Will Serena actually be in the sun and moon anime?

Dawn's "cameo" was basically just a ploy to sell more Piplup merchandise (and have Piplup 2.0, Oshawott, interact with it)

jjc927 said:

Having Ash randomly mention a former Pok?mon is different than bringing back a character that hasn't been on in many years. No matter what the target audience won't have the same connection to Misty that those of us who watched the original seasons will because they didn't watch the original series when it was first on.

Have they outright outlawed contests/showcases in Alola? They could just decide to have one if they decided to bring back Serena, Dawn, and May for a cameo. I do think they should include some cameos from Ash's past companions and rivals because it's the 20th season and nostalgia is still at a high level, but as others brought up the upcoming movie replacing Brock and Misty makes me worry that it won't happen.

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The Tauros Ash had in question haven't even appeared since... what, Johto? I'm pretty sure most kids of the current target audience would have as little clue as to what Ash is even talking about and have as little connection to them as humanly possible, meaning the reference would be utterly meaningless to them. And like I said, if they can catch up via reruns from old shows, watch the cartoons online via streaming services, and/or get boxed sets for past seasons, they most certainly can get caught up. Besides, they technically also had a May cameo in Sun & Moon (sort-of: her hairstyle made a cameo as a wig in a wig shop), and I'm doubtful the same audience would have any real idea of who she is, probably less than Misty. And besides, considering several of the kids in the target audience would probably have been young enough to have at the very least caught the tail-end of BW, they probably would have at least been familiar with Misty since she and Brock made a few cameos nearing the end of that saga.

So far as showcases/contests, considering they didn't even bother having Dawn do her goal when she appeared in Unova, even if it technically isn't outlawed, they most certainly didn't intend to have her actually do contests in her cameo, which points to the fact that they simply did not exist in Unova (in fact, Jessalina when ditching her outfit essentially implied that there won't be any contests, certainly not any in Unova, in DP after Dawn got runner up). It's the exact same deal with Serena, that showcases, contests, whatever you wish to call them, simply do not exist in Alola.

Don't get me wrong, I would love for Misty (and Brock and Gary, maybe Tracey) to get a cameo and it makes a lot of sense given the region and water Pok?mon, but I'm not too optimistic. It just doesn't seem like the Japanese producers care about her character. I think the best hope we have for seeing old characters return is if they do another series like Generations but featuring Ash's former companions and possibly rivals and former recurring characters that is online only and targeted more for longtime fans rather than target TV audience.

This has been talked about for like half a year now lmao.
Serena might come back.
She might not.
If the writers bring her back some people will be happy and appreciative, and some people will be annoyed saying that "Misty/Brock/Dawn should've come back" or "There's no reason for that character to come back omg she should focus on her own goal >:(" .

The writers really can't win on this one, and although I don't even watch the anime anymore so its not my concern, its still a bit odd to see people so divided over something that may or may not even happen. But that's the Pokémon anime I guess.

Well it is a topic of interest and something to speculate on. XY broke the string of the Pokegirl of the previous series making a cameo, but otherwise it's happened in every series. Serena was a polarizing but popular character and she was the only one that explicitly had a crush on Ash (it was implied Misty had feelings for him but she never really acted on them directly). You're right, she or someone else could come back or they won't and not everyone will be happy, but it is something interesting to think about and how they would fit in whoever cameos given the differences of Alola and this series compared to the past.

Like I said, it's unlikely, Sun & Moon seems to be focusing on the developing relationship between Ash and Lillie (they literally represent the sun and moon according to the intro). And Okemi Omode, who wrote quite a few of Serena's episodes, is now writing Lillie's episodes.

Gen 7 in general is heavily Lille-focused, and bringing Serena (or any old character for that matter) back would take spotlight away from Lillie.

Before you can answer this question you first have to analyze the circumstances at hand. Serena went to Hoen to train and compete in Contests(which are part performance and part battling). As far as we know, Alola has no such thing that would give her motivation or the writers a reason to bring her down there just for a Contest. You'd basically have to recycle old material that brought May back but take it up a notch by making it a Grand or Universal Coordinator Championship.

This Universal crown would basically encompass all regions for which Pokemon Contests take place(be it Kanto, Johto, Hoen, Sinnoh, etc.). Whomever wins it essentially becomes the Top Coordinator in the entire Pokemon realm(even surpassing Kalos Queen frankly). This would be the perfect vehicle to bring back not only Serena but May and Dawn(and all of their rivals). If Serena was to win something like that, talk about a prize waiting for Ash when he becomes a Pokemon Master?

To answer the question though: No I don't because you already have 3 Pokegirls. You don't need one more diluting the pool or sidetracking the plot just to appease a fan itch. I would like to see Brock come back though. Not only would I love to see him fawning over Lillie since she has a Vulpix(remember he cared for one) but he could go crazy since there's Mallow and Lana to consider too(before Croagunk brings him back to reality). Plus Brock has a school mechanism that could cause him to go on a field assignment to train.

