>>50582827Ho-Oh has nothing to do with the sky as a concept. It's a symbol of rebirth and new beginnings. Iirc, it actually fills out the legendary birds as the missing season, since Articuno is Winter, Moltres is Summer, and Zapdos is Autumn. Spring has certain connotations to the Japanese, relating to rebirth and shit. It's why they obsess over cherry blossoms.
Lugia is a complicated mess depending on whose interpretation you follow. Originally it was a goddess of the sea, life, and balance, now it's an unwilling destroyer associated with storms, it has nothing to do with the ocean, except that it lives there so it doesn't harm anything else.
By opposition, Groudon and Kyogre have very little in the way of symbolism besides their conflict. Groudon is just the land, Kyogre the sea. Rayquaza actually shares more in common with Lugia than Ho-Oh, because of its effects on weather. Lugia and Rayquaza are actually a pretty close set of foils. Lugia is an unwilling destroyer that upsets the balance of nature and the weather, Rayquaza brings balance and order to nature and weather, but is absolutely savage and ruthless in protecting it.
Rayquaza also moonlights as the guardian diety of Earth. Anything from outside of Earth that tries to enter it has to get past Rayquaza first, and if something cataclysmic goes down on the surface, Rayquaza sorts that shit out. It's an ambivalent protector though, like Godzilla. It doesn't give two shits about humans, it protects the earth itself.
Kyogre and Manaphy also have different spheres. Kyogre is the lord of the sea as a physical object and location, Manaphy is the one more associated with all the fucking water types infesting it.
The only redundant legendary that I'm aware of is Zygarde, which is yet another balance pokemon, and is more or less Rayquaza at home.
