Is Phione a Legendary?

[Randoman]

Do you consider Phione to be a legendary or not?

I personally don't since its power or base stats are nowhere near that of a legendaries, you can get as many of them as you want from breeding, Phione itself can be bred for more Phione (which is something no legendary can do, and breeding with Manaphy doesn't give you another Manaphy), and in the main games you never capture it in traditional legendary style (talking to it in the overworld, catching it like you do Cresselia, special movie distribution, or anything like that).

[YoungXehanort]

I don't consider it a legendary, i'd call it a Pseudo-Pseudo-Legendary.

[Silver Lightning]

Yes and No. Inside the games, I believe it is indeed considered a legendary, even if it doesn't have astronomical stats, because it can only be obtained normally by getting a Manaphy, which is an event legendary. It makes me feel like its an event legendary by extension.

Outside the games though......not so much. I treat it the same way I treat Shaymin; its a very rare type of pokemon with associations to other legendary pokemon, but it is not in of itself a legendary. Also because I'm a person who believes that there should only be one of each legendary pokemon, which is not the case with Phione and Shaymin.

[Tamanoir]

Yes and No. Inside the games, I believe it is indeed considered a legendary, even if it doesn't have astronomical stats, because it can only be obtained normally by getting a Manaphy, which is an event legendary. It makes me feel like its an event legendary by extension.

Outside the games though......not so much. I treat it the same way I treat Shaymin; its a very rare type of pokemon with associations to other legendary pokemon, but it is not in of itself a legendary. Also because I'm a person who believes that there should only be one of each legendary pokemon, which is not the case with Phione and Shaymin.

In this case, how do you see Lugia ? The true uniques are actually pretty rare.

But, actually, I pretty much agree with that.

My theory was that they are a lot of Phione (Well, more than one. They must be much rarer than most pokemons).

There is a special ceremony that allows one (or maybe a few more) of them to become a Manaphy, which is something like a King, or Messiah.

[Silver Lightning]

In this case, how do you see Lugia ? The true uniques are actually pretty rare.

But, actually, I pretty much agree with that.

My theory was that they are a lot of Phione (Well, more than one. They must be much rarer than most pokemons).

There is a special ceremony that allows one (or maybe a few more) of them to become a Manaphy, which is something like a King, or Messiah.

When it comes to Legendaries, I personally take game and movie canon over anime canon, simply because they mesh better; There is normally only one of a certain legendary in each game and the movies tend to support that because Legendaries are portrayed as powerful forces of nature that shouldn't be controlled by any one trainer, which I agreed with. It makes you think that there'd only be one of such a powerful pokemon, distinctly unique if its so rare. The anime used to support this idea too, until they started showing multiple legendaries in the wild (Mother and child Lugia), under the control of a frontier brain (Brandon's Articuno and three Regis) or random trainers (guy in a lobby with a Heatran, the trainer who took down Ash with a Darkrai and Latios).

I dunno, but the idea that multiples of these pokemon exist and are randomly under the control of trainers really rubs me the wrong way with what I grew up believing about the Legendaries when watching the movies or playing the games (obviously, multiple legendaries in the games are fine because trading and all that, but the game canon is usually that there is only one and that only you the player, or another important character like N, can successfully control it).

But yeah, those are my feelings on the subject....

[YoungXehanort]

In this case, how do you see Lugia ? The true uniques are actually pretty rare.

But, actually, I pretty much agree with that.

My theory was that they are a lot of Phione (Well, more than one. They must be much rarer than most pokemons).

There is a special ceremony that allows one (or maybe a few more) of them to become a Manaphy, which is something like a King, or Messiah.

I agree with that idea.

[Randoman]

Wow, the opinions are quite divided in terms of votes and explanations (in how they say part yes and part no). Even official sources within Nintendo are conflicted with their answer.