Genshiken info aside, I’m not one to write “breaking news” posts, but I had to report this: Mewtwo will be making its return in the new Pokemon movie, titled Divine Speed (Extremespeed) Genesect and the Rival of Mewtwo.
I still consider the first Pokemon movie to be the best one by far, and a great deal of it had to do with how powerful Mewtwo is as an antagonist and as a complex character in general. In other words, I’m now looking more forward to a Pokemon movie than I have in a long time. The made-for-TV followup, Mewtwo Lives (aka Mewtwo Returns) is also quite good in its own right. In case you never saw it, the conclusion was that Mewtwo basically becomes Batman.
I originally thought that they would have Mewtwo make a return for the Deoxys movie a few years back, as both were powerful psychic beings, but it didn’t happen. That said, Genesect may be a better counterpart for Mewtwo. In the story of the games, Genesect is an ancient Pokemon that was biologically altered by Team Plasma, which makes the genetically-engineered Mewtwo fit well into the story.
Mewtwo has also had an incredible voice actor in all of his previous appearances, theatre actor Ichimura Masachika. Ichimura is probably most famous as the original Japanese Phantom of the Opera, and I hope he’s back for the new movie. If you’re wondering what he sounds like as Mewtwo, he voiced the character in Super Smash Bros. Melee. If you turn on the Japanese mode, you can hear his spoken lines when you win as Mewtwo.
I’ll leave off with some trivia. Did you know that not only is the main antagonist of the first Pokemon movie (Mewtwo) is voiced by the original Japanese Phantom of the Opera, but that the second movie’s antagonist (Gelardan) is voiced by the original Japanese Jean Valjean?
Today marks the 5-Year Anniversary of Ogiue Maniax. That’s quite a big milestone I think, especially when I consider that it’s probably the longest I’ve ever actively stuck to something, but because I actually reflect on where I’ve been as a blogger and where I might go every year, I find myself not knowing really what to say that I haven’t said before. So, I’ve decided that maybe rather than just reminiscing on being a blogger, I would kind of talk about my pre-history of blogging, pretty much how I came to be active in communicating on the internet with fans and such, and how I strongly believe those experiences shaped much of how I write and approach anime. I’ve talked about some of these things in part before, so those who’ve been reading a while may see some familiar things, but I hope you’ll be entertained anyway.
My very first experience with online fando came shortly after purchasing my video game ever: NiGHTS into dreams…. I remember saying to myself at the time, “I must be the only NiGHTS fan out there!” based on how none of my friends even mentioned it, so I was pleasantly shocked to find out that there were communities dedicated to the game, even sites where people wrote fanfiction based on the universe. And so I hung on those early messageboards, things that didn’t even have the luxury of sub-boards and convenient categorizations, and it’s where I first learned about what it means to communicate online. I made a lot of friends then, both older and younger than me, and while I don’t really talk to them anymore I do cherish those times. Amidst the webrings and such I learned how big the world is. I was actually amazed that I could communicate with people from the UK!
My next big steps in terms of internet community went hand in hand: anime and Pokemon. With anime, I of course visited the Anime Web Turnpike and tried to read through every single site with the naive notion that if I did I could learn about every anime in existence. I mean, how many could there be? Though that was a fool’s errand, my pursuit of knowledge of anime is still of a similar sort, which I think shows in my writing. With Pokemon too, I can draw a clear line to where I am today as a blogger, firstly because discussions of the anime back when it first came out were filled with everyone’s wild hopes and speculations and theories, but secondly because a lot of my Pokemon community experience was on the competitive side.
There were the war stories,” entertaining recaps of Pokemon battles you’d had both online and off, where you had to take a rather dry text log consisting of “Pokemon used Attack! It’s Super Effective!” and spice it up into something more engaging. And then there were the strategy discussions, where we rated each others’ teams and discussed the pros and cons of various strategies. By engaging in those discussions, I think I laid some of the early groundwork for some of my more argument-oriented posts today. Obviously I was less experienced then in terms of conveying my ideas, but I remember wanting to present my ideas not only intelligently but also in an entertaining and accessible manner.
The amount of forums I interacted on grew and shrunk depending on various circumstances, but that idea of writing for fellow forum readers stuck with me throughout. It’s the reason I cannot truly accept the idea that the internet fosters idiocy in its communities: I know in my heart that my writing style was forged on internet forums, and I strongly believe that I benefited immensely from these interactions, and not only because it influenced the way I write.
