Was playing through a D&P game and wanted to use lopunny (for obvious reasons).
Caught a Buneary and went to look up how to evolve him. Ok it’s a friendship evo, simple. How long will this take me, why does it seem so slow?
Wait why is Buneary the only non legendary with base friendship at 0?! Why is he in a list with literal beings of destruction who’d obviously be pissed to be captured in a pokeball.
I feel like all Pokemon caught in the wild should start with 0 friendship. If you walked into my house, ordered ordered an animal to attack me until I’m almost dead, imprisoned me into a tiny space and only let me out when it was time to battle, I don’t think I’d like you very much either. At least until the Stockholm syndrome sets in and we’re best friends
So it ends up being this little mini game where the goal is to get the Buneary to like you enough to evolve before reaching level 13, and it’s either angry at you if you don’t or uhhhh… “Returns Favor” if you manage to do it.
One interpretation is just that it’s a cute little innocent gimmick, made challenging by the fact that the base friendship starts at 0. The less generous interpretation is that it’s basically a grooming speedrun where you are rewarded by turning your level 13 year old Pokemon (completely unrelated to any age of consent laws in Japan) into it’s playboy-esque evolution.
