A Faith-Founded Look at Pokemon Legends: Arceus’s Antagonists

Image from the official Pokémon website

Happy Easter Monday, everyone!

Before we start, just a fair warning: this blog post contains Christian themes and discourse, as I wanted to do something a little more faith-aligned in light of the day and season.

This blog post, however, was NOT created for the purpose of proselytizing; I just wanted to do a bit of a theological exercise to study and appreciate the story and characters of a video game whose very topics and themes make this kind of conversation inevitable.

I don’t intend to make posts like this often, if at all, in the future, but the only reason I’d never make this specific post would have been because I was simply too afraid to do so. That said, talking about religion is discomforting, if not alienating.

As such, if you’d rather pass on reading a post like this—or if you are simply avoiding Pokémon Legends: Arceus Spoilers— feel free to check back in next week for a more typical blog topic, or maybe go back and read one of my previous ones. Otherwise, it' means a lot if you’re choosing to stay and read.

Now, onto the main event, starting with…

A QUICK RECAP:

Pokémon Legends: Arceus’s story, as per its namesake, centers its story around the progenitor being of the Pokémon world. Although it takes a relative backseat for the main story after it gives you a mission and a tricked-out smartphone before sending you to the Hisui Region of years past, Arceus and its power are continuously alluded to via the iconic plates that you slowly begin to collect, each bearing cryptic hints of an “Original One” who shaped the universe.

It's during the postgame story that Arceus finally takes center stage as you and the trusty, myth-curious merchant Volo, venture off to seek out the rest of the plates in the hopes of unraveling—and perhaps meeting—the mythical Arceus, just as an ancient hero, whose ten Pokémon became the region’s “nobles,” once did.

With the help of your friends, you scour the land, exploring every nook and cranny while discovering and surveying the regions remaining Legendary Pokémon, each of whom possess a plate of their own. Ultimately, you are able to obtain all of Hisui’s plates—except one.

It’s then that you are invited to Mt. Coronet, Hisui’s tallest mountain and allegedly the origin point of the Pokémon world. It is here that Volo shares with you yet another legend, albeit a forbidden one: the story of the Renegade Pokémon Giratina, who was banished to another world for its violent nature and craves the chance to challenge its creator and condemner, Arceus.

One short trek to the top of Mt. Coronet later at the now-ruined Temple of Sinnoh, Volo reveals that he had the final plate from the very beginning—as well as the allegiance of Giratina, whom he used tear open a rift in space time to force Arceus to reveal itself. His help in gathering the plates was all for the purpose of taking them from you, meeting Arceus, and dominating it in order to create an entirely new world in his image.

Events ensue as you’d likely expect: your character eventually bests Volo, then Giratina, then Giratina once more in its true Origin Forme. Having been fully defeated, Giratina flees back to its own world, leaving Volo to surrender the final plate to you and watch as your flute takes on a new, holier form. Uneager to watch you face Arceus, Volo leaves, never to be seen again by the player, but not before assuring that he will see his dream to fruition—even if it takes centuries to do so. The last you ever hear of him is after catching Giratina, assuring the player that it has pledged to protect this world after its defeat by your hands.

VOLO AND GIRATINA: THE REBELS

During his monologue at the ruined statue of Giratina, Volo shares some details regarding his life before merchanting, highlighting the moments of pain and heartbreak and how, in order to cope, he poured himself into studying and unraveling the mysteries of the world. The turning point was the discovery of Arceus, whom he began devoting his life to—and saw as a tool for reshaping the world in his image, in light of his own understanding of good and evil.

Naturally, his rebellion brought him to Giratina, and the two forged an alliance to take all creation into their own hands.

Now, I have lots and LOTS to say about Giratina in the context of its actions in PLA--especially how the game’s events poetically tie into both the climax of Pokémon Platinum AND the idea that the level 100 “shadow” Giratina you fight for the griseous orb can be perceived as the lingering shell of those dark desires.

However, today’s focus is about its actions in PLA and relationship with Volo, and in light of that, it’s important to view Giratina as what it is: a willing accomplice in Volo’s endeavors to such an extent that it is willing to become an accomplice, if not a tool.

