So I decided to have a little fun with the canonocity of this game, as it's very much designed to be a lore-building title. Surprisingly, it seems to somewhat fit with Tajiri's vision; I initially thought it to be some kind of full retcon intending to divorce from Tajiri's canon in favour of starting in Johto's stuff. For context,
DYKG did a video on the original canon for Pokemon, translated from a book by Nob Ogasawara. It's a 3-part series, but the first is all that's necessary for what's here. It's as official as it gets, with Ken Sugimori providing the sketches which would become known as the Blue art set. It is the earliest form of Pokemon lore and I implore you to have a look, it's absolutely fantastic.
To clarify, Pokemon canon has never been concrete, but I always like to have a little fun with it from time to time, especially with Sinnoh's rich storytelling. The book's canon has been partially retconned a few times, such as Archen replacing Aerodactyl as the first bird, but it has generally been stuck to in a majority of areas.
To summarise the original Kanto lore from the book, the initial 30 Pokemon discovered were in 18th century
France (not Kalos, France!) by "Baron Tajirin", which later became foundations for stuff in England, Germany, etc, and eventually Kanto in Japan. "Professor Nishinomori" - whose descendent,
Professor Westood V, would have an anime appearance - would do further studies, putting Japan at the forefront and bringing the discovered number of Pokemon up to 80. Finally Professor Oak would bring it up to 150 and develop the Pokedex, which Professor Westwood V is stated to have contributed to, making up some data according to the anime (although this is stated to be a separate canon). At the time of the book, Mew was unreleased and thus "undiscovered", to my knowledge. A lot of the content in the book mirrors the development history of Pokemon Red and Green, which is really cool in my opinion. I also find it pretty surprising that the Westwoods line up so well in terms of lineage, as "5th" lines up pretty well with the years between ~1850 and 1996.
Merc. helped me out a bit here in my personal server, helping to "date" Hisui, as our only description for this is "hundreds". It sort of fits into the
Little Ice Age, placing it around the 17th century if we're talking late. This is partially supported by the region being more covered in ice than before and having less landmass underwater (compare the maps, flip 45 degrees counterclockwise, s/o Fig). Because of this, it is shockingly well-placed in the time continuum. The art style is also sort of reminiscent of this era as well, specifically the Tokugawa Shogunate. Naturally this is all educated "guessing" based on real-life areas, but it seems that we're sticking to the time frame nicely, and thus I'd wager that this story could possibly reflect Japan's side when studying Pokemon in that lore. Perhaps Professor Oak "localised" much of the information?
There is one area of concern though, which is that the "Pokedex" in Legends is seemingly intended to be the first one. This somewhat contradicts the events of RBY, wherein Professor Oak is stated to have created the first model, "HANDY505". Then again, Professor Oak is never stated to have written the entries - only inventing it - with Professor Westwood V among a few others being shown to have written their own.
I'm kind of shocked that this fits together so well.
Obviously kind of spitballing or whatever, but I really like discussing canon for this series as it's pretty deep.
