Ninetales

When Vulpix evolves into Ninetales, it drops the "cute" in favor of a more mature sort of "elegance." Again, this is something I can take or leave, but I can still respect. Many more foxes - and other fire-type canines, fox and non-fox - are yet to come, but most have relatively overwrought and unrealistic designs. The streamlined simplicity of Ninetales is fundamentally pleasant, with a minimal color palette and no extraneous stripes or spikes or doo-dads to break up its form, and best of all, it doesn't have those awkward, angular anime eyes that are so common to other pokemon. These more animal-like eyes look vastly better and I really wish they were more standard to the series than those "Dragonball Z" looking ones they like to slap on everything.