>>47309817>No, stop this. There's no real animals in Pokemon because the Pokemon replace them. Any show of them is probably a mistake or an abstract.The sheer amount of references to ordinary animals in the Pokedex alone is strong evidence that this is not the case. If it turns out the pokedex is a meta 4th-wall breaker, then fine, but that doesn't make any sense for the anime where the Pokedex speaks directly to the characters.
>>47309835>Ohmiri and Masuda have gone on an interview saying that Pokemon aren't sapientIs this supposed to mean anything? It's not consistent with the behavior or characteristics of Pokemon either in the anime or the games and sounds a lot more like what
>>47309946is the case, because romancing or worse capturing and enslaving sentient creatures might be a bad thing to say on television or the internet.
We have episodes of anime where a group of Pokemon isolated from humans have interactions consisting of verbose spoken dialogue that gets subtitled for the viewer. A good deal of the Pokemon in the show, at least as far as the anime is concerned, show heightened levels of self-awareness, consciousness and empathy towards humans and fellow 'mons alike. And if Pokemon aren't sapient as far as the anime is concerned, how on earth do you explain Team Rocket's Meowth or Lucario?
This doesn't even touch on the Mystery Dungeon games. What about those? The Pokemon in those games seem pretty sapient to me, with very few exceptions. They have complex societies, guilds, merchants and even banks.
>That's not canon of the main seriesWell, alright, but what if I say I'm just attracted to the Pokemon within the limits of the Mystery Dungeon canon? Is that okay? If not, then why not? I mean, the main character is human. The only way it could not be okay is
>Romancing Pokemon is immoral and makes me uncomfortable, because it makes me think of romancing animals, which is immoral, because Pokemon look like animals. 
