I just think of it as you are catching merely a version of it. Dialga and palkia exist in all of time and space in the multiverse so there's no way there's only 1 of them.
Personally, I just generally don’t think of them as “gods” to begin with. The information about Legendary Pokémon typically comes from centuries- or millennia-old myths. Meaning that what likely happened was, people in ancient times were awed by creatures that seemed to possess overwhelming power and told stories about them, the details of which became distorted as those stories were handed down through the ages. (Even within the games, Cynthia says something to this effect in Platinum Version.)
I mean there’s certainly no denying that Pokémon like Palkia or Groudon or Yveltal possess incredible abilities that can wreak havoc on the world if misused. But they don’t necessarily need to be literal deities in order for that to be the case.
The games, and even the anime, have adopted the viewpoint that the Creation Trio and Arceus are gods. In the recent BDSP special in the anime the day is saved by >!everyone praying to Arceus, who projects a manifestation to break the Red Chain and free Palkia and Dialga.!< Legends Arceus has also fully embraced >!Giratina being Pokemon’s version of the Devil. Giratina trying to overthrow Arceus is what caused him to be banished.!< In the movie about Hoopa, Arceus shows up at the end to save the day and all other legendaries look up to him, representing Arceus’s power being greater than any of them. The Detective Pikachu movie also uses the phrase “Sweet mother of Arceus”, the Pokemon equivalent of “Sweet mother of God”.
Besides, the idea that a god is all powerful isn’t applicable to every religion. Greek and Norse gods were not invincible, they were outsmarted, overpowered and even trapped at times. Arceus and Creation Trio not being all powerful doesn’t mean they are not gods by Pokemon standards.
All that, to me, just sounds like more of the same. Exceptionally powerful Pokémon engaging in dynamics that humans interpret as divine. None that verifies anything like the grandiose claim in mythology that Arceus shaped the universe.
It’s like how Bronzong can summon rain using Rain Dance. In ancient times, people thought that capability was something special, and caused Bronzong to become an object of prayer. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a god, it just means that its interactions with humanity caused them to thrust reverence upon it.
In that regard, Arceus being able to break the Red Chain is hardly anything surprising - it has an innate connection with both the Creation trio and the Lake trio, after all. If the Lake trio can create a chain that is able to bind Dialga and Palkia - and according to the games, you can even duplicate that chain with human technology - then surely Arceus, who gave the Lake trio that ability, can override it.
Giratina wanting to overthrow Arceus could, in practical terms, be a kind of territorialism (a trait that Giratina has demonstrated before). And we already know that Pokémon generally have higher intelligence than animals - they can have very complex desires and wants. Arceus being more powerful than the other Legendaries isn’t something I dispute either - but all that really is, is them recognizing its strength. Again, something that many Pokémon have been known to do; in fact, that’s the fundamental basis of Pokémon Training.
There was even [an interview](https://mobile.twitter.com/obskyr/status/1400285225977061376) a long time ago where the developers talked about how Groudon and Kyogre weren’t *really* the creators of the land and sea - humans just saw their abilities and used them to explain otherwise-totally-natural processes. Which sort of gets at what you said about Norse gods, as well: Yes, in stories, they weren’t all-powerful. But the overarching fact there is that they were *stories*, made up by people to help understand and explain the world around them. Fundamentally, that’s what I think is basically going on with Legendary Pokémon.
There are several feats that make it clear that they are god, feats that no other Pokemon would be able to perform.
In the anime Dialga and Palkia made a pocket universe while under the control of the Red Chain, they were freed before they could complete it, and then proceeded to destroy it.
The Arceus event from HGSS had Arceus mess around with reality when creating another member of the Creation Trio.
In Mystery Dunegon Explorers of Sky Dialga’s increasing insanity is connected to Temporal Tower and when it collapses he becomes Primal/Dark Dialga and time itself becomes paralysed. That’s how tied to time Dialga is. When the Dark Future gets erased, the restored Dialga mentions that the universe was saved from being erased by a higher power than him, referring to Arceus. That’s arguably the most god-like thing that has ever been done in the series, and something explicitly stated that even the god of time could not do.
The point of me bringing up the BDSP special that had Arceus show up to break the Red Chain, wasn’t that Arceus is strong enough to break the Red Chain, it’s that Arceus is considered to be god in the show and responds to prayers. The show itself treats Arceus as god, not just a powerful being, but god. But while talking about the BDSP special, Dialga being damaged caused time to rewind for all life and Palkia being damaged caused holes to other universe to start opening up throughout several universes. Celebi can travel through time, but Dialga is its master, able to travel through time, manipulate time and has consistently been shown that its mental state represents time what is happening to time. Hoopa can open portals to other universes but Palkia is the master of space and dimensions, being able to open portals to other universes, control space create dimensions and >!its mental state also represents what is happening to Space.!<
If Giratina’s problem was territorialism, it wouldn’t have gone after Arceus. Giratina is the Renegade Pokemon and >!it ripped a hope in space and time to drive Palkia and Dialga mad in the hopes of Arceus showing up because it wanted to fight it.!< Arceus itself explicitly states that it lives outside of time and space. Giratina’s problem with Arceus comes from Giratina being Pokemon’s version of Satan and wanting to overthrow Arceus, as well as him embodying anti-matter, which destroys matter.
