Re: Relative strength of humans vs. Pokémon
Wait, weren't they inside? In that case, Fly couldn't have been used.
The building has a door. All it'd take is to drag the guy outside the door and
then fly him off somewhere. Just Hyper Beam'ing him into a wall is probably quicker, though.
then again, Team Rocket keep surviving Pikachu's thunderbolts and they survive, don't they?
Tasers/stun-guns hurt like hell, usually knock you over, and stun you... but they're almost never lethal unless you have something like a pre-existing heart condition or a pacemaker that the electricity can interfere with. It's not too surprising that electric attacks, which never seem to do anything worse than knock another Pokémon unconscious or give them a few minor surface burns, would almost always be non-lethal.
That's like, the one thing the anime actually did realistically. XD If you ignore the whole randomly-flying-off-into-the-distance thing, anyway.
I just think that normal Pokemon (including pseudo-legends) do a lot of damage but not too much, and legendaries have almost deadly attacks.
Exactly how deadly they are probably depends on the legendary... I can't really picture something like Cresselia killing anybody, with its not-so-high attack stats and mostly healing-based powers. And what would a newly-hatched baby Manaphy or Phione be able to do? Not a whole lot, I'm guessing.
But yeah, legendaries are usually much higher leveled than other wild Pokémon... so, in non-game-mechanics terms, they're either freakishly strong mutants, or they're older and more experienced, or they actually go out of their way to train themselves rather than just gaining strength slowly as they grow. And they don't seem to be as used to having humans around either... put those two together, and they probably would be a lot be more likely to actually kill someone than most Pokémon would. If their attacks could be toned down, they probably wouldn't do it anyway, because they'd be so used to fighting other powerful things (other legendaries and other higher-leveled Pokémon, or Pokémon belonging to strong trainers trying to catch them) that would be able to beat them up if they held back.
I think something like a Metagross or Tyranitar would generally be more powerful than a lot of the weaker legendaries (like Articuno/Zapdos/Moltres, Raikou/Entei/Suicune, the Regis minus Gigas, Mew, etc.) that aren't really anything more than just a rare and stronger-than-average species, though... just because the rare exceptions like Dialga/Palkia/Giratina, Arceus, and Mewtwo are way beyond the level of other Pokémon doesn't mean that
all legendaries should be that high up there in power.
It's actually the freaking rodents that are running around all over the goddamn place. They bite you once and you get rabies or they mentally scar you with there derpness.
Bringing up the rodents actually reminds me of something... people in real life are often afraid of tiny weak things even though they can't actually hurt them in any significant way (unless you happen to be one of the extra unlucky people who just
happens to get bit by the rabid one), so why wouldn't people in the Pokémon world be the same way?
I mean, why else would Professor Birch be afraid of some random level 3 Zigzagoon or Poochyena that shows up? They're small, weak Pokémon that only have weak moves like Tackle at that point, so there's no way that
one of them would be any real threat to a healthy adult human's life, not even in Super Exaggeration Land where a somewhat-trained Eevee can kill you easily.
He's just afraid of them in the same way that a lot of humans are afraid of mice or snakes or bats: stupid irrational fear, probably picked up from several generations of relatives with the same stupid irrational fear, with an extra layer of fear of disease/poison plopped ontop of it to make it even worse. Even though all it'd really take to scare one off--or even knock one out-- would be to kick at it a couple times instead of running away.
