>>25110683Pikachu was already "modernized" in Yellow. Original sprites and concept art were janky as shit, the designs all got updated when the anime came out. Pikachu in Episode 1 of the anime is essentially the same as Pikachu is today 19 years later.
If the franchise was "rebooted", it would be with either Gen5, when they took things in a totally different direction, got more story focused and mature, and made a whole new set of unpolluted Pokemon for the Pre-E4 story, or Gen6, when they switched to the Mega universe.
