Pokemon and Consent

You say the pokemon are just animals and can't consent, but in the anime Meowth can speak intelligently and would be perfectly capable of giving and communicating consent. And episodes of the anime show that Meowth was originally just an ordinary pokemon, who learned all on his own how to speak and walk upright because he wanted to impress a girl Meowth. Which means that, in theory, any pokemon could learn how to speak.

He's not the only one, either. In just the first season, Tentacruel, Ghastly, and Lapras are also able to intelligently communicate in English. And even pokemon who don't speak English are often shown to understand English, and be able to respond with 'yes' or 'no' and communicate in limited ways by charades/acting things out. Furthermore, the pokemon often communicate with each other, even across species lines, in what seems to be a complex language of their own. In one episode, various pokemon's speech in their native language was actually given subtitles so that viewers could understand it. In several instances, Meowth has acted as a translator, telling humans what a pokemon was saying.

I'd say that it's very clear from the anime that pokemon are fully intelligent beings, who are capable of informed consent and often even capable of communicating that consent. (Heck, according to the pokedex, some pokemon are vastly more intelligent than humans.) I'd even go as far as to say that most of them are capable of communicating consent, if you count things like nodding their head yes and shaking their head no.

In other words... bring on the Vaporeon!

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