>>51647765Current designs are unironically better, coming from a characterdesign perspective.
Let's compare my favourite design from the top (Blaine) to my favourite from the bottom (Klara)
Blaine is a cool characterdesign visually, but it doesnt quite communicate who he is. If you look at him, he wears a white coat, a tie, round sunglasses, and he's generally very casual.
Now, the coat looks like a labcoat, and the sunglasses could be a reference to goggles. His stache is also reminiscent of another mad scientist villain who debut a few years earlier and started to enter the vidya market, namely Robotnik. So he looks like a mad scientist, and generally speaking scientists carry electric or psychic type Pokémon in the world of Pokémon. So clearly he's the gym leader of one of these types yes?
They added the fire badge to his tie because this is genuinely the only thing that makes him read as a fire gym leader. I'm also not sure if he was ever portrayed as all that casual, iirc he was very much meant to be loud and burning with passion.
Klaras design makes it very apparent that she's a poison trainer. The bowtie in her hair looks similar a Dustox, and her outfit has various venomous colours like lime green, purple and a dark blue. Her personality also shines through, she is wearing arguebly fashionable stuff, such as high boots, a white fluffy jacket, wristbands and her hair is well groomed. But the shadow on her eyes makes it apparent that she isn't all cutesy and is hiding under some sort of facade. Her pose adds to this twist as well. I will say it is a flaw that her bowtie looks like a regional variant that does not exist, though.
