- Joined
- Jun 17, 2006
- Messages
- 14,503
- Reaction score
- 21,140
- Staff
- #7,441
While it's possible that they didn't bring May back in XY due to her voice actress' health, I'm still not sure if that was a major factor. They weren't really interested in doing much with OR/AS compared to how they promoted other remakes and I don't think that was because they couldn't get May's voice actress to reprise her role. I think that had more to do with XY lacking continuity nods and they weren't interested in giving any of the main characters Mega Evolutions, which would have been one of the best ways to promote OR/AS with or without May's appearance.Well I doubt she has any contact with OLM or the anime director/writers. Remember her work for them ended in 2008 and she largely left the industry, I doubt she's ever going to call them on the phone about a character she played almost two decades ago. The writers very likely knew this back in 2014 since they chose not to bring her back at all then either.
It still seems a bit too early to think that May can't appear in the remaining episodes. Assuming that a new series will start around November, Journeys has about seven months left, which would definitely be enough time for May to show up for an episode or two. Like I mentioned before, I wouldn't say it's guaranteed, but I think that there is enough time for it to potentially happen. While I agree that May's chances of appearing would be even smaller if she doesn't appear in Journeys, it wouldn't be impossible for her to show up in the next series. We don't know what the next region is called, let alone what is in it, so I don't think it's quite fair to say that she wouldn't appear in it.As mentioned it's already been 14 years which is nearly a decade and a half, so that's already a long amount of time they let her be. If she can't return in Journey's where the writers will bring back every single female female companion by the time it ends and it features old characters, obviously nothing in the future will. If the show goes back to 1 region again obviously May won't show up in Spain a gen she has nothing to do with. So this really is her one and only chance to appear but it looks entirely unlikely to me with the remaining eps left.
I don't know if that would really affect the writers' decision on handling any AG in journeys. Plenty of people would have grown up with AG as their first series. I agree that the series is overshadowed by most of the following series, but it still seems to be pretty well received in general, which should count for something. To be fair, they basically needed to treat Steven like a new character. His AG appearance was pretty bad. They didn't even say he was the Hoenn Champion and was treated more like a typical COTD than the current generation's Champion. I don't think that making Steven effectively a different character was because they didn't want to throw AG fans a bone. I always thought that they just wanted to fix the mistake they made in that series by actually establishing Steven's strength as a Champion and giving him more personality.Also I think the apathy a lot of people have for the AG series in general nowadays affects the lack of interest. AG is so old now most of the younger generation never watched it, and of course it never had mainstream popularity like the OS, or popularity within the fandom like DP, XY, SM. Sure the saga wasn't disliked or anything, but it's pretty much overshadowed by everything that came after it for different reasons. It's the same reason other than Drake barely anything from AG has gotten referenced in either XY or Journey's, with Steven being treated like a new character and every other saga getting the fanservice treatment in terms of characters or nostalgia eps. Both the original trio (during SM) and DP trio were reunited (in Arceus eps), SM gets full reunion eps in Alola, the XY cast got treated well, and Iris got made champion and got a good battle with Ash. Nothing from AG would ever be treated similarly.
Considering that plenty of people still want to see May in Journeys, I'm not sure if the indifference take on AG based on this forums is particularly accurate. BW still seems poorly received and Iris is still arguably the least popular of the female leads, but they still gave her a big return episode. I know that Iris and BW as a whole have plenty of fans, but based on what I've seen of the online community, which admittedly still wouldn't be the most accurate insight as to how the target audience feels about the anime, BW still seems less popular compared to most of the other series. BW is more recent than AG, but I don't think that AG being that old or seemingly not being huge fan favorites would really prevent them from having more fanfare for any AG characters.AG kinda has the problem now that it just does the same Gym leader formula every other sagas does, but it doesn't have that mainstream evergreen appeal the OS does, and DP and XY just became huge fan favorites in the fandom. Also as I mentioned AG is also nearly 20 years old now, a large chunk of the younger generation who grew up with DP, BW or XY never saw it. I mean just by being on this forum you can see the clear indifference.