I've been looking at Pokemon names in Japanese and notice that there are some
inconsistencies in writing long vowels in their names. For example, ミニリュウ
(Dratini) vs ハクリュー (Dragonair). I'm curious as to why one would be spelled
with a long vowel mark while the other with an ウ kana, especially when both
presumably come from the same word 竜. In other words, why not ミニリュー or ハクリュウ?

A few more examples:

> ケーシィ (Abra): Why not ケーシー?
>
> ピカチュウ (Everybody's favorite): Why not ピカチュー?
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question
katakana long-vowels
Katakana Long Vowel Marking (Pokemon Related)
This is ultimately up to the creator's preference. As far as proper nouns like
character names are concerned, you will find lots of inconsistencies. シィ is
not the most common way of elongating シ, but uncommon spellings like this
sometimes feel more exotic or fascinating. 'Mary' is usually katakanized as
マリー in academic contexts, but マリィ is also very common in fictional works.

As for リュウ, there is another reason. As a rule, Pokémon names have to be
always in katakana, but etymologically, they contain many Japanese- or
Chinese-origin words (wago and kango) that are normally written in hiragana or
kanji. In such cases, people usually follow the original, hiragana rules of
elongating vowels. For example, in real biological contexts, オオカミ (wolf) is
not オーカミ, and コウモリ (bat) is not コーモリ because these are traditional Japanese
words (see also [this](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/20840/5010)).
However, this is not an ironclad rule when naming fictional characters, and
you will see both リュウ and リュー in the name of dragon-like Pokémons.

To take another example, the standard katakana spellings of Tokyo and New York
are トウキョウ and ニューヨーク, respectively. The former does not use long vowel markers
because it's a Japanese word that is normally written in kanji (東京). However,
トーキョー is not an uncommon spelling in manga, ads and such when people want to
emphasize the vibe of "Tokyo as an international city" or "Cyberpunk Tokyo".
In the field of creative writing and branding, people sometimes intentionally
use ニュウヨーク or even ニュウヨォク to add some additional exotic flavor.
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answer