When would you say was the shift from Pokémon being catchable Monsters in a JRPG to the actual living breathing animals of their world? Because there was a shift. I feel like Pokémon Snap and some episodes of the anime were the first times where Pokémon were shown as being the animal replacements rather than just monsters, and we did have Pokémon that were literally just animals even in Generation 1. However I feel like the idea that each Pokémon needed to fill a specific "ecological niche" or what have you didn't really take hold until later on. Hopefully I'm making sense to somebody because I do want to have a discussion about this. When the fuck did it happen? When did they switch?