First of all: thank you to @inprogresspokemon for recommending my post about how Meowth walk! I’m so honored =D
I see that post went places after that and got some comments, which I’m going to address below.
for Tyson’s Meowth the boots are covering up him standing bipedal digitigrade and giving him support allowing him more agile movements(think ballet
I thought in the anime, Tyson’s Meowth had injured it’s back legs making it painful to walk quadrupedal.
Well, according to Bulbapedia: “the soles of Meowth's feet were painful to stand on, so Tyson gave it boots to help it walk again”.
Correct me if I’m wrong but...wouldn’t walking quadrupedal make it soles hurt less than walking bipedal? Since walking bipedal puts all of its weight on its soles, while walking quadrupedal would divide its weight over all its four legs. I get that moving bipedal makes it more agile, but it should hurt its soles a lot more, so Tyson’s actually being an ass to his poor Pokémon here :P
Correct me if I’m wrong (because my memory is very blurry) but in that one episode where TR’s meowth tells the story how he learned the human language I believe him walking on two legs instead of four is explained as kind of a side effect. With meowth getting better and better at the language his posture changed more and more to the bipedaled one because he was adapting human traits?
In the episode he’s actively teaching himself to walk on two legs, as you can see from 6:06 in this video.
Sun and Moon have just furthered the problem- Meowth’s walk and run animations are all bipedal, but at the end of the game your mother’s Meowth runs on all fours to greet you.
The Walking and running Animations someone datamined aren’t helping either. Meowth is running and walking in a plantigrade bipedal fashion