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Customization Killed The Game Protagonist

marshiyanmisuta

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Do you think the new customization features in the recent pokémon games led to a decline in the chances of characters based on game PCs appearing in the anime?
 
Nah, they still have a set design at the begining of the game, customization is an aspect that helps to make how would you be inside the Pokémon world.

Also what about Best Wishes?
 
No, I don't. XY introduced PC customization and Serena still appeared, after all.
Also what about Best Wishes?
Correlation does not necessarily imply causation. Compared to those cases, it's reasonable to expect lessening impact of characters created with a settled design.
Nah, they still have a set design at the begining of the game, customization is an aspect that helps to make how would you be inside the Pokémon world
Yes, but customization at hair and skin colours are chosen before the game.
 
It's unlikely. Best Wishes didn't use Hilda or Hubert despite customisation not being a thing back then. XY then used Serena despite being the generation to introduce it.

Ash's design always borrowed elements of the male PC design, which made them unnecessary. Whether the female trainer appeared really seemed to depend on the type of travelling companion they wanted. May, Dawn and Serena were newbies, just like their game counterparts, so perhaps they hoped a connection could be made between them and new viewers of the show. The PC tends to be synonymous with the traditional trainer journey, which might be why they were omitted from SM. Who knows about BW, though. Might be a case of Hilda looking a bit older than normal and wanting a character closer to Ash's age, hence Iris.
 
I don't think so. XY had customization and they still included Serena in the main cast. Her redesign was most likely a nod to customization too. BW didn't have Hilda either despite customization not being a feature in those games.

I think the games not having anything for the writers to adapt into a secondary goal was a much bigger factor here. After D/P, there weren't really any secondary quests within the games that they could use for the female lead to do like Contests. They had to create a goal specifically designed around Serena in XY, but Showcases were basically a watered down version of Contests. This is a huge reason why I wish Contests were still in the games. It still feels like the anime lost something important once Contests were removed and they've never been able to find a way to make up for that lost, despite how the last Contest was over ten years ago at this point.

There wasn't really much room for the female playable trainers in the other series either. With BW, I think that they wanted to get back to basics in a sense with just focusing on Ash's Gym quest and have him travel with characters who are Gym Leaders in the then new games too. SM wasn't really going for a more traditional journey to begin with and I couldn't really see Moon being handled much better than Lillie, Mallow or Lana. The region hopping aspect of PM probably would have made it difficult to include Gloria too.
 
No. Serena was in the series in the same gen customization started.
Also, Crystal and Ethan didn't appear. Nor did Brendan, Hilda/Hilbert, Rosa/Nate, Calem, Sun/Moon, and now most likely Gloria and whatever the hipster's name is

SM didn't have enough room to add in Sun or Moon with four trial captains, Lillie, and Ash.
And 2019 stupidly decided to go with OCs, not that Koharu's bad. But I'd gladly take the hipster over Go anyday
 
They had to create a goal specifically designed around Serena in XY, but Showcases were basically a watered down version of Contests. This is a huge reason why I wish Contests were still in the games. It still feels like the anime lost something important once Contests were removed and they've never been able to find a way to make up for that lost, despite how the last Contest was over ten years ago at this point.
It was their choice not to make Serena battle-oriented. No one forced their hands, and the in-game contests never had battles to begin with.
 
It was their choice not to make Serena battle-oriented. No one forced their hands, and the in-game contests never had battles to begin with.

I didn't have a problem with Serena not being battle-oriented though. My complaint about Showcases was more about the goal itself being a much weaker version of Contests as opposed to Serena not getting to battle more often. She was never interested in battling, so that wasn't really an issue. Showcases were just too boring for a long term goal, although starting out in the middle of XY probably didn't help matters either. It's true that in-game Contests didn't have battles, but at least there was room for them to include a battle round to make them more engaging. If Contests in the anime were just about the first round appeals similar to Showcases, then they probably would have been much boring for me as well.
 
As said by the other post there isn't really a correlation, because:
-The trend of ignoring game protagonists started in Gen V, when all four got ignored.
-Calem, Serena and Elio still appeared through characters or outfits for Ash.
-None (or very few) of the customization items have appeared in the anime. Serena's second outfit and Ash and Go's PM outfits are unable to be replicated accurately in the games.
 
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The trend I've noticed so far is that the only playable characters that have made it into the main cast are the ones that have an NPC counterpart. My guess is that even though they tend to diverge from their game versions, having them present on the games with their own names makes them more recognizable as their own people and can be easily associated with their respective games, and even when you pick the female character you're still pretty familiar with their base design at least.
 
