>>45944252>>45944227>>45944107Newer patrons of pokewaifus have no idea how lucky they are today when it comes to fanart. Back in 2007, there wasn't jack shit in terms of good art, let alone hentai. In fact, most of what we had to fap to was ecchi. If you were on 4chan and wanted to fap to pokegirls back then, /e/ was better than /h/ (it kills me to see how dead the former is now comparatively). These were the days that a search of "Pokemon + paizuri" yielded 2 images on gelbooru and danbooru.
Also bear in mind, by 2007 a lot of us who were born in time to experience Gen 1 as early as possible (like those born in 94) had midriff fetishes, knowingly or unknowingly, mostly due to Pokemon itself (Misty's prominence in the early years), plus conditioning from other vidya and media that had girls with the same style (think Keira from Jak and Daxter or Yuffie from FF7).
So when Gardenia rolled around with a design that seemed to emphasize her midriff itself as the primary feature as opposed to a secondary one, and it generated a few softcore images like this and Kakkii's legendary underboob drawing, it was love at first sight. She epitomized what we loved. Short hair, genki tomboyesque, and of course, the all-too-lickable navel.
