Now that they've become easy to find and even easier to catch, Legendary Pokémon have been feeling much less Legendary in the Pokémon Journeys anime. Goh, Ash’s new travel companion, has ruffled feathers since his introduction over the ease with which he catches wild Pokémon. He usually just throws a Poké Ball without even battling first and generally catches them on the first try. These Pokémon-catching ways reached peak absurdity when he unintentionally captured a Suicune this way, and a recent episode of Pokémon has taken Legendary captures to a legendarily easy level.
In the good old days, a Pokémon trainer who had a Legendary Pokémon was indisputably one of the strongest trainers in the world. Brandon the Pyramid King possessed Registeel, Regirock, and Regice and it took Ash three attempts to beat just one of them. In the Sinnoh League, a trainer named Tobias steamrolled Ash with a Darkrai and a Latios en route to the easiest Pokémon League win ever shown in the anime. Brandon and Tobias were once outliers for possessing any Legendary Pokémon -- let alone multiple -- but nowadays in Journeys, all one needs to catch one for themselves is a can-do attitude.
As a part of Project Mew – a group of trainers trying to find Mew to understand the origin of Pokémon – Goh was tasked with capturing a Regieleki or a Regidrago. Alongside fellow Project Mew member Gary Oak, Goh did indeed capture himself a Regieleki while Gary managed to catch Regidrago. This Regieleki is Goh’s second Legendary Pokémon after his Suicune that he mistakenly caught when he was just trying to free it from a net. Goh’s Suicune doesn’t generally hang out at Cerise Labs with the rest of his Pokémon, and it remains to be seen what he’s going to do with his new Regieleki, but his ultimate goal of capturing Mew is beginning to feel less outlandish by the episode.
However, Goh’s and Gary’s captures aren’t the craziest Legendary conquests that took place in Journeys. One of Project Mew’s senior members, a trainer named Quillon, brought his Legendary Pokémon total to four after he used his Urshifu to catch Registeel, Regirock, and Regice with the ease and attitude of a trip to the grocery store. Quillon doesn’t appear to have any interest in battling beyond what is required of him as part of Project Mew, but who knows how far his Action Replay-esque team could take him if he decided he wanted to enter a Pokémon League or the World Coronation Series.
Legendary Pokémon have been all over the place in the Journeys anime. After all, Ash and Goh met when they both independently climbed onto the back of a Lugia just for the sake of riding it. Pokémon Journeys has apparently decided to make the anime more closely related to the games in that Legendary Pokémon are plentiful and not overly difficult to catch.
The downside is that these aptly named Legendary Pokémon don’t feel so aptly named anymore. Fortunately for Ash, he has yet to encounter a Legendary Pokémon during the World Coronation Series, because they have been the bane of his existence on multiple occasions in the past.
Pokémon Journeys truly has pulled out all the stops for both Ash’s and Goh’s increasingly separate adventures. Ash is competing in a tournament against every other Regional Champion while Goh is getting deeper into Project Mew and encountering rarer Pokémon with each new trial. Pokémon has gone on for so long that it was only a matter of time before major changes to the mythos would have to happen, and the demystification of Legendary Pokémon in the anime is a major sign that Pokémon is either switching gears or running out of ideas. Hopefully, it's just switching gears.