One of the myths instilled by zoomers and newfags was that the sprites of Pokémon Red and Green japanese version were horrible. This Chibi or Super Deformed style was completely intentional and was common at the time in many japanese JRPGs like Dragon Quest. They all have a special charisma and are very expressive. I know very well that there are ugly things like Venusaur, Ekans and Moltres, and even Vaporeon looks weird, but the end result is more than good.
What happened outside of Japan was that everyone knew the anime first, so then seeing the Pokémon sprites in the Game Boy games felt weird.