Remarks on Takeshi Shudo's Vision for the Anime

[majestic honor of lugia]

Hi all,

I read an interesting article about writer Takeshi Shudo, which some of you might be interested in: Pokemon's Head Writer: Used Booze & Pills to Fuel Writing Process

Notably:

• The Dennō Senshi Porygon incident meant that Shudo's supervisors were not paying as much attention to his scriptwriting of the first movie. This resulted in the first movie being much darker than otherwise would have likely been.
• The budget of the first movie was $5 million and grossed $170 million and was the highest grossing japenese movie in US theatres at the time. The resounding success of the first movie meant that the supervisors gave Shudo complete creative freedom for the second movie.
  • That means, without Dennō Senshi Porygon, the first three movies would have likely been much lighter in their content.
  • Shudo went "overboard", drinking alcohol and taking tranquilizers to help clear his mind, habits he would carry for the rest of his life. This likely contributed to his death in 2010.
• Shudo was the brainchild of Lugia. Lugia was intended to be simutanously male and female, and shudo envisioned Lugia as a maternal figure. Shudo was very upset when Lugia was voiced as male.
• Shudo had some ideas for how to end the anime, and didn't envision the anime lasting more than two or three years. His thoughts on how to end the anime were quite dark:
  • Shudo wanted ash to grow to be an old man. In the final episode, as he reminisced about his adventures, he would hear the comforting voice of his mother calling on him to go on another journey. He would then be shown to be a boy again starting his pokemon journey.
  • Shudo also envisioned an ending where pokemon realized that they were slaves, rejected the idea of ownership, and started a rebellion. Although he never figured out how to resolve the plot for this. However, the resolution would have clearly led to the end of pokemon.
  • Post ash, Shudo wanted a new protagonist to take over and start their own anime.
  • Shudo intended the anime to be moreso a coming of age story than what it has evolved into now.

All in all, I think Shudo left a lasting legacy on the anime, and while some of his ideas never came to life, he definitely was a factor in "saving" the anime post Dennō Senshi Porygon ... and responsible for the incredible popularity the show/movies enjoyed through the years. Maybe in an ironic twist, Dennō Senshi Porygon is what enabled (indirectly) the anime to persist to the present day.

I encourage you all to give the article a full read, it is very interesting.

Thoughts?