Should Legendary/Mythical Pokémon be captured or left alone?

[M.E.R.255]

I believe that I speak for many when I say: "Capturing Legendary Pokémon is exciting/fun/awesome!"
But... Should we?

If you watch the Anime, especially the movies, you notice how some of them have some sort of jobs, some importance to the world. They are keeping a balance in nature, provide good living conditions to Pokémon, or other things.

In Pokémon Sun & Moon I believe that there were four as island guardians, right? If so... when you capture them, who guards the islands? Surely not their lousy police force...
When I think about it... aren't we like those villains in those Pokémon movies, trying to capture a legendary just to add it to our team and give it commands? What do you think?

If there wasn't the thing of "Go and collect all Pokémon!" I think that there would be less people trying to force Legendary into balls just to fulfill that task of filling out a Pokédex. =/

 

[Mawa]

I always feel bad catching the legendary Pokemon... I mean, the Tapu are guardian, we catch them and put then in a box? For what? They can't guard the island anymore!
Seriously, I feel like the mythical Pokemon are mythical for a reason, they have a purpose. Why catching them? Wouldn't it change the world technically??

 

[Amore]

Na in all these games I'm the chosen one (or in the case of Black / White and their sequels, 1 of 3 heroes along with N and the protagonist from the sequel), so its probably safer for me to capture them all and therefore prevent any evil team / idiot with a Dragonite from capturing them.

After all its not like you're forging the routes to reach most of these pokémon, you either smash a couple of rocks in a cave or just bump into them when they're flying around - who's to say some idiot won't get a lucky hit in that throws Latios through a tree weakening him enough to be captured and misused by them?

 

[pkmin3033]

I think if the movies have taught us anything, it's that things go to hell if you capture Legendary Pokemon. That said, the anime contradicts the movies more than once by having people own Legendary Pokemon - no great catastrophe came out of Brandon using the Regis, and I expect Tobias capturing Darkrai saved a lot of people from some godawful nightmares.

And is there more than one? Despite being an artificial life form there are at least two Mewtwo, the Legendary birds have been seen repeatedly all over the place, there is a second set of Regis, and there might even be a second Arceus. So catching them shouldn't really be that big of deal...at least not for the environment. Where one gets captured, another will take its place.

 

[Cool_Porygon]

They are cool to have in the games, but it does take away from the "legendary" factor to be able to catch them.

 

[Amore]

And is there more than one? Despite being an artificial life form there are at least two Mewtwo, the Legendary birds have been seen repeatedly all over the place, there is a second set of Regis, and there might even be a second Arceus. So catching them shouldn't really be that big of deal...at least not for the environment. Where one gets captured, another will take its place.

Yup, there's clearly multiple Lati@s as well, as Latios died in Pokémon Heroes, yet Tobias sent out one when Ash finally beat Darkrai. Pretty sure if he'd resurrected that Latios it might have had qualms about battling Ash, so clearly it was another one.

 

[Lunar]

It's an interesting debate, I think if a legendary Pokemon is just destroying things and causing chaos in the world, then yeah they should be caught. But a lot of them have a vital role in the balance and order of the Pokemon world so in a lot of cases I think catching them is wrong. Although, in the anime cannon, there is not just one of each legendary/mythical Pokemon and that might well be true in the lore of the games too, so there's arguments for both sides.