>>23527614I'll address some of your points.
Lucario is not the only non-legendary Pokemon which was the main hero of one of the movies. Unown and Zoroark were as well. Having non-legendary Pokemon with smaller, gimmicky powers is a nice concept, not as common as another legendary with hugeass destructive powers.
Lucario's appearance in PMD games was accompanied by other 4th gen Pokemon that were revealed before Diamond/Pearl (Mime Jr, Weavile, Bonsly, Munchlax). It was a nice way to hype things up. Making Lucario a legendary team leader was not an issue really. It was a trivial thing and I'm surprised you mentioned it.
Charizard wasn't pushed by Game Freak, this is true. However it's cherry picking if you only decide to discuss its game appearance. You've talked about Lucario in the anime so you should have done the same with Charizard.
Charizard was the only evolved Kanto starter Ash's had. Additionally, it had more screentime than Squirtle and Bulbasaur IIRC. Its anime appearance had a huge impact on people because "everyone" watched anime back then.
Whether you like it or not Lucario is now popular because it proved to be pretty neat Pokemon in both games and anime.
It's fine to not like Lucario. It's not fine to bitch about its popularity here.
