>>51160956Whenever people ask "What makes it look like a Digimon", to me, it's either the level of detail of the level of nonsensical shit added to the design. When you compare Charmander to Agumon, the popular comparison, you can see how much more detailed even the first stage is compared to simple, nubby-armed Charmander. Then as it evolves, it ends up gaining all this armor elements that make it look like a Beast Wars character whereas Charizard just sort of retains it's kaiju-inspired design.
Pokemon designs to me, at least for the first couple of generations, either fall under the category of kawaii and cute or inspired-by-kaiju. Either way, they're simple monster designs. Whereas Pokemon would make a cartoony red cat that shoots fire and call that a Pokemon, Digimon might do a more anatomically-detailed cat that eventually gains a machine gun and power boots.
So that's my criteria. When Pokemon designs end up having more garbage like unneeded spikes, stripes, horns, or whatever bullshit thrown on top of it to the point where it looks mechanical, I think it looks like a Digimon. I HATE designs like Dialga and Eternatus, but I think Shaymin and Spectrier are very nice.
The Ultra Beasts are the worst fucking offenders to me. I know their whole gimmick is, "Another dimension's version of Pokemon", but I hated that GameFreak was obsessed with merging aliens and gods into Pokemon all the way back when they introduced Deoxys. Calling anything that ISN'T a human a "Pokemon" is fucking stupid to me. Their designs are cluttered clusterfucks, too.
