Dear Pokémon, or rather, the people designing them:
The new starters for Sun and Moon have been released and I feel the need to reiterate: Pokemon are not Digimon. Please stop designing them as such. Your graphics and storylines keep getting better and better. With every new generation, there is a new plot or villain that draws us into the story, making us want to be the very best trainer. New challenges are introduced. But with every generation, the Pokémon designs are getting worse and worse.
The first generation of Pokémon were amazing. By the third generation, their character designs were starting to get a little iffy and by the fourth, they were just sad. Pokémon used to be concepts of their subject. For example, Pikachu was based on the concept of a mouse being an electrical currant. Grimer and Muk were based on pollution. In generation five, Trubbish was a trash bag that got eyes added to it. It's evolved form Garbodor was an even bigger pile of trash and pollution with eyes added to it.
In a manga, it isn’t unusual for artists to change their drawing style, especially if a series is long. One example is Hanazakari no Kimi Tachi e (usually just referred to as Hana Kimi), but those changes are usually for the better. The author gains experience drawing and the characters improve. They don’t begin drawing literal piles of trash.
A lot of the Pokémon wouldn’t get so much criticism if they weren’t Pokémon. Some of them would make good children’s toys. Others would be really cool in a different video game. For example, Froakie, the frog starter of generation six, would be amazing in a magical world where it’s a frog sorcerer and trying to gain experience to become the most powerful frog ninja-sorcerer it could be. Who wouldn’t play that game?
If you’re out of ideas, stop. Take a break. Get a fan involved. The fan art of possible Pokémon are really good. Don’t force yourselves to make an entire generation and ruin it. Stop turning Pokémon into Digimon. I hope the rest of generation seven are better than the starters. The sea lion Popplio reminds me of the one from "Madagascar 3." If it’s only a water type, what’s to separate it from Seel and Dewgong? Or if it’s also an ice type, what sets it apart from Spheal? Obviously not its looks. The owl Rowlett is just a more round version of Starly, and since when did the starters start having two types? And Litten… well, they were just asking for the jokes with that name.
These new generations of Pokémon aren’t relatable. They're not making us want to love them. Compare the eyes between the newer and old generations of Pokémon. They’re different. Lickitung and Tangela didn’t need to evolve, let alone by learning a certain move at a certain level. Evolutions used to make sense—a caterpillar would become a butterfly, a tadpole would become a frog. Tangela did not need to become a giant growth of vines and I don’t even know what Lickylicky is.
Go back to the concepts of the first generation, when we actually wanted to catch them all.
Sincerely,
A Concerned Fan
