WhiteTomorrow!

illustrious-rocket:

ultraericthered:

themattress:

HAPPY METEONITE DAY!

With the whole thing out, I just want to look at a few key notes and differences between my old synopsis (which I’ve updated) and between how the episodes themselves ended up. 

I had two sources for the synopsis. One of them has now been exposed as a lying troll, as literally none of what they said actually happened in the episodes: Ash and his friends don’t voluntarily leave Juniper and Jenny, Krokorok doesn’t fight Pikachu, Ash and Iris don’t infiltrate the building and have Pikachu cut the power, Team Rocket doesn’t shoot at the Meteonite to empower Woobat and cause havoc in the process (they’re actually trying to stop it!), and in general a shit ton of details about Part 2 are left out…because like I said, the source was a liar who never saw the scripts and was out trolling. The OTHER source, however, was a storyboard artist on Part 1 who also glimpsed some stuff for Part 2 when the episodes were being produced. His recollections were generally accurate, as he said what he remembered was the whole Relic Castle ritual with Team Rocket, the adult and child heroes separating and then reconvening midway through, the whole deal with Giovanni trying to buy off Unova’s elites mafia-style using the Meteonite as leverage, Team Plasma wanting the Meteonite to drive Pokemon away since that’s the effect it has on wild Pokemon so they hope to do it with trained Pokemon as “the Hero” desires, Officer Jenny and Iris remaining outside the building while everyone else is inside, the whole backstory behind the Meteonite as explained by Professor Juniper, and the effect it has on Pikachu (it goes back to being overcharged and unable to use electricity like with what Zekrom did, then after Team Plasma takes the Meteonite the effects reverse so that it can use all the electricity and it runs off with the purpose of destroying the Meteonite with the heroes following). While some of what I wrote in the initial synopsis may have been off due to either Google Translate’s wonkiness or the source remembering things out of order, he clearly wasn’t lying to me like the other one.

Some things in the script clearly got changed in production, as well. The most obvious is that the first episode was called “Gathering of the Evil Organizations! The Desert Resort!!”, while only the second was called “Team Rocket VS. Team Plasma!” The finalized version ended up having both episodes called “Team Rocket VS Team Plasma!”, with a “Part One” and “Part Two” designation. Another change is how Giovanni’s arrival in the Desert Resort went down, as it’s described in the script as having the crowd of Team Rocket grunts flank him as he exits his plane, whereas in the final version the grunts are already gathered alongside Jessie, James, Meowth, Pierce and Dr. Zager when he lands. But the most drastic alteration is the whole midway point: in the original scripts it happens at a luxury hotel in the Desert Resort rather than a building in Castelia City, Team Plasma’s helicopter comes in from over the roof rather than outside the windows, and rather than a Liepard in the helicopter blasting the windows with a Hyper Beam it’s one inside the building blasting a Hyper Beam at Looker. 

Lastly, the biggest new information by far is what goes on with Team Plasma in Part Two. Not only do we hear more about “the Hero”, but we actually hear and see some of Ghetsis, who sits besides two small statuettes of Zekrom and Reshiram. We also get Giovanni reacting to learning Team Plasma’s name and making clear that he and the Team Rocket organization was to still be heavily involved in fighting Team Plasma in the originally planned B/W-based Team Plasma story arc. Beyond all of the graphic depictions of hot radiation threatening to destroy a city alongside all the earthquakes triggered by the Meteonite’s power, this is why the episodes were ultimately removed altogether: Team Plasma was setting up a story arc that B2/W2 rendered obsolete. Again, being a merchandise-driven show can really suck.

OK, I cannot lie to myself or others - reading these drafts that, especially in BW24, clue us in to what the original plan for the overarching series arc was, really has lowered my objective opinion on Best Wishes in the form we ended up with. My subjective opinion remains the same, but now that we know for sure we could’ve gotten not only BW1 Team Plasma and allusions to Hero of Truth N, but fucking Ghetsis getting his existence and presence established at that point and, if how Giovanni exited was anything to go by, more Year 3 Giovanni/TR content with Team Rocket continuing to combat Team Plasma even after Operation Tempest ended in failure? We got fucking robbed! The trainwreck that BW ended up becoming in Year 3 now looks even worse than it already did, enough so to make me almost wish we’d never found out what was in those episodes scripts at all (though as was noted, these were just the initial drafts - the finalized episodes that were set to broadcast might’ve had more alterations than we know of, and the short footage compilation film covering the retroactive “canonical” version of the “Dummied Out” events that the two-parter was meant to show plays it out a little differently too, so the drafts can be considered a “What If?” at best.)

