No, because it is just a name. It's probably meant to be symbolic or to just serve as a name rather than a description.
-
Check out the relaunch of our general collection, with classic designs and new ones by our very own Pissog!
-
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
Wonder if "rocket" has some other connotation in japanese or if they're literally just called that because it sounds cool.
Is the RBY Game Corner not supposed to be secretly run by Team Rocket? It seems like the prize Pokémon would be illegally trafficked and that the Game Corner would not actually want anyone to know they got those Pokémon from doing Team Rocket stuff like trafficking. It would be weird to name the location of their secret hideout after themselves.
It's literally called the "Rocket Game Corner" so I think it kind of feels like an open secret. Real life yakuza are probably not that on the nose, but I've got the feeling they're also not exactly subtle about their operations either. You might know but you can't prove that you know!
This is also the game where they shut down the most populous city in the region by taking it over and blocking off access to everywhere, as lead by the leader of the organization: one of the 8 gym leaders who seemingly no one knows anything about.
You know, everyone’s all excited about Pokémon Legends ZA coming out next week, finally Kalos gets another game, blah blah blah… yeah, I don’t care. I want to take a real close look at Zygarde for a moment.
The Junichi Masuda era of the core series (Gens 3-6) had somewhat of an obsession with sticking Legendaries into caves off of the beaten path. The Regis, the two extra caves in Emerald for Kyogre and Groudon, Giratina’s Turnback Cave, the Giant Chasm, and Kalos included Zygarde as a continuation of this trend. As we know, any plans for a second Kalos game on 3DS were scrapped in favor of Sun & Moon’s development, but I’m going to be honest… I kind of prefer Zygarde this way?
The problem starts with the mechanic of Zygarde’s cells and cores. The core itself is implied to be the, well, core of the Pokémon, but only in the anime was it ever fully explained how the individual cores can still have their own sentience even though they’re the same Pokémon. Without that added context, whether or not Zygarde is one Pokémon or technically as many as five different Pokémon gets completely lost in translation. More importantly, however, is the biology of the cells themselves and this is where my confusion towards this Pokémon comes up.
The famous green color, the fact that these cells are confirmed to convert sunlight into energy, the simple fact that Alola’s tropical climate makes a lot more sense for Sygarde to survive in than some random cave… I just have to wonder, has Zygarde secretly been a plant this whole time? Because I don’t recall seeing any water in-game in the Terminus Cave, either. The anime’s depiction of the cave thankfully doesn’t have that problem, but if we’re strictly speaking in-universe canon lore, if Zygarde’s entire shtick is that it wants to protect the ecosystem and the balance between life (Xerneas) and death (Yveltal), I genuinely think making Zygarde into this weird kind of plant dragon hybrid thing that shows up in Alola may have been the plan from the start back in the 3DS days regardless of whether or not a Kalos game or two got scrapped.
I fully expect all of this to be thrown into the dumpster in a week, and if the leaks are anything to go off of there’s no reason for Zygarde to get any kind of special treatment that it doesn’t already have without actively retconning lore from the 3DS games. Am I to believe that Legends ZA takes place in the same universe as X & Y because it has Mega Evolution, or is this not a true sequel and we’re going to pull some sh** out of a** and act like the first games never happened? The middle of Paris is still probably a better environment for Zygarde than a murky cave, but I still think it fits better in the Hawaiian Islands personally.
The Junichi Masuda era of the core series (Gens 3-6) had somewhat of an obsession with sticking Legendaries into caves off of the beaten path. The Regis, the two extra caves in Emerald for Kyogre and Groudon, Giratina’s Turnback Cave, the Giant Chasm, and Kalos included Zygarde as a continuation of this trend. As we know, any plans for a second Kalos game on 3DS were scrapped in favor of Sun & Moon’s development, but I’m going to be honest… I kind of prefer Zygarde this way?
The problem starts with the mechanic of Zygarde’s cells and cores. The core itself is implied to be the, well, core of the Pokémon, but only in the anime was it ever fully explained how the individual cores can still have their own sentience even though they’re the same Pokémon. Without that added context, whether or not Zygarde is one Pokémon or technically as many as five different Pokémon gets completely lost in translation. More importantly, however, is the biology of the cells themselves and this is where my confusion towards this Pokémon comes up.
