-
Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
SPOILERS! Mysteries and Conspiracies of Pokemon
- Thread starter stage7_4
- Start date
If I recall, they're called the Legendary Heroes of Galar in-game.
"Like, all this history research is making my nails gnarly. I'm gonna need a spa day, cha'h"
But that's boring.
Oh wow, didn't think I'd get that reaction. Of course I know Sonia doesn't talk like that, just pointing out that not only do we have ONE person researching Galar's history but that one person is a late teen/young adult woman. I originally wanted to us an image of the few times Sonia makes her silly surprised face whenever you tell her something stupid (like how Bob is part of the Darkest Day legend) but couldn't find a screenshot of that moment (and was too lazy to make one) so just used her default art (which if you didn't know Sonia's personality does look like she's more thinking about getting her nails done) and added a silly caption.
"Of course I'm sure the kings of Galar were Pokemon. The sword & shield the two humans who are constantly depicted wasn't the symbolism, the humans were the symbolism. They represent humanity getting help from Zacian & Zamazenta, crowning themselves as the new rulers, and how everyone grieved when they passed away. Then everyone agreed to forget about them and hide any evidence they existed, it's not that the two kings hid the wolves so their partners could rest in peace. That's why I'm the Professor and Bob isn't part of the Darkest Day legend."
Sonia's ascension to professor makes me seriously question the qualifications of the professoriate in the Pokemon world. She writes one book and suddenly she's a professor, didn't have to go to Pokemon grad school or do a Pokemon postdoc or anything? Are there even Pokemon universities at all?? It seems like Magnolia just promoted her from assistant to prof.
Are Pokemon research labs just run by independently wealthy bored billionaires that decided to study Pokemon in their spare time? I guess it might explain why Professor Oak recruits 10 year olds to collect data for him instead of grad students.
Are Pokemon research labs just run by independently wealthy bored billionaires that decided to study Pokemon in their spare time? I guess it might explain why Professor Oak recruits 10 year olds to collect data for him instead of grad students.
Sonia I can at least believe maybe went to professor college off screen. And if nothing else Magnolia was clearly her mentor.
Hop meanwhile, immediately jumps to apprenticeship to Sonia, who just became a professor
To be fair, the education system in Pokémon in general has always shown to be a bit lacking. Students at the Pokémon Trainers' school tend to be among the weakest trainers in the region, and the things you learn in there doesn't seem to extend beyond the few sentences about type effectiveness and status effects you pick up during a two-minute visit.
I wonder if older students do exist, but we just never meet them in the school. Like, we just drop in to beat up a few youngins, but elsewhere there are trainers studying serious battling, like if Smogon University was an actual university.
School works like the melemele school in the anime: it's a huge campus with a ton of different grades and people attending but you only see ash's 6-man class on the grounds in 97% of instances and you never see a single other teacher than Kukui
Pokemon college works the same way but its so out of focus only thosepure of heart strong of mind can see it
Pokemon college works the same way but its so out of focus only those
Also not to mention that is a Pokemon Trainer School, where is normal school where you learn math, language & writing, history, science, computer ed, PE, music, art, etc.? Now I suppose a Trainer School could be required to also have those courses (make them Pokemon related but at the end of the day a kid still needs to know how to red, write, and math) but, as DrPumpkinz points out, what if a kid wants to focus more on their education or at least a certain course (guess there's mentorships, though what is a college/academy then many kinds of mentorships all in one place).
For now, focusing on the Trainer School, while many past gens it was just one or two rooms so I guess it didn't matter, in Gen VII they actually made an entire school sized building. There was a front yard, a back yard, the building had three floors, and each floor had I think three or four class rooms. It was a pretty big building (there was also probably a roof and basement we never saw) and they could have put a whole lot of things in it. Note I said "could have". All your visit to the Trainer School resulted in a few easy battles, going to the third floor to battle the principle, maybe going into the few classes that were going on and grabbing an item, and then you were out! And then you only go back for one optional battle with the principle and USUM had a series of side missions about school rumors/ghosts.
While I understand they want the player to get a move on, that doesn't mean they can't add in a few fun optional things the player can do or maybe even learn some game mechanics and have ways of knowing about it. Some ideas:
Class Mini-Games: Even if you won't attend the trainer school, it's a good place to add in some mini-games. They can base them on each normal class courses:
Math would be solving as many math problems in a certain time: addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, squaring/square rooting, finding x, given two numbers and asked which is greater than or lesser than, etc.
Writing you're shown an incomplete word, image & given a description and you got to correctly fill in the missing letters. They could have one where you find words that rhyme. They could give you a batch of letters/a long word and have you spell as many words as you can with those letters.
History could just be Pokemon World trivia. Questions based on the Pokedex, regions, locations, characters, etc.. Before you're given the lesson you're told the topic so you can go to the bookshelf and find the textbook that'll help you know the basic trivia information they'll ask.