Ultimately this reconfirms what we already know for years now - that the Unova League, Iris’ character arc and the Village of Dragons, Team Rocket’s conquest conspiracy, and the Myth Arc around the Legendary Pokemon of Truth and Ideals, the Heroes Legend, and Team Plasma, were meant to be a lot more interconnected than they ended up being. Sad to admit what was meant to be experimental, groundbreaking and truly epic in a way unseen in the anime up to that point ultimately became just another Atsuhiro Tomioka series.

I am LOSING MY FUCKING MIND over how close my personal reconstruction of the original arc’s planned direction is to reality. Even just with these, I put Ghetsis into my reconstruction of BW024 on a whim to better glue the plot threads together (he threatened Giovanni prior to the helicopter attack via video) and lo and behold he actually WAS in it. That means my Holy Grail of pokeani material - settei of BW1 Ghetsis - DOES exist.

Ghetsis, Ghetsis, Ghetsis in the proper form… and he even had something that - suspiciously - came very close to his official anime music theme, in one of the movies. It’s time to unbury this thing! (Track 47, almost as if it was created with Ghetsis in mind!). Based on the scripts, having established Ghetsis presence so early, they wouldn’t merely drop the earlier incarnation of Plasma or handle it off-screen, far more likely the second one would be developing over the course of the original Plasma plot, with Ghetsis having his own plans in the shadows. So I wasn’t too far off with this music playlist and potential plot speculation! Most likely it would all culminate in the league and whatever the BW1 Team Plasma/N expectations - say, like Alan’s in XYZ - it would ultimately end up in the grand reveal of the actual plan, Ghetsis’ gloating, and by this point Colress possibly playing his part behind the scenes too, with the nasty control research kept far away from N and idealist grunts (which I guess could have been those Plasma agents from the scripts - that Liepard petting was very telling!). It’s fun to think of this again!

The episodes themselves weren’t anything more than we suspected they would be, but then again, they were very unique, with very unique elements and character interactions in them, and nothing like it ever since, and if all of this came to pass, influencing the structure of the series… maybe the anime itself would not be delayed for 3 series straight in certain departments and would be more free to keep doing innovated and slightly more interconnected things, you know, how it’s just went back to doing… now? Because Horizons gives me very similar vibes and it might be a lot of interconnected story arcs, kinda like the original BW might have turned out (though with BW mostly limited to villain arc department, whereas now it’s the entirety of the cast and continuity subject to such treatment!). Oh, I only wish it was never so wasted and denied to TRio, legacy characters and our old cast of the past three series!

Oh well, I guess the only thing that I wouldn’t even dream of, was that Giovanni actually had a solid plan and hinted at more action against Plasma, strategically salvaging the Meteonite failure and apparently being two steps ahead in the game - rather than just retreat in defeat and lose interest in Unova for the entire series. As cool as it was, this probably means the Operation Tempest would have been something else, maybe the culmination of TR / TP rivalry, when once again they come face to face, and N, as a hero, gotta save the day and prove himself, by putting an end to Team Rocket’s planned conquest and exploitation of legendary Pokemon (captured forces of nature?) which then would lead directly to Flare-styled league finale, and who knows, Jessie, James, and Meowth could have returned to Unova as they did in Episode N (except Episode N would not exist separately but all part of the Plasma league arc) and played the exact same roles they did in the Flare arc and Episode N arc - ultimately, help defeat the big bad Ghetsis as he goes rampart, and report back to Giovanni that all is well. It’s quite likely, that for three series straight, we’ve been just reliving bits and pieces of what was to be but never was, all over again and again, same same bits and pieces served differently… Someone gotta take a journey back in time, convince TV Tokyo to release those a week earlier and see how it goes from there! Very interesting how the Pokeani would have looked like then, at present day…