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I'm gonna catch a lot of flack for this but I think Infernape is a really cleverly designed pokemon.
I know a lot of people hate him because of the whole fire/fighting thing, but I legitimately think he's a clever design. He's partially Son Wukong so that explains the gold and the small stature, he's an underdog protag. The fire and white fur are another thing I find especially interesting, he's not colored like most fire type pokemon.
I believe this has to do with the fact that he geologically correlates with Sinnoh pretty well. He's a monkey in a mountainous region, and since Sinnoh is based off of Hokkaido, you can kind of piece two and two together and figure out that Infernape bares a lot of similarities to those white monkeys you see in natural hotsprings high up in those Japanese mountains. So Infernape's a bit of geological appropriation by being a fire type since it's freezing cold in it's native region. That and Son Wukong being a monkey hero that fights baddies on mountain adventures just meshes together so well. I just find it neat is all.
