#with different world's very different mechanics all happening to converge in certain areas like Pokeballs going from apricorn to more tech

[faislittlewhiteraven]

Ooh this is the kind of thinking I love to read (same 'just wanting to chatter about all the possibilities) and honestly Pokeballs being reinvented, potentially many dozens of times over history, makes total sense. <3 (I cry foul on no one before 'Pokemon meiji esc era' figuring out that Pokemon could be tamed or willing to allow themselves to be 'caught' inside certain kinds of hollowed out 'berries'. That feels very 'what modern PokeJapan wants the world/history to think while elsewhere the rest of the world mostly remembers Prof Laventon's complied PokeDex as one of the most scientifically and throughout versions of a pokemon focused biological encyclopedia that his title for it caught on everywhere and became THE name for about any Pokemon focused information collection... Which in turn could explain Professor Oak's 'Invention' of the modern PokeDex which is more accurately the 'automated data collecting machine that's hooked up to a trainer's automatic pokemon storage systems/ID' rather than the first concept of a PokeDex ever to be made). But er, back on topic. An alternative idea for why newer Pokeballs have so much more tech bits in them than Hisuian times is that all that tech stuff is not specifically for the catching of mons but rather for providing the 'additional' capabilities we see modern Pokeballs being capable of, such as the ball itself being able to grow and shrink in size, being teleportable, being stored along with the Pokemon inside in storage boxes on computers (however that works), preventing other people's pokeballs from catching a 'registered' mon, and potential 'comforts' for the mon inside like IDK TV or internet or something, etc (no idea what Pokeworld people see as stuff to enrich their mon's lives though I will assume Luxury balls are like IDK 4 star hotels that adjust to the mon's preferences once they actually allow the ball to catch them). Using this logic we can also perhaps see some in-inuniverse advancements from 'older' to 'newer, more advanced' modern style pokeballs even over the course of the games, as newer games, presumably set later, now prevent poisoned pokemon from losing hp while in the ball whereas before they did not, thus potentially implying that now Pokeballs have more of a 'stablizing' or 'freezing in time' factor than they used to.(1)

(1) ...I am now suddenly wondering if that mechanics switch happened around gen 5's black and white because if so I can suddenly understand why for a number of people even those outside Plazma's cult worries about the rights of Pokemon might've spiked in universe a bit (automatically freezing a pokemon in 'timeless status' if they're hurt sounds like a fantastically easy thing to exploit for ill intentioned types, even if it would also be an invaluable tool for saving the life of a mon with life threatening injuries). Edit: The change in 'poison in pokeball' mechanics DID occur in Gen 5! No proof as far as I know that any of this was a consideration in the design of Team Plazma or Unova's Pokemon rights concerns but the idea of such a shift does feel akin to N's own forced 'isolation in a time bubble' and he does outright go 'Pokedexes are screwed up because tons of Pokemon trapped in the Storage system!' at Professor Juniper so there might be a link there! =D Which in turn makes S/M's 'poison on the brain' Lusamine rant that's basically 'what's wrong with what I do when you trainers shove mons in the PC and it's fine' rant even more unsettling than it already was (yaaay for 'but everyone uses the boxes' being an implied in universe 'everyone knows its wrong but everyone still does it so its fiiiine' issue).

Alternatively we could both be overthinking this and all the fancy tech is just there so that cheap, non apricorn and tumblestone materials could be used to make pokeballs in mass production which might not be feasible otherwise. Which would partly explain why pokeballs seem so much more effective in Legends Arceus than they were in a ton of the 'modern setting' games; because by this logic they 100% were and Pokemon in the modern day are much more dubious about cheap, non apricorn alternatives... Which actually would explain why kurt's apricorn made pokeballs always have a 'special catching effect' compared to normal Pokeballs as well; more studies done on what specific kinds of Apricorn attract what kinds of mons for the purposes of marketing but in the process the 'wanting to industrialise' Pokeball companies find that most, if not all, species of apricorn trees require more specialized conditions to grow than they can mass produce which results in them turning to other materials, which in turn end up needing additional things to match the comfort/stability an effective Pokeball requires to work. ----

And um I'll stop for now I think but thank you for opening the conversation, and hope there ends up being lots and lots of ideas for all of us various flavors of PokeTheorists to gush over~ XD

Theory: Pokeballs were "re-invented"

I was thinking about this today and just wanted to share it. So you know how in most depictions for "modern pokeballs, the insides pretty high tech? Obviously that all does something to make it work, right?

But that poses an interesting question, how in the hell did people manage to make these things out of rocks, iron and apricorn husks back in the pre-industrial era?

Even though we don't get a good look at the inside parts of the pokeballs in Pokemon Legends: Arceus, I don't think its unreasonable to assume that there weren't all sorts of high tech looking greeblies in there. Then how are they able to function?

Personally, I am of the belief that there used to be much more magical stuff going on in the pokemon world, most notably in the time of PLA. You see wisps and all sorts of divine intervention stuff going on, so one can't help but wonder if that could explain how pokeballs were allowed to work. Were they more of a magical thing than a machinery thing, or something in between?

Furthermore, the seals containing the ruinous pokemon in Pokemon SV could function in a similar way to the pokeballs of the era?

My point is that as the world progressed and more of the mysticism of the world began to fade, so did the knowledge of magical phenomena and crafting techniques to make items like the old pokeballs, and now only a few people still keep up the tradition of making pokeballs the old fashioned way, such as Kurt in the Johto region.

The world eventually progressed to the point that modern tech based pokeballs became the norm, with the magic of the past mostly forgotten.

There are definitely holes in this theory, but I felt like it was too interesting of a possibility to pass up. I've always been curious about possible explanations for the technology and whatnot within the pokemon series and just wanted to talk about it.