CodeHelmet said:

Before you can answer this question you first have to analyze the circumstances at hand. Serena went to Hoen to train and compete in Contests(which are part performance and part battling). As far as we know, Alola has no such thing that would give her motivation or the writers a reason to bring her down there just for a Contest. You'd basically have to recycle old material that brought May back but take it up a notch by making it a Grand or Universal Coordinator Championship.

This Universal crown would basically encompass all regions for which Pokemon Contests take place(be it Kanto, Johto, Hoen, Sinnoh, etc.). Whomever wins it essentially becomes the Top Coordinator in the entire Pokemon realm(even surpassing Kalos Queen frankly). This would be the perfect vehicle to bring back not only Serena but May and Dawn(and all of their rivals). If Serena was to win something like that, talk about a prize waiting for Ash when he becomes a Pokemon Master?

To answer the question though: No I don't because you already have 3 Pokegirls. You don't need one more diluting the pool or sidetracking the plot just to appease a fan itch. I would like to see Brock come back though. Not only would I love to see him fawning over Lillie since she has a Vulpix(remember he cared for one) but he could go crazy since there's Mallow and Lana to consider too(before Croagunk brings him back to reality). Plus Brock has a school mechanism that could cause him to go on a field assignment to train.

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And let's not forget Dawn's reappearance in Best Wishes despite having literally nothing to do in her appearance relating to her goal, and we don't want them repeating that mistake. That's also a reason why Serena shouldn't appear at all in Alola (or May and Dawn, for that matter). It's already bad enough that Ash himself is essentially rudderless regarding his own goal of Pok?mon Master as it is thanks to changing up the structure of the games and him losing a league beforehand.

That said, the only Pokegirls I'd actually see plausibly returning beyond whether they simply were most recent are Misty and Iris. And the reason why is actually pretty simple: For Iris, since her goal of Dragon Pok?mon Master merely entails having a strong bond with various Dragon Types, she just needs to hunt down various Dragon Types in Alola, then capture them and try to bond with them. And she'd make an excellent teacher at the school regarding how to bond with Dragon Types, so her presence actually WOULD fit into the whole school theme of SM as well. And as far as Misty, other than the fact that this is the 20th anniversary of the series, the fact that the Alola region is more water than land actually makes it a natural fit for Misty and her goal of Water Pok?mon Master, essentially meaning that, if anything, her being in the region would do a lot more wonders to her actually focusing on her goal. Not to mention if the Whirl Islands are anything to go by, Alola would undoubtedly have something similar as well to the Whirl Cup, thus giving her yet another chance at fulfilling at the very least the battle aspects of her goal. And since it's also implied that studying water Pok?mon is also integral to becoming a Water Pok?mon Master, then similar to Iris, Misty would make a fine teacher for Water types at the school, which again would also fit in nicely with the school theme for Sun and Moon (and quite frankly, any one of those options would certainly benefit her goal far more than acting as a punching bag at Cerulean Gym due to her sisters ever would, and I prefer she actually pursue the goal she dreamed about before her sisters forced her to put it on the backburner.). They certainly won't hamper the plot unlike May, Dawn, and Serena, that much I can tell you.

I'll agree to Brock coming back for the field assignment aspect, since that actually would utilize a lot of potential from him. But not in regards to him flirting with the female cast, that would just come across as downright creepy since they're students. And besides, I wasn't exactly a big fan of his Glenn Quagmire-like qualities.

If they're going to push Lillie being attracted to Ash they could bring in Serena and/or Misty to have a jealousy/competition for Ash plot if they felt like it. As for Brock, he wouldn't flirt with Lillie or the other classmates. They're younger than him, and he never flirted with Misty, May, or Dawn.

A thought occurred to me that would be outright hilarious if Brock was to return. Namely Brock wouldn't have to flirt at all. Mallow would do it for him due to her Deredere archetype, which might cause Brock to get a taste of his own medicine from which even Croagunk doesn't even know what to do and would be a complete 180 from the old days where it's the girl fawning and not Brock.

To get back on topic, Serena is probably not going to return any time soon. I personally don't want to see her but her mother could make a special appearance though as a Rider Pokemon teacher(Ryhorn racing) where Ash could get an update as to Serena's whereabouts and progress. Outside of that, you'd basically have to put the primary show on hold just for Serena(which based on the number of filler Episodes tells me that it's not out of the realm of possibility).

I agree with Misty and Iris by the way.

Rad Dudesman said:

Like I said, it's unlikely, Sun & Moon seems to be focusing on the developing relationship between Ash and Lillie (they literally represent the sun and moon according to the intro). And Okemi Omode, who wrote quite a few of Serena's episodes, is now writing Lillie's episodes.

