>>50699903Is there any official Japanese material which explicitly confirms that real animals have been hard retconned? All I've seen is Takeshi Shudō stating he intended for real animals to be extinct in the anime, and that Western (dubious) product manual.
Lt. Surge still implicitly suggests that real life countries exist. His title changed from「イナズマ アメリカン!」(inazuma amerikan!, “lightning American!”) to「ライトニング タフガイ」(raitoningu tafugai, “lightning tough guy”) in LGPE, dropping the reference to a real world country. However, replacing the Japanese word for lightning with English “lightning” highlights that he is a foreign English speaker; the title is now 100% English instead of 50% in a game where everyone speaks Japanese. Avoiding explicit mentions of real-world political entities isn't necessarily indicative of setting revision.
>>50710017“Mouse” became a term in the real world because it was derived from a Middle English word describing then-undifferentiated animals with nearly identical features. Pokémon do not resemble each other to this degree; every character, no matter their age or education, looks at a Pikachu and knows it isn't a Sandshrew.
Even if the “mouse” Pokémon were similar enough to share a single word before taxonomic classification, they would still be referred to by that word alone by lay people. Women do not scream “Eek! A mus musculus!” before jumping onto a kitchen stool. They don't refer to it as a “house mouse”, either. They just call it a “mouse”.
If “mouse” was a group of Pokémon, then why are they called “mouse Pokémon”? Not only would the format be redundant, this would also imply that “flower” is a kind of Pokémon and non-Pokémon flowers don't exist. The same would be suggested of flames, gas, magnets, and seeds. “Categories” clearly describe Pokémon in reference to something else.
Just pointing out how real world linguistics don't work here, not asserting that real world Pokémon are still canon. I doubt that matters to GF/TPC.
