What do you think of humanoid starter evolutions?

[Corveone]

I wouldn't even say Infernape is anthro. In my eyes, none of the Gen 4 starters seem anthro. You said we hadn't really seen anthro ones before then, but Combusken (Gen 3), to me, is far more anthro than Infernape!

Yeah, I agree. I mean, Infernape has to be anthro because it's a monkey. And Empoleon is just bipedal because so are penguins, and unlike Blaziken it doesn't even have arms.

But it's not just an aesthetic thing anyway. Final starter evos in recent gens have shown a big tendency towards more human traits. Older starters used to be "a turtle", "a dinosaur", "a crocodile", now they're still based on animals but their main trait is to represent a human role/job. Cinderace could have been a rabbit, a monkey, or a bear... it wouldn't matter because it's just a human concept applied to a random animal.

 

[Thagnoth]

Thanks! I guess I've strayed so far from what English class taught me anthropomorphism meant that I forgot "to be anthro" can mean things other than what it does in furry lingo—I was thinking far more anatomically in my original response. As for the overly characterized starters of late, I definitely agree. I'd much rather just have starter Pokémon be creatures, "anthro" (humanoid in shape) or not, and leave all the hyper-characterized ones to be other Pokémon in the wild or legendaries. I don't want any future starters to feel like they could be characters in Pirate101. That being said, I don't think there are many starters that have taken this to the extreme enough to be dislikable to me—the onky exception I think is Incineroar. Serperior, Samurott, Cinderace, Decidueye, Delphox, and Empoleon pull it off quite nicely, I think, while Incineroar, Infernape, Emboar, and Inteleon are quite off-putting. Greninja and Rillaboom are somewhere in the middle. Were Blastoise to be designed nowadays, they'd make him into some sort of naval officer.

 

[Hyzenthlay]

The "furry bait" label doesn't stop me from liking Pokémon such as Zeraora, Lopunny, Braixen etc., I'm really fond of these and most others but I don't consider myself furry - I just like how they're designed. I have a slight preference for them because I write Pokémon Mystery Dungeon fanfics and it's more freeing when the characters stand on two feet and have hands, haha. Though, purely from a design standpoint, I always prefer designs that are more animal-like!

It's just... scary searching up humanoid Pokémon sometimes. I've been scarred a few times as a kid. 😔

 

[Sheep]

Haha, I never search humanoid Pokémon unless I absolutely have to… the internet can be a scary place.

But I'll have to agree with you, Hyzenthlay! Normally I prefer animal-like ones a bit more just because many designs I like are in that category, but some of the humanoid ones are also nice. Even Inteleon has grown on me and I disliked it quite a bit at first.