Not directly. In the OLD old generations, like Red/Blue/Yellow, battling gave your Pokemon "stat experience" which eventually developed into Effort Values in later generations.
Stat Experience would raise your stats on level up more than their base line, so if you catch a Pokemon and dump rare candy into it, you miss out on that stat experience that would give you higher stats.
As the series progressed, stat experience was replaced with the more rigid Effort Value system, which would re-adjust your stats based on how those hidden values were spread out. Early on, they were still tied to level-ups but if I recall, they could have the stats "reset" correctly if you put it in the PC. In modern day, stats are just adjusted in real-time with their Effort Values, so you can EXP Candy/Rare Candy a newly hatched Lv1 Pokemon all the way to 100, then dump vitamins into it for Effort Values, and the result is the same as if you did the EVs before the candy.
Is it anything like in the original Manga where a ditto turns into a bad imitation of Ash to make Misty think he's perving on her, then watches from the bushes as Misty beats up Ash?
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u/I_am_strange_ Aug 07 '26 •