I get the feeling that Gen 7's gonna be a short one. :( Between the lack of Event Pokémon and GF already announcing that they're working on a Switch game, I wouldn't be surprised if we were already staring down the barrel of Gen 8 by 2018.
To be fair, there's still the possibility of remakes, but yeah.
Not sure if this is how things had been planned all along, or if Nintendo may have pushed GF to finish Gen 7 early and get to work on Gen 8 because of the Switch coming out. As you said, it would've made sense to have Ash Hat Pikachu be Movie 20's Event, do a new movie with Marshadow in 2018, and then move on to Gen 8 in 2019. The snail's pace that the SM anime is moving at also suggests that it was not in the original plan to finish Gen 7 so early.
We'll see. I find it suspicious myself that Nintendo would do something like that, especially when the Switch is a console system, while Pokémon's more in the handheld territory. And yeah, Ash has got... what, 2 out of 11 trials done? Possibly 3 by Movie 20 if that mini manga is to be believed?
Really? This is news to me. o_O
At least... that's what allthingsmisty seems to believe.
I completely agree with you on the random Gen 4 Pokémon, especially Lucario. That thing gets enough promotion and attention as it is, and it almost gets shoved down our throats worse than the likes of Charizard and Mewtwo. At least those two have the excuse of being icons from the Pokémania Era.
Yeah. I'm willing to understand it if it was due to trying to promote remakes of the series, but even there... to do that in the 20th anniversary film?
Guess that means May's gone for good, then? I'm no fan of her, but that's still kind of sad and yet another example of the horrible way this show treats past characters. :(
Not fond of May either, and yeah, it's pretty bad that the show treats past characters like they are nothing, heck, less than nothing even (even COTDs get more love than past leads). Still, at least she had it easy compared to Misty. At least she's actually continuing to pursue her goal of becoming Top Coordinator, while Misty's pretty much forced out of her goal of Water Pokémon Master by her sisters (I will never forgive the writers for that).
Ive said it before, but if they were smart, they should've ended Ash's story in Johto and moved on to new protagonists after that. A lot of Johto's own filler and pacing problems stemmed from the fact that it had no storyline or endpoint to work towards (especially once the GS Ball was dropped), and the way that the original characters were all either dropped without closure (Misty) or stagnated into hollow shells of themselves (Ash, Brock, TRio) also makes a case for wrapping up their stories in Johto and giving them good send-offs.
To be fair, even Brock at least got SOMETHING out of his goal in Johto with that breeder convention, which is a whole lot better than what he got in AG and DP. And even Ash managed to actually improve in Johto, even face off and beat his rival Gary. That's certainly much better than in AG/BW, where he managed to either just make it to the same rank as before (which, alongside cheapening his one major accomplishment in AG both immediately afterward and during DP with Paul handing Ash's Pikachu his butt twice, the latter time via what was essentially a rookie Pokémon, and reusing May's goal for Dawn, rendered AG to be little more than an extremely pointless Filler saga) or do even WORSE than before, or DP/XY, where they find some cheap way to snatch his victory away even while technically doing better than before, thus circumventing any development he had in the region (and I'd argue that XY was even worse due to the sheer pointlessness behind the loss due to SM lacking any league at all. At least with DP and it screwing Ash over back then, BW did still have a league).
In fact, I've read that the original plan was to end Ash's story in Johto, likely dropped when RS were announced. The controversy over what happened with Brock/Tracey probably made them scared to retire Ash in favor of a new protagonist in Hoenn, although that still didn't stop them from chucking Misty in favor of May. >_>
Well, that would certainly explain why they decided to have Ash and Gary face off in the league. And yeah, chucking Misty in favor of May was just bad, not to mention HOW they did so. I could forgive that, and even how they characterized May, if they at least had Misty actually continue to pursue her goal. But, no! Instead of letting Misty pursue her goal, they unceremoniously dumped her at Cerulean Gym, and based on her last appearance in AG, she wanted to leave the gym and Daisy pretty much threatened to hand out badges. And what's worse, they had plenty of golden opportunities to bring Misty in, including the Pokémon World Conference from B2W2 and actually RECTIFY that bit, yet they completely blew them over every single dang time.
And honestly, I would have taken a replacement for Ash in Hoenn, or heck, actually mentoring Brendan, if it also meant not making the contest thing overly focused-on (especially when doing Contests was more of a side-mission than something actually required to beating the game, unlike gyms and the Pokémon League).
They chucked Misty because they had to choose between her or the Team Rocket trio.
Yeah, and quite frankly, that turned out to be a mistake, due to their grossly mishandling them afterwards by making them extremely pathetic and a mere annoyance than a true threat (and even when they do it in BW, they went overboard in the opposite direction). I mean, honestly, even the likes of Farousch, Gaston, Marina del Rey and Ratcliffe from Disney actually DID come across as genuine threats when the time came compared to JJM during AG and DP, and they were probably among the worst Disney villains ever in terms of writing and characterization.
Bit surprised they didn't even bother to consider axing Brock, though, since he barely did anything in that region, even relating to breeding, which was introduced as a gameplay mechanic in Generation II. Had it been me, I'd probably ax Brock just because they failed to use him for breeding, and thus was useless there.
