>>32059686>And as much as I love Primarina, it's too frail-looking desuThis is how I mainly felt about Primarina
Before you say "you just want it to look burly to empower your lack of manhood", it's nothing like that, actually. I just happen to like sea lions. I actually wouldn't have minded the concept itself, I'm all for creativity, but Primarina itself, of course, feels less like a sea lion and more like a fairy-like one with its own selkie/mermaid kind of feel, departing from what it once was and becoming prettier and slender, with cute things thrown together, thus sacrificing certain realistic details and making it more unnatural than it should. Sure, you can say that it's meant to be cartoony, but should a sea lion neck for instance be that thin despite the fact that it's cartoony?
Take a look at Charizard, for instance. You could say he's taking the mythology path too, what with the whole fire dragon thing, but the thing is, he still looks natural, there isn't any sort of added flare to him. Primarina itself could be considered as going for the mythology path too since it goes sea lion > selkie, but compared to Charizard or other starters/pokemon who follow this design path, it's got these added up things that makes it look more ridiculous than it should.
When I picture a mermaid or a selkie, for instance, I picture a young woman with its hair loose with a fish tail instead of legs and presumably one starfish in her head or in the selkie's case, it let goes of its sea lion skin and is a creature with a woman figure, which Primarina both addresses. Now, where in the heck did I mention "symmetrical starfish bubble headphones" or "cluttered to the brim with frills" here? Due to the former, you can't even see its ears, thus hiding them away from the viewer's attention, in order to make it "even cuter".
The incessant need to make it "cutesy" overall kind of ruined a concept that I would have otherwise found breath-taking, if done more naturally.
