SwSh Are Zacian and Zamazenta dead?

[Fairy Type Arceus]

In the games when you first find them attacks phase through them, and they look battle worn. In one of the tapestries the two kings are looking at tombstones with a sword and shield on them, and when you summon them light comes from two rocks behind the shrine like their spirits are revived from their resting places.

Are they, or were they prior to the climax, dead?

 

[Esserise]

no but Corsola is

Probably more like dormant or drained of energy, akin to Reshiram/Zekrom and Xerneas/Yveltal.

Unarmored Zamazenta's Pokédex entry: "This Pokémon slept for aeons while in the form of a statue. It was asleep for so long, people forgot that it ever existed."

 

[Fairy Type Arceus]

no but Corsola is

Probably more like dormant or drained of energy, akin to Reshiram/Zekrom and Xerneas/Yveltal.

Unarmored Zamazenta's Pokédex entry: "This Pokémon slept for aeons while in the form of a statue. It was asleep for so long, people forgot that it ever existed."

yeet
But it doesn't really explain why attacks phases through them? Nothing in their lore suggests they can create illusions? It seemed like their spirits were guarding the sword and shield.

 

[Esserise]

yeet
But it doesn't really explain why attacks phases through them? Nothing in their lore suggests they can create illusions? It seemed like their spirits were guarding the sword and shield.

I mean, strictly speaking, nothing in Darkrai's lore suggests that it can create illusions (only nightmares), and yet that whole "hotel that no one's been in for 50 years and yet still had a host who ushered you to sleep so you could teleport to Newmoon Island" thing still happened. Personally, I'd argue that Legendary Pokémon are powerful enough to have a free license to mysticism that the producers just don't feel like leaning into all that often.

Besides, you don't necessarily have to be dead in order to project your spirit.

 

[KaijuTyranitar54]

But in the fog forest area the Legendary Dogos are maybe illusions or Hallucinations. That's my guess.

 

[CynthiaLover]

I think it's more of a state of suspended animation. In order to rest from their battle 20,000 years ago, they placed their bodies into a resting state, hidden from the world, while their spirits guarded them, hence the ability to produce fog and the fact that attacks don't faze them, as they're just spirits. Those spirits would produce the fog to keep the sword and shield, along with their bodies, hidden and protected from the world while their bodies rested and recovered. After all, it was the biggest (and probably bloodiest) battle in Galar's history, and they're actually missing pieces of themselves (they each have one and a half ears, for example) from the fight, indicating it was a terrible ordeal. As a result, in order to allow themselves to recuperate from such a horrendous fight, as they knew the day would come when they would be needed again, they placed their bodies into a slumbering state until the time was right to be revived and finish the fight. At least that's how I see it.

 

[Cute Charm]

I say the illusions have to do with the forest being so foggy and disorienting that the player isn't actually hitting the real wolf. They only see a reflection of it. Like a peppers ghost type thing.

I mean, strictly speaking, nothing in Darkrai's lore suggests that it can create illusions (only nightmares), and yet that whole "hotel that no one's been in for 50 years and yet still had a host who ushered you to sleep so you could teleport to Newmoon Island" thing still happened. Personally, I'd argue that Legendary Pokémon are powerful enough to have a free license to mysticism that the producers just don't feel like leaning into all that often.

Besides, you don't necessarily have to be dead in order to project your spirit.

I took the hotel more as you unlocking the door, emediately passing out, and having a lucid dream caused by residual Darkrai energy than a full on illusion.

So it still kind of falls under it's powers if you stretch nightmares to mean dreams in general.

 

[Esserise]

I took the hotel more as you unlocking the door, emediately passing out, and having a lucid dream caused by residual Darkrai energy than a full on illusion.

So it still kind of falls under it's powers if you stretch nightmares to mean dreams in general.

Sure, but if you're dreaming, then is the Darkrai you catch even real?

 

[Cute Charm]

Sure, but if you're dreaming, then is the Darkrai you catch even real?

That's why I said lucid dreaming. Because it's the only thing that's real in the dream.

Like maybe one of the fisherman found you in the hotel and knew the only way to wake you up was to take your unconscious body to the Island. But you, still being trapped in the dream, don't know this so you think it's all part of the dream. But because you're in its domain, it's like you can basically defeat Freddy Krueger by catching him now.

 

[Esserise]

That's why I said lucid dreaming. Because it's the only thing that's real in the dream.

Lucid dreaming is just when you have control over the narrative of your dream. Even if Dawn were lucid dreaming, she would still be catching Darkrai in a dream, no? Like, her physical body isn't actually chucking a Poké Ball at it.

I mean ultimately I basically agree with you. I was saying originally that what we see there kinda goes beyond the purview of what we're told Darkrai can do. It's not actually a Freddy Krueger-esque entity that lives within the realm of dreams. It's a Pokémon that uses a psychoactive effect as a defense mechanism, which is only tangentially similar because of how it affects the mind. And yet it gets the old abandoned hotel event because it's a creepy and spooky and eventful Pokémon, and that scenario is creepy and spooky and eventful. My point mainly being that Pokémon operates more on simple and effective tropes than it does on rigidly defined logic. With Zacian and Zamazenta, they're powerful old warriors lying dormant at a shrine that most people aren't meant to go near. Being able to somehow project a force that keeps unworthy people from approaching their shrine is a pretty standard mystical notion that ups the atmosphere and makes them more imposing/intriguing.

 

[Jukain]

I am uncertain about what is going on, mostly because of the question that Galarian Corsola introduces. What IS "dead" in the pokemon world? Although this would seem to imply there is a Ghost type version of any pokemon in existence, and the legends are not Ghost types, so maybe that is not what is going on. One of them has a type that has existed outside of a living structure otherwise, though. Magearna is said to be powered by an artificial soul, yet is part Fairy type. We would have to have something that gives us more of an indication of what a soul is in this world. The children of Arceus already explain how a soul can exist in this world.

An alternative explanation, though, is that the legends are ethereal beings. I don't think they died, I think the tapestry just displays them making that shrine to the sword and shield once their business was done. I am not sure why they were just illusions before other than if they don't have real substance until summoned by the sword and shield.