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It's not like Pokemon aren't ready for combat. Imagine warfare in Pokemon universe. Oh wait, that's just Palworld.
Lt. Surge is literally a lieutenant. He fought in "the war" with his electric type Pokémon and used them to paralyse his enemies
Blud probably used them to torture and interrogate POWs
There was a canonical war between humans and pokemon about 10,000 years ago
There was a war less than 30 years before Red and Blue, Lt. Surge was in it
It was my understanding that a lot of gen 1 wasn't considered canon
More like it's still canon, but heavily retconned. FRLG removed some of the early weirdness and made it more consistent with the others, and Let's Go removed what little they missed with the first set of Kanto remakes. Both versions of Johto are direct sequels to Kanto, everyone important in the region shows up to the world tournament in B2W2, and Red and Green/Blue appear as adults in Sun/Moon's post game. It's just the references to real world countries and animals and stuff that they sweep under the rug and say "You didn't see that. That didn't happen."
also its official canon they fucked yo.
I saw how Mr. Mime looked at Ash's mom
https://legendsoflocalization.com/did-you-know-people-used-to-marry-pokemon-all-the-time/
no seriously. they edited it out in the American version lol
Play Pokémon Rocket Edition if you haven't already.