Another anon posted awhile ago that Pokemon are just energy creatures; you can store them in pokeballs and transfer them electronically, all of them can live just fine in environments where their "base" animal/object inspiration couldn't, and all of their attacks look like the real deal, but are just a weaker form of the same animating force that makes them move.
Naruto pulls something similar with their characters that breath fire and shoot out lightning bolts; it's not literal fire/lightning but energy/chakra/magic/shit that approximates the real-world equivalent. And you can conveniently tie that in with why pokemon get stronger with affection/training/experience just by slapping each other even though they don't physically get bigger or stronger, or pull up
bigger rocks out of the ground, etc.
>>35957282>>35957439Pokemon are questionably sapient, but I would guess that their experience from seeing the natural world + their trainer's expectations shapes what their attacks look like; if there's a reasonable way for them to manifest rock slide or flamethrower by messing with an existing source of rocks/lava they'll use it, otherwise the attack spawns out of their mouth/in the air next to them and gets launched forwards.
Finally, you also get to ignore "real world applications" of attacks, since if everything is energy shaped by belief, Pokemon don't have to literally launch/survive being hit by miniature suns and earthquakes/whatever, and the environment in battle can be damaged for rule of cool/epicness, but not a small nuclear explosion every time 2 fully evolved mons over level 50 fight each other.
