What would you change?

As the title of the thread suggests, what would you change if you had input into the creation of the Pokémon anime? Could be anything, such as plot, animation, voice actors, OST, basically anything related to the anime.

I'll start!
One thing I'd change right now is the development of the plot in the World Coronation Series. I have a fun little headcanon where Cynthia beats Ash and goes on to beat Leon in the final round so she can retire on top, afterwards Ash and Leon would have their own battle in an empty field away from the excitement of a packed arena in a battle without the expectation of titles.
While this Shonen trope ending doesn't seem like it would fit the bill of what the writers want to do, it's still a fun thought to play around with.

What are things you would change? Let's hear it below! :)

One thing I would change is the passage of time. It is obvious they wanted to follow real time in the Original Series given the timing of every episode. From being ghost filled around Halloween and Brock complaining about the end of Summer and how much time had passed.

I would not do that 100%. I would allow time to pass, but maybe not 20+ years. Maybe at most 5 years before Kalos. When Kalos game out, it was obvious that Ash was not supposed to be that annoying 10 year old again. He looked older and went through things older kids would go through. Even though they didn't out right say it.

I'd try my best to follow the canon timeline and Pokemon Original and Gold and Silver taking place in about 2 years. Hoenn and Sinnoh would be two years and then Unova being a full year, going through every season at least once. Which would put Ash at about 15 by Kalos. Alola would be a very short period of time, maybe about 3 or 4 months. And then Journeys would probably taking a few months. We see snow in Vermilion City. So Alola would possibly be Spring and Summer while Journeys is Autumn and Winter.

For me, Unova was a soft reset, but I think it was just more so that Ash was just super excited to be in another part of the world and not just a flight or boat ride from his home. And while they never said it and we only have the Kanto/Unova 10 year old thing, he was older in Hoenn, Sinnoh and Kalos. (Especially Kalos because they aren't going to put a 10 year old through what he had to deal with in the Flare Arc.)

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My other change, if not the above would be to follow the Manga a bit closer. Where Team Rocket and the other evil teams and legendries were an actual threat. Have lasting impact on the region and not just skim over it. Ash should be well known through every region he has been to. Journies did this a bit more. Even Hoenn, Ash was a bit more well known.

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Some smaller things is that I would have let Ash catch more pokemon or reuse some of his older pokemon in Journeys to actually train them and not treat them like Goh treats his pokemon. As if they are nothing after the original thought.

I would have also allowed Ash to catch more shiny pokemon or other specially colored pokemon. I think is Lucario should have been a shiny given that we have so many other Lucarios in the anime.

The first thing that I would have done was get rid of Ash after the first season. I would have written that Ash won his first Pokémon League challenge much like his in-game counterpart Red instead of losing for over 20 years. After that, I would have replaced Ash as the main protagonist with another character based upon the next generation's video game protagonist. For example, the Johto league season would have starred Gold/Ethan instead of Ash and his female traveling companion would be the female character that players could select in Crystal, whose name I forgot. The next season that takes place in the Hoenn region would star Brendan and May traveling together, then Lucas and Dawn, and you get the idea. Ash would still be relevant in the anime, as the other protagonists would look up to him as a living legend and Pokémon master. Ash would still make appearances in some episodes here and there and appear in the movies to help the other heroes win the major battles that could potentially save the world and help other Pokémon. I also would put more emphasis on the villain teams associated with each region rather than have Team Rocket follow the heroes and get blasted off every episode. In other words, if the pen was in my hand, the Pokémon series would look a lot more like a more fleshed out Pokémon Generations instead of what we have now.

I'd like to go back in time and restore the 4kids actors and writers, but I'm old.

Nikita Dracovish said:

I'd like to go back in time and restore the 4kids actors and writers, but I'm old.

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I agree. I think they did a really good job.

All I'd change is cutting out half of Diamond and Pearl's filler between the 7th and 8th gym. The Grand Festival can stay the way it is. But, the rest of the filler has to go. I'd shorten the gap to maybe ~20 episodes instead of 52 between badges. I'd do the same for that big filler arc in Johto. I don't remember what parts of Johto had major blocks of filler, but I'd delete most, if not all of them.

In terms of non-filler, I'd have Ash catch Hippopotas in the Sinnoh season. I really wanted him to catch it when I was a kid. It saddens me to this day he never did catch him.