Hello everybody and welcome back to "ZU Player of the Week"!. I, Jett, will be your host for this edition of the project. This project will feature interviews from some of the ZU's greatest community members so that we can discover more about their Pokémon and personal lives. I am thrilled that I will have the chance to interview so many amazing ZU players and I hope that you enjoy these as much as I do. You will also be pleased to know that I've managed to hire Ditto a full-time helper for this project. Anyways, now let us welcome our second guest who is none other than ZU's Luckiest Player...
Temporal Totodile!!
Favourite Pokemon:
> 
(ZU Driver, Manager of the Aesthetic Articuno (Finalists), Totodile lover, Skribblio Cacographer)
Ditto used Transform!
Ditto transformed into Totodile!
*toto toto DILE!*
Hey toto, how has your day been?
My days been great, I just handed in my last uni assignment so I'm free now. Woooooooooooo. What about yourself?
That's epic. I'm doing pretty good myself, been chilling for the most part. Thanks for asking.
To start things off, could you give us a brief introduction about yourself outside of Smogon?
Yup yup, so I'm 21 and live in England on the south coast in the countryside. As I just mentioned before I am a student at university and just completed my 3 year degree in sport and exercise science. Even though I just graduated I'm not sure what job I want to have yet, my only clue is something active and not a boring office job. For the past few years for a summer job I've worked as a lifeguard at my local beach. My hobbies include taking part in lots of sports especially triathlon which I main. I'm basically a Totodile irl
Oo that's really interesting. Overall sounds like a lot of fun. When did you join and what brought you to Smogon and Showdown?
So I'm not sure exactly when I joined but the oldest alt that I can remember and log into is called "blueboost" and is from July 2014. At the time I played a lot of lc, Ubers and 1v1. I played on and off for a few years I think but am not entirely sure. As a ladder hero ofc. I then came back in around July 2019 where I made my smogon account and joined Zu. (Even if nobody remembers me ;-; ). The reason for joining zu was because it had some of my favourite Pokémon and I wanted to use them as competitively as I could such as luxray and floatzel.
Damn, that's so interesting you started off playing all the non-usage based tiers/metagames first, but we're definitely glad you ended up in ZU now
Onto UMPL now. I've been thoroughly impressed by your team's performance during UMPL; how has managing for the first time been for you and what are your thoughts on the tournament as a whole so far?
UMPL has been a blast. Everything just went perfectly and fell into place. I'm super proud that we managed to go undefeated during the regular season and get the first seed. The reason for the success imo is that I drafted a lot of super nice motivated mainers instead of tour players and also the fact that my luck stat is a team buff. I was really nervous about the draft but when it came to it it run surprisingly smoothly and I got everyone I wanted with the exception of bloodace who is now being used against me as the mastermind of the Grookeys ZU squad. Overall the tournament has been a huge success and couldn't be done without your great hosting!
Ah that's great to hear. It's always nice to hear some insight from the managers themselves and I'm happy you took the approach of giving the mainers a chance to shine as it is really what tours are ought to be.
I assume you've been helping with building in ZU, what are your thoughts on the current metagame?
I've been more of a tester than a builder, I think I've only built 2 team so far in the whole tour and one of them got rejected. Current metagame thoughts are all over the place atm. On one hand the meta is as balanced as it has been since the 100+ drop in Janurary but I'm still not a fan of it and don't enjoy playing it much. This is due to no teams feeling consistent and I feel like there's always some unwinnable matchups. I have no solutions of how to fix the meta though as nothing is outright "broken". I guess banning all the cheese playstyles such as terrains could work but idk.
UMPL has definitely highlighted some of these issues but I feel this is a pretty solid take on the matter. The community is basically as confused as you are haha
Aside from Totodile, another Pokemon you like a lot is Regigigas. Does Regigigas deserved to be ranked on the VR and if yes why?
