What do you think on the apparant rule of “There is no such thing as an evil Pokémon”? There are clearly Pokémon who do things that can be considered evil (like Litwick and Lampent stealing souls in one animé episode) and there are Pokémon who look (and really should be) evil like Darkrai and Houndoom. Also, said “rule” was mentioned in a season full of Early Installment Weirdness, so what do you think? Can an evil (through no influence) Pokémon exist?

Oy vey.

I presume you’re referring to the dialogue between Pikachu and Ekans in Island of the Giant Pokémon?  Personally I give quite a lot of weight to that episode because it’s the only one where we directly hear what they think.  There are only a couple of other episodes I can think of that seem to address this question; the other one that I looked at in depth was the Case of the K-9 Caper.

I think the important thing to recognise about what Ekans is saying is that she’s not just saying “hey, don’t look at me."  She actually does understand that she does evil things as Jessie’s partner; she is aware of good and evil as concepts.  She just doesn’t care, because her master is more important.  Furthermore, Pikachu takes this as a totally legitimate excuse.

What I’m getting at is that the vast majority of Pokémon aren’t simply ‘not evil’ but completely amoral, like real animals.  Litwick devour souls because it’s just what they do, same as a lion will kill a human if it’s provoked, or stalk and kill a zebra.  The difference is that Pokémon do understand morality; they just think it only applies to humans.  The Litwick understand that their actions would be considered evil, which arguably means that they are evil, but it’s also how they survive, which arguably means it’s excusable – and I think Pikachu would probably agree, if you asked him about it while he wasn’t currently fighting for his soul.

Morality gets very confusing when you have to accommodate multiple intelligent species, all with different ways of surviving.