Why has there never been a fish starter?

No, mudkip doesn’t count; despite its name, it’s actually based on a salamander, not a mudskipper.

Attached: EE69A5F3-C5EC-45C4-A355-3C9AD514116D.jpg (1345x2178, 652.78K)

Because the anime needs to be able to portray it alongside the humans at any stage, which can't happen if one of them's a fish.

Fish are probably harder to make charismatic than other animals, and they've increasingly focused on more familiar and charismatic animal families in the past few gens. There may have been a chance of it back in the days when starters were more often simple dinosaur-like monsters, but it's probably long gone.

this plus there's already tons of fish pokemon so how would a fish starter set iself apart to actually feel like a starter

Fish can be on land indefinitely in the world of pokemon.
They might have to choose a meme fish like the blobfish or megalodon in that case.
There were already a few snakemon prior to serperior, so it can work to revisit a used concept.
They could base its first form an embryo or a fry, its second form a smolt, and its third form the full adult.
If they wanted to be really, really out there, they could make fish starter NOT the water starter—that’ll blow some minds.

because the fish starter that exists you say doesnt count
water starters are always amphibian even when they're not actual amphibians

>Fish can be on land indefinitely in the world of pokemon.
They always try to avoid portraying fish on land, stadium just did the "they float and do swimming animations" and that just kind of stuck for the games but the show isn't gonna do that.

So why did shudo have misty only use staryu or psyduck on land, when she also owned a goldeen?
Because he didn't play fish as being able to do anything but flop on land, hazards of being a boomer fuck given a video game to adapt to a tv show. Wasn't fucked learning the ins and outs of the game, thus couldn't comprehend anything but a "realistic" portrayal of the creatures. That extended to fish only being able to swim, so there has to be a body of water if they want to be shown off in the anime. And those that followed kept to that, as it wasn't a big deal, by that stage GF were working with the anime in mind, thus weren't going to make a fish starter.

Attached: 1614129328814.png (75x65, 1.61K)

>it’s actually based on a salamander, not a mudskipper.
Bullshit