On the other hand, those came out in the US when I was around 20 years old and I remembered visiting my folks during the summer and hanging out with my younger

On the other hand, those came out in the US when I was around 20 years old and I remembered visiting my folks during the summer and hanging out with my younger half-brother. He was maybe preschool age and watched plenty of cartoons and other kids shows. Compared to most of them, Pokemon was actually pretty decent. It had a (very basic, but still...) storyline about kids going off on kid adventures and meeting lots of weird cartoon animals. I mean, sure there was the whole "catch wild animals and train them to fight each other" thing but it wasn't really any more violent than the GI Joe or He-Man or Voltron shows I watched as a kid. Going back to those, the only real common negative thread is how they were basically ads for toys and games. Taken outside of that, I saw Pokemon as a halfway decent "starter anime" that was loads better than some of the live-action cartoons of the time (Power Rangers and its knockoffs were just awful).