So that’s “Early, Early Pre-Ogiue Maniax.” What you see from me in all of my posts on Ogiue Maniax comes from years of getting into spirited but (hopefully) good-natured arguments with people on a variety of nerdish topics. In fact, the reason why I ended up wanting a blog (and started participating less on other sites) was that I would frequently write forum responses which I felt argued really good points about a certain topic, but it would forever be confined to just that small community. I wanted to write about ideas and thoughts I had on my own terms.
Actually, in writing this mainly internet-oriented summary, I realize that I’m leaving out all of the real life development I had at the time as well. Around the same time, I discovered friends in school who had as much if not more interest in games and anime as I did, and I think the combination of both friends who understood me well (and are still friends with me today) as well as enriching internet communication actually worked together to help instill in me some confidence as to who I am and what I love. Still, it wouldn’t be until many years later that I would truly have faith in my abilities, and though they weren’t around all the way back then, I still feel a need to thank those who support me today.
In a recent video interview by Marcus “djWHEAT” Graham about the world of eSports, djWHEAT espouses his beliefs on how eSports can grow, and that in defiance to the doom and gloom that surrounds declining numbers in games such as Starcraft II there is steady growth in both the idea of video games as sport as well as streaming. One of the frequent criticisms I see from people towards djWHEAT’s philosophy is that for most people, eSports as a whole doesn’t matter, and that if their game is the one that’s doing worse, then little else matters because they are not going to jump ship to another game just because. However, I feel that this view is something of a shortsighted misunderstanding on djWHEAT’s viewpoint, and one that limits itself not only to an unfortunate a favored game vs. an evil usurper context, but to an ephemeral present too narrow in scope.
When I hear djWHEAT talk about how the growth of one game can benefit eSports as a whole, and that people leaving Starcraft II for League of Legends or other games is not such a bad thing, I do not interpret it as this idea that the games don’t matter, that they’re just interchangeable within this structure of the competitive gaming scene. Rather, it has more to do with increasing the presence of eSports as a concept to the point that it gets as close to a commonly understood idea as possible, not just among gamers but among non-gamers as well. While one can argue that there will always be economic limitations to how much eSports can grow, this does not mean that there is a limit on growth in terms of exposure and acceptance. The more people know about competitive gaming, whether that’s through friends or family, or seeing matches online, or through playing the games themselves, or even just from a random guy on the street, the greater the opportunity for eSports to never truly fade away.
The scene might wane. It might become a fraction of what it was. However, establishing a cultural foothold by just having enough people positively experience eSports through games—whether it’s Starcraft, Street Fighter, DOTA, Pokemon, or something else—creates a mental and emotional connection more difficult to take away than money and eyeballs. If we look at Japanese anime, for example, there are certain titles (again, such as Pokemon) which, regardless of how you judge their quality, made the idea of anime simply better known and more acceptable to a wider range of people than just an existing hardcore fanbase.
I find that djWHEAT’s vision is one for the future beyond the myopic squabbling we see now, one where the ground is more fertile for the potential growth of new eSports-capable video games in a way which does indeed benefit everyone. Let’s say for the sake of argument that Starcraft II is fated to die out in a year, that it is on a downward and unrecoverable spiral. In light of this scenario, I want to give two alternate realities where this could be happening: one is where Starcraft II is the only game in town, the only game people consider competitive in any way, and the other is where Starcraft II is but a fraction of a complex milieu of a society in which eSports is known and accepted.
In the first, when Starcraft II goes, so too does the notion of competitive gaming, and if ever some game developer wanted to make their own Starcraft, they would have to start from scratch in more ways than one. People would see Starcraft as an anomaly, something which fell with no viable alternatives, and the creators of this new game would have to convince people all over again that this was a worthwhile notion, that people enjoy spectating games just as much as they enjoy playing them, and that there are positives to creating a competitive video game for the benefit of viewers.
In the second, on the other hand, when Starcraft II dies out, the notion that competitive gaming is viable would still be part of the public consciousness. It may not have ended up working for this particular title due to some combination of reasons, but future game developers could look at it and ask, “Where did it go right, and where did it go wrong?” When they go to try and get funding and support, they can point to other games which have been successful, games which companies might even already know about as eSports, and say, “We know what mistakes Starcraft II made and we can adjust accordingly. And, as you well know, there are plenty of examples of this model working.”
