time to rant abt pokemon because i cannot be contained
so @ohnoitstbskyen released his review on Purrloin and Liepard recently, and remarked that it has a very similar niche to Meowth and Persian, and... i mean, he isn't wrong, but that is kind of the point since gen 5 was essentially "what if we made gen 1 again but better"
this is not a defense on Purrloin and Liepard though - i agree that they had wasted potential and could have been better pokemon, and the crux of that, really, is because Purrloin Stands Upright
in its original art and game sprites, Purrloin is just a dark-type cat, sitting down as a cat ought to, occasionally lifting its paws as if to taunt you like "nyeheheh i'm gonna steal from ya"
Liepard is a decent evolution from this, if not for the name alone. it's literally "lie" like lying and cheating, and "leopard". let's be honest, too: if Liepard did evolve into more of a Catwoman-esque bipedal creature, a la Meowscarada... would that have been better? i'm inclined to say it wouldn't be, but i don't have too much to say further on the point anyway
i primarily dislike that Purrloin Stands Upright because it never did in the first place, and i hate how it looks in the wild standing up like that. that's just a cat standing up - it's uncanny
compared to Meowth, you can at least say its anatomy better allows it to have a bipedal stance, and arguably you see it assume a bipedal sit at least in RGB. but then, you must remember, that Meowth aren't supposed to be bipedal - Team Rocket's Meowth had to learn how to stand up and walk and talk like a human, all to impress a girl Meowth he liked, who evidently walks just like a cat
of course, Team Rocket's Meowth is an incredibly popular character, and unfortunately his influence was too great, so now ALL Meowth stand upright, including the Alolan and Galarian forms! I can understand Galarian Meowth standing because it leads better into its evolution of Perrserker, but Alolan Meowth has the same problem and Kantonian Meowth, and so does Purrloin
tl;dr: Purrloin Standing Upright is a perversion of nature
thank you for coming to my TED talk