I despise Mawile. Like, it's one of the most awful things to look at in any pokémon game ever. But that was exactly my point. In the later gens you have a bunch of love/hate pokémon because the designers took risks, whereas in the first two gens pretty much everything that's not the final evo in a three-stage line is cutesy, simple, and safe (read: boring). I feel a lot of pokémon that would largely be ignored if they were released in a later generation get free passes just because they're associated with the glory years and nostalgia and all that, but... maybe that's just me.
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I've come to the realization that I need a sig.