>>41901237>Being too humanoid makes the pet/dogfighting/slavery aspect of Pokemon very awkward.Well the relationship shouldn’t be seen as “slavery” or simple pet/dogfighting since Pokemon enjoy battling and friendship value is lost when you lose battles. The bond should be stronger and seen as a close friend that chooses to accompany you on your journey out of respect and faith to help them become stronger. Plus it’s hard to see them as “pets” when Pokémon demonstrate far higher levels of intelligence than animals.
>Having built in personalities makes it impossible to project your own onto the Pokemon.I agree with this, but this has nothing to do with the themes or their physical design, rather they keep forcing personalities on top of them. Pokémon XY had the RPG class theme and didn’t force personalities on them (except Braixen, but that was never necessary to begin with)
>Being either too human or too gimmicky makes it hard to imagine the Pokemon living in the wild as a functional creature.The problem with this complaint is that since the beginning the Pokémon series has established that humanoid monsters exist, you can not like them, which is fine, but they’re fundamentally apart of the world they’ve built.
>Being too humanoid places the Pokemon into an uncanny valley where it's neither human or animal.They aren’t human or animal they’re monsters, pocket monsters. The uncanny valley effect can come into play with some individuals but in others some may not be effected by this.
>Overly exaggerated proportions make the Pokemon look like it couldn't function as a creature, and make it look more like a funny cartoon animal like Tony the Tiger, or Bugs Bunny.Many mons that don’t have these over exaggerated proportions still could come into question of whether they can “function” like creatures or not. Some object mons or even slime mons don’t make sense in cases, but again, that’s Pokémon’s world building.
