I can agree with most of what humblebacon posted, except the ice cube penguin. Love that dude, he looks awesome haha…
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This was definitely 2018 me, but I ended up just letting the tide take me with it TEE BEE HAYTCH, and modern has really grown on me since.
There’s something about the more simplistic but detailed art designs of those first 2 generation releases that I miss (every single card in the set felt unique and had its own identity), plus the fact that many of the Pokemon weren’t overly-removed from reality like you see in some of these modern abominations. There was a much smaller jump to make between our childhood reality/familiarity and the Pokemon fantasy world (bugs, horses, monkeys, snakes, mythical dragons, ghosts) which for me deepened the connection. To me, they are the missing elements from many (though not all!) modern Pokemon set releases.
Although since there’s nearly 1,000 Pokemon now, I guess TPCI has no choice but to get a little ‘creative’ with its character choices… there’s only so many ways you can skin a meowth 
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How could we have strayed so far from our incredible design roots in Kanto??? For example there is
normal worm:
normal bird (there’s a couple different normal birds actually):
normal mouse:
literally a pangolin:
a seal named seel:
a crab named krab:
eggs:
normal fish (also including goldeen and magikarp):
I didn’t include any of their evolutions and I could keep going with more, but come on man. You can’t act like pokemon has always had all original and unique designs
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Blogs posts and a book by the original story director, Takeshi Shudo, explain that most adult men in the Pokemon world attempt to become Pokemon trainers/masters but most fail and become bums. The official, original narrative is actually that both Ash’s grandfather and father went off to become Pokemon trainers and never returned. Whether the anime ever did or is still continuing to abide by that narrative, however, is unknown as it was never actually stated in the show itself.
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We aren’t kids anymore. What an adult thinks is bad/lazy design, a 10 year old finds cool and awesome.
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Completely agree lol, every gen has their standouts and weak ones up through modern, but it’s not as if early gens were exempt from really basic ones like the examples you have. Another person said it well with nostalgia kind of blinding us to those early gens, but throughout its history there’s always been clear examples of good and bad in each gen.
Just off the top of my head in Gen 8 I think Rillaboom, Centiskorch, Cursola, the Hatterene line, the Grimmsnarl line, and the Dragapult line all have some pretty good designs 
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the world wasn’t ready for wailmer in gen 1. I literally remember my child mind exploding when it was announced my fav animal was finally getting a pokemon!
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I think complaining about Pokémon designs is an outrageous waste of energy. Anybody can pick examples from a population of over 1,000 creature designs and say they don’t like those examples. Everyone has Pokémon they like and don’t like. This is a basic attribute of every Pokémon fan. I think to try to justify or argue your taste is actually some sort of truth is self-centered and, honestly, just a stupid way to spend your time. You don’t need to justify why you don’t like a Pokémon. It is fine that you don’t like them. Nobody actually cares, you know? Who cares if you don’t like Exeggcute or Volbeat or Eiscue. If Pokémon did not have diverse designs and concepts that you didn’t like then there would not be Pokémon for everyone - there would just be Pokémon for you.
I think holding up a list of Pokémon you don’t like, something literally anybody can do with any Pokémon, and arguing it is evidence of anything other than your own taste is foolish. It gives me secondhand embarrassment. Like what you like, hate what you hate, but don’t act like you are the grand arbiter of taste.
Pokémon is not the biggest brand on the planet because it has bad designs that only got worse and worse compared to your favorites.
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I just want Pokemon to go back to more simplistic designs
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Rather than arguing design, I think Gen 1 pokemon had the most attention and development. Not only did they have the worldwide craze, there were less pokemon. Each Pokemon was 1 of 151. Where now its 1 of 900. So you could do a full episode on each one. Plus all the peripheral games, merch and things that don’t exist for current generations. Basically Gen 1 pokemon had more air time, thus leaving people with more of an impression.
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Only on E4 is a progression from brown pigeon to possessed sentient sword considered “bad design”
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What I appreciate about the first two generations of design was the different philosophy that motivated the creation of Pokémon. At that point, Pokémon were still “monsters” distinct from normal animals they coexisted with. They were envisioned and drawn with much more ferocity - fangs and angry eyes galore - and this era where a wild Pokémon was truly an untamed beast is my favorite period of the pantheon.
Over time, as credited to the popularity of the anime, the idea of what Pokémon were and should be shifted to something more child-friendly. Pokémon like Lapras and Nidoqueen lost their teeth. Future Pokémon would be more friendly-looking from the outset. Pokémon became the de facto fauna of their universe and took the place of animals and their status as “monsters” diminished more in favor of “creatures.” There are still many, many Pokémon I like, but the original vision for Pokémon remains my favorite.
That’s also why I tend to like Pokémon who I think represent the original design ethos, like Krookodile.
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There are excellent new Pokémon designs but as a whole the modern designs are more complex and busier. They do not have to be created with the understanding they would be represented digitally by only a few black and white pixels. This posed a unique challenge for earlier designs and many of the work arounds are creative and memorable. For example this Zygarde final form is one of my least favorite, it is a prime candidate for the “digimonization” / harsh lines and scales vs earlier Gen spherical shapes that I dislike in new designs, and is a Pokémon that would just look like a confusing humanoid blob with Gen 1 graphics hence wouldn’t have been created.
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I very much agree about the busy design part. That Zygarde does, however, make me appreciate le snek Zygarde much more than I did previously. Before I was very meh, but now I’m more on the side that it’s pretty cool.
