Pokémon Physiology

Introduction

Pokémon, known in Japan as Pocket Monsters, are fictional creatures that serve as the foundation of the Pokémon franchise. New species are frequently introduced alongside the release of new games and related promotional material.

In the context of the Pokémon universe, the term "species" is used differently than in real world biology. In nature, a species typically refers to a group of organisms capable of producing fertile offspring, which does not align with how Pokémon breeding works. Additionally, real organisms do not change from one species to another, whereas Pokémon can undergo Evolution—a process that more closely resembles growth, development, or metamorphosis rather than biological evolution.

Each species has a capitalized name, such as "Pikachu." The species name is often used in the singular form to refer collectively to all members of that group, for example, "Pikachu is an Electric-type Pokémon." The plural form remains the same as the singular, such as "two Pikachu." In some early Pokémon media, incorrect plural forms like "Digletts" occasionally appeared.

Individual Pokémon are typically referred to by their species name as well, for instance, "Pikachu used Thunder Shock." However, some individual Pokémon are given nicknames instead.

In Japanese, Pokémon species names are written in katakana and also have official romanized forms. For example, Onix is written as イワーク (Iwark) in Japanese.

Abilities

• Superhuman Physical Characteristics
  • Superhuman Strength (All wild Pokemon are considered such threats that it's noted to dodge attacks from them like their life depends on it, going out into the grass without a Pokemon is considered such a threat to humans that they need their own Pokemon for protection)
• Pressure Points (Critical hits are in actuality pressure point strikes, with the Japaense version noting "Hit a pressure point!")
• Non-Standard Interaction
  • Spirit Interaction: Every Pokemon through the usage of struggle can harm even ghost type Pokemon.
• Evolution (Pokemon under correct conditions can evolve gaining new abilities that their previous form did not have)
• Acausality
  • Unfixed Causality: The future is not fixed and can be changed and altered by one's choices effectively countering premonitions and precognition.
• Supernatural Protection (The luminance light of Arceus guides and protects all Pokémon)
• Statistics Boost (When Pokemon use a move that is the same type as they are the move's power is increased by 50 percent)
• Impact Resistance
  • Standard Impact Resistance: Pokemon can recover from being flattened)
• Accelerated Development
  • Battle & Leveling
    • Physical Stats & Abilities: Pokemon doing battle and winning will gain experience and level up becoming stronger and may learn new moves.
• Enhanced Senses (Pokemon are able to sense when the seasons change)
• Emotional Empowerment (Pokemon can have their attack greatly raise from anger but doing so may also confuse them)
• Consumption (Pokmeon can ingest items such as soda pops or eat food to regain health and recover from status effects)
• Size Manipulation (It is mentioned by Laventon that each and every Pokemon is able to shrink itself down to minuscule size)

Resistances

• Limited Resistance to
  • Absolute Zero (The move sheer cold causes Pokemon to only faint instead of die, which is noted to be a blast of absolute zero cold)
  • Poison Manipulation (Pokemon will eventually cure itself of poison after being brought down to 1 HP or lose the poison status after fainting)
• Resistance to
  • Pressure Points (Pokemon can generally still keep fighting even after taking a critical hit)
  • Sealing (Pokemon normally require to be damaged or inflicted with status conditions to attempt to be caught only working after multiple attempts)
  • Sense Manipulation (Pokemon can eat Nomel Berries which are so sour that makes one bite impossible to taste for three days)
  • Ice Manipulation (It's noted to be difficult to freeze a Pokemon)
  • Acid Manipulation (Pokemon take no damage from moves like Gastro Acid and instead just have their abilities suppressed)

Weaknesses

• Pokemon being greatly angered causes them to be confused.
• The usage of struggle makes the Pokemon take recoil damage, even if they've barely damaged an opponent.
• Pokemon become too scared to move when dealing with an entity that cannot be ID'd.

Notes

• In Generation 1 games, struggle was a normal type move that didn't work on ghost Pokemon and would do basically no damage to enemies that were resistant to such attacks however in Generations 2 and onward, struggle was a typeless move that did neutral damage to all Pokemon including ghost types. This effectively means the mechanics of struggle were soft retconned after generation 1 along with many of its other mechanics.