- Greetings Pokefans! Michael here, and with the
release of the Crown Tundra, legendary Pokemon are being shoved down our throats again. Back in my day, legendary
Pokemon, in my opinion, felt more special, because
there were fewer of them. In the original Kanto games, there were just the
birds and Mewtwo. The Johto games,
there were the beasts and then your game mascot. In the Hoenn games,
there were some more, but overall there were still
relatively few available. But then you have
more recent games like Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, and the Crown
Tundra that make it so virtually every previous
legendary Pokemon is available, which results in there being
so many for you to find that you can make a
freakin' legendary zoo! Now part of the reason we have
so many legendary Pokemon now is because the game
series has been around for almost 25 years. So there's simply just a lot
that have built up over time. But I think another reason we have too many
legendary Pokemon, is that too many of
these legendary Pokemon are considered legendary
when they shouldn't be. In today's video, I'm
going to fix that problem. I'm going to go through every
single legendary Pokemon and determine once and for all, because I absolutely
have that power, whether it should remain
a legendary Pokemon. So don't forget to
subscribe to my channel since less than half of my
viewers are not subscribed, which is no no no no! And let's dive in to the
great legendary purge! Okay, I probably
shouldn't say that, that sounds a lot
worse than it is. First is determining a criteria for what makes a
Pokemon legendary. And yes, I have to be the
one to come up with that. According to Bulbapedia, "No explicit criteria defines what makes a Pokemon
a Legendary Pokemon. Instead, the only way
to identify a Pokemon as belonging to this group is through statements
from official media, such as the games or anime." There is a bit of
information in the game code, but the game code honestly
kinda convolutes things further, 'cause it denotes
things as legendary, and then sub-legendary. And sub-legendaries are allowed
in the battle facilities, and regular legendaries are not, but are the sub-legendaries
still legendary? They kinda say it
is, but kinda not, and so it's like mmm. Plus there's the whole
deal with mythical Pokemon. The official media has
been very inconsistent about whether these
are a totally separate
class of Pokemon, or just a subset of
legendary Pokemon. The whole thing's a mess. So for the sake of this video, I'm going to be sorting
this nonsense out by creating three criteria
that a Pokemon must meet in order to be
classified as legendary. The first is that they
have to be strong. This one's pretty
straightforward. The second criteria is
that there needs to be some kind of lore or
backstory about the Pokemon. The word legendary is defined as being described or
based on legends. So there has to be some
legends about the Pokemon. If you just find it, without
having heard about it first, then like, that's
not based on legend. It's just a rare Pokemon. And the final criteria is
that there can only be one! In a particular region. Obviously, as the
games have gone along, older generation
legendary Pokemon have reappeared in other games, but that's just to
make them accessible to players who are
playing the new games, but didn't play the old ones. What I'm saying is that a
legendary Pokemon is unique, so in its home region,
and excluding any
event distributions 'cause those don't
make any story sense, there can only be one in
the entire game anywhere. If it's repeated even once, then it's not
legendary in my book. One more thing, for
the sake of this video, I'm not gonna be talking
about mythical Pokemon. Like I said, it's kinda
confusing as to whether they are a subset of
legendary Pokemon, or a category all their own. And besides, they're
pretty much all gonna meet the three criteria
I mentioned anyway, so there's no point in me
going over them one by one. Well, except Phione,
Phione is just, why does it exist? It's so stupid and pointless! Oh, actually, one more thing. I'm not looking at
the anime at all. The anime is a mess. It's just taken far too
many creative liberties about multiple of
this kind of Pokemon, and is it real or is it not? Like, there's two freakin'
Mewtwos in the anime world. That's ridiculous,
also they said Unown was a legendary
Pokemon in the anime, which it is definitely not. So the anime, we're just, no. Put that aside, it's
its own weird thing. We're just looking at
the main series games. But now I think that covers
all of the important criteria, classification type stuff, so now I can start going through each individual legendary
Pokemon and determining whether it is still
legendary based on my system. And the first ones
I'm gonna cover are the Kanto legendary birds. And according to my system, they're just the
Kanto birds now. Not legendary! Articuno, Zapdos
and Moltres fail in two of my three criteria. The one they succeed
is their strength. Base 580 stat total,
perfectly acceptable. The first category they
fail in is not having enough backstory or lore. They don't really have any. The biggest piece of lore
