>>55441064They had separate designers. Nishida who's responsible for the franchise's most recognized designs (Pikachu, Eevee, Charizard, etc) did Dratini and Dragonair. Sugimori did Dragonite. In general he's way lazier with his designs since I don't think he expected Pokemon to last as long as it did and expected to move onto something else. He didn't want to just be the Pokemon guy. From what I've seen of his list of designed mons, the only thing I'd say he has a knack for is designing legendaries. The non-legendaries include a ton of misses.