In both cases, there is a chance for a new and better spiritual successor to appear and grab all of the fans who once supported that game, but where in the first reality a single company would have to struggle just to introduce the idea of competitive gaming, in the second reality the notion of eSports would be accepted enough that there wouldn’t just be one company trying to create the next Starcraft (or any game of your choice), but five or maybe even ten companies, all eager to re-capture and even improve upon the things that made it so widely viewed and adored in the first place. The potential would not only always be there, but it would be so visible that it would continuously inspire game creators, as well as players, casters, everyone, to seize that opportunity.
Essentially, what djWHEAT is advocating when he says that the growth of one eSport is beneficial to all is not simply the product of a “let’s all get along” mentality. Instead, it is based on the idea that the more “eSports” becomes a solid concept in people’s minds through exposure, the better chance future games and gamers will have of fostering and being fostered by that positive environment, an environment which benefits all competitive games past, present, and future, whether a game’s life span is 50 days or 50 years.
As an avid watcher of professional Starcraft I constantly hear of all the strengths and weaknesses of various video games as spectator sports. Starcraft, for instance, has tons of strategic depth and is also visually clear in many ways, but often times the complexity of a given player’s battle plan requires a commentator to explain it in detail, and differentiations in individual army units can be confusing for someone who’s never had experience with similar games. Compare this with soccer, where “kick ball into goal” is clear as day, or even fighting games, where life bars and graphical depictions of punches and kicks tell the story. So with all eSports, one issue is always, how far removed is the game from reality? If it’s too abstracted then it becomes a game mainly for the devoted or hardcore, which is fine, but spectatorship is the question here.
This got me to thinking, what about Pokemon? While Pokemon is pretty far-removed both in terms of its menu-based gameplay and the sheer number of Pokemon and attacks and the complex rock-paper-scissors chart that makes up the 17 types, I wonder if Pokemon can get around all of this by just being so internationally famous that a possible majority of people under a certain age have had some experience with Pokemon, be it through the video games or the anime or their friends/relatives telling them about how Rock beats Flying. If it’s a common-enough experience, then maybe there’s not as much immediate need for realism or explanation.
On top of that, Pokemon has always been quite robust when it comes to strategy, to the extent that not only have there been multiple tournaments over the years (see the recent Pokemon Video Game Championships for example), but there have been a number of sites dedicated to exploring strategy and tactics in Pokemon, whether that’s Smogon or predecessors such as Azure Heights. These forums manage to bring together the very young up to people well into their adulthoods.
Granted, there are a number of drawbacks and setback that could stifle Pokemon as eSport despite its popularity and penetration. The first is that it’s likely Nintendo would never entirely support a competitive Pokemon scene which fuels people’s salaries, especially because part of the appeal and atmosphere in Pokemon has to do with empowering players to feel strong and special and to bond with the Pokemon they catch and train. Ideally, a competitive version would just allow you to customize your Pokemon (and there have been online simulators over the years which allow this), but I doubt Nintendo would ever approve of such a thing themselves. The second problem is that Pokemon’s strategy and difficulty is purely in the mind, whether that’s coming up with ideas on the fly or memorizing statistics, and while plenty of games have those elements the fact that Pokemon is turn-based means there is no physical rigor involved. No one will mention someone’s fabulous micromanagement. No one will be impressed by 400 APM (actions per minute) when the game really only takes 1 APM.
In any case, while I’m not terribly optimistic of Pokemon Battling becoming a career, I still would like to think that some day there may be a game that is so commonly known that it’s a matter of course for it to enter a competitive realm accepted by many. I mean, more than League of Legends even.
I guess the only thing to leave you is an actual competition video of Pokemon, to see what people think.
C: The Money of Soul and Possibility Control is a show that can ostensibly be described as Wall Street meets Pokemon. “Investors” are summoned to a mysterious “Financial District” where they use powered assistants called “Assets” to fight and take each others’ money. As I am not really familiar with how actual stocks and investing work, I cannot tell you how accurate the flow of money is within the show, other than to say that I looked up the word “mezzoflation” and that is definitely some made up mumbo jumbo original to C.
But when I think about it, what percentage of the population actually knows in great detail the ins and outs of stock exchange? We go on the news and hear about “NASDAQ rising” this or the “Nikkei Index” falling that, and while the information is out there for people to learn, it is so many levels removed from how people traditionally think of how to make money (i.e. perform a service and get paid for it) that it all begins to sound like some elaborate game involving smoke and mirrors and maybe juggling clowns.
