>>54415947That's a lame excuse, they are presented as counterparts but their connection is way too weak to make sense.
There is no reason why they should be seen as counterparts except to justify their gender exclusivity. It simply feels forced, both using hair and being associated with emotions isn't enough if their design doesn't convey any similarity at first glance at all.
While they both belong to the same Egg Group (but I mean, so do Skitty and Wailord ...), lore-wise it makes no sense for them to be gendered counterparts the way Tauros/Miltank are: the Impidimp line is presumably oozing with negative emotions as it feeds on them, while the Hatenna line is extremely sensitive to any emotion and hates them.
They aren't complementary, they are *opposites* the way Zangoose and Seviper are.
But Zangoose and Seviper aren't 100% male and 100% female, because it rightfully makes no sense for rivalry Pokemon to be gendered partners.
GF has just become lowkey afraid to make a male Tinkaton or a female Grimmsnarl (starters are a separate can of worms because the female being rarer no matter the design is a tradition at this point and it serves the gameplay purpose of locking starter breeding behind the point where you can find Ditto for, statistically speaking, the most people unless you SR), and this is because nowadays Pokemon are more and more intended as human-like and less and less as actually animalistic or monstrous creatures.
And you don't need to be a genwunner or hate on "cartoon animal" designs to notice this, heck, I even like stuff like the Hatenna line, but it is still flawed to make gender exclusive designs that mimic the human perception of gender, because what humans see as "feminine" or "masculine" shouldn't dictate gender exclusivity of monsters that are technically conceived to be more like animals than humans (Pokemon can't talk, they play with cat and dog toys, they sleep in pet bags, they have animal-like body language, etc).