about the legendary birds is their association with Lugia, and the different islands
with the orbs and stuff, all of which was the main focus of Pokemon the Movie 2000. Now I could be wrong about this, but in the games, I
couldn't find any mention of their association with Lugia. Like at all. The extent of the backstory
you get about them before encountering them is basically just mentions
of them being noticed, like oh, I saw a blue Pokemon flying near the Seafoam Islands. That's not lore or backstory. That's amateur bird watching. Their second failure is that
there's more than one of them. In the Gen 1 and
Gen 3 Kanto games, there's only one of each, but in Let's Go, they
have a very small chance of appearing in the sky on
most any route in the game after you've
defeated the League. Even after you've captured them at their usual locations. Now, you could
argue that this is only in the Let's Go universe, but maybe they're showing
up in Red, Blue, Yellow, Fire Red, Leaf Green too, you just can't see 'em,
'cause you can't fly! The idea that there's
more than one of them is supported by the existence
of their Galarian Forms. It's possible that
the Galarian birds are just very similar
to the original birds and got the same name
due to the resemblance, but it's also
possible they evolved from a common ancestor. If evolutionary
divergence happened, that means there had to be quite a few of them at
some point or another. So to me, the legendary
birds are not legendary. They're just rare and special. Next up is Mewtwo, and Mewtwo
gets to stay legendary. It's obviously
plenty strong enough, and you could debate
me on the lore part, but I think it's sufficient. The fact that there's
an entire building, the Pokemon Mansion, giving
you backstory about it in little bits and pieces, counts as legend/lore to me. This backstory is more recent, but it definitely
does create legends about what the heck happened
at the Pokemon Mansion, and you have to
piece it together and then go find it deep
in this guarded cave. So you could debate
me on that part, but I think it counts. And finally, there
is only one Mewtwo in the entire Kanto games, so it gets all three
categories in my eyes, and stays legendary. Now on to the Johto region starting with the
legendary beasts, Raikou, Entei and Suicune. Now, they are plenty strong, and they have sufficient
lore and backstory. The story of how the
tower caught fire and they were trapped inside, and then Ho-Oh resurrected
them as these legendary beasts, like, that's a great story. It's a legend, and they
are the subject of legends, so that works. But is there only one of each
of them in the Johto games? Well, kind of. In the original Gen 2 games, there is only one of each. But the Battle Frontier in
HeartGold and SoulSilver changes things up. Castle Valet Darach, Derrick? Uses an Entei in his
Gold Print Challenge in the Battle Castle,
and Hall Matron Argenta can use all three of
the legendary beasts in the Battle Hall. Now normally, this would make me count out the legendary beasts, but I'm not going to. Because the Battle Frontier
in HeartGold and SoulSilver is not real? Is that the right word? The Gen 4 Battle Frontier
started in Diamond and Pearl, with just the tower,
led by Palmer, who is Barry's Dad. So very much a Sinnoh thing. Then in Platinum, it
was expanded to be the entire Frontier,
not just the tower. Then, in HeartGold
and SoulSilver, they took the Battle Frontier
and pushed it somewhere else. The HeartGold SoulSilver
Battle Frontier is the same thing as the
Platinum Battle Frontier. It's the same structures,
same people, everything. And that doesn't
make logical sense. How do you have
identical everything in two different places? To me, this means
the Battle Frontier in HeartGold and SoulSilver
is in the same category as other region legends
showing up in other regions. It's there for player access, not as a logical
part of the universe. This is basically a long
winded way of saying that in my eyes, the
Gen 4 Battle Frontier is canonically built in
Sinnoh, not in Johto. So therefore, any appearances
of the legendary beasts in that Battle Frontier
are in the Sinnoh region, so they have no
bearing on the status of the legendary beasts
in the Johto region. So because of that, the
legendary beasts are strong, have a backstory, and
don't appear anywhere else except the ones you
find in the wild. So to me, they stay legendary. Next up is Ho-Oh and Lugia. And this is a quick one,
they're still legendary. They're very strong, they have the backstory
with the two towers, and one of them burning down, and they're only found once
each in their particular games. Now we can move on
to the Hoenn legends, starting with the
original Regi trio of Regice, Registeel
and Regirock. Now these three
are plenty strong and they absolutely
have enough backstory, with the different caves
and the Seafloor Cavern and people sealing them away 'cause they feared their
power and all that, so that's good enough for me. But are they found just once? Absolutely not! In the Emerald Battle Frontier, Pyramid King Brandon
uses all three of them in his first battle, and
they're possible rental Pokemon in the Battle Factory. I excluded the legendary
beasts appearing in the HeartGold
