The time to promote the game is when it comes out. The anime is still going on with its own episodes into February and March. Unless we get an announcement of an arc for it soon, they're not going to suddenly change their minds and make a Legends Arceus arc 4-6 months after the game came out. It's the same way they ignore other games like New Pokemon Snap, Colosseum, and the DLC plots like Crown Tundra and so forth
The only spin-offs that the anime made reference to is Ranger and GO, and to be honest, even they were not that faithful to the referenced games. The anime will never adapt Masters because one of that game's signature gimmicks is strong continuity. And we shall see if anything from Unite gets any mention.
I mean, none of those are main series games (one is a DLC pack and not a game). And it doesn’t contradict or answer what I said. If we're still deep into the promotional window of a game that released a year ago how is the window of a game that just released less than it? Unless you have the future promotion plans in hand I don’t think we can say that. Other remakes got promotion various months before and after their release too, never at the exact time of release. Look at Mega Evolution Specials that promoted ORAS.
Considering how they've promoted other main series games, the idea that the only time to promote Legend Arceus is when it comes out sounds so weird to me. They didn't cover the Sword/Shield climax until nearly a year into Journeys. It wouldn't be unusual or a stretch for them to do something similar with Legend Arceus, especially when they haven't featured a lot of the Hisui forms. Getting an arc adapting Legend Arceus four to six months down the line really wouldn't be impossible, especially if they do have DLC for the game.
I still think that Sword/Shield's storyline isn't that bad. It isn't one of the amazing storylines in the series, but I thought it was fine and engaging. If Journeys had more proper setup for the Darkest Day plot, I think four episodes would have been a good length to cover it. Like I mentioned before, I don't really see the issue of them covering the game's storyline/climax within four episodes. I don't know if they'd be able to cover it effectively or do the game justice, but that hasn't really stopped them from covering the games' storylines before. I really love the storyline in Sun/Moon. It easily has one of the best storylines of the game, Lusamine was a different kind of villain given how she was so emotionally abusive to her children and Lillie slowly coming out of her shell, gaining more confidence and eventually standing up to her mother was fantastic. SM covered that storyline within about eleven episodes and I don't think that they did the game's storyline justice. The changes to Lillie and Lusamine just didn't make adapting the storyline work for me. It still had some nice moments, especially the episode where Lillie overcomes her fear of Pokemon, but it didn't do the games justice in my opinion.
That’s purely subjective. I could hypothetically see the anime butchering the LA plot like it has done for many other games and squeeze it in four episodes, probably the climax.
Ash’s Quilava evolving under the influence of Hisui is probably one of my biggest wishes that won’t come true.
Something about it kinda feels right, but I don't have my hopes up. Seeing Ash's Quilava evolve into the Highphlosion would be a dream come true. They have a reason to make it happen, but I just don't count on it.
Then if Ash's Quilava evolved into regular Typhlosion, they would be distinct from each other.
That would be really cool to see, although I think I'd still prefer for Dawn's Quilava to evolve into Hisuian Typhlosion instead. I still have my doubts about Ash's reserves being used in this series, so admittedly, I think that it would have minimal screentime regardless of which option they went for. I just think that Dawn's team would benefit from it more, especially when it's such a shame that she didn't get anything new. Ash having the regular Typhlosion while Dawn has the Hisuian form would be a nice way to make them more distinct. Besides all that, I think it would have been easier to evolve Dawn's Quilava since she has been regularly traveling and training with it through multiple regions. I still find it so baffling that they didn't make it evolve in the special when that would have been a great and natural way to showcase one of the new starters.
You're including filler in the number of episodes that "need" to happen? Nonsense. It's a commercial. Get in, catch a couple Pokemon, have a climax episode, get out. The absolute maximum that would be needed is 8-10 episodes, which is a perfectly serviceable amount for a side-story arc, I don't think Episode N had much more than that.
I'm not sure if anyone is really expecting a proper adaptation of the game though. The anime has never really been interested in providing faithful proper adaptations of the games. Events from the games tend to play out differently in the anime and important characters are removed or just flat out never appear all the time. The anime has always been more interested in having its own take on the games' storyline as opposed to being a faithful adaptation. Legends Arceus wouldn't really be that different in that regard. Even skipping over important game mechanics wouldn't be unheard of given how SM pretty much dropped regular trials halfway through to focus more on the Grand Trials.
This really doesn’t make sense. The same is true for literally most main series Pokémon games and they too, get a 4 episode promotion. I don’t know why are your standards suddenly increasing exponentially for this particular game. The anime can and will promote Arceus in 4 episodes if it wants to like literally every other main series games. Also, the average Go capture spree happens in under 5 minutes.
