. The gender wage gap is believed to be made up by roughly 50% of men according to an online poll of nearly nine thousand people.

However, it is undeniably true that women make $0.82 for every $1 a man makes and women of color only make $0.79 on that same dollar. This already sets women at a financial disadvantage, but on top of that is something even lesser known than the gender wage gap: the pink tax.

The average price on feminine products is higher in comparison to their masculine counterparts. This includes the unnecessarily expensive prices on period products, birth control, feminine hygiene products, and most items targeted toward women. Products are indirectly made for women when they are decorated with glitter, pastels, flowers, or the color pink–hence the name, “the pink tax.”

In 2010, consumer reports showed that women may pay up to 50% more than men for identical products. Women pay $1,351 more per year because of pricing, which becomes around $2,300 when adjusted for modern inflation, according to a California study in 1994. A study by the New York Department of Consumer Affairs in 2015 found that women’s products had a higher price tag 42% of the time, over double the 18% of the time that men’s products were more expensive.

Companies try to explain this increase away by the fact that women’s products are more expensive to manufacture, however, in many cases, the only difference is the item’s color.

Feminine products are priced 7% higher on average than their masculine equivalents (the smallest difference being 4% found between children’s clothing and the largest being 13% found between hygiene products). Examples of this include the following: BIC “for her” pens were double the price of a gender-neutral pack of pens, a pink wireless mouse was 39% more expensive than an identical blue mouse, a women’s pack of razors was 51% more expensive than the same men’s pack of razors, and a feminine train set costed 11% more.

Services, such as haircuts and dry cleaning also show very similar results: unequal prices.

In addition to being paid less than men, women also must spend more for the same products. This is only a small portion of the daily effects that sexist ideologies have on our everyday lives.

Some companies have recently begun making efforts to end the pink tax, which proves with enough unity and work, we can make a difference. CVS, as of February 2023, reduced the price on period products and decided to cover the sales tax for feminine products in twelve states.

This article was written to spread awareness about the pink tax, as it’s a very prominent financial issue for women, but not enough people know it exists. To combat the pink tax, you can purchase the cheapest versions of feminine products, buy masculine products instead, or speak up when you notice gender-based pricing in a store to leaders and other people in power.

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