>>49405055I think one of the reasons why Gen 1 is so fondly remembered is because how much grounded the setting is compared to literally every game onward; it's the literal region of Kanto Japan from the real-world in the 90s, and thus its trainers represent the everyday subcultures from that time.
This extends to the Gym Leaders, notice how with the outlier that is Sabrina (a dominatrix??), each of them look a bit of the culture from Japan:
>A rural young man>An athetlic teenage girl (don't mind the red hair)>An american soldier based in Japan>A girl wearing a kimono>A ninja>An old scientist>A yakuza boss 