SoulSilver Battle Frontier because that Battle Frontier isn't really
supposed to be there. It's the Sinnoh Battle Frontier that they just plopped
somewhere else. But the Emerald Battle
Frontier, that started in Hoenn, That is a canonical
Hoenn location, and so therefore, that means someone based
in the Hoenn region also got some Regis
alongside you, which means there's
more than one of them, and I can't classify
them as legendary. Next up is Latios and Latias, and I am saying they
are not legendary. They're strong enough, but they fail in the
other two categories. For lore, they have barely any. You have a TV
broadcast saying oh, a red or blue
Pokemon was spotted, which is, amateur bird watching! Southern Island, the canonical
home/base of these Pokemon has an inscription talking
about memories and dreams, but that's more of a random poem than lore about the backstory
of Latios and Latias. We know nothing about
how they came to be, and there are not
really any stories about them impacting
or doing anything with the people of the Hoenn
region in ancient times. They're just rare brother
and sister Pokemon, which is not lore! Plus they're also seen elsewhere in the Battle Frontier. Salon Maiden Anabel has Latios in her Gold Symbol battle, and Dome Ace Tucker uses Latias in his Gold Symbol battle. And they are available
rental Pokemon in the Battle Factory. Clearly, this
species is just rare, but there's still
multiple of them, so that's not legendary to me. Finally for Hoenn
is the weather trio, and like with Ho-Oh and Lugia, pretty straightforward here,
they're still legendary. Strong enough,
lots of backstory, and they're the only ones. That does it for
the Hoenn legends, so now onto the Sinnoh legends. Starting with the lake trio,
Mesprit, Azelf, and Uxie. They are strong enough, and
they certainly have backstory with Arceus,
pronunciation intentional, if you know, you
know, creating them and them representing all
of human consciousness. They seem pretty legendary, but there's more than one! Hall Matron Argenta can use
them in the Battle Hall, and as I discussed earlier, this Frontier's
true home is Sinnoh. Therefore, someone
based in Sinnoh was able to find more
of these lake guardians, which means there's more than
just the three that you find, and therefore, that's
not legendary to me. Next up is the creation trio,
Dialga, Palkia, and Giratina. And as you might imagine,
they are still legendary. They are plenty strong, there's the whole backstory
with Arceus creating them, and creating the universe
basically at the same time, and you can only find one
in each particular game. Next we have three
Sinnoh legends that are not related
to each other, but I'm covering
them all in one go for reasons you
will see shortly. Regigigas, Heatran,
and Cresselia. All of them are definitely
strong enough to count here. Regigigas has the lore part, what with being the
creator of the other Regis and having the Snowpoint
Temple built for it. Cresselia and Heatran though, don't have the
same level of lore. Cresselia has kind of an
association with Darkrai, so maybe that could work, but Heatran is just
an angry magma spider that lives in a volcano. There's not much
backstory at all. But regardless of what you
think about their lore, all three are disqualified
from being legendary Pokemon because Palmer, the head
of the Battle Tower, uses all three of them! His 49th battle team in
Diamond, Pearl and Platinum is all three of these legends. And he had this
team from the start, even before the whole Frontier
was added in Platinum. As icing on the cake, Argenta
can use the same three in the Battle Hall! God, how did she get ahold
of all of these legends? My God, Argenta! Now onto the Unova region, starting with the
Swords of Justice! These are plenty strong enough, and they have adequate
lore about protecting small and weak Pokemon, even straight up
fighting humans to do so. Also, you can only find one
individual instance of each per save file, so, they
meet all three categories. They're still legendary. Next are the forces of nature, AKA the legendary genies,
AKA three buff men. They are plenty strong, and
they also have some lore. People at the
Abundant Shrine reveal how Tornadus and Thundurus
were out destroying stuff, then Landorus whipped
them into shape. The ancient people constructed
the Abundant Shrine as a thank you to Landorus. Also, you can't find them
anywhere else in your game. There is a
downloadable tournament for the Pokemon World Tournament
where players use them, but those teams are based on actual real world
VGC competitors, and definitely doesn't count, especially since you can't even download the tournament anymore. In short, the forces of
nature are still legendary. Next is the Tao Trio,
Reshiram, Zekrom, and Kyurem. They are plenty strong,
have the whole backstory about the original dragon
splitting into three Pokemon, and you can only find one
of each per save file. They are definitely
still legendary. Now for the Kalos
legends, the aura trio of Xerneas, Yveltal,
and Zygarde. Now these three Pokemon
are very strong, and they have enough lore
behind them to count in my eyes. With Xerneas creating life
and turning into a tree and Yveltal killing things
