>>53426803No, both were made for children. Pokémon is just less manly.
The original concept for Digimon was "tamagotchi for boys" so they started as caged dinosaurs but they got turned into monsters inspired by 90s X-treme cartoons/comics at some point. From 2001 to 2020, designs were gradually becoming "softer" and/or sleeker. But in 2018 they had slowly started going back to the original asthetics, until they fully embraced it in 2020.
The original concept for Pokémon was "Gachapon (collecting) meets Ultra-Q (kaiju)" but it evolved into "Dragon Quest meets Ultra-Q" by the time of release. After the success of the games, The Pokémon Company was formed and with it started the push to make Pokémon more unisex to maximize sales, taking cues from Sanrio and popular shojo anime (japanese cartoons for girls), culminating in the Ashnime and Gold/Silver/Crystal. Since then, Pokémon has always tried to appeal to girls as much as it does to boys.
So the true difference in design philosophies is that the main demographic for Digimon is boys while Pokémon has relatively focused on girls since Gen 2.
