So we got our latest “Pokémon made up of separate entities” (Falinks) and I was thinking… how do these exist as a single Pokémon? What happens if you… separate them entirely? What if you divide an Exeggcute into two sets of egg-seeds and keep them apart? Could they still evolve? Can one or two members of a Falinks survive on their own? What would we call them? I never could wrap my head around the idea of multiple creatures making up a single Pokémon, especially when they don’t evolve from a single unit (like Dugtrio or Magneton)…
There’s gotta be an anime episode that covers this.
…
…huh. I don’t think there is? Or at least I can’t find one.
Well, we know Exeggcute at least must be able to survive on their own, because we’re told that a new one forms from an Exeggutor dropping an extra head… but six is clearly the optimal number for them to be healthy. I suppose in nature Exeggutor live in groups, so that there are always plenty of spare Exeggcute lying around to form clusters of six. When they’re with trainers… well, when they’re with trainers they lay eggs that hatch into six more eggs, so that doesn’t really help us much (maybe this is one of the examples we should think of when looking at that one random X and Y NPC who claims that Pokémon eggs “aren’t really eggs” but “more like a Pokémon cradle” – in nature they actually don’t lay eggs but have other, weirder forms of reproduction). Honestly I think an Exeggcute that loses one of its heads and can’t get it back may just be permanently impaired, and if it gets down to less than three it could well be impossible for it to evolve. On that point, though, what I want to know is, if Exeggcute form clusters of six and Exeggutor normally have three heads, what happens to the other three? Maybe the three heads don’t each correspond to one of the six Exeggcute heads at all, and their consciousnesses all sort of blend together during evolution (after all, they’re Psychic-types and make decisions collectively via telepathy anyway). Now, Falinks… the whole point of Falinks is that it’s supposed to reference ancient Greek and Roman infantry tactics, fighting styles where teamwork and cohesion are the units’ main strength (and we can debate ad nauseam exactly how hoplites and legionaries actually fought and whether Falinks is a good representation of either, but… dear gods, please not now), so I kinda think it would be thematically appropriate if a lone Falinks without its comrades just couldn’t survive – couldn’t fight predators, couldn’t find food, just generally couldn’t function. Maybe different numbers are viable, maybe you can have a five-member Falinks or a seven-member one, but they haven’t evolved to live independently. As a trainer you might be able to separate them and support them individually, but I suspect it would be psychologically damaging and frankly kind of abusive.