Gen 7 in general is heavily Lille-focused, and bringing Serena (or any old character for that matter) back would take spotlight away from Lillie.

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I don't see where they are working on Ash and Lillie's relationship where they barely interacted in almost 33 episodes... they only interacted in SM008 and a bit in SM030 while Serena and Ash had already their backstory and more interactions in like 7 episodes , if your dream is to see Ash and Lillie's relationship pushed like Ash and Serena one , you can go back to sleep, Pokemon is a kid show and it's not about romance, Serena was already a bit pushed too hard imo and it was not made to have the exact same thing one year later. They are working on LILLIE'S STORY and her character but not on her relationship with Ash.

If you like Ash and Lillie pairing that's fine but don't act like they are working on it since there's like 0 interactions and they just switched Pokemon one time, even Lana and Mallow have way more moments with Ash.

Now it's not like Akemi Omode also wrote non-Serena episodes in XY... Tomioka also wrote the biggest Serena's episodes in XY while he was supposed to focus on the main story, Ash's gym battles and Ash's development episodes, Omode can easily work on Lillie's story and then write some episodes about Serena whatever if it's special episodes or cameo's episodes.... It's not like she doesn't know how to write Serena.

BanFairy said:

I don't see where they are working on Ash and Lillie's relationship where they barely interacted in almost 33 episodes... they only interacted in SM008 and a bit in SM030 while Serena and Ash had already their backstory and more interactions in like 7 episodes , if your dream is to see Ash and Lillie's relationship pushed like Ash and Serena one , you can go back to sleep, Pokemon is a kid show and it's not about romance, Serena was already a bit pushed too hard imo and it was not made to have the exact same thing one year later. They are working on LILLIE'S STORY and her character but not on her relationship with Ash.

If you like Ash and Lillie pairing that's fine but don't act like they are working on it since there's like 0 interactions and they just switched Pokemon one time, even Lana and Mallow have way more moments with Ash.

Now it's not like Akemi Omode also wrote non-Serena episodes in XY... Tomioka also wrote the biggest Serena's episodes in XY while he was supposed to focus on the main story, Ash's gym battles and Ash's development episodes, Omode can easily work on Lillie's story and then write some episodes about Serena whatever if it's special episodes or cameo's episodes.... It's not like she doesn't know how to write Serena.

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If they wanted to canonize Amourshipping, they would have done it in, say, the date episode by actually having it stick as a date, or even the dance episode by having him and Serena actually dance with each other. They obviously didn't, not even with the XY finale, since Ash STILL was largely oblivious to her romantic feelings for him.

Either way, even if we are to ignore the shipping elements, there's other problems posed right now with Alola. Namely, there aren't any contests to speak of in Alola, and even if there were, there needs to be exceptional circumstances to have Serena leave in the middle of her trek in Hoenn to go to Alola. At least with May when she reappeared in DP, she was largely motivated by the Wallace Cup, which had a transregional ribbon to justify her being in Sinnoh. Alola and Unova didn't even have contests, much less something like the Wallace Cup, to justify Dawn reappearing in Best Wishes, much less having Serena appear in Alola for Sun and Moon.

weedle_mchairybug said:

If they wanted to canonize Amourshipping, they would have done it in, say, the date episode by actually having it stick as a date, or even the dance episode by having him and Serena actually dance with each other. They obviously didn't, not even with the XY finale, since Ash STILL was largely oblivious to her romantic feelings for him.

Either way, even if we are to ignore the shipping elements, there's other problems posed right now with Alola. Namely, there aren't any contests to speak of in Alola, and even if there were, there needs to be exceptional circumstances to have Serena leave in the middle of her trek in Hoenn to go to Alola. At least with May, she was largely motivated by the Wallace Cup, which had a transregional ribbon to justify her being in Sinnoh. Alola and Unova didn't even have contests, much less something like the Wallace Cup to justify Dawn reappearing in Best Wishes, much less having Serena appear in Alola.

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Huh ? I never talked about Amourshipping being canon, read my post , I just said that they will never push Ash and Lillie's relationship like Ash and Serena's relationship was pushed and that SM IS NOT promoting Ash and Lillie's relationship because they barely interacted, even Lana and Mallow have more moments with Ash for now, of course Amourshipping is not canon lmao but no one Alola shippings will top Amourshipping because Pokemon don't want the show to be focused on romance 2 generations in a row.
(Ash and Serena also had a lot of merchandise together like posters, their first poster was released in February 2014... Lillie and Ash I'm still waiting)

Now , of course there's no contests in Alola and for me Serena won't come back but if the writers really want Serena to be back because of some factors (popularity/fanservice/merchandises to sell or others reasons) they'll find something to make her go to Alola don't worry about it, Dawn came back just to promote Pipplup after all.

