Pokémon anime

We already had possessed Ash in the Battle Frontier arc, the first one where he battled Brandon.

Dogasu has written a summary for the first chapter of the manga adaptation

Be cool if this was the Lugia from the 2000 Movie.

edited 21st Apr '15 11:30:56 PM by WorldTurtle2

Welp, as oversued as it tends to be, Flygon's Ensemble Dark Horse status definitely got confirmed here.

Hopefully Pokemon Z/XY 2 will have a Mega Flygon.

I've been wondering if we will get Z or X2 & Y2 (maybe I'm mistaken, but shouldn't have something been announced by now?). Its just if you use the anime as a pace marker for the time between Generations we're already at the 6th Gym (will be by the end of May) and the Opening indicates we'll get to the 7th Gym before the end of the year.

2016 will have the 8th Gym and League. Theories have been going around about when the Team Flare Arc will happen (if it happens at all), either between Gyms 7 and 8 or before or after the League. Unless we suddenly get a lot of Filler that should take up the year with no problem. So 2016 should be the last year of XY or Generation 6 with the Generation 7 games coming out at the end of the year.

Now correct me if I'm wrong but D&P were delayed in 2005 and rescheduled for release in 2006 which is why we had the Battle Frontier Arc (June 2005-September 2006). So unless something similar happens there is no reason to have a year long Filler Saga (or a huge chuck of filler).

Also Gen V only had the Main Games (BW) and their Sequels (B 2 W 2). No remakes. Maybe Gen VI will be just the Main Games (XY) and Remakes (ORAS)?

I hope not. I feel like Kalos has a lot of things that need to be improved on & explored. Zygarde for example. What's the deal with that? Plus, there's that area in southern Kalos that looks like it could have a few more towns/cities, much like what they did with Unova in B 2 W 2. Kalos will just feel incomplete, without a third game or a sequel of sorts.

Delay...? I don't remember hearing of any delay. That might be the reason why we got the Battle Frontier arc - if they realised how much time they needed to prep Gen. IV - but even so they probably knew fairly well ahead of time of this (note that Movie 8, with Lucario, was firmly set in Kanto and so they knew the League would be over by July of 2005, a few months before the release could have been).

One might think that Gen. III had a release (in Japan) of one game/pair-of-games per year, but that's not the case - 2002 had Ruby/Sapphire, 2004 had FireRed/LeafGreen (in January) and much later Emerald (in September).

For Gen. IV, we had Diamond/Pearl 2006, then 2008 had Platinum & 2009 had HeartGold/SoulSilver - 2007 didn't have any releases. Also, in Gen. V we had no release in 2011 - Black/White had a 2010 release, then in 2012 we got the sequels; Gen. VI started in 2013...

To me, this proves that however large a Gen. might be, we will always get a year during which no main-series games are released since they need to devote a lot of time to producing and completing the games; if this stops one day I'll eat my words, but for the time being it is what it is. This means that by my estimation, 2015 will have no Updated Re-release - 2016 will have it, and then 2017 will see the (presumed) start of Gen. VII. We would have heard something by this point in the year... if they were planning to release it this year. Because at this rate, they are not - we'd have certainly gotten a big hype campaign by now if they were indeed planning as much.

Personally, I'd think that launching a new generation would make for a more hypable 20th anniversary celebration than a continuation of the current gen, unfulfilled developments aside. EDIT: Heck, they might surprise us and, instead of getting Diamond Ring and Pearl Necklace in 2018, we'll get X2 and Y2 then, under Gen 7 Rules.

Psyga: So do you think that we'll actually get the Evil Twin that we were faked out about 5 years ago? Because that's the only way that I could think that a Possessed!Ash could be faked out.

So, which do you think for Movie 18: Evil Spock, Assimilated Picard (Everytime I try to like to the relevant episode, they put in a dash in the link), or The Field?

edited 22nd Apr '15 4:36:10 PM by DonaldthePotholer

Note that the anime didn't really advertise ORAS in any real way yet, but it still sold like hotcakes.

That might be the proof the backers needed that the anime is pretty much a relic at this point and they don't actually need it to advertise the games anymore.

In that case they can either just finally wrap it up this season (possible since the ratings are supposedly not all that great anymore) or at least let them do their own thing with it.

The only ORAS advertising in the anime was Steven in the Mega Evolution specials and the kid showing up with a Treecko in a few weeks. Other than that ORAS was pretty much ignored in the anime.

Its really strange because they made that huge HGSS arc with Lyra in DP, and a lot of the DP eps around that point had Johto pokemon in the fillers and so forth. FR/LG got a lot of advertising in mid-late AG as well.

This is really the first time the anime didn't bother to do any major advertising for a new game coming out. ORAS is practically 6 months old now so we're probably past the point of expecting anything for it.

