>>52744671I fail to see how it's irrelevant because Pokémon doesn't exist in a vacum. You live in a world where apparently these things dislodge Pokémon from their intended space which they don't. Not only do you chose to ignore actual words from the people who run the series but also the many ways in which the series chooses to contextualize Pokémon. Nothing in Pokémon Snap ending suggest the girl is naive, verily so the point of Pokémon being attuned to the feelings of people and showing trust and love when shown love by people was a major point in Legends of Arceus such as NPCs remarking on the love the MC has for their Pokémon and even the lady at the pasture proclaiming Pokémon must want to be friendly with people since they're not running away from the pastures. Also it's never implied that the gengar bonded with it's trainer, instead it's revealed the trainer started to detest the gengar nevertheless it chose to be a good boy and await for it's owner. Likewise many abandoned Pokémon, like Ash charmender chose to wait for their owner and in Charmander case even if it meant death and enduring more abuse. The reception to the Gengar episode among children was one of sadness, many proclaimed to have cried at it's backstory because it has an element of pet innocence to it, indeed one reddit post called it the jurassic bark of Pokémon.
With all that in mind this construction is very powerful to the point that it greatly influences reception to Pokémon even in the NSFW sphere and as to why so many people have issues with sexualization of any Pokémon, they act cute and innocent and many people perceive Pokémon as occupying the space of critters in universe, and not just any critter but also the space of cats and dogs.
Of course I'm not alone here, as I mentioned you see this perception every on mass media. But as an example a rolling stone article for detective pikachu states that "Pokémon are like dogs" and that the movie is a "dog movie".