>>22627288Importantly, Pokemon IS dark, and sometimes edgy, but not in the main plot or tone. It's in the periphery, with the dex entries, various random lore stuff, and sometimes smaller bits of the main plot. The games are lighthearted, even at their darkest, but GameFreak does a good job of squirreling away some weird and kinda grim stuff if you care to find and think about it.
We all know how the internet loves to make it's lists of "top 10 most scary pokedex entries blah blah please click on our site." ORAS is kinda infamous now for Sea Mauville and how dark in a very real way the journal entries and letters got. And all the way back in GenI we had Team Rocket killing a Cubone's mother and you had to fight her ghost. Just to list some examples.
But the games have never dwelled on that. The Cubone's mother thing is a small part of the game in pretty much the 2spooky4u area, and even then, the game pays it very little mind. No focus is given to it, you can even completely miss it up until you fight the ghost and then Mr. Fuji makes an offhand mention of it once you clear out Team Rocket. Same with all the Pokedex and discoverable lore bits: no one hits you over the head with it, they're simply there for you to discover and make what you will of it.
Frankly, it reminds me of Demon/Dark Souls in that respect. You have a silent PC, and the world is revealed to you through what the NPC's and text tells you as you go through the game, but no one ever gives you a long, gory monolog of how dark and grim everything is. And the main plot is often very barebones, but the real meat, the stuff everyone loves, is the surrounding lore of the world and characters you can find but isn't "important" to the "story." Pokemon is a very light and children focused version of that.
