>>46603150The Pokédex is actually a device that very much compliments the core idea of Pokémon. The concept of Pokémon was a JRPG where the player was in a world that contained monsters which could be captured and tamed. There were common monsters, weak monsters, rare monsters, and strong monsters. Kids could tell each other about the monsters they've found, and the implemented trading function would allow for them to barter monsters for each other. The only thing they failed to implement was a feature that made having multiples of common and weak monsters useful and worth trading for one single rare monster.
The Pokédex is called a "Pokémon Zukan" (ポケモン図鑑). While there's no exact English word for zukan, it's like a picture book of different types of things like animals, often for children. Some people translate it as "Illustrated Encyclopedia", some people use "Picture Book". Personally, I prefer to translate the full term as Pokémon Index, which is precisely what they did. They then condensed that down to Pokédex, though the fandom still seems to think it stands for "Pokémon Dexter" because of the 4Kids dub of the anime. But it would absolutely make sense for something like this to exist in the games so it's easier to keep track of what you do and don't have. Learn new things about the monsters you've captured and add their info. Animal Crossing does the exact same thing with its museum.
