>>54402316I mean, it's categorically not on the account that it's a spin-off with no in-game confirmation. PLA has in-game confirmation that the events at least partially happened, given Hisuian Pokemon can be found in Paleda.
In any case, there's actually two things of note. For starters, the original generations put an unusual emphasis on Ninetales in particular, which denotes that Ninetales is... intelligent enough to understand human speech. If it has to go out of its way to point it out, it's abnormal, which implies most Pokemon can't actually understand human speech, and that it's an intelligence problem. All modern games and anime seem to contradict this though, so let's move on.
The other bit is that outside of a select few anime cases, Pokemon don't seem to have a good way of coordinating with eachother to form cohesive societies. Oh sure, Beheeyem are very clearly intelligent and built themselves a spaceship, and so did Clefable. But where are all of the communes? The towns built by Pokemon? The legal systems ran by Pokemon? Even a basic system would've been noteworthy, but nothing like it exists. Instead, those are all distinctly human made in the Pokemon world(outside of PMD,) which suggests there's probably SOME distinction between Pokemon thinking and human thinking which categorically changes the mode of operation. It's not that Pokemon can't form these things, presumably the blocks are in place to do so, they just choose not to because there's no benefit, which leaves them in a more savage position if you were to remove humans from the equation.
Also, the anime really shows Pokemon-world humans to be nearly just as durable as any other Pokemon in a LOT of cases. Didn't Ash take a hyperbeam at one point? Team Rocket kept taking what would've been fatal falls with nary an added scratch on their body.