Before writing and researching this blog, I initially viewed Giratina’s actions as trying to usurp Arceus, but after a closer look, I realized that wasn’t exactly the case. Between the duo, it’s Volo who seeks the power of world genesis and domination, while Giratina is framed simply as a seeker of vengeance and chaos, wishing for nothing else but, in Volo’s words, “to bare its fangs in defiance and tear down Arceus itself.” Aside from that, little other motivation is given aside from the fact that it simply wants to lash out against Arceus, and it’s using Volo’s motivations as a means of seeing that dream come true.

But then, another question popped into my mind: which of these two is the one in control? Volo’s phrasing as he hands you the final Arceus plate implies that Giratina was the one who set him down this course of events, but Giratina’s actions make it out to be a subject, in the same way a Pokémon trainer—or “wielder,” as per PLA’s phrasing—controls and commands their Pokémon partners.

Is Volo controlling Giratina? Is Giratina controlling Volo? Honestly, it’s not very clear (to me, at least), but the next part of the blog should shed at least a little light on things.

CONNECTING THE DOTS WITH BABYLON AND THE SATAN:

Now, we get into the real nitty-gritty of the religious discussion.

Giratina is easy to percieve as Pokemon’s devil allegory—and it has, practically since its debut—thanks to its blatantly devilish aura, the 6-spikes, 6-legs, 6-ribs pattern in its design, and its Pokemon Platinum dex entry reavealing it was “banished to the Distortion World for its violence. With Giratina’s development in PLA, however, we can finally take things a step further and draw even deeper connections and parallels to its inspiration.

First, it’s important to look at the Satan and its role in the Bible. For reference, I’m going to be pulling from BibleProject, an organization that breaks down the Bible through the lenses of literary and linguistic analysis and observation of authors’ framing and phrasing to provide a digestible understanding of its “unified message.”

As BibleProject’s video on the subject puts it, the Satan is the figurehead of the “spiritual rebellion” against God, not being for anything, but rather “anti-everything.” His ultimate goal is to bring chaos and desolation to God’s creation by being the force that tears it away from Him.

The “anti-everything” description lines up pretty well with what we are told about Giratina and its straightforward intentions as described in PLA.

What about Volo, though? Is he supposed to be a Satanist? Perhaps to some degree, but I would argue that Volo’s ambitions mirror those of a particular form of spiritual rebellion: Babylon.

Babylon is mentioned as early as Genesis (recall the story of the Tower of Babel) and is consistently portrayed as a place defined by idolatry, not just in the form of literal idol statues, but also as false “gods” of wealth, power, luxury, and material possession, things which are equal parts cause and effect in the spiritual rebellion and separation of God that ends up binding the soul to a life and ultimate death by flesh and worldly matters.

Volo is an interesting case because he is a self-described Arceus worshipper. Despite this, his words and actions reflect those of a spiritual rebel hell-bent on taking the definitions of good and evil into their own hands. The belief that you would know better than God, or perhaps seek to be God and/or define that which He has already defined, are the roots of idolatry, and such beliefs are naturally stoked and harnessed by the same “anti-everything” spiritual rebellion we’ve already mentioned.

In light of that, I would then wonder what might have become of Volo and Giratina should they have actually succeeded. Perhaps Giratina would have been happy to see his ambitions achieved through Volo as something of a non-puppet, to simply live to his heart’s content through Volo. Alternatively, perhaps we would have seen a conflict of interest so stark that the two would battle for the shape of the new universe they planned to create. It’s something that can only be speculated, though in light of the conversations said speculation can spark, I can’t help but enjoy doing so.

CONCLUSION

Being a game made by people in Japan—where only 1% of the population is Christian and you’ll find many more fiction stories dedicated to destroying gods instead of propping them up—I doubt any of this was done for the purpose of some religious mission. In all likelihood, they just wanted to do cool things and pulled from creation myths and religions of all kinds in order to give Pokémon its own (not that that’s a bad thing, mind you).

Even so, I ended up coming away from Pokémon Legends: Arceus with a take that surprisingly enriched me from a perspective of faith, simply by admiring the villains and connecting them with deeply personal aspects of myself. Such is the fun of subjectivity, I suppose. I’m sure you, dear reader, have a thing or two—maybe not faith-based, but something else relatively personal—that make you feel the same.

For now, though, don’t mind if I take a long, long break from talking about Pokémon. I probably need it just as much as y’all do.