Pokemon Worldbuilding

I had all the regions seperated only to recombine them...

mix between Japan and America ala early localization and ace attorney style Team rocket is still mafia styled, technology is in the 90s. Red has a geocities page. Sevii islands is a blend of cultures between various islands since there’s a lot of them in Pokémon canon. Religion is mostly centered on either the bird Pokémon or Mew, considered the mother/father of all Pokémon. No comment on if that makes them catholic or not.

Sevii Islands/Spinoff Area (Kanto Edition)

tcg islands are also here, considering calling this the spinoff island containment zone if great rocket is here that's how they took over sevil, with card games. very tiny sevii islands (said to be located south of kanto) orange islands (might as well be in same area) none of these are remotely to scale on the map, driving me nuts.
TCG: Renamed as southern islands based on Tcg card set. At this point there’s an entire spinoff island peninsula.

Orange Archipegalo

Said to be south of kanto and johto in lore. So maybe it’s like. Right next to sevii islands? Follows whatever the anime does, I haven’t watched this season in years. First noted regional variants spotted here (even if they were anime exclusive and have only ever shown up in fan games.)

Pokemon world building is casually wild since day 1 saffron city’s gym had teleportation panels installed They’ve got Jurassic park fossil resurrection, it’s just a casual thing in universe for all this sci-fi stuff to be background info Bill made a Time Machine in Gen 2

I've never played much of the GB TCG games or had much interest in the pokemon TCG but I was doing research to revamp my map headcanons where I mentioned that there was like a TCG island peninsula? Anyways, there's actually a lot of lore to some earlier stuff in the TCG based on executive balancing and wanting to have some unique ideas and I'll be mentioning some of them in case anyone ever wanted to make like, a TCG 3 or something. The TCG also had a few stuff like shadow pokemon before shadows in dark pokemon and type variants in the form of delta pokemon. In fact, as I witnessed, there's actually a lot of lore to it based on this video that showed up in my recommends from DeltaSeeker and looking through the bulbapedia pages: Delta lore

There's a few places like the southern islands, puzzle continent, parallel worlds, and holon, then the games exclusively have TCG island and the GR island. The southern islands came with a special set of postcards that were for tropical island and rainbow island that came out during the Neo era. Parallel worlds was about a clash of nature and technology having the two worlds clash because of space time rifts according to the backstory and images. Two mega mewtwo start fighting. The puzzle continent has crystal pokemon which are a variant but they aren't like the orange islands crystal onix, unfortunately. They could be though. Plus it's got the title of "the town on no map" in the aquapolis expansion, isn't that neat. Places like the Split Earth and Mysterious mountains both being tied to the legendary birds(gen 1) and ho-oh. There's a bunch of other stuff like undersea ruins and mystery plates and a bunch of stuff that is probably never going to be elaborated on again.

Holon having "power spots" kinda sounds like the galarian dynamax spots, right? Apparently the delta pokemon were caused by them absorbing energy from electromagnetic waves from the research tower that people made to harness and study the power spots (but there's also a spot that has natural delta species so I guess they can be a natural phenomenon.). They made a village to study the energy that causes the different type effects. Dark Pokemon (the Team Rocket corrupted ones) are kinda a precursor to shadow pokemon but is the dark celebi from movie 4 meant to reference that? likely. Light pokemon are basically purified pokemon. Basically depending on how the pokemon was raised they'd be either "bad" or "gentle" based on the OG JP names. I'm not sure if there's more than one power spot or just the mirage forest where the village was built. There's a bunch of other stuff like crystals on an island that sounds like terrastalization before it existed. There's a cave in the mirage forest that's like a power neutralizing monolith, a weird ring of fire that never stops, and a huge tree in the forest that could be like a world tree. There's a lake with a shiny gyarados too!

This Mirage Forest might be another place where Mew was around since it has a few holon related cards (like Guyana which is South america/Faraway Island/ French Guiana because it turns out the whole Guyana thing is a bit confusing when there are multiple places named Guyana when they were all a part of the same like government reigon.) Also Dark pokemon and Dark types were obviously different, like Dark Tyranitar was a fighting type. TCG has a few different types because obviously having like the 18+ types pokemon has isn't as feasible for a card game. Parallel worlds kind of reminds me of paradox pokemon since it has the concept of a natural world and a technological world colliding. The rest of the stuff you need to make up though since it came at one of those times where there wasn’t like heavily established tight consistent pokemon lore (holon was sometime during gen 3.)

For the game exclusive islands, there are clubs that are basically the equivalent of gyms and type specialists. Feel like making them all trainers is kind of taking away how weird it would be if there was a TCG yugioh like story going on. And there clearly could be one considiring how the invasion of team gr has team great rocket and the final boss guy is using mostly dark pokemon... neat.