and turning into an egg, and then Zygarde maintaining
that ecological balance. And being really mean
when it's out of balance. So you've got those
first two factors, and then you can't find them anywhere else in
the Kalos region, so they're still legendary. But now we're on to
the Alola region, the region that
inspired this video, because dear God, it is a mess. First up, we have Type:
Null and Silvally, which are yes, officially
designated as legendary Pokemon, which is ridiculous! First off, let's look
at their strength. Silvally certainly is, but
Type: Null is pushing it on the lower end there. Next up is the lore criteria, and to me, the
backstory just doesn't fit the status of legendary. The ether foundation
wanted to make a Pokemon that could fight off
and kill Ultra Beasts, so they made three Type: Fulls,
but they didn't work well, so they put the masks
on them and froze them and renamed them Type: Nulls, then Gladion stole one of
them and befriended it, and it evolved into Silvally. That's not a legend, that's just questionable
corporate activity. Now an argument could be made that this backstory is
basically the same as Mewtwo's, and I counted Mewtwo's backstory as adequate for being legendary. However, there are some
distinct differences that I think matter. Type: Null was inspired
by a mythical Pokemon, but it wasn't created from one. They just took DNA from
different regular Pokemon. While Mewtwo was cloned from
an actual mythical Pokemon. It has direct genetic relation to an existing
mythical/legendary Pokemon. And the second difference
is that the way the stories are presented, gives Mewtwo's story more
of a legend type status. With Mewtwo, you have
to search through this abandoned mansion and maybe see
the diaries that explain it, and it's just really, it's just got this big
air of mystery around it. Where with Type: Null,
Gladion's like yeah, they made this and I took one. But even if you disagree with me and think that Type: Null's
backstory should count as worthy of being legendary, they don't meet
the third category, because there's more than one! You get one, Gladion has one, and apparently there's a
third one somewhere else. So that's too many! That's not legendary! Next up are the Island
Guardians, the Tapus. These are still legendary to me. They're plenty strong,
they have the backstory of being the Island
Guardians for centuries, and who knows how long, and selecting the Kahunas, and you can't find them anywhere
else in the Alola region. Next up we're gonna talk
about the Ultra Beasts. Yes, all of them. There's a lot of ongoing
debate in the Pokemon community about whether they count
as legendary Pokemon. Bulbapedia says they're not. Serebii says that according
to the game's code, they're classified as
sub-legendary Pokemon. So the weaker legendary Pokemon that are allowed into
Battle Facilities, like the legendary birds or
the beasts, or the Regis. They say the Ultra Beasts
are the same as those. But in my eyes, from a
story-based standpoint, they should not be
legendary Pokemon. They can be on the same power
level as legendary Pokemon. Sure, but they're not
creatures of legends. They're just aliens! But not only did they show
up relatively recently, as just invading aliens,
not creatures of legend, there's also a lot
of all of them! I believe the only Ultra Beast
that you cannot encounter more than one of in Ultra Sun
and Ultra Moon is Poipole. And even then, its
'Dex entry says that in its world, its popular
as a first partner Pokemon. Poipole's not a legendary
Pokemon, it's a starter! I don't think Ultra Beasts should be considered
legendary Pokemon just because they're
from alien worlds. Like, that'd be like someone
else on an alien world calling Tyranitar legendary. It's not, it's
strong, and it's rare, but there's plenty of them! They're just mean dinosaurs! Next up we have the light trio, Solgaleo, Lunala, and Necrozma, plus the pre-evolutions,
Cosmog and Cosmoem. These are a mess. They're kind of Ultra
Beasts, but also kind of not. So apparently, Solgaleo/Lunala came to Alola in ancient times, and were worshiped by
the people of that time, which led to the building of
the Altar of the Sunne/Moone, and the lake of the Sunne/Moone. And then there's the
whole story from Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon
where Necrozma like, the Ultra Megalopolis
people tried to restrain it, and then it escaped, and
now it's in constant pain, trying to steal
everyone's light. Oh, but also Solgaleo and
Lunala can create more Cosmogs! They actually do
that in the game when you go to an
alternate universe and then go to the lake. But you have to go to an
alternate universe to do it. So clearly, there's
more than one, but like if we look at
an alternate universe, like Johto region,
there's gonna be more Ho-Ohs and Lugias there, and then there's Ho-Oh
and Lugias in ours, but I still called
those legendary. So are these other Cosmogs
they're making just reproducing, or are they just alternate
universe versions of themselves? Where is Solgaleo and
Lunala's home even? It's really hard to
decide for these, as you might imagine by my
frantic storytelling just now, but I think I've settled on
Necrozma being legendary, while Solgaleo, Lunala and