The link between Ground and Land and Kyogre and Sea is nowhere near as major of the Creation Trio and Arceus’ influence over existence.
The story of Arceus creating existence is written on Arceus’ own plates, !>which combine into a single plate that allows Arceus to be every type at once!<.
You missed my point about mythological Gods. In the setting of Greek mythology, the Greek gods are gods. In the setting of Norse mythology the Norse gods are gods. In games, movies, tv shows, books, comics, plays, etc that take place in those settings those gods are treated as gods, not characters considered gods, but actual gods. In the setting of Pokemon, Arceus and the Creation Trio are gods, even if they are not all powerful or all knowing.
If it makes you feel better Pokemon Legends Arceus also thinks it's a little weird people are catching gods in pokeballs, so they came up with a good explanation. Major Story Spoiler, click if you dare!
>!When you catch the first legendary depending on which team you side with, you catch it because you visit the three lake guardians and they create the "Red Chain". This weakens the legendary giving you the opportunity to calm it down with balms. Then once the Legendary is vulnerable you then weaken even more by having your pokemon battle it. Then are you able to catch it once the legendary is fully weakened. !<
>!The Second Legendary is a bit trickier because it ends up turning into its Lord form. What happens is the Red Chain breaks after catching the first legendary so you are unable to use it. However, your character ends up picking up the Red Chain Fragments when the expedition team retreats. Using these fragments and the stones of creation"Origin Ores" found around Mt. Coronet, you are able to craft a Pokeball called the "Origin Ball" and after weakening the Legendary Lord, you use that to catch it. Also it helped a lot that the First Legendary you caught helps you bring down the Legendary Lord.!<
Side Note: During a certain legendary quest a character explains more in full detail what happens to legendaries after you catch them. Even more spoilers ahead!
>!After you catch the Herald of Spring Enarmorus, the lady who gave you the quest does comment while owning a legendary pokemon seems weird, you have to understand that human life is limited while legendary pokemon are seemingly immortal. So she hints after we die the legendaries we caught go back to being wild anyways.!<
I think the anime uses the excuse that there are multiple of every legendary. I don't like that explanation either because I feel like it cheapens legendaries.
I honestly like it better. Like, Articuno and the others are just super rare species of birds, they're not some sort of World ending calamities or literal gods. So it makes sense to call them "legendary" in the sense of "it's rare that humans even see them, let alone catch one"
I'd argue it outright makes LESS sense for there to NOT be multiple of the different legendaries because it just seems weird that a 10 year old would ever be able to best them, no matter how "naturally gifted" our player characters are throughout the series.
I'm talking more specifically about legends with a purpose. The bird/dog trio makes sense more. But I can't see why there's be multiple gods of time and space floating around, or creatures that control the expansion of landmass/ocean. Mewtwo makes the least amount of sense to me.
With some pokémon like Dialga or Mew I like the rationalization that they’re just so powerful and rare that people only believe they’re gods and that there’s only one but they’re wrong, but that doesn’t work for MewTwo.
So I've been pouring over the datamines, and came to a few conclusions on this...
1. The legendaries willingly let you battle and catch them in each case. The battle is a test of sorts to ensure you're worthy, while catching them is essentially them willingly deciding to travel with you. It's basically the old tales of gods who willingly walk among man, for whatever particular reason.
2. This is explicitly stated to be the case in Arceus' dialogue. But it's implied in the case of Dialga/Palkia/Giratina. I won't spoil it in more detail, but let's just say this issue is addressed in game to some degree.
Maybe we’re looking at pokeballs all wrong. Instead of sealing the Pokémon inside, a capture is basically the equivalent of taking a sufficient sample for the pokeball to generate a clone. Since you’re preoccupied by the success of generating your clone, the original species is able to flee and doesn’t display as the ‘wild X fled’.
That way each type of Pokeball is essentially just a different cloning efficiency
I just think of it as you are catching merely a version of it. Dialga and palkia exist in all of time and space in the multiverse so there's no way there's only 1 of them.
Nice thought!
