Bulbapedia talk:Project Anime

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Talk Archives: One

Anime characters and Trainer's Pokémon

I'm starting this thread because Maverick Nate commented on the discord conversation and talked about being discussed in an environment where it can be debated more exclusively focused on the issue. Will the rules for Trainer Pokémon and relevant characters in the anime(s) remain the same? More mainly I ask because of pages like these here:

• User:BigDocFan/Leon's Charizard
• User:Hikaru Wazana/Diantha (anime)

Another case, the part that I think is important to be evaluated would be Friede's Charizard

• User:CuteSylveon42/Friede's Charizard

Whereas Friede appears to fall into the main character category, Charizard appears to be a notable Pokémon.

As up to the present moment, Horizons has been completely different from what we had before, will this new series receive its own rules or will the ones we had in Ash's anime still be maintained? Since I'm only trying to follow the standards adopted in the pages of the manga characters for this series.--Hikaru Wazana (talk) 13:56, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

Organizational improvements in response to Horizons

In response to recent new information regarding Pokémon Horizons: The Series, these are the top level organizational improvements that have been discussed lately that seem pertinent to plan out the details for making them happen. (I will go from largest category and work my way inward.)

The following improvements have already been discussed at length and are generally thought to be necessary. Relevant counterarguments can still be presented below, just please be very clear about what points are being talking about. Once we get some of these moves and splits taken care of, we can address specific content decisions on a per article basis on the relevant talk pages, but for now, let's just try and make sense of the mess we've found ourselves in.

• 1) Problem: Pokémon anime is trying to both be a specific page about Pokémon the Series and a general page about Pokémon animation.

Solution: Move Pokémon anime to Pokémon the Series to maintain the page history, rewrite Pokémon the Series to only detail Ash's adventure from The Beginning through Journeys with any relevant sub content, rewrite the anime page to be about all Pokémon animation (as it is named here) similar to Pokémon manga.

Implications: Movies are separated on Pokemon.com, and it's probably a wise decision to create something separate in order to keep appropriate focus for these pages.

Relevant userspace drafts: User:Boblers/Pokémon anime; User:Boblers/Pokémon the Series; User:TrainerSplash/Pokémon animation; User:SaturnMario/Pokémon the Series (series), User:Boblers/Pokémon movie

• 2) Problem: The wiki currently references Ash's story as the main series or the anime on many, if not most, of anime relevant pages, even though the "main series" will now be Pokémon Horizons: The Series.

Solution: Future-proof all references to call the medium by its name: i.e. Pokémon the Series, Pokémon Origins, Pokémon Concierge, Pokémon Horizons: The Series, instead of giving precedence to any one or another. Additionally, scale the naming of sections something similar to the following

==In animation==

===Pokémon the Series===

====The Beginning====

====Diamond & Pearl====

====Journeys====

===Pokémon Horizons: The Series===

===Pokémon Origins===

===Pokémon Concierge===

• 3) Problem: Original series is a weird amalgamation of 2 different English series and 3 different Japanese series.

Solution: Split the page to follow the English language definition, as that's what makes the most sense for an English language encyclopedia following primarily English language sources. Update any references accordingly.

Implications: the EP Epicode will no longer make sense for EP117-EP274. Solution: move those pages to GS001 to GS158.

Relevant userspace drafts:User:Maverick Nate/List of Pokémon the Series: The Beginning episodes; User:Maverick Nate/List of Pokémon the Series: Gold and Silver episodes; User:SaturnMario/List of Pokémon the Series (series) episodes

• 4) Problem: Horizons has a Season 1, so the season epicodes become problematic.

Solution: Move all seasons to their official title instead of using an epicode.

Implications: Season 23, for example, is named the same as the series: They are both Pokémon Journeys: The Series. (Solution: use the (season) parenthetical, and maybe (series))

Relevant userspace drafts: User:Evie/Anime seasons; User:Pikachu Bros./WebsiteSeason

If I missed anything, let me know. ^Maverick_Nate 14:59, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

The third topic is interesting to discuss, because clearly the "original series" has three distinct arcs; Kanto League, Orange League and Johto League.

Johto, by the way, has a lot of difference in the structure for Ash's Kanto phase. And I know this is an English language wiki, but I always consider the Japanese stuff more important than the American stuff, the anime has a lot of stuff that stayed in the country of origin or was changed to be ignored.--Hikaru Wazana (talk) 15:43, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

I do have some counterarguments. On point 2), should't both Ash'story and Pokémon Horizons fall under the "main series" label, at least from a production perspective? I think HZ can be considered a series of the anime/Pokémon the Series just like AG or SM and not something inherently separate form it, even though this time all the protagonists are different. On point 3), while the original series does indeed have three chapters in the Japanese version, they are nonetheless all part of the 1997 Pocket Monsters series so it wouldn't be inaccurate to keep a single page. On point 4), it's true that the website had "Pokémon Horizons (Season 1)" listed there, but it could simply mean that it's the first season of the HZ series. There is a good possibility that once arriving on pokemon.com they'll count it as the 26th season meaning that the current epicodes won't be obsolete.--Ricbolog1310 (talk) 21:52, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

On Points 1, 2, and 4, I completely agree. However, I don't think either of the userspace drafts for Point 4 are relevant to this discussion; they were made at a time that the season boundaries themselves were in dispute, which is an issue we have largely resolved (unless someone wants to propose having separate articles for "Pokémon the Series - Season 1" and "Pokémon: Indigo League" based on the differing definitions).