Why you got to do this to me ;-;. Unfortunately regigigas does not belong on the vr. Whilst I was a pretty big fan of using the sub set and setting up on passive Mons such as clef and audino to get the occasional sweep it is not good. However I have been using Bouffalant alot recently for the same kinda purpose and Its really good! It should rise up into the B ranks as long as tangela is S which is sets up on
My apologies, I thought it'd be funny question hehe. That's sad to hear for Regi fans but it's great to know that Bouffa is getting some love
pretty cool mon
play oras zu, its the most fun and balanced zu gen and regi is good!
:o, I have yet to dabble with the old gens much for the time being, but maybe in the near future I will :)
Moving away from mons now, do you play any video games outside of Pokemon?
Yup, although its basically all Nintendo games that I play with my two younger brothers. All the mario party games, zelda, splatoon, smash brothers. The only exception was that I played persona 5R last year and enjoyed it alot! I know you also said games outside of mons but pokemon mystery dungeon explores of sky is the best game ever made and everybody should go play it :)
Ah nice, all of the ones you've mentioned are great games. Pokemon spinoffs are pretty cool, especially the mystery dungeon series. Explorers of Sky has such good music!!
yup yup!
Seeing as you had such a good taste in video games, do you have any favourite songs, TV shows and movies?
Hmmmm I don't listen to normal music that often now, more just video games soundtracks and lofi mixes for studying lol. I would probably say that time is running out but Muse is my favourite song. I don't really watch TV shows at all. I watch some anime if that counts and haikyuu is my favourite. Again don't watch much movies either lol but Kingsman is prob the best one I've watched.
Fair fair. You mentioned earlier that you're a triathlete, do you enter many competitions and how well do you do in them? Also would you mind ranking the three sections from your favourite to least favourite and why?
Well because of covid there haven't been many going on the past year but I used to enter alot a few years ago. I was pretty decent and got prize money a few times for getting on the podium or winning the under20 age group category. The ones that I enter are sprint distances and consist of a 750m swim, 20k bike and a 5k run. The ranking of the disciplines are in that order too with swimming being the least favourite and running being the favourite. This is mainly cause I'm the fastest at running and its fun to chase people down at the end of the race.
ah ye unfortunate pandemic is ruining things but that's still very impressive. Triathlon sounds like an absolute blast
Onto the wacky question of the interview, if you were a captain and the rest of ZU staff were pirates, who would you make walk the plank and why?
Easily has to be tuthur, I cant think of a reason why I shouldn't make tuthur walk the plank. Big meany. Only downside is our crew will lose all of the shiny badges he has so maybe greg is the better choice for asking to play in umpl every week.
Haha great answer :D
Yup, had to think about it
Nearing the end of this interview now, do you mind sharing a team of your own design that you are especially proud of?
I'm not proud of any of my teams but sure!
Double crab is back baby, its just a fun team I like to use and its funny to see people reactions on team preview to dwebble. Butterfree is a monster and always puts it more work than it should even if its just forcing a sleep sack with is usually the least it does. Monke is necessary on ho and gorse is an autowin sweeper in alot of matchups. Ghost vally is underused currently and is a threatening sweeper and spinblocker
This team looks un-bee-lievably fun... (apologies for the bad bug pun), thanks for sharing
Is there anyone you'd like to give a shout-out to?
hmmm, ig the whole of ZU staff for being legends and well as the Zu community in general and ofc my team the cunos in umpl. Albinson deserves and big shoutout too for probably being my best friend on ps and TWiTT too for being oras buddies. Prob shouldn't have stared naming individuals cause someone gunna get left out so ill stop.
Last but not least, do you have any final remarks?
nfe smells
I expected this from Tuthur, not you D:
CHOO CHOO
And on that note, that marks the end of this week's interview; thank you toto for sitting down for this interview and for all your great answers!
np, thanks for having me on!
Feel free to ask to Temporal Totodile any questions you want!
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