Was this an attempt from the franchise to move away from Ash and Pikachu?This entire story feels bizarre like it is some piece of media from an alternate ongoing television series.
No, they were almost certainly using it as filler to the anime season, given its airdate and eventual determination as to where it sat in the series. The bare basic facts of the matter were they had established Ash and as he shared his name with the creator of Pokémon in Japan (essentially introducing kids to Pokémon still, despite the real man pulling away from directing his series), they were keeping him around to continue the weekly toy advert. But that doesn't mean they weren't allowed to explore other parts of the pokémon world, so long as it didn't actually interfere with Game Freak's lore.
>>59272849>fillerIt aired as a new year's special, it wasn't filling anything. Most years they just aired an older movie during these specials.
>>59272882>it was just filling time with pokémon content, it wasn't filling timeLooks to me like they were attempting to boost movie home video/dvd sales. No free movie, but a filler tv special instead. Still doesn't make my comments on the anime proper any less legitimate. Satoshi/Ash was established, they were going to ride him until he was an albatross (oldfags sperging the fuck out over Gen 7 once again adhering to a game plot and making Ash champ, before breaking tradition and not following a game plot and making him world champ, then retiring him and starting something new, tangentially related to the plot of SV, but not slavishly adhering to it or its characters). Mainly because in Japan, most people got the "watch 3 years of Pokémon, understand you've grown out the demo, even if you keep watching it" mentality vs western spergs of all spectrums seething in impotent rage because he didn't fuck the side-piece of the Gen or become champ in their manchld self-insert series, but did in the anime based off the games where the player canonically becomes the first ever champion of a region.
bump
>>59272947>Gen 7 once again adhering to a game plot and making Ash champThe teraleaks revealed that they had initially planned to have him lose the league in SM too, and that the decision to have him win had nothing to do with "but le game protag becomes champion so we literally have to make Ash one".
Feels like someone posted this topic not too long ago... whatever Legend of Thunder is fun, let's do it again.>>59272832I wouldn't blame anyone for thinking it feels like a long pilot episode. It has its own intro animation and song and draws its characters a liiitle more strongly than we're used to from this show. But I never had any problem leaving it as a one-off. Ash isn't the only traveling boy or girl in this setting, after all, and never was. And even if LoT WERE a pilot episode for a new series I doubt the show's creative horizons would have shifted. Ash/Misty/Brock are decently drawn at the start of Kanto too, but then they meander as the show does.>>59272947>(Please) Understand you've grown out of the demo, even if you keep watchingUgh, truly. The show couldn't make it any clearer, either.
>>59273027Uh-huh. the assumption was he'd lose, they turned tail when the game plot was finalised to no champion, but the player (requiring him to win). They didn't do anything but shill the games that are currently the lead of the Gen at that point. That included following the story of them in their advertisement of the newest additions to the series.>>59273061Well yeah, in fairness. It's part of an established framework of media works for Japanese people (kodomo, shonen/shojo, seinen/josei) and as such has clear progressional aspects (you're supposed to graduate to media more in line your age, or at least accept a series aimed at a younger demographic will not rise up with your graduation to the more advanced topics of the more age-appropriate media). That Japs understand it and people here can't tickles me greatly.
