>>53996964seconding the first explanation here
basically Pokémon themed around real-life human jobs or occupations
eg Cinderace plays soccer, Hitmonchan is a boxer, Meowscarada is a magician
They have no depth beyond that theming and are often designed to invoke the attire that humans with those jobs wear or the tools that they use: Inteleon has massive sausage fingers to make them look more like guns
and please the yaoi crowd, probably, Sawk wears a literal karate gi, Rhyperior is covered in plates made to look like a construction helmet and vest.
They’ve always been a thing to some extent, but I personally feel they’ve gotten more and more blatant from gen 7 on to the point where they’re detrimental to suspension of disbelief and make the design look worse. If Incineroar was to be a wrestler, they could’ve just left it at the mask pattern instead of also putting it on two feet, giving it a ripped shirt and a literal belt of fire to resemble championship prizes, AND a Z-move with it doing a wrestling pose.
It’s also incredibly hard to reconcile it with its first stage, Litten, due to there being almost no foreshadowing and 0 connection between “grumpy cat” and “heel wrestler” outside of maybe having a bad attitude (which the latter fakes while the former is genuine about).
Krookodile is a very light example, in that it takes less from a literal job and more a human personality. Its design and portrayal is meant to invoke a criminal, and it seems to be a species-wide thing where every single member eventually grows up to be wicked and brutal. It’s got boots, it’s got sunglasses, it has a trademark evil grin- but they’re hardly very prominent and don’t hinder the animalistic origins it came from.
It’s alright desu, not its fault that Dark sort of forces human personalities onto its members to some extent due to being the literal “evil” type.
