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Pokemon Anime Continuity Discussion Thread

I find it more likely that the post is misinterpreted and that the TRio in SM belongs to the SM continuity, just like the rest.
Really? You think it's more likely that:
a native Japanese speaker misinterpreted the answer to the question "are Musashi and Kojiro completely new characters" as "they're the same old"
COMPARED TO
Pokemon fans with too much room in their over-large brains concocted a convenient theory to explain away poor writing decisions over a 20-year time period
?

Not saying that the two are mutually exclusive, but unless Jez pulls up the original conversation and it has been grossly mistranslated into English, I'm gonna hedge my bets on the latter for now.
 
Really? You think it's more likely that:
a native Japanese speaker misinterpreted the answer to the question "are Musashi and Kojiro completely new characters" as "they're the same old"
COMPARED TO
Pokemon fans with too much room in their over-large brains concocted a convenient theory to explain away poor writing decisions over a 20-year time period
?

Not saying that the two are mutually exclusive, but unless Jez pulls up the original conversation and it has been grossly mistranslated into English, I'm gonna hedge my bets on the latter for now.

…And this is what happens when autocorrect messes things up. I meant "mistranslated", not "misinterpreted".

But yeah, it would be nice if we got the text of that conversation. It could give a better insight of this whole story.
 
Judging from Jez's post, they're all supposed to be the same characters in so far as their personalities. But they've had different experiences than the OS characters did throughout the years.
 
But they've had different experiences than the OS characters did throughout the years.
That's not how I read it. It sounds to me like they're from a point in the "past", but nothing written suggested that their pasts are alternate.
 
How do you interpret "parallel stories", then? It is clear that these characters did not experience the XYZ events, at the very least.

Also, while "departed from the past, more from the beginning" is obviously not good wording, it does imply that a lot of Ash's past has been erased. The simplest explanation is that the movie is indeed the new origin story, which is consistent with the advertising.
 
How do you interpret "parallel stories", then? It is clear that these characters did not experience the XYZ events, at the very least.
I don't know yet. I agree that that much is clear, but at the moment everything else is a bit too ambiguous for me to be confident to pick an interpretation (because I will be super annoyed if I do and I end up picking the wrong one).
 
Yes.
And bottom line is that they are different individuals.

Pretty much. Just like CCS Sakura is different from TC Sakura. As the writers have implied, they have the same soul but are different characters.

I wonder why the Pokémon anime staff is so shy to dispel this doubt about the movie and the series, though. Are they doing so to avoid spoilers? Or perhaps they have something planned?
 
Because they want us to forget about the past, and calling attention to it by mentioning the word "reboot" would do them more harm than good. From their perspective, it is better to let viewers interpret the movie's existence however they want. Kids have no reason to care about anything other than SM and the movie, given the lack of continuity.

Mima is more honest. He tells it how it is, pretty much.
 
I bet that, should the movie seem to have a more negative reception, the writers might pull a Best Wishes in terms of backtracking. Sure, it might be a bit harder to do so, but the writers could always take cues from the Electric Tale of Pikachu manga in terms of how well Ash would know Brock and Misty. For those of you who don't know, in that manga Ash is still friends with Brock and Misty, but they don't stick with Ash throughout the region: he would just meet up with them sometimes.

Regardless of whether TPC tries to "fix" things after receiving a ton of backlash, I wonder if the writers are going to take cues from the Electric Tales of Pikachu anyways in terms of Ash's new origin story.
 
Without the original Japanese text that conversation between Jez and Mima is kind of useless as far as evidence goes. We're just playing the telephone game at this point.

As for the original tweets by Mima Masafumi that everyone's getting so worked up about...it's not the greatest translation. The current version that everyone's looking at treats this one sentence:

『ポケットモンスター XY&Z』の続きではない、全く新しいサトシとピカチュウの
アローラでの発見、冒険、友情を皆さんに感じて貰える事、心から嬉しく、また感謝で一杯だ。

As two separate, unrelated statements.

This is not continuation of Pocket Monster XY&Z, a completely new Satoshi and Pikachu

I feel happy from the heart when having everyone feel the discovery, adventure, and friendship in Alola, and full of gratitude for that.

The above translation ignores the の after サトシとピカチュウ and that kind of completely changes the meaning of the whole thing. If I were translating it, I'd do it like this:

This isn't a continuation of Pocket Monsters XY&Z, and I'm so happy and thankful from the bottom of my heart to be able feel from everyone (on the staff) the brand new discoveries, adventures, and friends that Satoshi and Pikachu will have in Alola.

It's not quite the open and shut case some people have been presenting it as.

I don't know one way or the other whether there's multiple continuities but the current ”evidence” we have isn't super convincing.
 
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I bet that, should the movie seem to have a more negative reception, the writers might pull a Best Wishes in terms of backtracking. Sure, it might be a bit harder to do so, but the writers could always take cues from the Electric Tale of Pikachu manga in terms of how well Ash would know Brock and Misty. For those of you who don't know, in that manga Ash is still friends with Brock and Misty, but they don't stick with Ash throughout the region: he would just meet up with them sometimes.

