>>49915595I don't think that's it. Consider the following:
>Johto had very few original Pokemon lines that hadn't been touched prior to PLA>A possible Johto remake could be coming as our next Let's Go game. LGPE used all of the new Megas and regional forms of Kanto mons to pad out and give more type variety to its dex (+Meltan/Melmetal) since the original Kantodex was lacking in Dragons, Ghosts, Dark-types and Steel-types>With the Gen 4 evolutions (Gliscor, Mismagius, etc.) included, Johto gets rid of the problem of having a lot of single-stage mons but still could use more type variety. Thus the idea of introducing more regional forms and evolutions for Pokemon that would be available in Johto makes sense (Galar: G-Corsola + evo, G-Mime + evo, G-Meowth + evo, G-Fetch'd + evo... Hisui: Ursaluna, Wyrdeer, H-Qwiflish, Overqwil, H-Arcanine...)>Aside from improving Johto's dex, Ursaluna also makes sense for gameplay reasons as they needed a Lord that could act as the "Item Finder" in PLA and probably wanted something NEW since all other Ride mons/Lords are original Pokemon... Bears are good at smelling shit, so they turn to Ursaluna over any of the canines>Hokkaido, on which Sinnoh/Hisui are based, has a history of being closely connected to bears. The native people used to catch and raise bears, the endemic population of bears are pretty massive and friendly to humans, and one of the kami of the region is a massive mountain bear>There is a true infamous story of a rampaging bear murdering and fucking up a bunch of Japanese people around the Meiji Period, the time when PLA is set>Giving Ursaluna a 550BST gives us another powerful physical Normal-type we can use in future metas considering most of them are not viable with powercreep or gimp abilities 