What I want to know is why they even bothered with the "pokemon are our friends" malarkey if this was going to be a central mechanic. It's very existence contradicts such notions. The explanation if you want to call it that didn't come until the 4th gen, but it's mostly the explanation of what is obviously nothing more than a game mechanic, which is what pokeballs are to begin with. I have no information on how recruiting monsters happened in other franchises, other than the Digimon DS games, which is the most stupid mechanic I've ever seen for such a thing. I imagine pokemon foremost was supposed to resemble bug catching, which is cruel and unusual in itself, but it may have also been to reinforce the idea that these things are a commodity to be bartered and collected. Nothing but a giant plushie factory.
