Ho-Oh, the majestic rainbow bird, has had some pretty... eh... sprites.
I don't buy this flapping animation. That's just not how birds fly. I think there's way too much weight at the body of Ho-Oh, and the flapping feels like there's no force. Overall, I'm not getting this "majestic Rainbow bird". An angle change, a pose change (it might not even have to be flying). It is certainly a left over from the Gen 4 sprite, but it didn't translate all that well. I know developers don't go out of their ways to make new poses for a lot of older Pokemon, but if the result is bad, it's worth pointing out.
Somehow, the back sprite looks a little better, probably because the head reads a lot better by not overlapping in front of the wing, so it makes for a better silhouette. But still, it's not consistent with the front sprite. I have to knock on the animation too; Ho-Oh looks like its headbanging to a metal song and the wing animation is still completely off (heck, I just have an issue with Ho-Oh's overall wing design which probably is part of the reason the animation looks off). The perspective on the tail is wrong too.
This is the 3D model, where you don't have to worry about perspective.
They CAN do pretty good flying animations. Pelipper's is great, it actually captures the graceful flight the pelican is known for doing.
But actually, I don't really like any of Ho-Oh's sprites. 3D model is the best depiction of Ho-Oh. The original Gold sprite is the second best, but the disproportionate parrot beak makes it look more silly than majestic. Mainly because Ho-Oh's neck isn't unnaturally bent downward in a forced way to make it seem threatening. But I like the 3D model and its animations capture Ho-Oh better especially as its flapping animation is pretty slow, but helps give it a ton of volume that the Black White sprite failed to do. I also dig the color better in the 3D model. I prefer this cooler shade of orange more than the yellow orange one Ho-Oh previously had because it serves better contrast to the yellow tail feathers. Ho-Oh actually does go through several different types of red-orange and orange, but they should settle on red-orange.
And while I don't have a problem with Ho-Oh's back sprite being reused several times, because it's a mostly decent back sprite. I just don't understand why some of its tail feathers show up. They certainly don't read as tail feathers. You have to mess around with both perspective and proportion to get those feathers showing. I think they have to put them volume there because having just Ho-Oh's head and neck can be awkward for a back sprite.
But overall, I do like Ho-Oh a lot. But it seems to me that, despite being initially designed with 2D in mind, it looks better in 3D than 2D. I'm really not a fan of how they keep craning Ho-Oh's head down, making the bird's neck look strained. It doesn't help that well with the overall silhouette because the head is a good little piece of contrast between its massive wings and making that head too close to the body seems to throw it off. I guess they want to emphasize the wing size, but I don't think moving the head up detracts from it.
This is the worst offender.