Fair enough that Shigeru may have just originally intended to be the neighborhood snob for all we know, but given that they have met before (Shigeru would have no reason to just "know" Satoshi's name otherwise) and Shigeru specifically went out of his way to single out and push Satoshi's buttons in the earlier episodes, the childhood flashback later on and Satoshi calling him a childhood friend aren't exactly contradictory.
Seeing as they gave OS Satoshi a redesign for this film, it's safe to say this isn't going to be the Death and Rebirth of Pocket Monsters because old clips with Satoshi are unusable by default, not to mention OLM's old animation would clash with any new spliced content.
I think they missed a huge opportunity to bring him back with a mega Pinsir in the XY anime, so this would be the perfect time to bring back the bestest cotd of all time lol!
I'm curious as to why you think that it'll take place in Alola, considering they already revealed Satoshi wearing redesigned Kantou clothes. As in, more than just the old outfit with new animation, they went out of their way to make a new design for it. Isn't that a bit much for meager flashbacks? And why doesn't he resemble his Sun and Moon character design, when the other movies tried to stay relatively close to the design reference sheets from their corresponding anime series?
