Pokémon Sword and Shield anime speculation thread

[BigDocFan]

We really need something like this again for the SwSh anime. At least try the DP formula and make it stand out better than what XY did. This series might look like XY done right. SM is just what Ash needed to charge up his batteries for the long march ahead.

DP formula with XY animation would be good

 

[KyseL]

XY animation

Maybe reintroduce 3D backgrounds in major battles, but that's about it. Anything else is a huge downgrade.

 

[Grass Type Gardenia]

Maybe reintroduce 3D backgrounds in major battles, but that's about it. Anything else is a huge downgrade.

If you look in the last page, someone posted tweets from a studio that does the Pokemon anime, who said that future animations will be fully digitalized. So... something like Digimon Adventures Tri.

 

[KyseL]

If you look in the last page, someone posted tweets from a studio that does the Pokemon anime, who said that future animations will be fully digitalized. So... something like Digimon Adventures Tri.

They are already working fully digitally, though. If anything, maybe some older animators still work on paper, but for the most part the show is now animated in ToonBoom Harmony (animation software).

 

[Diamond & Pearl]

Maybe reintroduce 3D backgrounds in major battles, but that's about it. Anything else is a huge downgrade.

Uhm, that's just your opinion (which few share).

 

[KyseL]

Uhm, that's just your opinion (which few share).

I'm almost sure nearly everyone working on the show could agree on it. The XY style is both ineffective and inefficient. Its stiffness seriously reduces which boundaries you can break and how much can you express without using words or going extremely off-model. The "sharpness" of the shapes seriously hinders how effective you can use lines of action without them feeling broken. The amount of detail, especially on its poor use of shadows, creates a lot of visual noise, making it even harder to get any sense of volume, which shading should be used to aid, not hinder.

 

[Sakuraa]

Something I thought of, if Ash ends up getting Sobble, I could see it having a fear of battling in the large stadium gyms due to the species being shy normally. It could be an interesting character arc for it.

 

[Grass Type Gardenia]

Something I thought of, if Ash ends up getting Sobble, I could see it having a fear of battling in the large stadium gyms due to the species being shy normally. It could be an interesting character arc for it.

I would think Gloria will get Grookey as her starter, whilst Ash would get Scorbunny and Sobble.

 

[DynamicFusion]

I'm almost sure nearly everyone working on the show could agree on it. The XY style is both ineffective and inefficient. Its stiffness seriously reduces which boundaries you can break and how much can you express without using words or going extremely off-model. The "sharpness" of the shapes seriously hinders how effective you can use lines of action without them feeling broken. The amount of detail, especially on its poor use of shadows, creates a lot of visual noise, making it even harder to get any sense of volume, which shading should be used to aid, not hinder.

Kinda wonders me how they'll animate dynamaxing then. Fluid Animation is necessary for it.

 

[Grass Type Gardenia]

Kinda wonders me how they'll animate dynamaxing then. Fluid Animation is necessary for it.

SM was more of a vacation, a break in the series before going into the deep stuff between XY and SwSh

 

[KyseL]

Kinda wonders me how they'll animate dynamaxing then. Fluid Animation is necessary for it.

The Pokémon getting smaller will probably be hell to animate if they want to make it look any good, anything else related to Dynamaxing seems be bearable as long as the storyboards/layouts have good framing.

I honestly expect a lot of recycled animation, and a ton of battles ending with Pokémon fainting after an explosion while being in Dynamax form.

 

[Diamond & Pearl]

I'm almost sure nearly everyone working on the show could agree on it. The XY style is both ineffective and inefficient. Its stiffness seriously reduces which boundaries you can break and how much can you express without using words or going extremely off-model. The "sharpness" of the shapes seriously hinders how effective you can use lines of action without them feeling broken. The amount of detail, especially on its poor use of shadows, creates a lot of visual noise, making it even harder to get any sense of volume, which shading should be used to aid, not hinder.

Why do you even assume I like XY's art style more than SM's? What I was just trying to get at is that you shouldn't formulate your opinion in such a way that it comes over as a fact and you don't know whether nearly everyone working on the show thinks that XY is inferior to SM. And even if that is the case, I don't think that's a general opinion. After all, SM's crew should differ quite a lot with e.g. DP's in terms of vision.