I didn't have a problem with Serena not being battle-oriented though. My complaint about Showcases was more about the goal itself being a much weaker version of Contests as opposed to Serena not getting to battle more often. She was never interested in battling, so that wasn't really an issue. Showcases were just too boring for a long term goal, although starting out in the middle of XY probably didn't help matters either. It's true that in-game Contests didn't have battles, but at least there was room for them to include a battle round to make them more engaging. If Contests in the anime were just about the first round appeals similar to Showcases, then they probably would have been much boring for me as well.

I don't think that the problem with showcases was that they didn't involve any Contest-like battles, but rather the fact that they felt... skill-less, for lack of a better term. I mean, compare them to the Appeal Rounds from Contests. In those rounds, the goal was to show off your Pokémon and their abilities by using their moves, but you had to be careful not to create a spectacle by overusing their moves, as that would detract form the Pokémon and move the spotlight on the move itself. That's actually what even started Dawn's first arc, as she was having problems coming up with some strategies and combinations without having the moves overshadow the Pokémon, which was causing her to be on a losing streak and doubt herself. Meanwhile, with Showcases, there didn't seem to be any standards whatsoever, as the goal was to create a spectacle that would wow the audience. The Performers didn't have to come up with some creative strategies and perfect them over the course of the series, as there were no standards to which they would have to adhere to (other than the audience's tastes, which would change form place to palce and person to person, not leaving much room for strategies), and most of the struggles came from the particular Showcase being the Performer's and/or their Pokémon's first Showcase, which led to them being nervous (which, from what I remember, would get resolved pretty quickly).

I think Showcases would've been better if they would've kept the idea of having judges evaluating the Performers during the event (like with past contests or any other talent show that I've seen) and made Showcases so that the goal would've been to showcase your Pokémon and their abilities, while also doing it in an entertaining fashion and without relying to much on the spectacle that the moves would create. They could've even found a way to keep the idea of the audience voting as well, though having its impact be lessened. Anyways, the point I'm trying to make is, concept-wise, Showcases aren't terrible, but they weren't that well executed (doesn't help that they were rushed, to the point that all of Serena's rivals magically got three Princess Keys by the time the Master Class started).
 
Customization didn't kill the game protagonist. Ash did. Let's take a list and see.

Red = Ash
Blue/Green = did not exist at time of release

Ethan = Legend of Thunder and DP Movie cameo
Lyra = DP arc
Kris = Legend of Thunder

Brendan = Movie Cameo
May = AG deuteragonist

Lucas = Movie cameo
Dawn = DP deuteragonist

Hilbert
Hilda
Nate
Rosa

Calem
Serena = XY deuteragonist

Elio
Selene

Victor
Gloria

The percentages by region always were going down. In Kanto, we had 100% since Blue/Green didn't exist at the time. We also had a 100% in Johto due to the Legend of Thunder Special and Lyra's Johto arc in DP. AG is where we struck a snag since we did technically have 100% protagonist appearance, one was a movie cameo. Same with DP. BW was where we hit the wall with a small spike with Serena only for it to drop once more.

Ash's mere presence guarantees that the male characters are basically not going to show up if at all or show up in minor roles. You've reduced your pool of protagonists by half already.

It's too early to tell for Sword and Shield, but I'm not holding my breath.
 
The trend I've noticed so far is that the only playable characters that have made it into the main cast are the ones that have an NPC counterpart. My guess is that even though they tend to diverge from their game versions, having them present on the games with their own names makes them more recognizable as their own people and can be easily associated with their respective games, and even when you pick the female character you're still pretty familiar with their base design at least.

Pretty much this.

Customization isn't what led to the decline of the use of game protagonists. It is them moving away from using the games as the only source for material.
 
I think the games not having anything for the writers to adapt into a secondary goal was a much bigger factor here. After D/P, there weren't really any secondary quests within the games that they could use for the female lead to do like Contests. They had to create a goal specifically designed around Serena in XY, but Showcases were basically a watered down version of Contests. This is a huge reason why I wish Contests were still in the games. It still feels like the anime lost something important once Contests were removed and they've never been able to find a way to make up for that lost, despite how the last Contest was over ten years ago at this point.

It was a loss for the games too - not just Contests themselves, but how it was the start of the "introduce features and drop them next gen" pattern. I can't prove it but I think that's been a factor in the anime making fewer callbacks to the past than it used to.
 
It was a loss for the games too - not just Contests themselves, but how it was the start of the "introduce features and drop them next gen" pattern. I can't prove it but I think that's been a factor in the anime making fewer callbacks to the past than it used to.

I could have sworn that they started to drop features well before the fifth generation, but I could be mistaken. I don't know if that would be much of a factor as to why the anime makes fewer callbacks though, especially when both BW and SM have more nods to previous series than XY did.
 
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