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How Could Pokémon Introduce Fusion?

Can pokémon pull off introducing fusion into the games?

  • Yes

    Votes: 2 28.6%
  • No

    Votes: 5 71.4%

  • Total voters
    7

Mr.Munchlax

Great Ball Rank Trainer
This was a little discussion idea that I've been debating for a while & I wanted to see what other people think.

I've seen people make their own designs of pokémon fusions before, but I never really liked the concept since all people seemed to be doing was randomly taking two pokémon and slapping theme together. I always liked fusion as a concept due to stuff like the fusions from Steven Universe or DNA Digivolution from Digimon, but it just seemed like pokémon wasn't fully utilizing it.

I tried designing my own fusions similar to the other two examples, where fusion works like a form of evolution where the fusers become an entirely new pokémon that makes them stronger & more complete than they are when they're apart. However, the more I played around with this idea, the more I realized that fusion opens a moral can of worms, similar to how Pokémon battles are normally compared to forcing animals to fight. Unlike Steven Universe or Digimon, where the fusers are inorganic beings who can turn back into their original selves after fusing, fusing Pokémon can be wrong & disturbing from a moral standpoint since they're real living creatures that can't go back from fusing. This could basically be compared to the chimeras from Full Metal Alchemist.

The only way I thought of working around that issue would be to push fusion as an evolution mechanic by using stones to fuse & making sure the pokémon give their consent with fusing. The only problem with that is for the games you need to make it so that any & all pokémon can fuse and the consent thing is only seen through the dialogue or stuff like the anime, which a number of people will more than likely gloss over. This is a similar problem to mega evolution since the game dialogue & anime say you need to have a strong bond with your pokémon in order to mega evolve, but in the actual battles all you have to do is slap on a mega stone and -poof- you've got a mega pokémon.

So, this is what I want to discuss. Do you think pokémon can introduce fusion & work around the dark undertones behind it? If so, how can they do it?
 
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Sceptile Leaf Blade

Nighttime Guardian
I don't think permanent fusion is something that they should do to be honest. Even the dex entry for Beldum isn't ever followed up on in the actual anime or games, we see Morrison's Beldum evolve into a Metang, just one-to-one. Permanent fusion also opens up a whole can of worms regarding what to do with the personalities, the natures, IVs, and so on for game mechanics. Nothing that can't be solved, but it does complicate matters quite a lot. I think it's just too much trouble for too little pay-off. Meltan is one that also evolves one-to-one in GO if I'm not mistaken, and the implication that it's actually a merger does trouble me for the anime that will presumably want to show off Melmetal at some point. I personally don't consider Kyurem and Necrozma fusions, they're more assimilations than fusions.

One kind of fusion mechanic that I have thought of is a temporary in-battle fusion mechanic for double or triple battles, where certain pokémon could fuse if sent out simultaneously in battle, and I was thinking it in relation to the Regi trio. In battle you don't have quite as much complications morally, since they can separate again later, and nature, IVs, EVs aren't quite as complicating as you can use the sum of the pokémon's summary stats to form the new fused pokémon's stats (something you can't easily do with a permanent fusion as such a pokémon would be far too powerful to use as an individual pokémon, but as an in-battle fusion where you'd only have one pokémon out against two of the opponent's it could work). Still needs to have some complications solved like what to do with the fused pokémon's moveset, and actually getting it to work, etc. but those things can be solved.
 

Sceptile Leaf Blade

Nighttime Guardian
Dragon Ball doesn't really have important permanent fusions. Just some Kai side characters. The characters you're actually supposed to care about only have temporary fusions. Dragon Ball is also targeted at a different audience from pokémon.

I'm not really sure how what I said applies to mega evolution at all, mega evolution is also temporary and is one-to-one to boot. It's completely different from a permanent fusion.
 

NovaBrunswick

Canada Connoisseur
Didn’t Pokemon already do fusion with Black and White Kyurem? That wasn’t really a permanent fusion though. There was also that Venustoise that Gary made in the original series of the anime, and Thu-Fi-Zer (the fusion of the three legendary birds) in the Adventures manga. There’s another manga, ReBURST, where humans basically fuse their souls with Pokemon (much like Steven Universe). So fusion wouldn’t really be a new concept for the Pokemon franchise as a whole.
 

Tsukuyomi56

Sky High Knight
Don't really see fusion for Pokemon expanding beyond a handful of Pokemon that is integrated in their lore. Yo-Kai Watch does has fusion as an evolution mechanic but the nature of the creatures are somewhat similar to Digimon/Steven Universe so that there is no moral implications (Yo-Kai are essentially spirits).
 

Doppelgänger

Superancient Member
Dragon Ball doesn't really have important permanent fusions. Just some Kai side characters. The characters you're actually supposed to care about only have temporary fusions. Dragon Ball is also targeted at a different audience from pokémon.

You would need permanent fusions for it to work outside of doing a "fusion dance" in a doubles match, like with the Kyurem and Necrozma fusions. When I brought up Dragon Ball, I was just talking about fusions as a concept and why it's at home with "super forms" and "super moves" now that both are a thing in Pokemon..

