Legendary babies

[wertyuiop[]

Has it ever been explicitly stated that Legendary/mythical can't breed? I get why they can't for game balance reasons, but in terms of lore was there an in-universe reason ever given?

 

[Sceptile Leaf Blade]

Some of them do reproduce in the series, the baby Lugia from the anime comes to mind. It's never explicitly stated that legendaries can't reproduce. The mechanism of where eggs come from has never been detailed either, for all we know Mew could just stealthily deliver eggs with DNA resembling Pokémon it sees around the area.

 

[Hilda]

Pftt. Everyone knows legendary pokémon babies are delivered by Pelipper.

 

[octoboy]

I think there are a few cases of legendaries reproducing outside the Daycare Centre a la cosmog and I think some of the Sinnoh legendaries as well. It seems likely to me that the Daycare Centre just isn't a suitable breeding environment for them - there are actual animals which are borderline impossible to breed in captivity (including rhinos, which is what Lockstin & Gnoggin suspects is the reason nidorina and nidoqueen won't produce offspring in the Daycare Centre), so the legends are probably the same case.

 

[Captain Jigglypuff]

I’ve always thought many of the Legendary Pokémon had genders but people never realized it because there is no gender differences and the Pokémon were rarely seen. Lugia is the best example where I see the Pokémon 2000 Lugia being male while the one seen in the Johto arc of the anime was an obvious female given the baby Lugia and how the females of most species is typically the primary caretaker of their young. The Swords of Justice is a bit more complex though as all but Virizion seem to be male and just give that vibe. The Regi are truly genderless as Regigigas created the other five using materials it found in nature. Darkrai I think is always male to be a true counterpart to Cresselia who is always female. Lunala is female while Solgaleo is always male give it’s a lion with a mane and Cosmog is the baby form and Cosmoem is the cocoon stage. I don’t think Eternatus has a gender as it appears to be the result of some sort of negative energy that can pollute any area it is in if it stores up too much of this energy. Type: Null and Silvally I think do have genders but not in the traditional sense and they appear not to be able to reproduce mostly because they were created in a lab and no one has discovered the way to breed them properly.

 

[pacman000]

Apparently, Shudo thought Lugia should be genderless, but with a female voice. He didn't tell the production team that, so the one in the movie had a male voice.

I'd say legendaries can reproduce, but refuse to do so in captivity.

 

[RedJirachi]

We don't know how regular Pokemon breed, and while that's mainly because of the age range when you think of, say, Litwick, it's a legit question. Occam's Razor suggests that whatever allows legendaries to make more of themselves cannot be found in a breeding center. Some legendaries and mythicals have lore reasons for why they can't breed

• Mewtwo: It's not natural but a secret genetic experiment that given the Cinnabar Mansion's state, how to create another one was probably lost
• The legendary beasts: Specifically resurrected by Ho-oh
• Celebi: Given its a time traveler we have no idea where and when Celebi comes from. For all we know it comes from the far future with a different ecosystem
• The Regis: Artificial constructs made centuries-millennia ago
• The Weather Trio: These beings are millions of years old and no-one would really know how to recreate the conditions that made them
• Deoxys: You at least need a laser to hit a space virus
• Creation and Lake trio: Basically created by God
• Arceus: Basically God
• Tao trio: An unknown super-dragon Pokemon that had MPD and fractured into three beings
• Genesect: Secret criminal project not in the mood for explaining how it can reproduce. Assuming it can; Genesect is a cyborg, it is probably lacking in certain attributes its primitive incarnation had
• Magearna: Whoever made it may not have been able to make it capable of reproduction. And good luck trying to get them to help the Daycare make more; unless AZ made Magearna in the game continuity its creator is long dead
• Type: Null: The Aether Foundation may not have given them the ability to reproduce. And they're not going to tell the Daycare how to make more of them
• Necrozma and Eternatus: They're space dragons of unknown origins, and the former's crippled. How's the Pokemon Daycare supposed to account for that?

I'm pretty sure the "genderless" is meant to represent "gender unknown" more than anything