Gen 5 Kanto copycats in Unova

I remember seeing the comparisons to the Woobat line and the Zubat line a long time ago along with the Gothita-Abra and Mewtwo-Genesect comparison but I did not realize the similarities go much further than that! I did remember hearing somewhere that during Gen 5 it was almost like Game Freak was doinh some kind of reboot with the series and in a way this proves that idea.

 

ah man, i've heard of the reboot theory, but i've never seen it laid out quite this obviously.

i've kinda gotta wonder what they were aiming for by doing this, if they did it on purpose. though it seems more and more like they did when you consider that there were almost no Pokémon that weren't native to unova in black and white -- an interesting concept, lorewise, but metawise is hmm!

 

Oh boy first post and it would be a too long ramble on Gen 5 stuff wouldn't it?

From what I remember reading, Gen 5 was meant to feel like a fresh new region having all new Pokémon and starting the route numbers over from one, yeah. I'm not really sure how it's a replacement (or a rebirth) though. Like, Gen 1 is never being replaced, could never be replaced, there's too much bank on it. Anyways I'm just gonna throw down my thoughts on the topic as a whole.

(I'd like to say right now though, I don't know jack about meta, so I'm mostly speaking about base design and concepts as I think of them.)

Spoiler: Nein Talks Too Much

You find bats and rocks in caves, so it feels natural to me to make Pokémon based on that for those areas, which is why you see the same Zubat and Geodude across four gens which made going through caves (for me at least) incredibly boring. They've never had to make new Pokémon to fill those roles, so here we get new ones.

With Audino and Chansey, in places like the anime you need a Pokémon who is the pokecenter Pokémon, so they make a Pokémon to fill the same niche. Principles like that I think guide a lot of figuring out what kind of species go places, and so there's similarities. (Sort of like in real life evolution but that's a hot topic for another day)

I wouldn't say that explains all of it of course, the Gurdurr and Boldore parallels to me being especially striking. But others, like the parallel with the Abra and Gothitelle line, yes it's there, but Gardevoir, as a three stage humanoid psychic-type, came first. Human forms are associated with intelligence, so it's a natural fit to make psychic types human-like. (See also, Hypno, Mr. Mime, Mewtwo, Slowking, Jynx, Medicham...) With Reuniclus and Gengar being paralleled, I'm not sure how solosis is incorporeal? I always saw it as just, a very large cell. Aside from that the only major similarity I see is the three-stage evolution.

The last thing I sort of want to point at is with making this region exclusively new Pokémon to fill the entire thing out, it means a lot more Pokémon are made which are a lot more instances where similarities are found. (especially filling similar roles) There's balances in deciding how many two and three stage evolutions you give, what your obligatory version exclusive counterparts are, how you spread introducing new typing and strength levels throughout the game etc that factor in as well.

Again, I don't think all the parallels are unwarranted, and yeah I'm pretty sure gen 5 was going for the feel of gen 1 and used some similar concepts, but I think it's unfair to call it a replacement gen, especially looking at the bigger picture of all the new species Unova brought us.

TLDR: Yes I think there's a good amount of similarities for various reasons, and somewhat intentional, but I also think to some extent there's an amount of confirmation bias in picking out these patterns.