>>46529651>Pokemon has literally always been scifiExcept when it's clearly not trying to be.
What part of 1800s Japan screams modern or scifi to you?
If you're going to go for that time period aesthetic on a SPIN OFF game, you might as well go all the way, not saying you can't take some anachronistic liberties, but a sleek, small device that turns monsters into light particles to hold inside just feels completely out of place and only there because of the mainline games. It would be like having a bicycle in that period, it clashes horribly with everything else.
They should have just taken a page from Conquest, or- and I'm definitely getting flack for this -
Monster Hunter Stories 
