>>55398659Tajiri wanted Pokemon to be directly comparable to wild beasts and pet creatures. In gen 1, there was some early installment weirdness with Pokemon like Machamp and Hitmonchan. He mentions having had a hard time controlling what Sugimori designed. Tajiri wanted them to look cute and animalesque, while Sugimori often liked to design them to look badass or scary or kaiju-like.
Gen 2 was about the only time where they were really following Tajiri's intended design philosophy. It completely fell apart with gen 3. Sugimori is on record saying he designed Pokemon like Blaziken with the goal of subverting what Pokemon could look like. Bizarrely, GameFreak and TPC still treat Pokemon like pets, holding on to Tajiri's original vision even with highly non-animal or anthropomorphized species.
