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>Was this a good idea?
Absolutely not.
Alolan forms are one of the dumbest things to happen in this franchise, and that's saying a lot, given the existence of Baby Pokemon, Mega Pokemon, DNA splicers, etc. Thematically it makes sense: species could certainly undergo dramatic changes in new regions to adapt to different environments. But since it took until Gen 7, it implies that Alola is a unique and special region compared to the other SIX regions that have no regional variants. Oh and the regional variants in Alola just so happen to only be Kanto Pokemon.
Exeggutor, the poster boy for Alolan forms, is even a big pile of dogshit. Sure, conceptually it makes sense to grow stronger in warmer climates, its Dex entries say it's from tropical regions and Kanto only had it in the Safari Zone. But then in true GF fashion it gets fucked up by no longer using telepathy (and therefore the heads no longer communicate?) and now has the power "of the sleeping dragon." And all of the other designs make no sense either conceptually or aesthetically. Some of them are certainly improvements; Ninetales and Marowak are very well-done designs. But that doesn't justify their existence.
Alolan forms was just a way to shoe-horn genwun nostalgia and pad the Alolan Dex to make it look bigger. than it really was. And now when we move onto other games in this gen or the next they will either have to omit these Pokemon entirely from future regions or force them into a Safari Zone-esque area, defeating the point. And I'm guessing like the other stupid bullshit ideas that GF has come up with this will be quickly abandoned and these lines will be the only Alolan - and fuck, probably the only regional - variants to exist ever.
3/10 idea, 1/10 execution