Johto

more traditional Japan than Kanto (I feel like that’s always been the case for Johto.) Technology has budged a bit more. Worship is focused mostly on Ho oh and Celebi, Lugia tends to gain more cults. Lugia’s title is the Stormbearer. There’s not really any sort of control for where the kanto- johto line is aside from a huge marked rock that people sometimes move to say that they traveled between kanto and johto in a day. johto kanto (very obviously connnected) white city from stadium (idk exact location but somewhere in johto kanto area) it's based on IRL Japan so my alignment's might be horribly wrong I failed geography class lol White City (stadium): since stadium games only played up to gen 2 before colosseum I’ll say it’s between kanto and johto again, possibly near Violet City accounting for earl's pokemon academy being the exact same thinig that's in violet city

Hoenn is...? Australia. I kind of had no headcanons on Hoenn until I came up with the idea that it’s just way more untamed and weird. (But it's obviously still Japan...) Technology is way more advanced but the company in charge (I forgot the name, Stone company) refuses to import it to other reigons. Grab bag of beliefs and clash between progress and worries of over expansion destroying nature. Team aqua is less pirates and more disgruntled fishermen, team magma is less geeks and more disgruntled farmers. Idk where I read this but hoenns main conflict was based on a real life event in Japan where farmers and fishermen fought in concerns for rapid expansion, but the agricultural thing didn’t translate well so people just think their motivations are stupid because too much water would flood everything and too much land would make it impossible for things to be sustained. hoenn is connected to kanto and Johto.(based on sevii islands meteor event) something in between johto and kanto as well hoenn is at the tail end of japan if IRL connections are taken to account plus there has to be a connection because of the sevii islands wireless connection quest.

Spinoff Areas (G3 Edition) Fiore: Close to Hoenn but not to Orre. Far from Sinnoh because of the manaphy event. Almia: Above Sinnoh since their manaphy event isn’t as far. Oblivia: said to be located south of both fiore and almia, but also features Arceus worship. I’ll plop it by alola. Ransei: below Sinnoh. An entire island shaped like Arceus and no one questioned it??? Rumble exists in universe as a collectors toy unless I headcanon that they can sometimes come to life ala Toy Story.

Spinoff questions: what is fiore connected to??? is it close to hoenn because it's gen 3 pokemon or is it close to hoenn because that was the latest reigon out fiore is said to be far away from sinnoh but it's never said how south oblivia is from it so for all we know they could literally be right next to each other (AKA I had no clue where to put it on the map) oblivia from rangers 3. guardian signs feel like an anime concept/ weird historical lore plus deoxys event makes it feel like sevii Filler space where I post other weird official artwork stuff (got cut from the OG map and I just moved everything in closer) They casually had time travel working in the 90s and only used it to get pokemon sinnoh and johto have some connection because of the sinjoh ruins but nothing in between kanto exists in universe yet. So there's a whole reigon that's been missing for years presumably. Perfect for fangames. ransei a giant reigon shaped like arceus lol I just plopped it by the other spinoff islands. almia lines up with the tail end of sinnoh that's inaccessible + heavy gen 4 emphasis/ manaphy event. Fiore is said to be further away. I should probably have moved the TCG Puzzle Continent on the map because I just learned that it's analogous to South America but it's too late now. The Sevii Islands and Orange Islands are probably also somewhere near here but that's on the kanto page.

Russia based on the snow/ artics. Worship is heavily placed on lake trio, “Hisui” (which is lord Sinnoh based on Legends), and Arceus, the creator. (Note: Pokemon religion is kinda interesting because in previous games like Gen 1/2 there were things in mention to God/Gods . But they were taken out for translated versions. The Channeler class is a shrine maiden/miko which is based in Shintoism, Buddishm was also a likely religion in the pokemon universe for early iterations. As later games follow though most of that religious mention gets erased. Since Reshiram and Zekrom are possibly based on Taoism based on the fanname... that's more of a philosophy than a religion though, I think? Note: Look into that kind of thing.) Giratina the renegade has some worshippers alongside the Nightmare and Dreammaker but they’re more obscure. Shaymin is basically a regular mon but just rare species wise if the anime is counted so idk where I’d put it. Heatran has gained a memetic cult following because no one recalls it otherwise. Sinjoh ruins dictates that it needs to be close to Johto as well so I’ll say that Kanto-Johto and Sinnoh are all near each other in proximity Note: This is literally canon because Oak says they're all in the same country. And what country is that, it's IRL Japan. Berryless moment. in Pal park professor oak mentions that kanto johto sinnoh and hoenn are all part of the same reigon which is another piece of evidence for them all being analogous to japan other reigons make their referential country pretty blatant.

I got rid of the map image since it was SUCH an eyesore, but the only interesting thing I really did was place almia for the bottom bit of sinnoh and claim that Ransei (the arceus island from conquest) was somewhere there too.