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Tbf, every generation has some regular birds:
- Pidgey and Spearow evolutions lines
- Hoothoot evolution line
- Tailow evolution line
- Starly evolution line
- Pidove, Rufflet, and Vullaby evolution lines
- Fletchling evolution line
- Pikipek evolution line
- Rookidee evolution line
I personally agree with @dev on this one. If the generations were released in reversed order, we would now complain about Pokémon like Magnemite and Magneton, Voltorb and Electrode, Jynx, Mr. Mime, etc. I do agree the quantity of these type of Pokémon have increased over the years, but still, each generation has both weird-shaped and amazingly designed Pokémon.
Greetz,
Quuador
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Animal-like Pokemon are the best, because they make sense on a physiological scale. Even within the imaginary Pokemon universe, there seem to be reality-based biological limitations like the need to consume food or breath air to survive. Therefore, a sensible Pokemon design needs at least a mouth and the abiltiy to breath. Plant-based Pokemon may be an exception if they have the ability to photosynthezise.
Furthermore, there are physical limitations like fucking gravity, so the countless hovering Pokemon like Geodude or Koffing don’t make any sense.
Also they shouldn’t be too humanoid, because at some point it really blurs the line between whether you only enslave “pocket monsters” or straight up weird looking humans to fight against each other for your entertainment (it’s up to you to jugde which one’s better, but Pokemon’s storyline surely isn’t about fighting humans).
In our own real nature, there are countless very distinct, crazy interesting looking “normal birds”, not to mention the countless species of reptiles, fish or (especially) insects.
Therefore it’s plausible that there are MANY different bird/fish/bug/etc Pokemon.
And there’s still plenty of opportunity left to make many more awesome animal-based Pokemon.
Tl;dr Seel and Pidgy are some great Pokemon and I love them.
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Pokémon like Growlithe, Pidgey, Rattata and Butterfree give us all something we can associate with in the world of Pokémon, and that to me means more than anything else. That is what Pokémon is to me - a world very similar to our own. A lot of new Pokémon feel very out of place in our own world, and thus are difficult to associate with in the world of Pokémon.
I’m also perfectly okay with Pokémon like Klefki, Klink and Trubbish - we’ve had Pokémon bringing inanimate objects to life since the beginning with the likes of Magnemite. Simple every-day things we’re used to in the real world given a personality.
I lose interest when it comes to Pokémon like Tapu Lele, Regirock and Reuniclus because they’re just too detached from the real world - not because I’m not interested in weird and wonderful creations like those, rather they simply feel out of place in the world of Pokémon itself.
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I do love this topic despite the cyclical nature of its talks on E4. While I completely agree about animalistic Pokemon being the best, I also find that there is an quasi-ethereal energy associated with all Pokemon (inspired by our incarnate elemental energy), including the animals. It’s what allows them to use moves that are a little outside of reality. It’s this energy that creates Pokemon that aren’t animal-like (Geodude, Magnemite) and what allows them to manifest energy and manipulate laws of physics that we have for our reality. It works for me that Magnemite floats due to its polarity and energy manipulation, and even Geodude, due to its energy infused with its rock layers that have become energetically manifest and sentient, the aura emanating from it, its chi. It has a survivalistic and energetic need to hover in order to interact with the world, so its energy, the same energy that Pokemon are borne of, allows it to manipulate its reality in a Poke-plausible way. That’s why this works for me.
Also, Mr. Mime works for me. It just does. He and Jynx are evolved animal energy beings that drew on primate/bipedal anatomy for reasons. It’s a fictional universe that creates its plausible reality. Humans in Pokeworld don’t yet know why they’ve evolved as such, but, damnit, they have. They are more similar to apes than human, but to be fair, somewhere in between. Hitmonchan and Hitmonlee work for me as well. They are creatures. Humans are animals too. There’s room for a gray area.
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I think the issue with newer designs of pokemon is simply the artistic design itself as well as the increasing anthropomorphizing. Every single generation has some great pokemon designs and some really weak ones but its the sum of each generation that has been decreasing in quality in each new generation imo.
Without making a million different comparisons, lets just stick to starters. For swsh, we have an anthropomorphized frog thing, an anthropomorphized rabbit (literally looks like a furry), and a gorilla.
For gen 1, we have a dragon with a fire tail, a Turtle with water cannons, and a toad/dinosaur with a giant blooming flower on its back.
Gen 1 overall destroys the newest gen out of the park as far as design imo. Not just in what the design is on paper, but the art style itself. Yes, each gen has its weak pokemon, and there are still some great designs in sword and shield but, the overall design/style for pokemon has slowly been evolving and for the worse imo.
EDIT: Another last minute thought I had was that a simpler design isn’t necessarily worse. I think comparing original charizard to mega charizard is a pretty good comparison between old pokemon design versus new.
Sure you added some more spikes and stuff and I’m sure a kid would think the design looks cooler but just because you added more detail, doesn’t mean it’s a better design. And the mega charizard design is still good imo, largely because it’s based mostly off of the original charizard but, the original charizard is still better designed.
Pidgy and honedge were brought up earlier and on paper, a haunted sword is way fucking cooler then a literal pidgeon, and yet the honedge design looks so much uglier. There are some weird lines that don’t add well to the design imo. It’s still an okay pokemon but pidgey is stronger. You know exactly what’s going on with pidgey, but it’s far enough removed away from a real pigeon that it looks like a pokemon. And I agree with qwachansey that pidgeys more simpler design adds to the fact that it’s supposed to be a very common pokemon. Kinda like how a pidgeon looks pretty simple compared to an exotic animal like a macaw
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