>>41785673You're being obstinate.
Let me give you an example.
Growlithe and Arcanine aren't just "dogs but fire". They're inspired by shiisaa and komainu, legendary characters found in Japan which Kanto is based on. The fire typing correlates with the myth of the protective magical dog. In addition to this they match with Meowth, another Pokémon that may seem to be "a cat but __" but is again based on something thematically related to the region.
Pawter and Hurricanine are based on "labrador retrievers" and "thunderstorms". That's it. They're not even based on sea rescue dogs which might make thematic sense depending on the setting, but nah. Just blue dogs, because we don't have that yet. The same philosophy is why I'm not keen on Wailord; it's just "we don't have a whale Pokémon yet, let's do that". You know why shit like Koffing and Muk exist? They're subtle social commentary. They turn Tokyo pollution into a caricature, evocative of the "monster" of modern factories. Arcanine is a legendary guardian spirit that runs like the wind. Pawter is a blue dog.
By the same token, the three elemental monkeys from Black and White are absolutely reviled because they, again, fall into the lesser design philosophy. They seem to bear a very loose reference to the "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" pictorial maxim but they don't actually have anything tying them to that theme other than some vague gestures. They appear in the setting based on New York, yet it's a Japanese concept. Perhaps if the "See no evil" was Dark, and so on, to tie in mechanically with that concept, it would be stronger, but otherwise it's just lackluster, lazy, and sticks out as poor among the slew of extremely well-considered designs that came with gen 5.
