I don’t intend to say I know the process of creating new Pokemon goes in the company, but for the sake of argument lets say that the illustrators design their Pokemon family and hand it to the series’ overseer or project leader… Now lets say in a parallel universe, you were the overseer but your views on the Pokemon world are identical to how they are now… In all honesty, are there Gen 1 Pokemon that when brought to you, you would tell the illustrators to change it or scrap it?

Eh… that’s complicated.  A couple of people have asked me similar questions before, and my usual position is as follows: on the one hand, I certainly do think that a number of first-generation Pokémon are, shall we say, not great.  Many of them are quite straightforward adaptations of comparatively unremarkable real animals; I’ve never thought much, for instance, of Rattata and Raticate, Spearow and Fearow, Sandshrew and Sandslash, Krabby and Kingler, Goldeen and Seaking, or Seel and Dewgong (although personally I have an unaccountable soft spot for the last two).  On the other hand, I also maintain that the first-generation Pokémon can’t necessarily be judged by the same standard as their successors, because they were created in a vacuum, as it were, by a comparatively much less experienced design team.  Context matters, and the circumstances and aims of the project would have been very different.  So… I am divided on this question.