 

[ii kanji]

Judging by some tweets Iwane made after he came home just from home, it seems that the TV Series will be fully digitalized in the Future. I don't know if he's referring to the SwSh Anime or just the anime in general but this is definitely interesting. Also he says the Work was very free flowing and relaxed.

He tweets a lot of crap, very frequently, but I find the description of it being 'free flowing and relaxed' is interesting - it is certainly at odds with the popular fan idea that we'll head back to something as 'on' (& stiff) as XY's animation style. What will actually transpire remains to be seen.

I would happily recommend a few British voice actors to Lisa Ortiz, David Tennant being one though doubt he'll be involved

I think I would bloody die if DT did a Pokeani voice, not least because I would then be compelled to watch the dub. On balance, I'd rather not bring him down to the level of having to work with Zoppi .et al.

The lady doing a full-on Glaswegian Gloria is great. I don't think we can hope for any such great voice selections.

 

[KyseL]

Why do you even assume I like XY more than SM? What I was just trying to get at is that you shouldn't formulate your opinion in such a way that it comes over as a fact and you don't know whether nearly everyone working on the show thinks that XY is inferior to SM. And even if that is the case, I don't think that's a general opinion. After all, SM's crew should differ quite a lot with e.g. DP's in terms of vision.

1. The post you quoted was a response to someone suggesting to bring the XY style back. When I said downgrade I meant that series specifically.
2. I mean, I'm talking from my experience working on animation. Non-animator friendly character design and art direction create a lot of issues in the production pipeline, which often has a lot of consequences in the final product. SPECIALLY on a show running on a weekly non-seasonal schedule.

 

[Daenerys]

Something I thought of, if Ash ends up getting Sobble, I could see it having a fear of battling in the large stadium gyms due to the species being shy normally. It could be an interesting character arc for it.

Why does he need more Pokemon with issues? Sure it could lead to an interesting character arc, but the writers tend to deal with those very slowly and I personally get impatient having to wait so damn long to see progress.

 

[Grass Type Gardenia]

1. The post you quoted was a response to someone suggesting to bring the XY style back. When I said downgrade I meant that series specifically.
2. I mean, I'm talking from my experience working on animation. Non-animator friendly character design and art direction create a lot of issues in the production pipeline, which often has a lot of consequences in the final product. SPECIALLY on a show running on a weekly non-seasonal schedule.

XY from what I've heard, didn't do well in the ratings in Japan, whilst SM is doing better. Whether or not it has something to do with the slice of life and taking a break from the old formula, I'm sure with SwSh they might surprise us with something new.

 

[Diamond & Pearl]

The post you quoted was a response to someone suggesting to bring the XY style back. When I said downgrade I meant that series specifically.

Yes, I am aware of that.

I mean, I'm talking from my experience working on animation. Non-animator friendly character design and art direction create a lot of issues in the production pipeline, which often has a lot of consequences in the final product. SPECIALLY on a show running on a weekly non-seasonal schedule.

An approach the XY crew doesn't agree with I reckon.

 

[KyseL]

An approach the XY crew doesn't agree with I reckon.

It's not like we're talking about different people, though. Even though there's some inevitable people leaving and joining the production team as it happens in any studio, the anime is still produced by Team Kato in OLM, which worked in the anime since late DP. Just seeing the knee-jerk reaction people had to the change in style it's no surprise why they held on to the more "traditional" style for so long, even if it had a ton of problems to work with.

XY from what I've heard, didn't do well in the ratings in Japan, whilst SM is doing better. Whether or not it has something to do with the slice of life and taking a break from the old formula, I'm sure with SwSh they might surprise us with something new.

SM wasn't doing better exactly. It wasn't losing as many viewers as XY, but that stability was lost after the time slot change.

 

[Diamond & Pearl]

Just seeing the knee-jerk reaction people had to the change in style it's no surprise why they held on to the more "traditional" style for so long, even if it had a ton of problems to work with.

Why do you assert the traditional way's "inferiority" is the cause of the great shift in style? Maybe it has to do with SM being a light-hearted series? Maybe they wanted to experiment with something new?

Were SwSh to revert to the traditional style, you'd think it'd be due to the (mostly Western) fans' backlash, wouldn't you?

 

[JinksChow]

XY from what I've heard, didn't do well in the ratings in Japan, whilst SM is doing better. Whether or not it has something to do with the slice of life and taking a break from the old formula, I'm sure with SwSh they might surprise us with something new.