Maybe after the problems with the 5th gen advertising (I think the stuff with the 2 year gap between Black/White and Black2/White 2 buggered things up a bit, along side those episodes they were forced to skip) left them uninterested in such thing.

Or like I suspect, they're just testing to see exactly how much the anime factors into game sales.

Alternatively they couldn't find a way to tie in ORAS without May(Lyra hadn't been used before, and Ash IS their equivalent of Red), but don't want to use May anymore, so they just left it.

Or they're waiting to see if there's gonna be an XY 2 or Z before making their next move.

I know this has been out for some time and probably has bee said, but it needs to be said again: Best. Version. Of. The Original. Theme. Ever. Thank You Powerglove.

What surprises me is they're not advertising the Hoenn starters for new kids. All the Kanto starters showed up in mid-AG, and in the Lyra arc in DP.

Now we just have a Treecko with some rival kid who might not even be a major character, and Torchic/Mudkip are nowhere to be seen.

Goodra learned Ice Beam

Well, apparently they are going to have a Torchic in this year's Pikachu short. But, yeah, I don't see how they couldn't get Brendan Birch to cameo either in the Mega Specials or in the recent Lumiose arc. He was in the intro to 4 movies, so it wouldn't have been that much of a stretch.

On that note, Serebii revealed that "Hoopa's Appear Plan" is a series of 1-minute shorts which seem to be the Legendaries' answer to Mairin's Mega Evolution reports. Given that Ash and Pikachu are also featured in them and they started now as opposed to after the movie, it has me leaning harder towards the Evil Twin theory I posited last night. EDIT: I don't see Hoopa making the effort to directly possess Ash if they're already doing stuff together. Granted, the canonicity of these shorts relative to the film could be dubious, but given the target demographic, I could see a great bit of confusion if the djinn that was seen traveling with Ash for 3 production months suddenly turned evil; Meowth's Heel Face Mole routine back in Best Wishes notwithstanding.

And I've often thought that the reason why we've gotten the Cerebus Syndrome that we have in XY^note Ash and Team Rocket retaining their intelligence, Ash getting a more overt Love Interest, and the creation of a faction of evil Pokemon wholecloth (though they aren't used as often as they could've been), is because the writers were told to Wrap It Up; the relative lack of ORAS promotion was likely tolerated because TPC already feels that the Anime has outlived its usefulness.

edited 23rd Apr '15 4:15:40 PM by DonaldthePotholer

Maybe it's time.

It's been running too long to be frank.

My personal hope is after the XY series is done they reboot with a new protagonist, a new cast, and maybe something resembling an actual plot.

The next series would probably follow the same formula, but I won't mind because Ash's story will end. Honestly if you told me back in 1998 that Ash would still be the main character of Pokemon nearly 20 years later and he still didn't win a single league I would have said you were out of your mind.

Wouldn't getting rid of Ash mean getting rid of Team Rocket? That didn't work the last time they tried that. Not to mention it would mean getting rid of Pikachu who is the franchise's mascot. …could they just replace him with another Pikachu?

edited 29th Apr '15 11:12:14 AM by WorldTurtle2

The game guys have hated Pikachu being the mascot for awhile now because for several games they more or less ignored it except as a random mon and the RS special Pikachu was something they were apparantly forced into doing.

So if the anime as it is really ditches everything, Pikachu could go to, with the new character main mon being the new popular mon of that generation.

Maybe this would mean Raichu could finally stop getting the shaft in the games?

@Donald: Seven-Year Rule. They're gonna do it again.

I think there's gonna be a long filler arc before they get to the next gen.

edited 28th Apr '15 5:46:38 AM by Psyga315

Keep dreaming, man. Unless they get an idea for a Mega Evolution for Raichu, might as well consider him unnotable. Worst part is that they still refuse to give him a decent natural learnpool.

Psyga: Milestones are more easily marketable than patterns. And, to date, the Anime's saga lengths were dictated by the games, not vice versa. In sum: The 7th generation will start next year because it's the 20th anniversary of the Franchise.

World Turtle: Getting rid of Ash and (his) Pikachu shouldn't mean getting rid of Team Rocket, just like changing the teams in Power Rangers didn't mean getting rid of Bulk and Skull. Then again, getting rid of May shouldn't have meant getting rid of Harley either.

Ash and Pikachu, on the other hand, are inseparably linked, the latter being the former's starter. And with the target demographic and its Necessary Weasels, (specifically Little Jimmy,) the necessity for Pikachu to always be in the series made Ash The Artifact, though Shudo felt that he was this from the start.

AJS: If you have any evidence to back your hypothesis, we may have a Franchise case of Creator's Pet here.

edited 28th Apr '15 5:14:30 PM by DonaldthePotholer

Like honestly, that's the only thing that ever bugged me about Pikachu. It's Wolverine Publicity never phased me, but the fact that Raichu could never been competitively viable just because of it sucks.