Monster/animal human bonding partnership fictions exist. Digimon, Zatch Bell, Monsuno, Yugioh has it too, even Persona series has something of it with demons. Dragon’s prophet, Even How to train your dragon. But what has pokemon bonding thing that stood out above the rest? Maybe you can even right an article on it, comparing relationships to other series.

Well, I haven’t actually heard of half of those… and I haven’t seen How to Train Your Dragon, or anything past the first season of Yu-Gi-Oh (how do you have a ‘partnership’ with a trading card, anyway?  I mean, sure, I can see how that was where Yugi’s ‘heart of the cards’ bull$#!t was heading, and his favourite creature is human anyway, but still, wha?).  So, to be honest, an article on that could easily stretch to several months of work.

I do know Digimon, and as far as contrasting that with Pokémon, I don’t know that Pokémon does stand out above it.  Obviously the video games are far more numerous and successful but I’m inclined to suggest this has more to do with aspects of gameplay than with anything related to their respective themes of partnership, while as far as the anime goes, Digimon is pretty highly acclaimed for its characterisation, and much as I love the Pokémon anime I have to admit that the first two seasons of Digimon are a good deal deeper, and deal at least as convincingly with the partnership thing.

So I guess my final answer to this question is “eh.”