Regardless of whether TPC tries to "fix" things after receiving a ton of backlash, I wonder if the writers are going to take cues from the Electric Tales of Pikachu anyways in terms of Ash's new origin story.

Most members of the target audience don't care about Misty and Brock, so I doubt TPC will backtrack.
 
Most members of the target audience don't care about Misty and Brock, so I doubt TPC will backtrack.
That's kind of why I said "should the movie seem to have a more negative reception". I'm not expecting them to do this but having bland on-shot movie characters in place of the companions that were once iconic to the Anime may cause a bit of backlash if TPC isn't careful.

I'm more interested in whether or not TPC might take cues from that manga in general in terms of what Pokémon Ash had previously caught. Apparently, The Electric Tale of Pikachu had Ash own a Fearow and an Oddish...

That just got me thinking: what if this Ash ended up catching Pokémon the original Ash didn't have? What if SM Ash kept Primeape and Pidgeot whereas original Ash just released them? I'm wondering how many liberties the staff is willing to go in terms of what kind of Pokémon Ash has caught for this reboot.
 
In the other thread, I had already expressed the apology that I initially didn't notice Mima's tweets were connected, hence translate the broken tweets as each single separate entities.
Yet, once I connect them, specifically the two concerned tweets back together, the meaning is still ambiguous.

The concerned sentence is this one:
『ポケットモンスター XY&Z』の続きではない、全く新しいサトシとピカチュウの
アローラでの発見、冒険、友情を皆さんに感じて貰える事、心から嬉しく、また感謝で一杯だ。
Unfortunately, the meaning especially the second sentence is ambiguous due to its sentence structure. Yes, its meaning was ambiguous already even in its original Japanese text.

The concerned sentence is this:
全く新しいサトシとピカチュウのアローラでの発見、冒険、友情を皆さんに感じて貰える事、心から嬉しく、また感謝で一杯だ。
And the concerned phrase within this sentence is this:
全く新しいサトシとピカチュウのアローラでの発見、冒険、友情
You have to understand, Japanese language rule in regarding to sentence structure is, the subject is never at the beginning of the sentence. That's why, if you look at its sentence structure, it may convey two different meanings. This is due to the ambiguity in the subject choice within this sentence.

1) 全く新しいサトシとピカチュウのアローラでの発見、冒険、友情
If you take "Ash and Pikachu" as the subject of this sentence, then the adjective "completely new" is describing them, hence having the meaning of Ash and Pikachu are new characters.
2) 全く新しいサトシとピカチュウのアローラでの発見、冒険、友情
If you take "Discovery, adventure friendship in Alola" as the subject of this sentence, then the adjective "completely new" is describing those things, hence having the meaning of Ash and Pikachu are again going on a new journey.

Translation is not straightforward meaning interpretation, you should account the language rules and semantics in different languages. Especially when the original sentence is already ambiguous in its meaning, my translation will keep its ambiguity even I translate it into English. If I have to retranslate Mima's tweet after I had connect them back together like the above quote, unlike what I had done initially where I treated them as separate entities, then this will be the new translation:
This is not continuation of Pokemon XY&Z, I feel happy and thankful from the bottom of my heart having everyone feel the completely new Ash and Pikachu's discovery, adventure, and friendship in Alola.
In such English translation, there exist the choice liberty of one may take "Ash and Pikachu" or "Ash and Pikachu's discovery, adventure, and friendship" as the subject of the sentence, just like the original Japanese sentence where subject is ambiguous. So how one interpret it is up to the reader, not me the translator.



Though, regardless of the second sentence, the first sentence 『ポケットモンスター XY&Z』の続きではない is so straightforward where there isn't any second meaning. When Mima had said that SM is not sequel of XY&Z, this single sentence already causes enough timeline and continuity confusion in the fanbase.
 
In November I asked my Japanese friend to ask Masafumi Mima about his tweet. Here is what my friend told me:
1492503011-fifi1.jpg

1492503011-fifi2.jpg

1492503020-fifi3.jpg

This sounds like it is the same Ash and Pikachu, but I wonder about "Satoshi's parallel story departed from the past". Does that mean just a stylistic departure or is it literally about parallel worlds like from the games, like they somehow wandered into another world?
 
Well, the important part is the statement about SM not being a continuation of XYZ.

If Jez's friend doesn't provide Mima's original quote, then I think Crystal, FANG-TAN or Dogasu should send him a tweet asking for a clarification. Specifically in regard to SM being a continuation of the movie... In fact, that's a good idea anyway.
 
A little patience, I asked my friend to send me her conversation with Masafumi Mima in Japanese and here is her answer:
1492601513-fifimessage.jpg

I will post all the text here as soon as she sent it to me.
 
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Please note: The thread is from 7 years ago.
Please take the age of this thread into consideration in writing your reply. Depending on what exactly you wanted to say, you may want to consider if it would be better to post a new thread instead.
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