The famous green color, the fact that these cells are confirmed to convert sunlight into energy, the simple fact that Alola’s tropical climate makes a lot more sense for Sygarde to survive in than some random cave… I just have to wonder, has Zygarde secretly been a plant this whole time? Because I don’t recall seeing any water in-game in the Terminus Cave, either. The anime’s depiction of the cave thankfully doesn’t have that problem, but if we’re strictly speaking in-universe canon lore, if Zygarde’s entire shtick is that it wants to protect the ecosystem and the balance between life (Xerneas) and death (Yveltal), I genuinely think making Zygarde into this weird kind of plant dragon hybrid thing that shows up in Alola may have been the plan from the start back in the 3DS days regardless of whether or not a Kalos game or two got scrapped.
I fully expect all of this to be thrown into the dumpster in a week, and if the leaks are anything to go off of there’s no reason for Zygarde to get any kind of special treatment that it doesn’t already have without actively retconning lore from the 3DS games. Am I to believe that Legends ZA takes place in the same universe as X & Y because it has Mega Evolution, or is this not a true sequel and we’re going to pull some sh** out of a** and act like the first games never happened? The middle of Paris is still probably a better environment for Zygarde than a murky cave, but I still think it fits better in the Hawaiian Islands personally.
It's all one Pokemon; the Cores are still implied to have some manner of sentience just due to how they're depicted and how they have memories (represented by battles). It's kind of irrelevant if it's "five different" Pokemon because it's all one Pokemon that splits itself up. Think of it like a hive mind; the cells are just extra eyes and limbs but the cores are separated brains that can better monitor things.You know, everyone’s all excited about Pokémon Legends ZA coming out next week, finally Kalos gets another game, blah blah blah… yeah, I don’t care. I want to take a real close look at Zygarde for a moment.
The Junichi Masuda era of the core series (Gens 3-6) had somewhat of an obsession with sticking Legendaries into caves off of the beaten path. The Regis, the two extra caves in Emerald for Kyogre and Groudon, Giratina’s Turnback Cave, the Giant Chasm, and Kalos included Zygarde as a continuation of this trend. As we know, any plans for a second Kalos game on 3DS were scrapped in favor of Sun & Moon’s development, but I’m going to be honest… I kind of prefer Zygarde this way?
The problem starts with the mechanic of Zygarde’s cells and cores. The core itself is implied to be the, well, core of the Pokémon, but only in the anime was it ever fully explained how the individual cores can still have their own sentience even though they’re the same Pokémon. Without that added context, whether or not Zygarde is one Pokémon or technically as many as five different Pokémon gets completely lost in translation. More importantly, however, is the biology of the cells themselves and this is where my confusion towards this Pokémon comes up.
Zygarde is likely meant to allude to plant life, aside from the green it ties to the whole "environment monitor" theme. You think of the environment, chances are stuff like trees and other plant life come to mind immediately. The rigid cell structures are likely also meant to make you think of plant cells. It's a thematic connection.
Yeah we have documentation for SM that literally just pulled out other documentation meant for Version Z, down to iirc intending there to be the cell hunt in Kalos, so I have doubts to it always being intended to show up in this regard.
Also it's kind of irrelevant if there's a water source in the cave when (1) half its body is spread around the region anyway so its easy to handwave of transmitting extra nutrients if it reaaaaallly needs it and (2) the cave. Is full of creatures. That live in it? And presumably, also, get water somehow?
If Zygarde's alolan adventure gets mentioned at all I suspect it'll just be an off-hand mention (like "so Zygarde's back in Kalos..." or "It's said that Zygarde doesn't just show up in Kalos...") at best, but like, I genuinely do not know why you are getting mad at an idea you made up not being true or "retconned".
The hunt for cells is almost certainly coming back in Legends ZA. Not only does it just make too much sense but every game since Sun & Moon has had some kind of overworld collectible to look for. Zygarde Cells, Totem Stickers, the Alolan Digletts and the Swords of Justice footprints in the Galar DLC, even Hisui had the Spiritomb wisps. They’ll likely have it so each part of the city (and possibly a few in the underground sections) has so many Zygarde cells to collect out of 100, if I had to guess.
I like the hive mind analogy though, I didn’t think of it that way. As much as I thought the Kalos anime was too similar to Hoenn and Sinnoh at times (unrelated, but Serena is just a May/Dawn clone and you cannot convince me otherwise), I can appreciate it for giving us more closure on Zygarde’s role in the Pokémon world when the games weren’t willing to do so because of the cancellations and whatnot.
Hopes rise, hopes fall
I suppose there’s still the DLC to go, but I’m pleasantly surprised that they didn’t revisit this moment in Z-A. I’ve always felt that the reason it works is because it just happens, all of a sudden and with no context, and you never get any resolution to the emotions it leaves you with.
