>>52556461The original director of the series, Takeshi Shudo was a bit of a character. He wrote all the early episodes while on meds or alcohol. His original idea to end the series was a pokemon uprising being led by pikachu.
Basically pokemon was never meant to be a simpons like never ending show, it was a proper anime up to a point.
Add to that is the fact before series 6, or the gen 3 anime, pokemon used hand painted cel animation which is massively superior in terms of colour and linework (also comfiness) when compared to digishit.
While the animation wasn't super high quality the actual early toriyama esque character designs and cel animation make it look 10X better than modern pokemon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xKWiCMKKJg 