>>52793039Here's the thing. Looking past the nostalgia and bias, the entire core idea of going around, capturing creatures and making them beat the shit out of each other is somewhat unsettling. And I think GameFreak being vague about the exact mechanics of pokemon capture and why the wild monster who just tried to fry you is suddenly obeying you without question is a deliberate move to not draw too much attention to these issues. But then again the existence of humanoid, intelligent and blatantly sapient pokemon who can be captured just like your generic rats and pigeons does that anyway.
Then there's the fact that there ARE pokemon who exhibit personalities - Arceus, Calyrex, Mewtwo, etc. And then different continuities like anime and Mystery Dungeon straight-up make them actual characters with their own personalities, quirks and sapience, but still without adressing the elephant in the room that is trainer-pokemon dynamics.
Add all of that together and there's a big moral clusterfuck that GameFreak is too afraid to address, and the difference in pokemon portrayal even inside one game gives leeway to fans to interpret shit however the fuck they want, with opinions ranging from asinine "all of them, including the likes of Mewtwo, Calyrex and Arceus, belong on the leash, are too dumb to clean themselves and deserve to only eat from the floor" to an opposing extreme of "all of them, even your Magikarps and Ratata, have human level sapience and deserve to be treated as equals to humans". All interpretations have plenty of problems and GF isn't gonna fully commit to either one because they are too lazy and that's just gonna open a whole can of worms anyway. So all you can do is just consoom.
