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Tetsuo Yajima Interview on XY

In the recent edition of Animage there was an interview with Tetsuo Yajima, the director of XY, including some storyboards as well.

Here are various interesting tidbits from the recent interview with Yajima:
*The kiss scene is indeed meant to be Serena kissing Satoshi, and his reaction to it is surprised awe, any ambiguity the scene has is so they could get it on TV in the first place.
*Likewise, you're meant to hope and assume the two of them are going to become a couple later.
*The idea to have a romance subplot apparently came from producer Shukichi Kanda, who came up with the idea of portraying things through a female lead's admiration for Satoshi, which then led to the suggestion that they'd have a flashback to a childhood meeting with romantic implications.
*Yajima did not know exactly how long the series would last, only that it would have to end when the next games came out.
*Alan was always meant to be part of the main series. The reason the four Mega specials were made was because it would be difficult to set up his backstory and development in the series itself, so he came up with the idea of giving him his own episodes that could establish his character. The idea to give these episodes a mega evolution theme came later, and was also his idea (so they were not made for the purpose of marketing megas, or in order to test the water for a series with another main character or any other such theory).
*Also, Alan is meant to be an "Anakin Skywalker-type character", someone who turns to the dark side to protect those he loves.
*Satoshi's XY design was primarily Yajima's, and the idea for his sideburns were taken from "a character from the video games named Red, which Satoshi is based on".
*Yajima wanted to make the bond between Satoshi and Gekkouga a major part of the story, but felt it would be difficult to do so if it had to remain a Gekkouga, so he went to Game Freak, and they came up with the idea of a synchro transformation. It was put in Sun/Moon afterwards, but was created during this discussion between anime staff and GF.
*The interviewer notes that Okido didn't appear at all outside of episode 3, and that Okido's lecture segment getting replaced with PokeTV when XY&Z started meant that Okido didn't appear at all throughout all of XY&Z (the interview was conducted before XY&Z47 had aired) and asks if there was a reason for this. Yajima confirms this was a complete oversight, not something intentional. Presumably this goes for other callbacks to older series as well.
*When XY&Z started, Yajima knew that the series had to wrap up everything in only a year, and they did a meeting to basically set up how the events of that year would go. He also specifically says that this is the reason there's minimal filler in XY&Z, there was absolutely no room.
*Yajima wanted to drop the use of stock footage completely, but this wasn't possible to do, so they went with creating stock foreground footage that could have different backgrounds added to it instead.
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Credits for the interview translation go to Dephender on Serebii.

It's 2020 now and we have amazing series like Pokemon journey but still I miss Pokemon xy and xyz, I love that series more then most of the anime I watched but Pokemon Sun and moon despite being awesome can't compete with xy. I love the work of Yajima and want him to be director of future series, he knows what we want and give us the scene we never imagined we could get in Pokemon
Thank You, Sir
For giving my childhood hero, what he deserves.......
 
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*Yajima wanted to make the bond between Satoshi and Gekkouga a major part of the story, but felt it would be difficult to do so if it had to remain a Gekkouga, so he went to Game Freak, and they came up with the idea of a synchro transformation. It was put in Sun/Moon afterwards, but was created during this discussion between anime staff and GF.
Now I know who to blame for that one.
 
*The idea to have a romance subplot apparently came from producer Shukichi Kanda, who came up with the idea of portraying things through a female lead's admiration for Satoshi, which then led to the suggestion that they'd have a flashback to a childhood meeting with romantic implications.
And I know who to blame for that one.
 
I wonder why they went from planning out arcs like this to the more episodic plots in Pokémon 2019. I have heard that it's because the anime now airs on Sunday and "kids and their families don't watch TV" on Sunday but I can't help but wonder if that is just an excuse.

Either way I can't help but miss the arcs that DP and XY had. They still had a lot of filler anyway especially DP during the last gyms. I wouldn't mind a shorter series myself but if they can't afford that, they could at least try to have a balance with some arcs and some fillers.
 
I wonder why they went from planning out arcs like this to the more episodic plots in Pokémon 2019. I have heard that it's because the anime now airs on Sunday and "kids and their families don't watch TV" on Sunday but I can't help but wonder if that is just an excuse.

Either way I can't help but miss the arcs that DP and XY had. They still had a lot of filler anyway especially DP during the last gyms. I wouldn't mind a shorter series myself but if they can't afford that, they could at least try to have a balance with some arcs and some fillers.
So far it's looking like they may have slightly overstated how episodic 2019 would be:
*Gengar was introduced in one episode and befriended by Ash several episodes later.
*Leon was introduced as the big rival for this series and is getting another appearance in (what would be without the hiatus) the near future.
*We had a two parter with episodes 12 and 13 which seem to be setting up an arc involving Eternatus.
*Foreshadowing a possible rematch with Lt. Surge in the future.

The biggest difference I'm seeing so far from earlier series' is not using the "Gym format" of intro episode/battle episode, and 12/13 arguably did that for Leon so we could see it more in the future.
 
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