Maybe I’m just an idiot when it comes to finances but with the sheer complexity and mystery of how the world’s finances work, it feels like a nation’s wealth might as well be decided by a Pokemon Battle, instead of the convoluted web that exists in reality.
I’ve recently been talking to an old friend in the competitive Pokemon community, and I was surprised to find out that he and other people I knew from back in the day were still playing competitively. In fact, a bunch of them are going to the Pokemon Video Game Championships this year in Indiana, and though I definitely can’t make it, it’s kind of re-lit the fire in me to do something with Pokemon, especially when I’ve seen what he’s been up to.
Known in the Pokemon communiy as Fish, his team is the one on top, if you want to see some intense and exciting turn-based combat.
At the very least, I want to have a well-conceived team or two around in case anyone wants to battle me. I don’t know how long it’ll take me, especially because I haven’t even opened my copy of Pokemon Black yet, but I think it’ll be a worthwhile endeavor.
I definitely want to use Durant, as I’ve been waiting for an ant Pokemon since the original games.
Thinking back on my years of playing Pokemon, I began to reminisce about the original RBY era and its competitive scene. I talked a little bit about RBY-style battling here, but I’m not sure if my description did it justice in terms of how unique RBY battling turned out to be, relative to subsequent generations of Pokemon. RBY was the era where the only way to cure a status ailment was through the use of Rest, when every Pokemon could have all of its stats maxed out to their personal best. The result was a game where Pokemon were neither overly frail nor excessively defensive.
The best example I can think of is a scenario where one player is switching in a weakened Rhydon on a weakened, paralyzed Alakazam. Alakazam could have predicted a switch and thrown out a Thunder Wave to paralyze the incoming Pokemon, but because Rhydon is immune to electric attacks, it can effectively block the Thunder Wave and avoid its paralyzing effects. From there, a fight which would normally be won by Alakazam’s superior speed and nasty Psychic attack has a different consequence, as paralysis reduces Alakazam’s speed by 75%, well below Rhydon’s, and so now Rhydon has the first shot, and its superior attack does tremendous damage to Alakazam’s poor defenses, possibly to the point of knocking it out. But if Alakazam decides to switch out, Rhydon can throw down a Substitute for 1/4 of its health to take damage for it while it Earthquakes from a safe position. The permanency of paralysis is key here, as in later generations status ailments can simply be whisked away by the effects of moves such as Heal Bell and Aromatherapy.
RBY was by no means a balanced game in terms of diversity. Only about 10-15 Pokemon were considered viable for competition (barring Mewtwo and Mew, who were usually banned due to being way, way, way too good), but it had a certain kind of intensity that wasn’t quite present in later games, and it’s something I wouldn’t mind coming back, though I know it’ll never happen.
When people lament changes in sequels despite the fact that the original game’s system was the result of various limitations and oversights, I can relate to knowing that something is unreasonable and yet still feeling that it’s right. I’m not going to talk down the other generations of Pokemon Battling, though. There’s always a special place in my heart for that original 151, but I still look forward to having fun with a list that is now 646 creatures long.
As I get set to return to the United States this month, almost a year since I left, I remember my birthday, where I received a copy of Anne of Green Gables. After that, I never managed to read the whole way through, which is something I’m trying to correct now, but rather than feeling any sort of guilt over not reading it all, it makes me reflect on how my habits have changed from being in a different environment.
In New York, I have the most convenient reason in the world to read a ton: the subway. Commuting to Manhattan takes up a good half-hour to an hour (or more) depending on where you come from, and it’s the perfect opportunity to catch up on manga, to read a novel, to draw, and in my younger days, to do homework. Had I still been living in New York City, I know that I would’ve definitely finished Anne of Green Gables. Same thing with my Pokemon games. I’m a long-time fan of the series, but I haven’t even touched my copy of Pokemon Black yet because of how I never finished Heart Gold, and I refuse to leave a Pokemon game unbeaten. This would’ve been a lot quicker if I had that hour or so to and from Manhattan every day, but alas.
