"Several Hundred Years"

Okay, I haven't seen anyone talking about this line in the Ash-Greninja description and I think it's super interesting.

"...This can be brought on by the bonds between people and Pokémon. It seems that it has only known to have occurred once—several hundred years ago."

Several hundred years? So, if we assume that Pokemon Red/Blue took place about the same time as the anime began, then are we to assume that Pokemon Sun/Moon take place several hundred years after that?

There are a few potential issues here.

1. Samson Oak is Professor Oak's cousin... but Oak can't be several hundred years old.
2. S.S. Anne is still sailing... that's one old boat.

However, this does provide some fun theories

No Gyms: maybe the gym system died out over hundreds of years. Maybe our objective is to create the gym system again, like one leak suggested.
The Alolan Region is Kanto: After global warming destroyed the region and several hundred years passed, most of the native Pokemon died off. Those that didn't adapted to their new surroundings.
Different Dimensions: Maybe, as some have predicted, Alolan is a different dimension. Where Ash lived several hundred years before he set off in the main series. When Oak finally comes around, Ash has been dead for a while and they never new each other.

I don't know... there are others. What are your thoughts?

Sun and Moon at best take place a decade and a half after Gen 1 and Gen 3, which took place simultaneously. The anime has an even shorter runtime, since it started in Gen 1 and Ash hasn't grown a year older so technically the entire anime is happening over the course of a year. Don't ask me how that works. I know it makes absolutely no sense.

It's worth noting that the games and the anime have completely different continuities, and even within the games themselves there's 3 different timelines with varying differences in the course of history in each one. Sun and Moon take place in Timeline C along with ORAS and X and Y, and it's this timeline that's significant here as games aren't being made for Timeline A (RBYG and GSC) and Timeline B (RSE, FrLG, the Gamecube games, DPPl, HgSs, BW, and B2W2.) Ash Greninja probably is going to come from the anime and immigrate into Timeline C somehow, so his history in the anime will be questionable at best unless it's confirmed. If it is and Ash Greninja did appear hundreds of years ago, that appearance will have taken place centuries before Sun and Moon.

My personal theory is that he learned of Ash's horrible curse causing him to wander the earth and never become a Pokemon master, and rather than be tossed aside and replaced by newer mons he struck a deal with Hoopa to travel to the world of Sun and Moon and come hang out with trainers more worth his time. But that's just me; they'll probably just throw him in without rhyme or reason.

Hate to be the party pooper, but the "several hundred years" thing is referring to the original Hero-Greninja, who you can find more about from the anime.

But in short, it was the first Greninja to be able to accomplish the "Bond phenomenom", and the only one before Ash and his Greninja were able to do it.

clbgolden said:

Hate to be the party pooper, but the "several hundred years" thing is referring to the original Hero-Greninja, who you can find more about from the anime.

But in short, it was the first Greninja to be able to accomplish the "Bond phenomenom", and the only one before Ash and his Greninja were able to do it.

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Yeah, this is what I was thinking, that they left out a key word that changes the meaning of the entire sentence. It really should read: "...This can be brought on by the bonds between people and Pokémon. It seems that it has only known to have occurred once before—several hundred years ago."

With Ash-Greninja being the first occurrence of this phenomenon since then.

If Sun/Moon really took place centuries after the previous generations, there'd be a noticeable gap in technology and such.

It kind of makes me wonder though what exactly this form is though, and why there's only 2 instances of it in recorded history. It's very similar to Mega Evolution in that it requires (lore-wise anyway) a strong bond between a person and a Pokemon and grants the Pokemon greatly increased power, but it does not require afaik a stone or ring or large amounts of energy of any sort--even Mega Rayquaza needs to ingest a meteorite in order to mega evolve. It's not Primal Reversion either as a bond is unneeded for that and Ash-Greninja is not a reversion to an older, more powerful state.

colours said:

My general thing is that it's probably flavour text and doesn't mean a whole lot

/funkiller u_u

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I feel like this too :( Because Gamefreak never really touches upon the flavour text.. but hmm. I plan on researching this a bit more by watching the anime's English dub since my Japanese isn't exact. They talk about Ash-Greninja a lot... and I also hope something new will be revealed in the future episodes.

I feel like the anime and games aren't also linked... the form is called "Ash-Greninja", yea, which is an anime character, but that's because multiple names would be confusing. They've called it "Ash-Greninja" for an entire season already basically.

It is indeed based on the Greninja Hero from the Ninja Village in the anime. But I think this is mainly going to be the same thing as what happened with Megas. They said Lucario was the first Mega Evolution, but that was then retconned in ORAS when Rayquaza was the first Mega.

I wouldn't be surprised if this ends up being retconned later on if the other 2 Kalos Starters also get them which I really think they will because this reminds me of what happened with Blaziken.