>>45423483They don't make it cohesive because it's not like those riffs are repeated across the whole line. There's a lot of Pokemon with Nishida eyes... but only the ones she made have those. They're way more naturalistic and unexpressive than the ones with big cartoon eyes. They're not repeated anywhere else. A lot of Pokemon have a random horn, but it's really just a dozen or so and it doesn't connect them to the series any more than other designs. There's lots of generic Toriyama eyes, but those are the closest thing to a "cohesive" element and it was just the generic default of the time, with a ton of exceptions even back then. The theme of "animals with exaggerated elements" is the most cohesive thing there is, and a bunch of fucking Pokemon in Gen 1 don't actually follow it. Gen 1's not very cohesive, which made the exploration and collection aspect better because players could share secrets and discoveries to help the game spread.
As I said, the only thing that made Gen 1 even pretend to be "cohesive" at all is that Sugimori tweaked some to work in his style better, and he drew everything. When you say you want cohesive designs? You really just mean you want him to draw everything. Which is fine, everybody trying to pretend it's all still Toriyama drawing everything for Dragon Quest is a style some people like. But it eventually leads to increasingly restrictive, increasingly template-y design as what defines the "style" becomes more and more rigid and arbitrary. Pokemon in later series do explore concepts and styles not done in Gen 1, but the core is still the same as it's always been and to say otherwise is just almost always getting caught up in pointless details.
