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TV Series / Its been nearly 20 years since Misty was permanently written off the anime

« on: August 13, 2021, 01:45 »

My my, how time flies. Sometimes it seems like only yesterday we first heard the news Misty was leaving the Pokemon anime, it's hard to believe that was a whopping 20 years ago now. Misty left in 2002 at the end of Johto, by 2022, she'll have been gone a full 20 years.

Misty's now in less than 20% of the animes total episodes. Nowadays the ENTIRE series is after Misty left, with 900+ episodes and multiple series. Misty stayed gone not only for Hoenn, but every single generation that came after. There's also a whopping 9+ female companions after Misty, which proves Misty could be replaced with any type of female lead and the show would continue on.

It's kinda funny when you remember how people tried to make a big deal out of Misty leaving, yet she really did stay gone for the end of Johto for the entire duration of the series anyway, and only got a few brief cameos in Hoenn and in SM. I guess a lot of people wrongly thought she would be more important to the show than she turned out.

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TV Series / So are the writers pretty much done with old character cameos now in the anime?

« on: July 31, 2015, 00:29 »

If you stop to think of it, most of the older cast has been gone for years now, and aside from stuff like flashbacks or in the Japanese openings/endings, they simply don't appear in episodes anymore. For example:

- Misty hasn't appeared in an episode in 10 years. Her last appearance was back in 2005 when Ash came home from the Hoenn league. Since Battle Frontier started, Misty never appeared in the anime ever again. Her last episode was AG134, "A real Cleffa-Hanger" and then afterwards she was basically neglected to flashbacks and that's it. Its pretty notable that Misty hasn't had any appearance since AG, which is now three generations and 10 years ago.

- Tracey hasn't had a speaking role since the final episode of AG back in 2006. We've never seen him again since.

- Gary hasn't appeared since the Team Galactic finale back in 2009. Since then he's never appeared again.

- May's last appearance was the Wallace Cup back in 2008. Even with the release of ORAS it seems it wasn't enough to get her another appearance.

- Dawn's cameo in BW back in 2012 looks to be the end of her character forever too, especially with Serena designed to be so similar to her.

- Brock is of course gone for good, having stayed gone for two gens with Cilan and Clemont replacing him. His last appearance was in a Cilan special that only aired in Japan


So given the huge gaps in time for some of the older characters, especially ones without an episode appearance in an entire decade like Misty and Tracey, is it safe to say the writers are done with the entire older cast?

3

TV Series / XY anime

« on: November 04, 2013, 22:23 »

The first few episodes have aired in Japan and the first two eps aired in the U.S. already in a preview. Thoughts so far?

It has a very similar feeling to AG due to a 4 person group with another sibling pair on the cast. Ash's personality seems back to what it was in Hoenn with Serena feeling like a mix of May or Dawn. Bonnie and Clemont are the sibling pair.

I like that they're trying a 4 person group again as going back to a trio in DP was extremely boring, and the BW trio while Ok was too short lived to make much impact.

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TV Series / Was Misty the writers least favorite Pokemon girl?

« on: June 30, 2013, 01:36 »

I can't help but think that the writers never really liked having Misty in the series. As someone who has watched most of every saga of the series, this is why I think this:

1. Misty was the first classic Kanto character to leave the show. Ash, Brock and Team Rocket all lasted in the anime for 13+ years (and Brock only just recently left), while Misty was dropped way back in 2002, back when the anime was still at the beginning of its lifecycle. She was officially the shortest-lived classic Kanto character of the series.

2. As we can see now, Misty's departure at the end of Johto was indeed quite permanent. Misty stayed gone permanently for the entire duration of the series and was never allowed back into the main cast in any of the following arcs.

3. Misty's cameos/guest appearances have stopped entirely. The last time Misty had a real appearance in the show was way back in 2005 when Ash came home from the Hoenn league. That was 7 years ago! She appeared in flashbacks in the recent Best Wishes series, but flashbacks don't really count. The writers don't even allow Misty to come back for 2-3 episodes anymore like she did during Hoenn, now she's completely ignored.

4. All the biggest water-related plotlines in the anime happened AFTER she left. Hoenn had Team Aqua which was a villain team all about water. Movie 9 was a blatantly water-themed Pokemon movie with a legendary who was the "prince of the sea." Wallace appears in the DP series as a, "Water Pokemon Master coordinator" and Misty doesn't get to meet him. They gave May blatant water-themed plotlines instead of using Misty for them.

5. Dawn got a Togekiss. Back at the start of the anime, Togepi was exclusively associated with Misty and no other character ever had a Togepi in fillers in the series. Then instead of Misty reuniting with her Togetic, the writers decide to debut Togekiss with Dawn instead.

6. With the current 5th gen anime drawing to a close, this is the second generation in a row where Misty did not get to return. The writers didn't have her appear in a single episode over the entire span of the DP arc, and it looks like she won't appear in the Best Wishes series either.

7. She was probably the worst treated of all the female leads in the series. She barely got much screentime and was always kept on the sidelines while Ash did everything. In many ways May, Dawn and Iris all got bigger roles in their respective sagas than she got, making it seem like Misty wasn't very important.

8. Misty did not get an ending theme in the Japanese version of the anime, while other female leads did.

9. The writers dropped Misty the first opportunity they got, which leads me to believe they might have dropped her at the end of Orange Islands if a female lead from the games existed with G/S instead of Crystal.

10. She's the only female lead with no ongoing rivals, unlike May/Dawn/Iris.


Thoughts on this? It almost felt like they treated her as a placeholder character until they had others to replace her with. Even though both May and Dawn left the show too (and Iris will leave shortly), they all just feel like the writers cared about the way they handled them. Any thoughts?