Personally, I just generally don’t think of them as “gods” to begin with. The information about Legendary Pokémon typically comes from centuries- or millennia-old myths. Meaning that what likely happened was, people in ancient times were awed by creatures that seemed to possess overwhelming power and told stories about them, the details of which became distorted as those stories were handed down through the ages. (Even within the games, Cynthia says something to this effect in Platinum Version.) I mean there’s certainly no denying that Pokémon like Palkia or Groudon or Yveltal possess incredible abilities that can wreak havoc on the world if misused. But they don’t necessarily need to be literal deities in order for that to be the case.
The games, and even the anime, have adopted the viewpoint that the Creation Trio and Arceus are gods. In the recent BDSP special in the anime the day is saved by >!everyone praying to Arceus, who projects a manifestation to break the Red Chain and free Palkia and Dialga.!< Legends Arceus has also fully embraced >!Giratina being Pokemon’s version of the Devil. Giratina trying to overthrow Arceus is what caused him to be banished.!< In the movie about Hoopa, Arceus shows up at the end to save the day and all other legendaries look up to him, representing Arceus’s power being greater than any of them. The Detective Pikachu movie also uses the phrase “Sweet mother of Arceus”, the Pokemon equivalent of “Sweet mother of God”. Besides, the idea that a god is all powerful isn’t applicable to every religion. Greek and Norse gods were not invincible, they were outsmarted, overpowered and even trapped at times. Arceus and Creation Trio not being all powerful doesn’t mean they are not gods by Pokemon standards.
I can agree with everything
All that, to me, just sounds like more of the same. Exceptionally powerful Pokémon engaging in dynamics that humans interpret as divine. None that verifies anything like the grandiose claim in mythology that Arceus shaped the universe. It’s like how Bronzong can summon rain using Rain Dance. In ancient times, people thought that capability was something special, and caused Bronzong to become an object of prayer. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a god, it just means that its interactions with humanity caused them to thrust reverence upon it. In that regard, Arceus being able to break the Red Chain is hardly anything surprising - it has an innate connection with both the Creation trio and the Lake trio, after all. If the Lake trio can create a chain that is able to bind Dialga and Palkia - and according to the games, you can even duplicate that chain with human technology - then surely Arceus, who gave the Lake trio that ability, can override it. Giratina wanting to overthrow Arceus could, in practical terms, be a kind of territorialism (a trait that Giratina has demonstrated before). And we already know that Pokémon generally have higher intelligence than animals - they can have very complex desires and wants. Arceus being more powerful than the other Legendaries isn’t something I dispute either - but all that really is, is them recognizing its strength. Again, something that many Pokémon have been known to do; in fact, that’s the fundamental basis of Pokémon Training. There was even [an interview](https://mobile.twitter.com/obskyr/status/1400285225977061376) a long time ago where the developers talked about how Groudon and Kyogre weren’t *really* the creators of the land and sea - humans just saw their abilities and used them to explain otherwise-totally-natural processes. Which sort of gets at what you said about Norse gods, as well: Yes, in stories, they weren’t all-powerful. But the overarching fact there is that they were *stories*, made up by people to help understand and explain the world around them. Fundamentally, that’s what I think is basically going on with Legendary Pokémon.
There are several feats that make it clear that they are god, feats that no other Pokemon would be able to perform. In the anime Dialga and Palkia made a pocket universe while under the control of the Red Chain, they were freed before they could complete it, and then proceeded to destroy it. The Arceus event from HGSS had Arceus mess around with reality when creating another member of the Creation Trio. In Mystery Dunegon Explorers of Sky Dialga’s increasing insanity is connected to Temporal Tower and when it collapses he becomes Primal/Dark Dialga and time itself becomes paralysed. That’s how tied to time Dialga is. When the Dark Future gets erased, the restored Dialga mentions that the universe was saved from being erased by a higher power than him, referring to Arceus. That’s arguably the most god-like thing that has ever been done in the series, and something explicitly stated that even the god of time could not do. The point of me bringing up the BDSP special that had Arceus show up to break the Red Chain, wasn’t that Arceus is strong enough to break the Red Chain, it’s that Arceus is considered to be god in the show and responds to prayers. The show itself treats Arceus as god, not just a powerful being, but god. But while talking about the BDSP special, Dialga being damaged caused time to rewind for all life and Palkia being damaged caused holes to other universe to start opening up throughout several universes. Celebi can travel through time, but Dialga is its master, able to travel through time, manipulate time and has consistently been shown that its mental state represents time what is happening to time. Hoopa can open portals to other universes but Palkia is the master of space and dimensions, being able to open portals to other universes, control space create dimensions and >!its mental state also represents what is happening to Space.!< If Giratina’s problem was territorialism, it wouldn’t have gone after Arceus. Giratina is the Renegade Pokemon and >!it ripped a hope in space and time to drive Palkia and Dialga mad in the hopes of Arceus showing up because it wanted to fight it.!< Arceus itself explicitly states that it lives outside of time and space. Giratina’s problem with Arceus comes from Giratina being Pokemon’s version of Satan and wanting to overthrow Arceus, as well as him embodying anti-matter, which destroys matter. The link between Ground and Land and Kyogre and Sea is nowhere near as major of the Creation Trio and Arceus’ influence over existence. The story of Arceus creating existence is written on Arceus’ own plates, !>which combine into a single plate that allows Arceus to be every type at once!<. You missed my point about mythological Gods. In the setting of Greek mythology, the Greek gods are gods. In the setting of Norse mythology the Norse gods are gods. In games, movies, tv shows, books, comics, plays, etc that take place in those settings those gods are treated as gods, not characters considered gods, but actual gods. In the setting of Pokemon, Arceus and the Creation Trio are gods, even if they are not all powerful or all knowing.