BanFairy said:

Huh ? I never talked about Amourshipping being canon, read my post , I just said that they will never push Ash and Lillie's relationship like Ash and Serena's relationship was pushed and that SM IS NOT promoting Ash and Lillie's relationship because they barely interacted, even Lana and Mallow have more moments with Ash for now, of course Amourshipping is not canon lmao but no one Alola shippings will top Amourshipping because Pokemon don't want the show to be focused on romance 2 generations in a row.
(Ash and Serena also had a lot of merchandise together like posters, their first poster was released in February 2014... Lillie and Ash I'm still waiting)

Now , of course there's no contests in Alola and for me Serena won't come back but if the writers really want Serena to be back because of some factors (popularity/fanservice/merchandises to sell or others reasons) they'll find something to make her go to Alola don't worry about it, Dawn came back just to promote Pipplup after all.

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Not saying that SM was promoting any ships between Ash and Lillie (the only potentially shippy aspect I can actually think of is Lana when she turned neon red and denied it in an erratic manner at the insinuation that she has a crush on Ash from what I saw of a .GIF on one of the Deviantart journals). Just saying that Amourshipping isn't likely to be canon, period (they would have made it canon a long time ago if they wanted it to be that).

So far as her return, honestly, my idea is, if they are already on a goal that requires traveling through a region to collect trinkets for a competition, that they WEREN'T forced out of anyways, they should focus on that goal, meaning they don't actually revisit the region if it interrupts their goal. In other words, they really shouldn't have brought Dawn back at all, not even with Piplup. At least with Misty and Togepi, she was pretty much forced out of her goal by her sisters anyways, so I could tolerate it. Let me put it another way: Ash doesn't interrupt his own goal of becoming a Pok?mon Master and his journey in a current region to visit friends in Kanto or some other region, why should his friends do so for him?

Never said anything about shipping.

But the reason for that is because they have something bigger planned for Lillie later down the road. She's the "main" companion for Sun/Moon, the rest are just supporting characters.

Hopefully serena never returns. I rather see Dawn come back for Sinnoh reference. And no, lillie is not the main companion of SM.

Alexander18 said:

Hopefully serena never returns. I rather see Dawn come back for Sinnoh reference. And no, lillie is not the main companion of SM.

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She is. She gets significantly more focus than the rest, there's a lyric in the opening song that's specifically about her, and she's used to represent the moon while Ash is used to represent the sun. And she's in the ending as well, doing Z-Move poses with Ash and Team Rocket. On top that, she's the only character other than Ash with her own text color, everyone else just has white text.

She's the deuteragonist (second most important character) of SM, just like previous main girls.

Alexander18 said:

Hopefully serena never returns. I rather see Dawn come back for Sinnoh reference. And no, lillie is not the main companion of SM.

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Dawn has no good reason to comeback and besides she wasn't that great. Serena really doesn't need to have a cameo re-appearance, she had enough time on the show when she was with Ash. The writer's didn't even try to do more with her crush on Ash, the only time they actually did do try to do something with her crush on Ash is when they had her kiss him good bye (off-screen since they didn't actually show it due to the show being aim at a younger audience.) But anyways i doubt Serena will be coming back for a cameo's during the SM anime.

Rad Dudesman said:

She is. She gets significantly more focus than the rest, there's a lyric in the opening song that's specifically about her, and she's used to represent the moon while Ash is used to represent the sun. And she's in the ending as well, doing Z-Move poses with Ash and Team Rocket. On top that, she's the only character other than Ash with her own text color, everyone else just has white text.

She's the deuteragonist (second most important character) of SM, just like previous main girls.

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I don't think so. She never be a main companion because she has not earned the right.

Piii said:

Dawn has no good reason to comeback and besides she wasn't that great. Serena really doesn't need to have a cameo re-appearance, she had enough time on the show when she was with Ash. The writer's didn't even try to do more with her crush on Ash, the only time they actually did do try to do something with her crush on Ash is when they had her kiss him good bye (off-screen since they didn't actually show it due to the show being aim at a younger audience.) But anyways i doubt Serena will be coming back for a cameo's during the SM anime.

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Dawn does actually if they want to reference sinnoh and possible remakes. As for serena, she definitely won't be back. I don't a character with a crush to be on the show ever again. That off screen kiss still ruin her character.

Alexander18 said:

I don't think so. She never be a main companion because she has not earned the right.



Dawn does actually if they want to reference sinnoh and possible remakes. As for serena, she definitely won't be back. I don't a character with a crush to be on the show ever again. That off screen kiss still ruin her character.

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Dawn is not coming to the show and there is no reason for her to return. The reason why they brought her back for Unova was to promote the Piplup line, and we don't need to see a repeat of that ever again. I do agree Serena's off screen kiss was kinda pointless, since the writer's didn't try to take it any further then that.