The Pokémon Academy Life Community

It's hard to make a party when you are forced to have one Pokemon that has to be a part of your team for story reasons, by this i'm talking about charmander. I get the idea that we're red in this game, but isn't the focus on us the player? isn't that why we name our character? i think it'd be more enjoyable if we were able to choose from a list (or even randomly selected) of starting Pokemon, not necessarily starters either.

You probably won't have to use charmander on your team. There is more to pokemon training than using them in battles. The graduation requirement is there to make sure you can raise a pokemon. Not everyone going to the school will join the battle team. Some people are going to the school to prepare for a career in hosting pokemon contests. The school requirement is there to make sure that you can raise a random pokemon... that you know enough about pokemon to make sure you don't do something stupid, like leave your charmander out in the rain. I wouldn't think the devs would force you to use charmander or pikachu if you really didn't want to.