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Well, we did say it would come, eventually.
Pokémon Mystery Dungeon Is Canon Again
Mystery Dungeon's canonicity is more of a side thing, but it's mandatory for the Magnagate argument. I honestly don't see why we removed this at all from the canon; I'm guessing it's because we lack a full-out statement, though. We should talk about why it plays into the verse, however.
After reviewing some material, I think we can make the connection sufficiently without that many problems. Pokémon Mystery Dungeon has this idea of a human world where most of the protagonists originate. Whenever they transform into Pokémon from humans, they go to a world having Pokemon as the dominant species (humans are pretty just fairy tale creatures in later games). All of this is pretty basic stuff that no one will contest. However, one of Nintendo's guides seems to hint at a strong connection to the games. When asked about what happened to the trainers from the games, they said they weren't in this world. In context, "this world" references the dominant Pokémon-oriented universe for the Mystery Dungeon games. The way the response comes across is that the game setting for trainers and the protagonist's human world is the same, in actuality. Both worlds, the human world and MD's Pokémon universe, would co-exist but as separate universes.
When I discussed this with someone, they brought up the fact there's another criminally overlooked aspect (thank you, Purgatory). Link Cables exist as a canon element to the Mystery Dungeon series. Their in-game descriptions even note the use of their IRL qualities, "An intriguing cable used for linking unknown devices. It allows a certain kind of Pokémon to evolve." Not only would this give Mystery Dungeon a similar kind of meta-status for each game's canonicity, but it's the same type of cosmological set-up as the mainline games.
It’s also established in Pokémon’s cosmology that there exist universes where certain concepts do not exist, i.e. there’s two different Sapphire and Omega Sapphire worlds, one where Mega Evolution exists, and another where one doesn’t exist, this can be easily correlated to MD, with saying this is a universe where humans were never a concept (or not nearly as significant) but rather only the pokemon species.
To summarize, Mystery Dungeon needs its place back in the canon: the human world from the Mystery Dungeon games has implications of being the same as where trainers from the games come from, share the same concept of a Link Cable, and have each copy as a canon universe.
Magnagates
Magnagates are very important to this argument because they pretty much confirm the 2-A cosmology. To explain what a Magnagate is real quickly, they are portals that lead to different dungeons each time. They can have some minor discrepancies or even vary wildly such that not every dungeon is the same. The important thing behind them is just how many possibilities they have.
"It is your mission to battle your way through Mystery Dungeons that have sprung up across this world, and to uncover a fiendish plot that threatens your new home and its Pokémon inhabitants. No dungeon will appear in the same way twice, so an infinite number of possibilities can unfold," ~ Nintendo of Europe
There was a brief mention of this in a thread, but the people overlooked the notable aspect. Notably, the Magnagates' size is utterly irrelevant to the point. Unlike what others tried to say, it doesn't matter if the Magnagates are full universes in size or not (they're not). What matters here is the mention of infinite possibilities. Furthermore, the trailer for Magnagates repeats this sentiment. Magnagates, from a canonical perspective, having an infinite number of potentialities is consistent and supported on multiple occasions.
Possibilities As Timelines
I'm pretty sure we mostly accept this idea for the verse. However, I'll briefly go over why possibilities are their differing timelines for the series.
Examples:
Reflection Cave
The Reflection Cave is probably the next best argument, but it doesn't require any evidence from other mediums to sustain itself, unlike Magnagates. I'm aware that we already factor Reflection Cave into the cosmology, but it should factor into a 2-A interpretation.
The way the Reflection Cave works is that there is a universe for every mirror in the cave. If we factor the games into how many Reflection Caves we can confirm there are minimum, we get pretty staggering results. X and Y sold 16.49 million overall copies. We can validate that there are at least 16.49 universes connected to the Reflection Cave because of that. While I don't doubt the cave itself being gargantuan, I would be very doubtful that each cave contains the ~17 million mirrors necessary to connect them to each universe once with that being it. What I'm getting at here is the idea that X universe might connect to Y universe that connects to Z universe, but X universe might not attach to Z universe by itself. If that's true, the point is a universe can connect to other universes later on down the line that they don't automatically share an initial connection. This idea would culminate to support the further likelihood that the Reflection Cave participates in an infinite recursion rather than merely being a closed system.
This is more of a supporting argument; I should clarify that. It adds decent support for a 2-A rating, but I wouldn’t use it as the main reason.
Conclusions
From this, we can show that Pokémon has a 2-A cosmology. Magnagates lead to infinite possibilities; those probabilities receive realization as separate timelines based on Pokémon's own rules about how branching timelines function. Reflection Cave gives decent support if you believe the argument too. I prefer the Magnagate proposition personally as it's simple to get behind, though. Of course, this plays back into the top tiers' tiering as they scale to the multiverse's full extent.
If this is accepted, the following profiles will need to be updated accordingly: Arceus, Giratina, Palkia, Dialga, Azelf, Uxie, Mesprit, Darkrai, Cresselia, and Lucario (Pokémon 7). Let's see how this goes.
Pokémon Mystery Dungeon Is Canon Again
Mystery Dungeon's canonicity is more of a side thing, but it's mandatory for the Magnagate argument. I honestly don't see why we removed this at all from the canon; I'm guessing it's because we lack a full-out statement, though. We should talk about why it plays into the verse, however.
