Takeshi Shudo's blogs (original anime head writer)

[precita]

For those who don't know who Takeshi Shudo is, he is a former chief writer of the anime up until the Johto series (the final episode he wrote was EP244). A while back Shudo made a novelization of the anime which was extra things on the anime that he couldn't fit in the series itself. This stuff has been posted on Bulbagarden and reviewed by Archaic (webmaster who speaks Japanese), over there, so this is all legit:

I am posting these here as I found them to have interesting things that I figured might interest some/most of you. Shudo's vision of the anime was very different to how it played out.

Takeshi Shudo's Novelization: http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/ ... on_tidbits

And here are Takeshi Shudo's blogs, tne entries were translated on a mod staff's website:

http://bmgf.bulbagarden.net/f228/takesh ... ogs-71914/

blog: http://www.freewebs.com/rocketshipper

Also interesting to note is if you read entry 2, it explains why Shudo and the other writers made the decision to remove Misty from the anime. They basically imply she was the "least justified" main character of the show, and the only reason Pokeshipping existed is it was an attempt to make her character interesting and appeal to girls. They also imply that she wasn't a good enough female protagonist, given she did very little on the show and they had no clue what to do with her. This correlates with the fact that she was permanently removed from the series, and bringing in May, Dawn, etc. after her as more active female protagonists.

Here is the direct quote about how the writers felt about Misty during the Johto days:

Out of all characters in the show , Kasumi's existence was the least justified. She was there to draw attention of girls, because anime with boys only would be "tasteless" for them.

And why she left the show. After the show got longer, there was a decline in ratings so they thought of changing something about the main characters and the villains.

Because justification of Kasumi's existence was the weakest, she was the most endangered to leave. He says that it wasn't like he wanted to substitute her, but they needed someone with fascinating personality, whose existence was neccessary. Also stated that Kasumi didn't have a good role as a female protagonist.

Also interesting to note is they were also considering having Team Rocket leave the anime at the end of Johto, but instead kept them around.

Even though Shudo unfortunately passed away a year or two ago, you can see how the writers viewed the anime at that time period. Its actually kind of interesting to see this "behind the scenes" stuff about the anime, I wish there was more of it.

 

[Toastie]

I kind of wish that Team Rocket had gone. The only time I actually liked them was at the start of the Unova saga, when they didn't care about Pikachu and were high-level TR operatives. When they returned to their pantomime-like ways, it forced me to stop watching the anime. I'd prefer it if there were antagonists who were good at their job and got caught up in Ash's adventures, maybe even integrating themselves into his life, posing as his rivals.

 

[precita]

I think the problem is the writers keep some characters for so long they become stale. Since the series was originally supposed to end after Kanto, that means Misty, Brock, and Team Rocket weren't intended to last for hundreds of episodes.

Once the show became such a success they had to create Orange Islands and continue into Johto and beyond, and since the characters they created were only for one generation, they got progressively worse with each passing saga.

Misty especially became so stale and one-dimensional in the Johto series. It felt like the writers didn't care for her at all. It now seems like the writers probably would have replaced her at the end of Orange Islands, its just that no new girls existed to replace her with at the time. Marina didn't exist till Crystal and I couldn't imagine Jasmine or Whitney on the main cast.

Brock, for some reason, lasted in the show for 13 years. In that timespan, his character faded away into the background more and more to the point where he felt like he had no purpose anymore but to explain Pokemon attacks.

Looking back at their characters now, both Misty and Brock feel like they were mishandled characters. Instead of having these great storylines, battles or character development, they had next to nothing and never really amounted to anything.

I almost feel as if Iris and Cilan are intended to fix the mistakes they made with Misty/Brock over the course of the anime.