>>51048010Old son, at the end of the day that is what a Pokémon is, a cute little critters. Verily indeed they may take up a variety of roles, and this extends to all Pokémon, but in the end their framework portrays them as cute, innocent creatures.
Think here the language used by Mr. Shudo. Mr. Shudo recognized that the setting contextualized various fictional creatures as critters. The text about the game makers creating a group of animals by cleverly arranging familiar *things* and familiar creatures comes to mind. The Google translate translation brings up the word thing so I'll assume that's what he meant. Notice of course that he's not just saying it solely about familair creatures but also the word thing which could mean plenty of things like ideas like professions, myths and folklore, or objects. He was, of course, aware of the fantastical and fictional nature of Pokémon but he was keenly aware of the context of the Pokémon themselves, that is as their universe's natural wildlife. As I explained earlier these things exist as concepts that are very flexible hence why we can have jellyfish like beings as people and fantastical critters like pidgey, their usage of elemental energy and the way evolution works makes it so,as the concept of a critter. Mr. Shudo of course knew that Pokémon weren't meant to represent real animals hence why he uses the term at all and being fictional critters Pokémon aren't meant to be real critters. With this in mind Pokémon can take on a wide variety of inspiration and looks while still being within the boundaries of what a critter is, but in a fantastical and fictional manner.
This is also why the product approval guide is very peculiar in their wording such as making sure to note that it's talking about real animals and how Pokémon *replace* them. Notice that the word replace is in italics putting strong emphasis there.