So I ask myself a question, “What do you think of your interests when they can be swayed so easily by circumstance?” To that, I answer myself with “Who the hell is keeping count? I’m the person I always was!” Yes, I’ve taken on certain hobbies and pursued them in ways that are in line with where I was living and where I came from. In New York, I have Japanese bookstores to fuel my collection and a commute to utilize them. In Japan, due to the distances of things, I rode my bike extensively and I watched anime on TV. Here in the Netherlands, I’ve got super-powered internet and a short walk to work. Had I grown up in a mountainous region, maybe I would’ve developed a fondness for rock-climbing. All I know is that these things influence how I function as a person and as a passionate fan of media, and I’m fine with that.
A good analogy for how I’m feeling might be how manga has developed as a black and white comics medium. Manga was originally printed in black and white out of necessity. It’s cheaper than full color and thus easier to mass-produce. From that practical limitation, manga grew out, with artists figuring out ways to best utilize their monochrome palette, including strong usages of negative space and creative application of screentones. Yes, if they had the money to afford full color back then, none of this might have ever happened. But it did, and even if manga were to change to full color now, we at least have that background and history to show us that path
Circumstances exist, but what we make of them is part of what makes life wonderful.
While I have had many friends over the years who were quite fond of Magic: The Gathering, for one reason or another I never quite got into it. So when I began reading about the different player types in Magic as defined by the cards’ creators, I found it so fascinating in a way that I kind of wish I had gotten into the game more. But while I do not have familiarity with Magic, I have thrown many hours into the Pokemon series, and I thought about whether or not I’d be able to determine by player type based on my experience there.
According to Mark Rosewater, the architect behind the current card creation system, players of Magic fall into one of three categories: Timmy, who “wants to experience something,” Johnny, who “wants to express something,” and Spike, who “plays to prove something.” More details can be found here. I’ve found myself unable to quite determine where I fall in the spectrum, but perhaps if I explain how I feel about one aspect of the Pokemon, maybe you can help me out.
The second generation of Pokemon games introduced an attack called “Hidden Power.” Story-wise, it was supposed to be a mysterious strength lurking deep within your Pokemon which allowed it to attack with a type element that it normally would not able to. On a technical level, it was an attack ranging in power from weak to medium strength that could be any one of the 17 Pokemon types in the game depending on your individual Pokemon’s inherent statistics. At first it came across as a move you were “lucky” to get, but its meaning and purpose changed in the context of high-level competition, where it could be manipulated to give you exactly the type and strength you wanted. Combined with the fact that nearly every Pokemon could learn it, Hidden Power became a wild card of sorts, customizable just like everything else in the game.
I did not like Hidden Power then, and even though its capacity has been a little more limited since Diamond and Pearl and the re-categorization of “physical” and “special” attacks where the move only becomes useful to “Special Attackers,” I still do not like it. As a person who really enjoys creating Pokemon teams using Pokemon that are not the cream of the crop and trying to figure out different ways to make them work even when they’re at a distinct disadvantage, the way Hidden Power has been continuously used as a near-automatic suggestion to fill a Pokemon’s move slot has always bothered me. Need your Hypno to fight a Swampert? Just give it Hidden Power Grass. Ground types giving your Jolteon trouble? Hidden Power Ice is your answer. Rather than encouraging players to really sit down and think about how a Pokemon could make the most out of its limitations, Hidden Power became a band-aid that could be applied to just about anything, the chainsaw applied to the proverbial hedge maze which just encourages laziness. While I don’t necessarily fault anyone for using the move (why ignore it if it’s there?), I would rather it never existed in the first place.
I am well aware of the counter-argument that Hidden Power is a boon to these lesser Pokemon of which I’m so fond, as it gives them diversity and the ability to compete where without it they would just have no other choice. After all, why should Dragonite get Ice, Electric, Fire, and Water attacks but not Pidgeot? I understand that side well, but I just wish the solution wasn’t as simple and widespread as Hidden Power. With Hidden Power, there’s so much less challenge in trying to get a Pokemon to work that it takes some of my enjoyment out of team-building, because I can’t just ignore that it exists because it’d inevitably be used against me.
So what do you think? I get the feeling I’m not really all that Spike, and I know hybrids can exist, but I’m not too sure where I fall between Timmy and Johnny.
As an aside, I’m quite pumped that Mewtwo finally gets its own signature attack. I’ve been hoping for this since forever because previously Mewtwo’s only distinguishing trait was that it was “really good.”
*NOTE: Turns out some of the information I have in this post is inaccurate. Check the comments below for the correct information!
