Why did Johto have so much filler?

[Enzito]

We all like to think of Johto as the peak of anime filler hell, but I was always wondering why exactly did it get so much of it in the first place? Was it to last the corresponding gen? Or just simply bad writting. I would like to find some likely theories surrounding this

 

[Daren]

A few things, I suspect:
*The G/S ball plot getting abandoned in favor of putting Celebii in a film could have easily caused quite a bit of disruption to the planned story focused episodes.
*The writers adjusting to the slower pace of the show after Kanto had been written under the idea it would less than two years long.

 

[marshiyanmisuta]

They tried what they've done on Kanto while expanding it through three years.

 

[Hidden Mew]

This was the first time they had to extend one journey for an entire generation. Kanto lasted for about two years and they had the Orange Islands between the first two generations. Since they were still primarily focused on Ash's Gym battles and neither Misty or Brock had a lot of focus, fillers were probably the easiest way to pad out the arc. Dropping the G/S Ball could have been a factor too, but it's hard to say if that would have drastically reduced the amount of filler. It probably could have gotten a follow-up, but I don't think it would have been more than two or three episodes at most given how most of the other mini arcs in late Johto were structured.

 

[jungle_penguins]

At that point (really at Kanto or Orange Islands) they realized the show was going to last a decade, maybe even more. Personally I think they were still working on the formula as the show went on and never really got the hang of it until much later. It's many reasons.

 

[Greninjaman]

The GS Ball plot being dropped could be a factor to that.

 

[kantoskies]

It’s also because they didn’t bother to give Kasumi or Takeshi a running storyline like they did with characters like Haruka and Hikari in the future. Perhaps if the Gold/Silver games had something in them like Contests?

Perhaps the writers didn’t fully realize just how many filler episodes would be required to have a badge quest as the only long-running story for an entire generation. It could explain why there seemed to be more mini-arcs towards the later half of the saga. Then by the time they started developing the Advanced Generation series they decided to give a second character a storyline as well.

 

[Konja7]

The GS Ball plot being dropped could be a factor to that.

As it was mentioned, it's unlikely the GS Ball plot really affect so much the general plot, since it will likely have a two or three episodes arc.

 

[Flynn]

Like others have said I think it was just growing pains as they shifted to making a show that wasn't going to end anytime soon. Though, I've always wondered how much the show was affected by Takeshi Shudo stepping down (or demoted?) as head writer after EP156. Really makes me wish we had more behind the scenes info on the production of the show in its earlier years aside from that one Masamitsu Hidaka interview that's been quoted a million times.

 

[Nicolas721]

Kanto and Orange Islands had lots of filler too. It's just that they were more dynamic and experimental so Johto's felt like a drastic change, but the actual formula of gym>fillers with a couple captures in between >gym was the same.

I think the first year of fillers were clearly made to promote Gold & Silver, given that some of them even came out before the release of the games and arguably have the rule of "only one new Pokemon per episode". Afterwards it was just stalling for time.

I heavily disagree with the notion that the GS Ball plot being dropped had to do with it (just like people relate the censorship of Team Plasma vs Team Rocket to BW's issues) as 1) the fillers were present before and 2) it would have been a 3-parter conclusion at best, I don't think they would have pulled a 50+ episodes serialized story out of it.

 

[Vengeful Ghost]

It was a transitional region with some behind the scenes drama that caused the GS ball plot to get dropped. Johto was a region where they definitely were trying to find an identity for the anime and franchise as a whole.

 

[Emelie]

Yeah, I agree with everyone about Misty's lack of goal. I think in some ways Aim to be a Pokémon Master suffers from the same problem Johto does. Brock and Misty are there but they mostly remain passive in the background.

Seeing Misty get a competition similar to May, Dawn and Serena would have been great. She needed her own arc where she collected something similar to badges/ribbons and had rivals who tested her skills from time to time.

A competition like contests but with normal battles without the unecessary fluff that contests and showcase sometimes had would have been great.

 

[Hidden Mew]

Yeah, I agree with everyone about Misty's lack of goal. I think in some ways Aim to be a Pokémon Master suffers from the same problem Johto does. Brock and Misty are there but they mostly remain passive in the background.

Seeing Misty get a competition similar to May, Dawn and Serena would have been great. She needed her own arc where she collected something similar to badges/ribbons and had rivals who tested her skills from time to time.

A competition like contests but with normal battles without the unecessary fluff that contests and showcase sometimes had would have been great.

The "unnecessary fluff" helped to make Contests distinct from regular battles, as well as explain why Ash wouldn't be more interested in taking part in them more often. If you take out the appeal and flash of Contests, then they aren't anything different from regular battles.

While giving Misty a more active goal could have helped with her character and potentially reduced the amount of filler in Johto, I don't think that giving her a Water Pokemon version of the badge quest would have worked, if only because Ash would have been interested in battling against other Water Pokemon trainers too. They both took part in the Whirl Cup despite how that was more fitting for Misty by comparison. That might not have been the case for every trainer Misty wanted to battle, but if she was going after special Water Pokemon trainers, I think it would be harder to justify why Ash wouldn't want to battle them too, something they didn't have to worry about for either Contests or Showcases.

Besides that, I think that the issue is less due to Misty herself and more like the original series in general was more focused on Ash and Team Rocket more than anyone else. Misty and Brock still got some focus here and there, but neither of them were given the more consistent focus and development that a lot of other future companions had. I'd argue that Brock had better focus episodes in both AG and DP than he did in the original series since by that point, they were more interested in focusing on other characters in the cast more consistently.

 

[LuxrayOfTheWild]

I think there's two things that really attributed too it the large amount of filler.

-The first is the fact that the GS ball plot was dropped early on in favor of doing a movie about Celebi.
-The fact that they realized the series was going to go on longer than they anticipated.

It does make me wonder how Johto would have gone though had it been done more similar to the AG-XY era of the anime.

 

[jbmasta]

Having to sustain an 8 gym and league storyline over three seasons worth of episodes. Kanto ran for about a season and a half iirc and Orange Islands was a short term stalling tactic while waiting for GS to release. I do agree the GS ball being dropped wasn't as big an impact as many make it out to be, the Johto seasons did do mini-arcs to try address the pacing including a couple of Team Rocket ones (baby Lugia and the Lake of Rage), the Whirl Cup, the Larvitar arc etc. With Ruby and Sapphire having contests, the writers had it a lot easier to have a secondary region long arc and focus for the female travelling companion, not to mention Emerald introducing a new campaign for Ash to embark on to fill out the episode count before Diamond and Pearl (and being able to showcase plenty of gen 4 Pokémon to make the episodes around them more interesting at the time of airing). Johto just had the battle tower and doing more than a couple of episodes around that would have been tricky.

 

[Johtoo]

You know what would have been interesting. Misty actually leaving the group to battle gyms herself. She's a gym leader who always professed to be a water pokemon master. To me, it's obvious that she should have been competing for league badges and being a water pokemon master is essentially ash's goal, except stuck onto a single type. Of course she would still have been in the anime, but watching misty turn into Ash's rival in Johto would have been really fascinating. The lustre of Gary had also faded since Kanto, and this would have added such an interesting dynamic.