Maybe the “different franchises” thing was an exaggeration, but you can’t deny that overall Pokemon have gotten much less natural. Besides oddballs like Mr. Mime or Voltorb, first gen Pokemon looked like real creatures and now they’re like action figures.

I believe you’ll find I can deny anything that I think is untrue.  We agree the style is different, but I would never have thought to describe it in terms of being more or less naturalistic; that varies from one design to another but I don’t think there’s an overall trend across generations.  I honestly have no idea what “like action figures” even means in this context.

How do you feel about how much more cartoon Pokemon designs have gotten lately? Most of them don’t even look like they’re from the same franchise as the original 151.

I think maybe some of your phrasing here needs dissecting – like, calling one of two groups “more cartoon” is an extremely vague way of comparing them when both of them objectively are cartoons.  I would understand “more cartoonish” to mean something along the lines of… probably more zany, more “out there,” less naturalistic, and I honestly don’t think that would be a remotely fair assessment.  Voltorb and Electrode, I think, are some of the most cartoonish Pokémon of any generation.  But maybe we’re understanding the words differently.