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It's because of Pokémon GO and Detective Pikachu.
Both put the series back into the normie mind. Not the quality of GF's work.
TPC/GameFreak can thank western developers who understand what made Pokémon popular in the first place: giving the illusion Pokémon could be real life creatures you can tame. Instead of the minimalist lean-business strategy that cuts content, focuses on cute shit to an unhealthy degree and makes everything look like a toy. Japanese culture has some very cancerous aspects and Pokémon could have been living with high numbers like these sustained all its life since gen 1 if it had been handled by a western team.
Even Tajiri admitted it the west understood it better. And how many times western players said things like "wtf are they doing!" as generations kept advancing yet we kept consuming it "regardless" of their questionable decisions, not "because" of them.
