>>713644287I have a suspicion it's artificial.
I have nothing but vibes to run off of, but I have a hypothesis that Pokemon started trying to infiltrate and push their character designs as erotic after Sun and Moon. Maybe a bit before, but definitely after.
The games have had some of the safest, most corporate appeals to niche fetishes, on utterly bland characters, that get circulated like they're revolutionary. I don't think I've seen more than a handful of discussions about any of the gen 8 and 9 characters that didn't feel fake, overly fixated on barely present, or even entirely fabricated design elements, when if you actually like these things, there's a buffet of characters that actually appeal to these things better, and oddly similar to one another.
Maybe this is just the way the zoomer appreciates and expresses eroticism, but, somehow I doubt this.