After reviewing some material, I think we can make the connection sufficiently without that many problems. Pokémon Mystery Dungeon has this idea of a human world where most of the protagonists originate. Whenever they transform into Pokémon from humans, they go to a world having Pokemon as the dominant species (humans are pretty just fairy tale creatures in later games). All of this is pretty basic stuff that no one will contest. However, one of Nintendo's guides seems to hint at a strong connection to the games. When asked about what happened to the trainers from the games, they said they weren't in this world. In context, "this world" references the dominant Pokémon-oriented universe for the Mystery Dungeon games. The way the response comes across is that the game setting for trainers and the protagonist's human world is the same, in actuality. Both worlds, the human world and MD's Pokémon universe, would co-exist but as separate universes.
When I discussed this with someone, they brought up the fact there's another criminally overlooked aspect (thank you, Purgatory). Link Cables exist as a canon element to the Mystery Dungeon series. Their in-game descriptions even note the use of their IRL qualities, "An intriguing cable used for linking unknown devices. It allows a certain kind of Pokémon to evolve." Not only would this give Mystery Dungeon a similar kind of meta-status for each game's canonicity, but it's the same type of cosmological set-up as the mainline games.
It’s also established in Pokémon’s cosmology that there exist universes where certain concepts do not exist, i.e. there’s two different Sapphire and Omega Sapphire worlds, one where Mega Evolution exists, and another where one doesn’t exist, this can be easily correlated to MD, with saying this is a universe where humans were never a concept (or not nearly as significant) but rather only the pokemon species.
To summarize, Mystery Dungeon needs its place back in the canon: the human world from the Mystery Dungeon games has implications of being the same as where trainers from the games come from, share the same concept of a Link Cable, and have each copy as a canon universe.
Magnagates
Magnagates are very important to this argument because they pretty much confirm the 2-A cosmology. To explain what a Magnagate is real quickly, they are portals that lead to different dungeons each time. They can have some minor discrepancies or even vary wildly such that not every dungeon is the same. The important thing behind them is just how many possibilities they have.
"It is your mission to battle your way through Mystery Dungeons that have sprung up across this world, and to uncover a fiendish plot that threatens your new home and its Pokémon inhabitants. No dungeon will appear in the same way twice, so an infinite number of possibilities can unfold," ~ Nintendo of Europe
There was a brief mention of this in a thread, but the people overlooked the notable aspect. Notably, the Magnagates' size is utterly irrelevant to the point. Unlike what others tried to say, it doesn't matter if the Magnagates are full universes in size or not (they're not). What matters here is the mention of infinite possibilities. Furthermore, the trailer for Magnagates repeats this sentiment. Magnagates, from a canonical perspective, having an infinite number of potentialities is consistent and supported on multiple occasions.
Possibilities As Timelines
I'm pretty sure we mostly accept this idea for the verse. However, I'll briefly go over why possibilities are their differing timelines for the series.
Examples:
- The main focus of the Delta Episode revolves around this literally. Zinnia talks about how there's a different timeline where Mega Evolution doesn't exist; the Ultimate Weapon firing or not firing caused two different timelines.
- In Episode Rainbow Rocket, we learn that there are other timelines where the main villains were successful with their plans. That receives support because they came there through Ultra Wormholes.
- There is an episode with Dia that gives a flat-out explanation of this, following MWI. He explains that each possibility continuously diverges (Imgur RAWs), and that is how his world and Ash's world can be separate universes.
Reflection Cave
The Reflection Cave is probably the next best argument, but it doesn't require any evidence from other mediums to sustain itself, unlike Magnagates. I'm aware that we already factor Reflection Cave into the cosmology, but it should factor into a 2-A interpretation.
The way the Reflection Cave works is that there is a universe for every mirror in the cave. If we factor the games into how many Reflection Caves we can confirm there are minimum, we get pretty staggering results. X and Y sold 16.49 million overall copies. We can validate that there are at least 16.49 universes connected to the Reflection Cave because of that. While I don't doubt the cave itself being gargantuan, I would be very doubtful that each cave contains the ~17 million mirrors necessary to connect them to each universe once with that being it. What I'm getting at here is the idea that X universe might connect to Y universe that connects to Z universe, but X universe might not attach to Z universe by itself. If that's true, the point is a universe can connect to other universes later on down the line that they don't automatically share an initial connection. This idea would culminate to support the further likelihood that the Reflection Cave participates in an infinite recursion rather than merely being a closed system.
This is more of a supporting argument; I should clarify that. It adds decent support for a 2-A rating, but I wouldn’t use it as the main reason.
Conclusions
From this, we can show that Pokémon has a 2-A cosmology. Magnagates lead to infinite possibilities; those probabilities receive realization as separate timelines based on Pokémon's own rules about how branching timelines function. Reflection Cave gives decent support if you believe the argument too. I prefer the Magnagate proposition personally as it's simple to get behind, though. Of course, this plays back into the top tiers' tiering as they scale to the multiverse's full extent.
If this is accepted, the following profiles will need to be updated accordingly: Arceus, Giratina, Palkia, Dialga, Azelf, Uxie, Mesprit, Darkrai, Cresselia, and Lucario (Pokémon 7). Let's see how this goes.
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