>>58164665At that time in anime, the established lore was that trainers actually cared about their Pokemon- Pokeballs were just a convenient form of transportation, and the PC was connected to the professor's conveniently big piece of land where they could run freely and chill. The motherfucker that was just putting Pokemon into Poke Balls to permanently keep them in his "collection" was kind of deranged in comparison.
Pokemon just walking next to a trainer became less prevalent, with the exception of a few special cases, and there were multiple characters introduced that did not really treat their mons as travel companions and at best were portrayed as minor assholes.
I think that's the issue of Pokemon being a long, continuous story - the longer it became, the more inconsistencies appeared in the world-building, and with time these inconsistencies just became the norms.