Shudou Takeshi, anime writer, has passed away at age 61. To fans of magical girl anime, he may be best known as the writer for Fairy Princess Minky Momo, and giant robot fans may associate him with his work on series such as Sengoku Majin Goshogun, but as for me and for millions of others all over the world, our first true exposure to Shudou was through his work on the Pokemon anime. Pokemon is undoubtedly one of the most successful anime series of all time, having penetrated popular culture down to its core along with the games on which it’s based, and while a good portion of its success can no doubt be contributed to effective marketing, underneath it all you will find a surprisingly engrossing story that can attract people of all ages, particularly in the beginning. It is Shudou’s work on those early seasons of Pokemon that helped to give it so much character and memorability.
Pokemon wasn’t always considered the evergreen franchise that it is today, and Shudou’s writing on Pokemon in those early days reflects that. Let’s go back to the very first Pokemon series, to the time when it was just 151 Pokemon; if you were to ask someone who watched the series avidly during this time to list their most memorable moments with the show, what would they say? Most likely, they would recount moments such as Pikachu defeating an Onix by activating ceiling sprinklers, Team Rocket giving their famous speech for the first time, a Bellsprout with expertise in martial arts overwhelming opponents many times its size, and a mysterious and absolutely menacing Pokemon in cybernetic armor asserting total domination over Gary Oak. What these events and many others have in common is that they not only broke the rigid logic of the Pokemon games but also created rules where there were none.
Before the games told us that Pokemon lay eggs and that Rhydon’s horn can act as a lightning rod, the anime gave us a story about how Ash’s Butterfree had to leave to find a mate and showed us that Rhydon’s invulnerability to electricity could be bypassed by attacking it through the horn. Before female main characters were an option, the anime saw fit to turn a water-loving boss character into a supporting cast member. Unorthodox creativity characterized those early seasons of Pokemon under Shudou, and while it meant that kids who believed the show’s every word tended to do poorly when playing against their friends on their Game Boys, on a storytelling level it was a complete boon. I believe that it is this dedication and relative freedom that Shudou and his fellow staffers were able to exercise is that enabled the anime to capture the imaginations of people everywhere and bring them into the Pokemon franchise. They wanted, above all else, to tell a good story.
Nowhere is this desire to entertain and inform more evident than in the very first Pokemon film. Placing Ash, Pikachu, and their companions against the formidable armored Pokemon which so soundly defeated Gary, Mewtwo Strikes Back on its surface seemed like it would be the story of Ash taking on a villain and coming out victorious, but it turned out to be far more profound than perhaps anyone anticipated. Watching the movie through a VHS fansub, I was introduced to Mewtwo, a cloned Pokemon genetically engineered to be the ultimate fighting machine. Having come into the world fully grown and told of its purpose as a living weapon, Mewtwo first destroys its creators and eventually sets out to show that clones are inherently better than their natural counterparts, or at least that’s the initial story. While perhaps even Mewtwo believes that its own goal is telling the world about the superiority of genetic enhancement, in actuality Mewtwo’s true desire is to find worth in its own existence. Ultimately, the important message to take from the film is as follows: the circumstances of why you’re in this world don’t matter nearly as much as the fact that you’re alive and have the right to keep on living.
As the man responsible for the story of Mewtwo Strikes Back, Shudou Takeshi gave us an amazingly complex antagonist in Mewtwo, by far the most well-developed character in Pokemon to date, as well as an amazingly intelligent children’s movie, and his only cues from the original games were that Mewtwo was an offspring of a Pokemon named Mew, that Mewtwo destroyed a lab and escaped, and that Mewtwo is designed to be the strongest Pokemon ever. The manner in which Shudou was able to weave these simple story elements together into an existential tale of a being cursed with incredible power is nothing short of amazing, and it is this very reason that I consider Mewtwo Strikes Back to be the best movie of the franchise, with or without nostalgia. This is also why I was so disappointed at the English release of the film back in 1999 and still am today, as it almost completely whitewashed the actual message of the movie, replaced it with a thematically inappropriate “fighting is wrong” moral. But even with such a compromised story, the light of Shudou’s script is able to shine through, at least a little.
Pokemon was and is one of my first great obsessions, and I cannot understate how beneficial my time with Pokemon has been. I have made lifelong friendships through it. I have interacted with fellow fans about it, and through those interactions established the roots of both my writing style and my approach towards anime as an artform. Without those early seasons of Pokemon, I would not be who I am today. Thank you, Shudou Takeshi. You have made my life.
OGIUE MANIAX 