I'm not really sure how what I said applies to mega evolution at all, mega evolution is also temporary and is one-to-one to boot. It's completely different from a permanent fusion.

Pokemon had already established that evolutions were permanent and the super form trope tended to appear in franchises that had run out of ideas. In Dragon Ball, there were endless variations on the Super Saiyan and everyone (even kids) had one; in Digimon we had alternate Mega Evolutions and everyone had one. In Yu-Gi-Oh!, fans tended to prefer the original monster to the endless, explicitly different identity super forms of those monsters.

If GF wanted to avoid looking creatively bankrupt, it had to handle Mega Evolution in an organic, sensitive manner and not offend fans whose favourite Pokemon were or were not chosen. Instead, they completely dropped the ball - playing favourites with already popular Pokemon, giving the Megas similar abilities, promoting them to the point of overshadowing the rest of Generation VI.

To me, it's like winning the lotto and immediately squandering the earnings on cheap indulgence. GF showed no restraint or respect with how they handled Megas, like they were clueless as to how it might offend people.

That wasn’t really a permanent fusion though.

It's permanent, but reversible. Temporary would imply there's a timer ticking down before the fusion dissipates.
 

Sceptile Leaf Blade

Nighttime Guardian
Permanent = forever, which implies irreversibility or permanence. Temporary is the opposite of permanent, it implies reversibility. Mega evolutions are temporary, they last until the end of battle. Necrozma isn't a fusion, it's an assimilation because Necrozma stays in control while Solgaleo and Lunala don't have any power in the form (whereas a fusion would have a blend of the two, like in Dragon Ball), and it's also temporary because it's reversible. And Kyurem is the same. Yu-Gi-Oh is a completely different franchise and should not be used as an example for anything, it's a commercial for selling trading cards and little more. It has fusion, but again it's temporary, and it doesn't have any of the moral implications this thread started because the monsters in that series have no personality, they're just holograms.
Pokemon had already established that evolutions were permanent and the super form trope tended to appear in franchises that had run out of ideas. In Dragon Ball, there were endless variations on the Super Saiyan and everyone (even kids) had one; in Digimon we had alternate Mega Evolutions and everyone had one. In Yu-Gi-Oh!, fans tended to prefer the original monster to the endless, explicitly different identity super forms of those monsters.

If GF wanted to avoid looking creatively bankrupt, it had to handle Mega Evolution in an organic, sensitive manner and not offend fans whose favourite Pokemon were or were not chosen. Instead, they completely dropped the ball - playing favourites with already popular Pokemon, giving the Megas similar abilities, promoting them to the point of overshadowing the rest of Generation VI.

To me, it's like winning the lotto and immediately squandering the earnings on cheap indulgence. GF showed no restraint or respect with how they handled Megas, like they were clueless as to how it might offend people.

That's a bit far away form the topic of the thread though, more into the motivations of creators for implementing a certain mechanic rather than looking at in-universe implications of permanent fusion evolutions and whether those would be hindering or breaking the possibility of implementing it. Mega evolution doesn't have those. It has different issues, sure, but I don't think that's exactly the topic of this thread.
 

Doppelgänger

Superancient Member
Colress outright calls that "assimilation" fusion, and reminisces about working with Pokemon Fusion in the past. The subtext is he's referring to Kyurem. Dragon Ball mechanics have no bearing on Pokemon, it's only relevant so far as fusion concept appears in it . Both Necrozma and Kyurem fusions are permanent unless undone by the trainer.

"temporary" has a specific meaning in Pokemon, referring to a timer. Weather used to be "permanent" in that it would persist until changed. But if we go by your definition of permanent, once the weather is set, it cannot be changed by any means. Temporary weather is recognized as 5-8 turns; Mega Evolution lasts until the battle ends or the Pokemon is knocked out.

Maybe an easier way to understand this is in-battle/out of battle. Most status moves are permanent because they carry out of battle until cured. But stat boosts disappear as soon as a Pokemon is recalled, which happens at the end of battle anyway.
 

Leonhart

Imagineer
I don't think adding Pokemon fusion as a common game feature would be a good idea to begin with, but just to play Devil's advocate, I suppose that Game Freak could go the Digimon route by allowing Pokemon to merge in a similar way to DNA Digivolution.
 

VampirateMace

Internet Overlord
I think fusion could be interesting if properly utilized, though there's probably too many pokemon for it to be worth GF's time to allow us to just fuse any two pokemon. Also since they are, as previously stated, supposed to be living creatures that have relationships with other creatures, something akin to daycare/bonding first would make sense, and maybe personality compatibility. There's a lot of interesting ways fusion could be restricted; by type, body shape, egg group, evolutionary stage (like saying only first or second stage could evolve through fusion), or just a few species being able to do it (in which case maybe they could fuse with everyone else), that would make it more plausible to implement. I think I would be more interested in it being permanent (as in non-reversible) rather than a battle mechanic or gimmick (as much as I love Steven Universe).
 

RedJirachi

Veteran member
Some Pokemon could evolve using fusion, getting enough you can combine into a new Pokemon. Though there would be difficulties in programming how natures, movesets and such are passed on to the new specimen
 
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