Can we stop spreading misinformation about viewership ratings... Let me just post what I wrote in the other thread here:

First of all, ratings are not everything and don't have any indication on the quality of the anime. TVTokyo has gone on record saying they don't care about ratings, even if the Pokemon anime drops to below 3% ratings, which has happened in both XY/XYZ and SM.

Second of all, as someone else pointed out, the SM anime has not been faring better in ratings when compared to XY/XYZ.

Take a look at this:

精灵宝可梦 XY动画收视率列表 - 神奇宝贝百科，关于宝可梦的百科全书

wiki.52poke.com

精灵宝可梦 太阳＆月亮动画收视率列表 - 神奇宝贝百科，关于宝可梦的百科全书

wiki.52poke.com

The first link is for viewership ratings for XY/XYZ in Japan, while the second link is for viewership ratings for SM in Japan.

Ever since the time slot change, viewership ratings for the SM anime has basically been cut to two-thirds, sometimes even more so. But even before that, SM was barely keeping up in ratings when compared to XY. When you compare equivalent episodes, SM has only beaten XY on a few occasions. To add insult to injury, the SM anime has been out of the top 10 anime in viewership ratings since March (28 consecutive weeks), which has broken all previous records of the Pokemon anime. The most it had done so before was 7 consecutive weeks back in XY/XYZ. We should really thank Meltan's capture as well as the Misty/Brock cameos, otherwise the SM anime would actually have been out of the top 10 the entirety of 2019.

Before you argue that viewership ratings have steadily been dropping in Japan due to declining birthrates, each episode actually has a detailed rating separating viewership into age demographics. If you check those, SM has had lower viewership ratings among kids (4-12) and teens (13-19) when compared to XY/XYZ for most episodes.

While the time slot change definitely has effect on lower viewership ratings, there is no denying that the current genre of the Pokemon SM anime is not doing any favors. The lowest rated SM episode currently is SM126, which is probably the epitome of what SM is about.

Honestly, since the website I linked is considered an affiliate of Bulbapedia by both being members of Encyclopædiæ Pokémonis, I feel like we should translate those pages to English just to prevent people from bringing up misinformation about viewership ratings...

While that is true, we must also consider the floor for entering top 10.

Back during XY, the floor for entering top 10 is much higher; XY029 had a rating of 5.2%, and yet it still wasn't enough to be within top 10. Another thing is that Yokai Watch was the height of its craze back when XY was airing, so that's one slot out of top 10 consistently taken.

On the other hand, the highest rating for an episode out of top 10 is SM013 with 3.9%, while Yokai Watch Shadowside and the reboot barely appears in the top 10 anymore. With the bar for entering reduced dramatically as well as one more slot to compete for, the SM anime has a better chance of entering the top 10. (That is, of course, until the time slot change)

videor.co.jp/tvrating/

The above link as well as animenewsnetwork has a pretty good archive of the top 10 anime tv rankings, so you can go back and check how the floor for entering top 10 has decreased over the years.

Of course, I must stress again. Viewership is not everything. TVTokyo doesn't care about viewership. According to their financial reports, the Pokemon anime is consistently ranked third in terms of revenue from anime. Nothing comes about from arguing viewership level for different series, other than causing arguments about the reception for different series...

While I agree with most of what you said, basically all Pokemon series jump in viewership ratings at the start of a new series. If you use the link I gave in my original post and scrolled back to previous series, we can see that the only series that never did so was AG, since, let's face it, nothing can really come close to the viewership of the OS series, even if we're comparing to the relatively lackluster Johto part of the series.

Being family friendly has never been a problem for Pokemon, it's always been family friendly; the problem here is Pokemon becoming a slice-of-life/comedy series, Japanese families would rather watch Chibi Maruko-Chan and Sazae-San to get their fix of that genre, which just so happen to be airing in the exact same timeslot as the Pokemon SM anime.

With Fairy Tail Final Season ending in October, TVTokyo basically only has Boruto as its action/adventure anime. Since we now have the Yokai Watch reboot covering the slice-of-life/comedy genre, I really hope Pokemon can go back to its previous style or at least give a moderate mix of the two styles. That way, Pokemon can stay in its current timeslot and still offer something different to Chibi Maruko-Chan/Sazae-San, which might make it slightly more competitive in terms of viewership ratings.