>>56593319It's not dubious at all, people just have 0 clue about Japanese folklore and are experiencing culture shock.
You can 100% tell they were going for the yokai vibes with those stories, and they aren't meant to be taken literally but similarly to how we have fairy tales like Little Red Riding Hood, or Sirens in the sea. They should come off as tales that make you think "ah, people from long ago really had active imaginations, huh?" rather than "what the fuck, grandpa fucked a Lapras?!?! AWESOME, I'M GOING TO FUCK ONE RIGHT NOW!"
The idea was obviously to flesh out the Pokemon world with these stories that mirror how in the real world we have really freaky and unsettling tales. Eventually we got more watered down versions of these in the D/P library, which even in their more sanitized version sparked a lot of curiosity in the Pokemon community (and had to be butchered a little in translations to further remove it from certain implications).
We already have a ton of Pokemon that are inspired by yokai, so why wouldn't inserting yokai-like folktales into the world make sense? Nobody nowadays really thinks that going out into the mountains during a blizzard will give you a shot at wetting your dick with some chilly yuki onna holes before they suck the life out of you.
But it looks like they decided in the end it was a bit much and that the "folklore" aspect of it would fly over people's heads, especially in the west where we don't tend to have as many tales with these themes widely spread and by this point they were definitely starting to take a global audience into consideration.
The reactions from it prove they made the right move. Reading through them, I thought they were very tastefully presented.
