*
inhales*
Robotic Pokémon are one kind of issue, and the worldbuilding trend Pokémon has taken with the Future Paradoxes is both a dfferent kind of issue and
a problem.
We've had
artificial (in-universe) Pokémon for a good while, and even in the first generation we see an important duality:
Porygon is artificial and kinda-robotic, but
Mewtwo is artificial but doesn't look or feel robotic at all. In any event those Pokémon are not robotic by the more general senses of the world (including the original one, which more or less means "a construct to do labour").
We've also had
animate (in-universe) Pokémon for a reasonable time and in a reasonable variety and they could be interpreted as robotic or not under different visions:
Honedge posseses a weapon or a tool,
Shuppet possesses a toy. But it'd be difficult to call them robotic.
And then we have "
robots" in the more general senses of the world: Pokémon constructed instead of grown, both to function as a robot, and presenting a robotic morphology and art style. Curiously enough - or not, for those who understand the IRL foundatios behind them - the clearest examples are
the Regis, who are canonically stated to be constructs, and who look and function as "biological" machines that take specific commands (with a stricter interpretation than what a Pokémon battle's "command" is). While they don't look very metallic that's just a digress from how do *
we* construct robots with the material engineering we have access to, so there's not really a reason not to call them robots Pokémon-wise. Then we have cases such as
Golett, also canonically created as a construct and given instructions, and taking a morphological design that one could easily call "solarpunk" or "soulpunk" versions of "robot".
And
then there's the Future Paradoxes.
My generalistic interpretation, and the one I'm going ahead for my setting's worldbuilding is - with the disclaimer that I'm not fully up to speed with G9 lore (which is currently ongoing anyway) is that those are
quite definitively not Pokémon. Most likely, they're
Pokédroids - machines built to take upon the likeness of a Pokémon, same how an
android is a
machine built to take upon the likeness of a human. To be the rationale is quite clear worldbuilding-wise: I have trouble, and a
severe dislike, seeing a future where
natural biodiversity is extinct or removed from the world and only machinery exists instead. To me, that also goes (almost) wholly against the core themes of Pokémon and gives more an impression of a world that has "outgrown" Pokémon and instead turned to something
thematically closer to Palworld and mechanically closer to, perhaps,
NieR. Neither of which are good things.
It's perfectly feasible that these machines are the "Pokémon" drawn from the future (if it's true the machine is doing that) because it is drawing creatures from the *same* area in the future, which has perhaps been turned into an industrial zone or an environmental wasteland, but that *doesn't* have to mean
every Pokémon everywhere in the future has been replaced with metal machines - and *only* metal machines, what about liquid silicon machines? crystal machines? *Miraidon* certainly looks like it's from a different "kind" of robotic future than the rest of the Futuredoxes.
All in all however, Future Paradoxes are introduced as a pretty limited / restricting, disappointing, and counter-thematic concept, and I hope that is soon fixed. But their introduction doesn't really impair the presence and design of "robotic" (in looks or in function) Pokémon as a whole, and I certainly await the day Porygon is given its dues after how it was basically excised from the franchise when the spasm flashes
were actually Pikachu's fault. We certainly could have done with a better mascot. Like Vulpix.
So, yeah.
