Fully evolved Pokémon are pretty much implied to be full grown adults in most cases right? Most Pokémon stories take place across roughly the span of a week, and the player is expected to have a full team of fully evolved mons by the time they reach the 8th gym.

So what I’m getting at here is that if the 11 year old protagonist can somehow have their single child-like starter Pokémon grow to maturity, get another 5 of them, defeat all the gyms, foil an entire criminal organization and ursurp the champion who usually has been champion for a long time, all within a span of like a week, how come 80% of the adult people have a lame band of 1-3 NFE Pokémon? Clearly they’ve been at it for a much longer than some 11 year old rookie...