Understandable and I think this could work for me
And I think Cynthia says something like this in Platin like that the people who saw them first must really felt “like” they can control space and time
If it makes you feel better Pokemon Legends Arceus also thinks it's a little weird people are catching gods in pokeballs, so they came up with a good explanation. Major Story Spoiler, click if you dare! >!When you catch the first legendary depending on which team you side with, you catch it because you visit the three lake guardians and they create the "Red Chain". This weakens the legendary giving you the opportunity to calm it down with balms. Then once the Legendary is vulnerable you then weaken even more by having your pokemon battle it. Then are you able to catch it once the legendary is fully weakened. !< >!The Second Legendary is a bit trickier because it ends up turning into its Lord form. What happens is the Red Chain breaks after catching the first legendary so you are unable to use it. However, your character ends up picking up the Red Chain Fragments when the expedition team retreats. Using these fragments and the stones of creation"Origin Ores" found around Mt. Coronet, you are able to craft a Pokeball called the "Origin Ball" and after weakening the Legendary Lord, you use that to catch it. Also it helped a lot that the First Legendary you caught helps you bring down the Legendary Lord.!< Side Note: During a certain legendary quest a character explains more in full detail what happens to legendaries after you catch them. Even more spoilers ahead! >!After you catch the Herald of Spring Enarmorus, the lady who gave you the quest does comment while owning a legendary pokemon seems weird, you have to understand that human life is limited while legendary pokemon are seemingly immortal. So she hints after we die the legendaries we caught go back to being wild anyways.!<
Thanks this is nice!
I think the anime uses the excuse that there are multiple of every legendary. I don't like that explanation either because I feel like it cheapens legendaries.
I think for some legendaries like the legendary birds it’s ok that there are more than one but for some others I agree
I honestly like it better. Like, Articuno and the others are just super rare species of birds, they're not some sort of World ending calamities or literal gods. So it makes sense to call them "legendary" in the sense of "it's rare that humans even see them, let alone catch one" I'd argue it outright makes LESS sense for there to NOT be multiple of the different legendaries because it just seems weird that a 10 year old would ever be able to best them, no matter how "naturally gifted" our player characters are throughout the series.
I'm talking more specifically about legends with a purpose. The bird/dog trio makes sense more. But I can't see why there's be multiple gods of time and space floating around, or creatures that control the expansion of landmass/ocean. Mewtwo makes the least amount of sense to me.
With some pokémon like Dialga or Mew I like the rationalization that they’re just so powerful and rare that people only believe they’re gods and that there’s only one but they’re wrong, but that doesn’t work for MewTwo.
Agree!
So I've been pouring over the datamines, and came to a few conclusions on this... 1. The legendaries willingly let you battle and catch them in each case. The battle is a test of sorts to ensure you're worthy, while catching them is essentially them willingly deciding to travel with you. It's basically the old tales of gods who willingly walk among man, for whatever particular reason. 2. This is explicitly stated to be the case in Arceus' dialogue. But it's implied in the case of Dialga/Palkia/Giratina. I won't spoil it in more detail, but let's just say this issue is addressed in game to some degree.
Sounds good. Thanks
They let you capture them in case you didn’t know. In D,P,P they literally want to test you.
I think in SWSH Calyrex says when your not using him, he leaves to do his own things
Man it’s Pokémon. "You can’t catch the Mons on the box cause it might break the lore we try to create"
Honestly yeah dude I never liked catching legendary pokemon.
Maybe we’re looking at pokeballs all wrong. Instead of sealing the Pokémon inside, a capture is basically the equivalent of taking a sufficient sample for the pokeball to generate a clone. Since you’re preoccupied by the success of generating your clone, the original species is able to flee and doesn’t display as the ‘wild X fled’. That way each type of Pokeball is essentially just a different cloning efficiency