>>44479599If that's the appeal of the whole franchise, why isn't there a single 'cartoon animal' in the list of most popular Pokemon?
The baseline for an standard Pokemon design is some kind of animal + some secondary 'thing' attached - whether it's just slapping an element on somehow (Ponyta, Vikavolt, Gogoat, all the Eeveelutions), giving it some kind of 'theme' (Empoleon, Crabrawler, Xatu) or just morphing/exaggerating parts of it's biology (Kingler, Beedrill, Sharpedo)
Noctowl does literally nothing with the idea of an owl. It doesn't even have a cool typing (despite being obviously associated with Psychic), and it's biology is identical to a regular owl, with some eyebrows added. Even it's dex entries just talk about how it can see in the dark, fly silently, and rotate it's head 180 degrees - which are all things real owls already do.
