>>47635716This.
>>47635729You're completely off base, TCPi just learned to go for the fujo market on top of the consooomer market, but the humans in Pokemon are a niche group compared to the actual Pokemon themselves, just compare Pokemon GO's income with Pokemon Masters'.
To answer the question in the OP though, Gen 5 is when humans started to actually be characters with arcs and a place in the world, in previous generations, there'd be maybe 1 or 2 characters that had something going on, like Silver and Wally, but come Gen 5, suddenly both Cheren and Bianca have their own character arcs, Alder deals with his past, the gym leaders are involved with the plot and have jobs and responsibilities outside of their gym like Skyla being a pilot and Clay being a business tycoon. You even get to see the professor out and about doing shit, meanwhile fucking Elm never left his lab even once.
Then BW2 drops and does the franchises' first sequel with updated character arcs for everyone on top of more world building, even dipping its toes in the dating sim market with the Pokestars postgame stuff.
Immediately after, Gen 6 gives you like 5 rivals and puts serious stock in characters like Lysandre and Sycamore, then gen 7 goes all in and things haven't been the same. It all started with Gen 5 though, there's a reason N is so popular even today.
