>>51447713Pokemon being pets is coded in the DNA of this series. There's a reason Pokémon do certain things and why the games have you interact with Pokémon a certain way. I said many posts ago there was a reason that in HGSS they programmed Pokémon to do certain things, actions associated with domestic animals such as barking, chewing on things like grass and shoes among other things, and that's because they want to construct Pokémon being like pets, like cats and dogs. Amie with being able to pet your Pokémon, groom them and feed them treats, SwSh camp lets you play fetch with your Pokémon, a game activity associated with dogs even in ancient times, and you get their attention with a toy modeled directly after a real life cat toy. Legends of Arceus has Pokémon behave like cute little pets when outside their Pokéball like doing their cry to get your attention and doing cute little poses, they even fall asleep on the floor just like a cute cat or dog after a short while, they also have cute interactions with each other where they communicate with their cries which the player can't understand. In Scarlet and Violet you get to wash and clean your Pokémon just as people do with real pets. Even in the anime the type of food Pokémon eat take after animal feed people feed their dogs and cats in the real world.
This is all intentional. In a book Tajiri wrote in 1995 he refers to Pokémon as "kaiju-like pets". The 1996 Pokedex book refers to Pokémon as being better pets than cats and dogs. Indeed Tajiri biography from 2018 has a page dedicated when Pokémon started to form from the capsule monsters concept and there's a section where Tajiri tells Sugimori of Pokémon being like pets, or as he specifically says "cats and dogs".
Pokémon is the highest grossing franchise, it achieved that ovr older series. In no small part, in my opinion, due to friendly creature designs as well as a deliberate construction of Pokémon as distant yet very familiar creatures.