I think the title "Pokémon the Series" is a little bit tricky, because my understanding has always been that that name specifically refers to the TV series as opposed to the movies (which are titled "Pokémon the Movie: ..."). However, in the absence of a better title, I think it's perfectly fine to use.

Regarding Ricbolog1310's point: To my knowledge they have never referred to the start of a new series as "Season 1". The season Pokémon the Series: XY was always Season 17, not Season 1 of 'Pokémon the Series: XY. I still think it's a good idea to rename season articles to the season names instead of epicodes though, even if Pokémon.com decides to refer to "Pokémon Horizons: The Series - Season 1" as Season 26 (which I suspect they won't, but we'll have to wait and see).

Point 3 is where I disagree. My understanding is that the Japanese side considers the original series (just titled "Pocket Monsters" without a subtitle) to be an entire series on the same level as Pocket Monsters: Advanced Generation etc. The Kanto, Orange Islands ("Episode: Orange Islands"), and Johto ("Episode: Gold and Silver") arcs are treated as subseries. I think it's entirely reasonable to argue that the two dub series and three Japanese subseries all deserve articles on their own too, but I do not think we should replace the top-level original series article we currently have, nor do I think we should rename EP epicodes to GS. I'd like to continue that specific discussion on the talk page of original series, as I think it's going to take this conversation too far off-topic. --SnorlaxMonster 03:26, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

I fully agree on topics 1, 2, and 4. Perhaps I can help sell those points:

• 1) Animated Pokémon media has branched out a lot in recent years, yet with the current form of the "Pokémon anime" article, the TV show is drowning everything else out due to its sheer size. Re-organizing a "Pokémon animation" article would give much more visibility to these other works, and help them seem like their own, important things rather than just footnotes.
• 2) Usage of the "main series" label seems to be based on plot/world, not really production. Most pages' anime sections talk about events that happened in PTS. In that sense, given that Horizons seems to be a hard reboot, keeping PTS plot elements separate from Horizons plot elements could help avoid confusion over which events could influence future events, etc. It wouldn't make sense to associate Ash's achievements with Horizons events, if Horizons doesn't consider him to exist. If we want to present the production ties, we can do so on the post-rework "Pokémon animation" article - have a section for "TV animation", and have PTS and Horizons in their own subsections under that.
• 4) Renaming the seasons is pretty much necessary if we want to establish that PTS and Horizons are separate entities - it'd be odd to have Horizons as S26, when it's seemingly not connected to S01-S25 in terms of world and characters.

Regarding topic 3, I initially agreed - it's strange to me that we use official English titles for all PTS series except the "Original Series", even though it has official English names as "The Beginning" (EP001 - EP116) and "Gold and Silver" (EP117 - EP274). Going through with topic 3's changes would bring some consistency to how we present this - additionally, it would fit well with the Johto color scheme we're already using on EP117 - EP274's pages.

However, given what SnorlaxMonster has mentioned about the Japanese side of the Original Series, now I'm not quite sure about topic 3. --Boblers (talk) 10:43, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Ricbolog1310, both Liko's and Ash's anime are main series.

The point is that the two as far as it turned out are independent series. Assuming that the anime from now on starts to do like the Yugi-Oh and Digimon anime, which take place in other universes, it will be important to have differences, even if they are all still the "Pokémon anime".--Hikaru Wazana (talk) 11:54, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Personally, I think it's too early to tell. As of now, Nurse Joy is the only character from a previous series to have received an appearance in Horizons, but once more old characters start to appear it will hopefully be easier to discern whether it's indeed a hard reboot or not--Ricbolog1310 (talk) 12:47, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

I never said that Horizons is a reboot, but that it is a series without ties to the previous one (a person who started watching in HZ001, has no need to watch the previous 25 years of anime). I'm sure more characters will show up at one time or another but that's not the point of the question. And then we enter the speculation and theory area, something that makes no sense to discuss here.

The point for me is that some pages (like the Elite Four) are based on describing Ash's experiences with these characters. That kind of thing won't happen anymore. This page and the Rivals page, I was even thinking of changing the way some information is described there, by the way.--Hikaru Wazana (talk) 13:01, 26 June 2023 (UTC)