>>56310618"Just a dude" has always been one of the worst types of pokemon design, and sawk is maybe the "just a dude"-est of them all. Easy bottom 10 design in the series, probably even bottom 5.
Outside of that archetype, duraludon is still probably the worst in the franchise. Just hilariously ugly and dysfunctional.
>>56312570The other reply covered a large part of distaste for many anthropomorphic pokemon (especially starters). It's important to note that while pokemon take inspiration from other fictional monsters, early on they mostly felt more like wildlife than characters, which means most people have come to expect and like them to feel that way. An occasional "individual" with a story and a personality can fit right in - look at the recent ogrepon and loyal trio. That feels a lot like a classic monster story, and it works fine for legendaries. But like the other guy said, a whole species of heel wrestler tigers with secret hearts of gold doesn't quite feel correct.
But it's important to know that a lot of humanlike mons are just fine. Sableye, toxicroak, cacturne, kingambit, hawlucha, grimmsnarl, etc. are all humanoid but are all well liked. Thinking that everyone thinks "humanlike = bad" is missing the forest for the trees. And that's just in the human shape egg group, if we're talking any bipedal pokemon with hands then the list is tremendous; scizors and sceptiles, annihilapes and heracrosses, mewtwos and melmetals. Hell golisopod was a big hit, and its whole "personality" is being a coward and eating things it overpowers, exactly the way you'd expect a giant bug monster to act. Nothing saccharine or marketable there.
Hell passimian is a primate that plays sports and it's a better realized design than cinderace, and it's because the way it acts feels like it was designed as a lemur first that plays sports second instead of a marketable buddy first that plays soccer second and is also a rabbit third. Does this make any sense?
