The world of Pokémon is home to creatures of all types. Many are based on creatures that exist in real life and are slightly twisted with certain design decisions to make them uniquely adorable, cute, intimidating, or mysterious. Pokémon can have many different types, many based on elements, and the coolest of these is arguably the dragon-type. These are often large creatures packing a ton of power and ferocity. With a good number to choose from let's rank the 10 coolest dragons throughout the entire Pokémon series.
10 Dragonite
On the surface, Dragonite may look like a big goof, but it's a pretty powerful creature in its own right. The biggest issue with Dragonite is that as a final evolution in a chain it doesn't look anything like its previous two versions of itself. It goes from a blue and white ribbon-like dragon and turns into something that would have been a guest appearance on Dragon Tales. Luckily when it makes a cameo in the movies sporting a messenger bag as the local mailman it brings it all together into it looking like a friend you'd want to hang out with.
9 Flygon
So, Flygon at first glance looks like it would be equal parts bug-type and flying-type, but it turns out it's neither.
Flygon is primarily a ground Pokémon with its secondary typing being a dragon. It's a big beautiful creature that very much exudes characteristics of dragons, but the ground-typing is more of a meta-design decision to have it throw players off in battle. Its eyes are the design choice that reads as a bug, but if those were altered in the slightest then Flygon could pass as a smaller species of dragon.
8 Kingdra
Kingdra is often forgotten about as a dragon-type despite being one of the most majestic Pokémon under the water. In the real world seahorses, which Kingdra and its evolutionary line are based on, are often seen as having many dragon-like features. Their facial structure is very reptilian and they can often be seen sporting wing-like fins that help them control their movement underwater. If a bat or a t-rex can be a dragon, then why can't an underwater creature who looks like one also be a dragon?
7 Haxorus
The land of Pokémon has very few dragon-type creatures and Haxorus has the distinction of being the only one on this list. Haxorus' body looks like it's covered in armor plating and unlike most dragons, it's bipedal meaning it stands on two legs, similar to how humans do. It also has a pair of massive tusks on its face that resemble two large red scythes. Combining armor-like skin with sharp objects is a clear way to create something cool to most people, but especially younger boys in elementary and middle school.
6 Garchomp
The real struggle of this list was figuring out if the base or the mega version of Garchomp should make the list. Having Charizard as the only mega brought home the fact that his base form not being dragon-type is blasphemous, and made it all feel a little more special.
Garchomp reads more like a guest character on the '90s cartoon Street Sharks then he does an actual dragon, but he is cool in design. The darker hues of blue, yellow, and red contrast his white details and make him pop off the screen.
5 Noivern
Noivern is hands-down one of the coolest Pokémon there is regardless of typing. It takes the traits of bats and turns them into something fluid and ferocious. Bats often feel scary due to how creepy they look and the fact that they're often all black. Noivern happens to be mostly comprised of purples and would technically be a wyvern and not a dragon. This distinction is based on whether or not a supposed dragon's hands are a part of their wings or if they're independent of them. Fantasy entertainment often makes this mistake and calls wyvern-designed creatures dragons.
4 Hydreigon
What is a hydra if not a dragon with many heads? This must have been the thinking on part of the team behind designing Pokémon when coming up with Hydreigon. Outside of fire and dragon-typing, mixing dark with dragon seems to be one of the truer combinations for what one would assume a dragon to be in the land of Pokémon. Hydreigon is exactly the latter and when matched with his intimidating form looks cool. It sadly suffers from the dragon curse of Pokémon which means it takes forever to evolve into its final form.
3 Tyrantrum
Now, though they are largely thought of as fantastical, dragons share a lot of similarities with dinosaurs who roamed the Earth ages ago. With the recent discovery that many dinosaurs likely had feathers at one point, it creates an even likelier scenario that dragon-like creatures once existed.
Pokémon took a different route and decided that though Tyrantrum is based on a T-Rex which is a dinosaur, it would make sense for them to make it a dragon-type Pokémon. It seems that in the world of Pokémon dinosaurs are the dragons of the land.
2 Salamance
Coming in as arguably the coolest base dragon Pokémon in the entire series, Salamance is what you'd expect when you hear that there are dragon-type Pokémon. In many ways, its evolutionary chain is similar to that of a Beedrill or Butterfree as its middle evolution is pretty much a defensive casing. The bugs use it as a stage of metamorphosis, whereas it seems that Shelgon is hiding from the world until it can make its grand reveal that it is now a big and powerful dragon-type Pokémon.
1 Mega Charizard X
The biggest mistake the Pokémon franchise ever made was deciding not to retype Charizard into a hybrid dragon-type when it was introduced. If you were to print out a picture of Charizard and ask 1000 random people what he was based purely on the picture a vast majority of them would say he was a dragon. Thankfully through Mega Evolutions, Charizard was given a hybrid dragon-typing while in the mega evolved state and also comes with a cool new design that exchanges his orange look for blacks and blues.