their pre-evolutions are not. The Cosmog line
seems to be a species that just makes its home across different alternate
universes and worlds. A book in the Malie City Library talks about how
in ancient times, when Solgaleo and Lunala
showed up in the Alola region, they created more Cosmogs
for the Island Guardians to watch over, to be heirs
of the region for them. Their history with
the Alola region led to lore and
legends about them, but the reality is that
they're just aliens that showed up a while ago that got ancient people excited. They're just an inter
dimensional species that reproduces
like a regular one. And to me, that's not legendary. But the same is not
true for Necrozma, because while we see
multiple Cosmogs, we only ever see one Necrozma
in any particular game. And it has the backstory with
how it tried to be restrained by Ultra Megalopolis
and then it got free, and now it just hunts down
and steals light from places. And so to me, Necrozma
is a solitary Pokemon, and is just the only one, and it goes across
dimensions hunting light and making the
Cosmog line its prey. I know that was long
and kinda convoluted, but the simplest way to put it is that the Cosmog line,
there's a lot of them. They're just an alien species that people in Alola
thought were really cool. But then Necrozma
is a really angry, light hungry hunter,
and he's the only one, and there's stories about it, 'cause it's done some stuff. But now that finally
covers the Alola region, so I can move on to the Galar
region legendary Pokemon. First, I'll talk about
the main game legends, what I'm calling the
Darkest Day trio, Zacian, Zamazenta,
and Eternatus. They are very, very strong, and they have the lore, the
whole Darkest Day legend. There's statues of these
Pokemon for crying out loud, and they're the only
ones you can find. They clearly meet the
criteria for being legendary. Next up are Kubfu and Urshifu. Now, Kubfu is not strong
enough, but Urshifu is, so maybe I could let that slide. However they don't have much,
if any, lore about them, just that they're a rare species that lived in mountainous
areas far away from Galar. And it being the
Armor of the dojos, just kinda that dojo's
tradition that Mustard set up. But the definitive reason
they shouldn't be legendary is that there's a bunch of them! You get a Kubfu,
Mustard has a Kubfu, Leon, apparently had
a Kubfu at some point, but couldn't evolve it 'cause he couldn't
find the right tower. No, this is just a
rare special species. It's not legendary. Next up are Regieleki
and Regidrago, and I'm actually classifying
them as legendary Pokemon. They are plenty strong enough, there's only one you
can find of each, and they have lore and backstory with the Split-Decision ruins. Now what this means is that the original Regi trio and
Regigigas are not legendary, while these new ones are. But I can explain it. So we saw that there was more
than one of the original Regis in their home region, so who knows what the
Regigigases over there created? However, as of now, the Galar Regigigas
appears to have made one of each of the
original three, but then it went the extra mile, and it made Regieleki
and Regidrago. That makes Regieleki and
Regidrago more special than the other Regis
that are seen elsewhere in their home regions. So they're the legendary ones. Next are the Galarian
legendary birds. As a reminder, I
did not classify the Kantonian legendary
birds as legendary, because there were
more than one of them. Now with the Galarian birds, there's not more
than one of them, but I'm tempted to say
that there kind of are, because of my theory
about them being part of the same evolutionary
tree as the original birds. Meaning, there had
to be plenty of them for that divergence to occur. But regardless of that, they don't have enough
lore for me to count this. People see them at the tree? They just go to the tree
because they like the berries. That's not lore,
there's no story there. That's just a common
meet up point. Finally are the King
and Steed Pokemon, Calyrex, Glastrier,
and Spectrier. They have plenty of backstory. We got the whole story
there in the Crown Tundra, and there's only one of each. Calyrex is, I think, too weak
when in its regular form, but it has other forms
that are strong enough, so it makes up for that. These three, still legendary. So to summarize, my new trimmed down list
of legendary Pokemon is Mewtwo, the legendary
beasts, Ho-Oh, Lugia, the Weather Trio,
the Creation Trio, the Swords of Justice,
the Forces of Nature, the Tao Trio, the Aura Trio, the Island Guardians, Necrozma, the Darkest Day Trio,
Regieleki and Regidrago, and the King and Steed Trio. The others are definitely
rare and special, but in my eyes, they shouldn't
be classified as legendary. Thanks so much for watching, and an extra special thanks
to my Patrons over on Patreon who are helping
support my channel independent of the
fluctuating nature of the YouTube ad business. You wanna help support
me in the same way? The link is in the
description below! Also if you wanna check out some more of my fun
Pokemon content, I recommend these videos here. All right, that's
all I have for now. So until next time, Pokefans, gotta catch them all!
