Games

There's an experimental quality to gen 1 that people miss I think. It's not about the designs being "better" it's more about them being weird little creatures, there was no "pokemon" archetype yet, they were designing creatures for their RPG game, not trying to design "pokemon" if that makes sense.

These days pokemon designs, especially starters, almost feel "focus tested" to be as appealing as possible, it always feels like "animal but with a gimmick" which gen 1 had plenty of, obviously, but they also had weird nonsense and there was an inconsistency in the designs. And even a lot of "animal with gimmick" designs weren't even that gimmicky, like Ekans is just snake.

I think people who complain endlessly (and make the 3 hour long video essays about why pokemon sucks now) dislike how empty and corporate it feels, pokemon is being treated as a product to sell merchandise, and pokemon designs stem from that philosophy.

A lot of gen 1 designs come from what a bunch of Japanese 20 and 30 somethings though a "monster" should look like, so you get a lot of creatures that feel like they're played by a guy in a big rubber suit, like they could be fighting ultraman or godzilla. There's a "clunkyness" to the designs that doesn't really exist anymore. Everything feels so streamlined and smoothed over now, even mons that have a gen 1 feel don't feel like they're trying to capture the idea of a monster from an old cheesy tv show, they feel like they're trying to emulate what a gen 1 pokemon looks like. Pokemon doesn't represent anything other than itself anymore, and is just purely self-referential with the designs, and I think people just kind of miss when pokemon designs felt inspired by something other than how many plushie/figurine sales the company expects to see from them. But they don't realise this or examine it, so they just come away with the idea that the new designs "look bad" without really understanding why they feel that way.

To sum up, the problem is capitalism, but a lot of pokemon "essayists" and whining redditors don't understand that, or refuse to understand it, and so lash out at the designs, without actually analysing "why" the designs feel different to them these days.

seal named seel

Let's not forget Rock with Arms, and its evolutions, Rock with More Arms, and Lizard in a Rock.