And this trend has been exponentially growing since the later gens.

I play the games since Gen I when I was a little kid. I loved fantasizing that Pokémon were some cooler version of our real world fauna and flora. They always had that aura and feel that made them believable, you could almost imagine them existing in a parallel universe. After all, they are supposed to be Pocket Monsters that you catch, befriend, train, and battle with. You were supposed to be the tamer of these powerful monsters, and it was how you raised your i.e. Arcanine and how you imagined your own was that made them unique amongst all the other Arcanines in the world.

This isn't how it feels to me anymore. They feel like characters now. I have a very hard time seeing Pokémon like Blaziken, Lucario, Greninja, Incineroar, Decidueye, Tsareena, Mimikyu, Hawlucha, Pangoro, or the new starters as surreal monsters in an otherwise regular world, instead, they feel like characters of a cartoon show. I simply can't see past them being characters of the Pokémon game and anime franchise.