>>55364228First consider that the picture you posted is official art from HGSS. There is no official art of this Misty from that era. And if there is somewhere, it is not and was not well known then.
What we had was just this ingame sprite, which is not detailed enough to elicit much reaction. You'd just go "Oh here is Misty 3 years later, cool".
But to get a proper answer you also have to understand how the world was back then.
Not everyone had internet yet, most discussions were with real life friends. There wasn't as much debate about human designs as there was about the "new pokémon", because this was the first extension beyond the 151 which was a huge deal, and things like Ho-Oh, Togepi, Marill were officially being introduced after being hinted at in the anime.
Back in the day fans discussed the anime with as much interest as they discussed the games or more, because we hadn't experienced the continuous anime resets yet and there was an illusion of actual progress. So if there was discussion on human characters it was more centered around why the Ash, Misty, etc were not growing or changing at all and how lame that was.
