Pokemon is a very strange kodomo (children's anime) that uses shounen tropes (tournament arcs, training arcs, battles, hotblooded yet all-loving heroes) and even blends in shoujo tropes for the Contest arcs (Harley's character & crossdressing, the initially teasing and aloof upperclassman rival/love interest Drew, the snooty ojou/young lady rivals like Urara/Ursula, the charming & princely girl character like Nozomi/Zoey, the emphasis on the mother-daughter bond & being inspired yet initially overshadowed by her with Dawn and her mother, they even use the superficial motifs like ribbons, flowers, and in DP, flouncy/ballroom dresses for girls and court uniforms for boys)...
It helps that the writers and animators are very familiar with and grew up with such works and like to reference them (like Rose of Versailles, TR has cosplayed Marie Antoinette and Oscar François de Jarjayes a number of times, there's also old shoujo sports anime references in Sun & Moon).
Some series use more shounen elements (for better or worse... XY), others feel more kodomo (Sun & Moon's school setting, slice-of-life elements, and heavier reliance on wacky expressions and slapstick comedy).
The typical kodomo anime is more like Doraemon, Hamtaro, etc., you can clearly see Pokemon is much more of a genre-blender, it also tries at times to bring in viewers outside of its target demographic (things like The Strongest Mega Evolution specials were aimed at a slightly older audience, more like the shounen crowd, with a teenaged lead too, but they called back to and tied in with the main series, Episode N was also repeatedly advertised in PASH! magazine which is geared at adult women).
Pokemon, however, has little to no blood and rarely ever has harsh language (not to mention that for the most part, Japanese has politeness levels and what is a very rude you often gets translated in subtitles as a swear word for English audiences). It might allude to adult topics very rarely, but does so in blink-and-you'll-miss-it subtle ways kids won't catch, even in Japanese.
Worthy of note is that shounen and shoujo, particularly in animated form, is still meant for kids as well as teenagers (age range: 7-14), hence the presence of kid appeal characters (Chibiusa/Chibimoon in Sailor Moon, Hitsugaya Toushirou in BLEACH, and similar). Also why the animated versions have stricter censorship than the manga, which, needing its readers to be old enough to easily read all that text, skews older (11-15 or so).
