What Kind of Pokémon Are You?

What kind of Pokémon are you?
How do you do the things you do?
Share with me your secrets deep inside -
What kind of Pokémon are you?
Are you loyal through and through?
Do you have a heart that's true?
What kind of Pokémon are you?
-- "What Kind of Pokémon Are You?", Dream Street

Lately, every so often this song chances upon my mind. There are so many good songs from the early years of the English dub of the Pokémon anime, and I feel that this is one of them. This song takes the types of Pokémon as a discussion point, and it was created back when there were fewer types of Pokémon out there; yet I think it's still relevant today, even outside of the anime. There is still a sense that types and personalities go hand in hand, in addition to the fact that types are one of the things that determine how the course of a battle progresses.

Since a Trainer can only have up to six Pokémon (which are further knocked down to four in-battle in the case of the VGC format and even three in the rare case of competitive Singles), it is impossible for a Trainer to have every type in a team, even when Pokémon with dual types are considered. Thus a Trainer has to pick and choose Pokémon with types that benefit a chosen strategy. Figuratively, what Trainers do in making their Pokémon prime battlers can be regarded as befitting the evaluative nature of the questions above, posed in the song's chorus.

As for the "personality" part, every Pokémon has different stats, abilities, and moves among other tidbits, in addition to the types they belong as. Things like these determine what they can or can't do in battle, and these in effect become the elements of their "personality". Any strategy that Trainers choose for their teams then becomes an amalgam of these personalities. So while a Trainer may not be singly defined by the personality of a single type, they may take up the personalities of the Pokémon they use, in particular their types. And that's an elegant way of thinking about things, especially in light of this song.

So now it's back to the question: what kind of Pokémon are you?