Science they could change it into "Battle Science" and be Pokemon Trivia about the Type chart, Moves, Abilities, and Stats. They could even have those puzzle Sim Battles like Colosseum had.
Music they could do some rhythm mini-games, maybe even give you a Mario Maker-like music creator to play with on your free time.
Similarly, Art could have some drawing mini-games, also giving you an art canvas you can use on your free time (aka cram in Pokemon Art Academy into the game).
And what would you get at the end of doing all these tests? Why, Bonus Points (BP) of course! Which leads to.
School Store: Just like college, the school can have its own store and while for students it's where they get their supplies & text books, for the player we can skip that and focus on items you can buy with BP. I'm thinking items like packs of Berries, the regional food treats, the Type-Enhancing items (Charcoal, Mystic Water, Miracle Seed, etc.), and some other useful held items you'll probably not find in the Battle Tower's Shop like Binding Band, Grip Claw, Big Root, Expert Belt, Metronome, Scope Lens, Wide Lens, Wise Glasses, Zoom Lens, Lagging Tail, Quick Claw, Sticky Barb, Iron Ball, Black Sludge, Ring Target, Air Balloon, Bright Powder, Float Stone, Shed Shell, Smoke Ball, Cleanse Tag, and Soothe Bell.
Advanced Classes: Finally, they can just have classrooms that actually teach you about in-game mechanics. Crazy right? EVs (and have someone explain how you can see your IVs and able to reset them), IVs (and have someone just tell you what the numbers are, maybe even make them the Hyper Trainer), strategy combinations with Moves/Items/Abilities, evolution methods (and how to do them or where you can find the items), and probably other mechanics that would be really useful for the player either to know while playing or for post game.
That's not really what I pointed out at all, at least not recently. I was mostly replying to the "students at the Pokémon Trainers' school tend to be among the weakest trainers in the region, and the things you learn in there doesn't seem to extend beyond the few sentences about type effectiveness and status effects you pick up during a two-minute visit" part of Cod's post. Like, the reason the school seems so inept is because we only see the students K-2. It's likely that higher levels of trainer education exists where they teach more advanced battle stuff, but we just never see it directly. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the Ace Trainers the player meets along the way are graduates of "trainer college" or even currently enrolled.
Does this mean the player just dumps on the education system through stuff they learned online? Related, in the Melemele school, there's an advanced classroom taught by Kukui that has stuff like IVs on the chalkboard.
Mew is implied to be the ancestor of all earthbound pokemon species (pokeworldboud pokemon species? has the planet ever been called earth?) in other words the last universal common ancestor of all pokemon
It certainly doesn't make it Deoxys' ancestor, or the Ultra Beasts' for that matter
which would make Arceus older
The planet's never been named though at the onset it was clearly supposed to be on earth. The lightning american Surge, the Columbia rocket, the assorted references to real world locations (Mew was from South America!) in the dex. I wouldn't be surprised if Earth was namedropped in early side materials, either. They quickly pivoted away from that and I think now its just vauge World of Pokemon.
Also may as well clarify that Mew's implication is not a kanto-specific thing. It's an in-universe scientific theory based on its ability to learn any move and probably isn't meant to literally account for the assorted other Pokemon of myth, or the "Pokemon" that only exist in other universes.
And also I guess may as well mention that its likely that while Arceus is a provably absurdly strong Pokemon with world-warping abilities (see: The Triad Stage event) it is technically only the Original One in sinnoh religion. Normally you can kind of take these things at face value but Platinum went out of its way to add a (really interesting, I like it a lot) conversation with Cynthia where she muses that Dialga & Palkia were revered as gods due to their strong power but may not necessarily have actual god hood and Dialga's heart beating probably does not keep time moving. Can Arceus create life? Demonstrably, yes. Does it hold dominion over others? Probably, Giratina is clearly cut fro mits cloth and likely didn't just wind up ruling over the Distortion World and SOMEONE spoke to you about Darkrai's place in the world. Was it the one who created the universe with its metaphorical thousand arms after hatching from an egg in the nothingness of existence? Mmmmm let's say "maybe" at best.
Hollywood is a....weird thing, because in Japan it's offbrand legally distinct hollywood
While the dub directly states this place to be Hollywood, its Japanese name is a corruption of the usual rendering of "Hollywood" in Japanese (ハリウッド), replacing the initial "ha" (ハ) with "ho" (ホ).
I do think fans overreact to if a game calls its place "Earth" (like its fine ya'll it doesnt literally mean its earth golly....) but in this case its less fans mad and more gamefreak deciding to have pokemon be on actual for-real Earth and then deciding, once they actually started bothering with thinking more about the world, to set it in a fully original location probably so they weren't shackeled to how real world things would affect this and that.
