"Do you primarily view pokemon as animals or monsters?"

I know what you're thinking: 'they're pocket MONSTERS dummy'Yes, they are! But don't you think that a lot of the conversation around the details of the pokemon universe seem to center around a lot of belief that they are animals? Talking to some friends, many people bring up questions like"But why do they make them fight each other?!""But how do they survive in that little pokeball? Are they at least comfortable?!"and something like "Why is there an ice cream pokemon? Why would ice cream be alive?!"And I realized that all of these questions come from the mindset of believing that pokemon are like our animals here on earth and as such have the same behavior and natural instincts. In which case all of these questions are valid: how do you download a squirrel into a computer? How do you store a squirrel in a baseball? Why would you make a squirrel fight a trout? And why is that trout flying?On the other hand, if we all agreed that they are monsters and not animals, wouldn't these questions be a little nonsensical? If you think of them as monsters, then all of those questions get answers: these monsters can be stored in baseballs and they can be stored in computers because as monsters we figured out how to do that and that's just... how these monsters work. This monster can be a trash bag with eyes because it's... a monster. This monster is ice cream because it's an ice cream monster. And most importantly: these monsters clearly enjoy fighting in some capacity or else it wouldn't be so damn easy to get them to do it!I dunno, it was more of a shower thought that I had. It's obvious to us at first that they're monsters but I think a lot of the longstanding questions surrounding how pokemon work are based on us viewing them as animals. I've also found that reminding myself they're monsters and not animals clears up a lot of seemingly inconsistent or uncomfortable facts of the pokemon universe.Thanks for coming to my TedTalk. via /r/pokemon https://ift.tt/2Ql39Ly