Pokemon's first lore retcon · 10:25pm Oct 27th, 2023
I mentioned in an earlier chapter of My Little Pony: When Friendship Shimmers that Pokemon has had retcons in it's own lore a few times. But some of you may be wondering what I believe to be the first actual retcon.
Well the thing is, it's not just what I believe, it's something that actually happened. When the Pokemon Xerneas was revealed and it's ability to revitalize other Pokemon was discovered, it brought a lot of comparison to the Pokemon Ho-oh and it's ability to resurrect fallen Pokemon.
And this comparison caused fans to realize that Game Freak had pulled a retcon: Now, it was if Ho-oh was only for resurrecting things, while Xerneas was meant for reviving things. Which in turn, made the lore of the Pokemon world get called into question, and caused the debate between Arceus and Mew for which Pokemon was first lore wise to be sparked anew now that Arceus's lore reasoning was being brought into question.
You don't need to know the full story of that debate, and honestly, I would rather you keep such a debate away from my blog posts. My point, is that this was the first time the pokemon world's lore was brought into question due to the existance of a newly revealed Pokemon. and this wouldn't be the last time either, especially when Gen 7 rolled around, and introduced fans to the first Legendary Pokemon that had an actual evolution line in the form of Cosmog which would ultimately evolve into either Solgeleo or Lunala depending on the version you were playing.
I could list other examples of when lore that was established before certain later Pokemon were revealed, but then we'd all be here all day. My point, is that due to how inconstant the lore of the Pokemon world seems to be, I have created my own headcannon that leaves things vague but does cover what is known about certain legendary Pokemon using the most up-to-date information.
This seems to be a trap many storytellers fall into when it comes to expanding a universe. The more you expand it the more you are forced to retcon because the expanded content wasn't part of the initial plan. It's like making a wonderful metal statue then you weld more pieces onto it and eventually what was once beauty turns cringe.
Because of this I fear for the future of the Pokemon Universe because the Nintendo joint companies will keep adding on to it until they end up releasing Pokemon games that flop.
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Sad part is, I'm worried that a total flop of a Pokemon game might come sooner rather then later because how glichy and broken Scarlet and Violet ended up as. They still are to this day.