Junichi Masuda gave a pretty definitive answer for that question (sadly the original source of that question can no longer be looked at but I don't think Bulbapedia would make this stuff up):
So Pokemon World isn't our Earth. It's an alternate Earth where the existence of Pokemon has radically changed the world's history, culture, and values. A bit idealistic that humans by large all agreed to work with each other and there's little feuding but hey, it's a world made for a kid's game.
Related to this but I was wondering if they ever thought about retconning Surge any. What with ahh..you know...being a soldier from a war that in-universe would be recent memory? When the originals were still "Literally Our Earth" I think that'd make him, what, Gulf War probably? Maybe a middle eastern war? Kind of awkward especially post-Earth for the franchise, where stuff like that's usually the far off past if mentioned at all.
I am a bit surprised they haven't, honestly. Yellow/Let's Go is the closest they've come to steering away and that was probably more to just play int othe anime's personality. BW2 ignores it entirely. HGSS has a lot of extra dialog where he doesnt talk about war or anything. But it is still there in his design and some of his other dialog, so....
As a reminder this is his intro dialog
GS and by extension HGSS follow it up too
Yellow & Let's Go meanwhile keeps the general soldier aesthetic but downplays the actual war part
Just a little surprising, but I suppose he's so tied to the army aesthetic it'd be more awkward to really change it. Just another of those early game archiac left overs, i suppose.
I am a bit surprised they haven't, honestly. Yellow/Let's Go is the closest they've come to steering away and that was probably more to just play int othe anime's personality. BW2 ignores it entirely. HGSS has a lot of extra dialog where he doesnt talk about war or anything. But it is still there in his design and some of his other dialog, so....
As a reminder this is his intro dialog
Fairly...explicit. And kind of dark!
GS and by extension HGSS follow it up too
Yellow & Let's Go meanwhile keeps the general soldier aesthetic but downplays the actual war part
Just a little surprising, but I suppose he's so tied to the army aesthetic it'd be more awkward to really change it. Just another of those early game archiac left overs, i suppose.
The Geneva Convention probably doesn't exist. In a literal sense because Geneva itself most likely isn't a place in the Pokemon world, in a moral sense because high powered Pokemon are an inherent risk to civilians - Zekrom and Reshiram allegedly devastated the entire Unova region in an instant and Kyurem's power in-universe was shown to be able to freeze over a large city within minutes. Yveltal meanwhile drains the life out of things within what seems to be a large area just when it dies.
Without wide scale evacuations before battles even began civilian casualties would be expected.
E: To add onto this, wild Pokemon pose an additional threat even if the combatants themselves hold back (which is an unrealistic scenario itself). Gyarados, in particular, apparently shows up whenever a major conflict starts and burns everything to the ground for up to a month.
Yeah but like, he's openly threatening to deliver a (presumably non-lethal but still painful enough to submit) electric shock directly to a civilian without provocation. I get that it's just smack talk, but still...
Merritt:
But those are Pokemon examples which could just be seen as a force of nature. Lt. Surge is a human directly threatening another human. That said:
And that's it. It's just smack talk. He's not going to actually shock the trainer, or what he's saying he'll shock the trainers Pokemon until the trainer submits. It could also be seen as a warning that you've challenged Lt. Surge to a battle (which would actually make you a hostile "threat"; him calling you civilian is just a way to talk down to you, like how could a civilian be able to stand up against a soldier trained to fight in wars?) and he's telling you he uses Electric-type Pokemon so you and your Pokemon be ready for electrical shocks.
But those are Pokemon examples which could just be seen as a force of nature. Lt. Surge is a human directly threatening another human. That said:
And that's it. It's just smack talk. He's not going to actually shock the trainer, or what he's saying he'll shock the trainers Pokemon until the trainer submits. It could also be seen as a warning that you've challenged Lt. Surge to a battle (which would actually make you a hostile "threat"; him calling you civilian is just a way to talk down to you, like how could a civilian be able to stand up against a soldier trained to fight in wars?) and he's telling you he uses Electric-type Pokemon so you and your Pokemon be ready for electrical shocks.
I wonder how Insurance companies even function in the pokemon universe
I mean the answer’s probably that private insurance doesn’t really exist and they just have really robust public institutions supported by Pokémon slave labour teamwork between humans and Pokémon.
People in the Pokémon games and anime generally aren’t that fazed by major property damage, so construction and repairs must be pretty straightforward and low-cost/heavily subsidised. Health insurance seems even less necessary based on what we know about medical care in the Pokémon universe, although the ‘rules’ for this are applied pretty inconsistently.
People in the Pokémon games and anime generally aren’t that fazed by major property damage, so construction and repairs must be pretty straightforward and low-cost/heavily subsidised. Health insurance seems even less necessary based on what we know about medical care in the Pokémon universe, although the ‘rules’ for this are applied pretty inconsistently.