While I don’t universally agree with the common horror adage that not showing or explaining something is always more effective, in this particular case, I think it applies. Lumiose ghost girl confronting and rejecting you according to some unknowable reasoning is a lot more ominous and arresting than, say, the Marvelous Bridge ghost girl, who just briefly flickers in and out of appearance and doesn’t really interact with you, so building out a side story about the latter in B2W2 felt less compromising of the feelings produced in that original moment.
The added Darkrai lore made Marvelous Bridge ghost girl more tragic, definitely. But, and maybe this is a creativity issue on my end — I don’t think it is, because I am considering plenty of out-there possibilities like the Lumiose ghost girl being a remnant of one of the defeated giants who wants to find a suitable vessel that would allow her to bring her reign of abstract terror to the physical world, or her being the astral-projected spirit of a future character we’ve yet to meet who urgently needs someone to be the protagonist of her game’s story, or her being someone who got stranded by Hoopa’s portals and is looking for a way back home, or her being an embodiment of the sentient spatial coordinates of that office building floor in Lumiose looking for someone to inhabit her space forever — I feel like it’s a just very delicate tightrope to walk when it comes to providing a satisfying “answer” to that type of thing, and I can’t help but wonder what that would actually look like for people, and how it would compare to the prospect of just never having an answer.
I know that our brains tend to crave resolution and order, but I think that’s also precisely the reason why unsolved mysteries are so inherently eerie and intriguing. Not that “the truth” can’t also be those things, but “the truth” has a greater chance of existing further away from those qualities just being totally mundane or unsatisfying (feelings which I think also have their artistic merits, but which people more generally tend to frown upon when it comes to “answering mysteries”).
(Somewhat related to all of this, I’m also surprised that, rather than retaining the Lumiose Station and doing something with that cryptic message on the signboard about going to get help, Game Freak just… closed that place off and made a new train station altogether. Again, I don’t exactly mind the lack of a resolution here, but I assumed based on how many of Sinnoh’s lingering bits of lore and intrigue that Legends: Arceus opted to play with, that we’d see Legends: Z-A do the same for Kalos. But instead it’s mostly been pretty straightforward and only focusing on the big, big story-related things.)
I am generally one who tries to be certain that to the developers, things have meaning even if we can't necessarily see them
that said
Sometimes a spooky ghost girl is just a spooky ghost girl. I think that even if we had gotten a Z back in 2015 it'd probably be the same spooky ghost girl saying the same spooky line, maybe just in a different hotel.
that said
Sometimes a spooky ghost girl is just a spooky ghost girl. I think that even if we had gotten a Z back in 2015 it'd probably be the same spooky ghost girl saying the same spooky line, maybe just in a different hotel.
I don't even think it's trolling, I think they just want it to be a spooky ghost. It's a memorable sequence and to the point. Transplanting it 1:1 into ORAS is just an easy spook multiplier
Anyway remember when ORAS had the 1:1 ghost girl but then decided to show the origin of Mr Bonding which involved finding 5 energetic men and having them transfer their power into a depressed guy by merging with him.
I agree with all of this
& also this
I should clarify that I'm not actually hugely invested in this ever getting resolved (though this would seem the prime occasion to do so). My post was largely unserious and I'm generally not a huge proponent of "we need every answer" so if this never gets followed up I won't be losing any sleep.
XY do, despite my general indifference toward them, have a few genuinely intriguing unanswered mysteries though amusingly I think the fandom focuses on the wrong ones (the Power Plant, for instance - was that ever even supposed to have been a mystery? Because I don't think it ever was...) The mystery that actually interests me the most is this bit of text, which, again, might not ever get resolved and is probably just a bit of fluff.
Oh my god I never finished that sidequest that is what that resulted in?
That's insane.
Yeah tbh I never got the obsession with her or the way people acted like it was some huge mystery that needed to be resolved. There’s a bunch of these spooky things that go nowhere and are just there to be spooky
People were even insisting she was in the Victreebel video and on the map artwork! When it’s just that all the hex maniacs from gen 6 have the same design lol.
tbf that probably was a reference to it since it's a spooky hex maniac you can barely see, in a game that does not have that design anywhere in it.
Ultimately I think it’s just the common sentiment that XY have a lot of “loose ends,” which is only exacerbated by the conspicuous lack of a third version. People see and feel that lack, so they interpret anything that wasn’t completed or tied up in XY as something that probably would have been addressed in Z, or that Game Freak had plans for.