1st Gen Genwunners are misunderstood

[NipahRika]

Like a huge chunk of my friends stopped liking Pokémon after Gen 1, sadly. Pokemon was ALL OVER the place such as t-shirts, the anime, video games, and the cards. I was into the games and anime as a kid, and so were most of my friends and people at school. Also yeah, the card game. I've known some schools to ban bringing the cards to school due to drama surrounding it (just people fighting or a trade gone wrong etc)

I stuck it out with the franchise, but mostly consume it via the video games. I liked the anime up when the Diamond/Pearl anime ended. (Season 10-13 according to the Pokémon website)

 

[jojobear13]

I think most of gen 1's appeal (and gen 2 as well) comes from Satoshi Tajiri's creative vision that defined early Pokemon.

- It is very unapologetically Japanese. Locations are obviously based around Tokyo suburbs. It has all the tropes of a 90's jrpg or anime that was made for a Japanese kids first then localized other places. This made it feel exotic, different, and alluring to your average western 10-year-old. Much of this was dropped after gen 2 in favor of making things have a bit more universal appeal and also to make localizing easier. Like how the TV show stopped using Japanese cultural tropes and switched to a fictional written language.

- Pokemon were just one aspect of what was a characterization of the real world. All the other real life animals, cities, countries, etc, assumedly still existed. Pokemon were treated as strange "other" creatures, as mini-kaiju, that lived along side regular wildlife. The player was just one kid focused on just this part of the world. This eventually changed to Pokemon being the only wildlife that exists, and the entire world seems to be a fictitious fantasy realm.

- It's super 90's. Say what you will about being better or worse, Japanese games of that era have certain unique and definitive characteristics that came about from both hardware limitations and media tropes of the time. Art style, music composition, gameplay, all just screams 90's. This has a very specific appeal to a segment of the fanbase. Similar to how some people get really into 60's American muscle cars.

 

[jibbajabbawocky]

Like a huge chunk of my friends stopped liking Pokémon after Gen 1, sadly. Pokemon was ALL OVER the place such as t-shirts, the anime, video games, and the cards. I was into the games and anime as a kid, and so were most of my friends and people at school. Also yeah, the card game. I've known some schools to ban bringing the cards to school due to drama surrounding it (just people fighting or a trade gone wrong etc)

I stuck it out with the franchise, but mostly consume it via the video games. I liked the anime up when the Diamond/Pearl anime ended. (Season 10-13 according to the Pokémon website)

I've packed out Pokemon cards for my job for the last 8 years. All those kids who "drifted away" drifted back when Go came out. :) (or showed up with their kids saying, "Pokemon is still a thing!?" .... yeah, it's only the single most profitable franchise in history. where have you been?)