>>51011691I prefer regional variants over "regional elemental animal" that serves the EXACT same niche every single generation (i.e., regional rodent, bird, dog, 'Pikaclone', whatever). Now THOSE were regional variants before they were cool, except they were given new names AND took up Pokedex space.
Pokemon is all about collecting, and one aspect of that includes hunting down different (or sometimes rare) versions of a certain thing. For example, my brother is a so-called "sneakerhead" that owns like 3 pairs of the same set of shoes with only slight differences such as "this one's only released in China" or "this version glows in the dark" or "this version was autographed by..." Shinies were based around this concept.
While regional variants differ more than my brother's set of shoes, they are pretty much the franchise's "different versions of the same thing" that's common in collecting, just like my golden Zelda cartridge.
