How do the writers decide which sidequests to include in the anime and which not?

[Cybersai]

While the writers are required to debut all new Pokemon into episodes, (except the Porygon line, apparently), and feature all Gym leaders, there are other aspects of the games they either ignore or downplay.

- For example the Pokeathlon, a brand new quest in HGSS, gets only 1 episode in DP. Instead of making a mini-arc for it, they give it one throwaway episode and toss it in the trash.

- The Pokemon Musicals, if we see them at all, will likely only get 1 episode when we get to Nimbasa City. Its far too late into the saga to turn them into a major sidequest.

- Most of the Johto and Hoenn E4 was never debuted.

- Likewise the Johto/Sinnoh BF was completely ignored, despite being featured in two games. On top of that Johto was not revisited in the anime at all, despite HGSS coming out.

- The new Pokemon Ranger games gets at least one episode to promote them in the anime, but that is all.


When you stop to think about it, the only heavily promoted sidequest from the games were the Contests. They probably originally made a big deal out of them in Hoenn because they were trying to build up a female aspect of the show that wasn't there before, and the best way to do it was to treat Contests like a token-collecting quest. It was quite possible the Contests were intended to be a Hoenn-only thing at first, but their popularity made the writers include them in the Kanto BF arc, and then once again in DP.


So why so much heavy promotion on some aspects yet so little on others?

 

[Sweet Veil]

How do you know Musicals will only get one episode?

I don't see the point in having a Poke-athlon Arc. It's not something Satoshi would get hung up on.

 

[Piplup]

You answered it yourself- for AG/DP, both games and anime tried to appeal more to girls and part of that included using Contests as the girly plot of the heroine which got more of starring role rather than a sidekick
That's the only reason Contests got more than Pokéathlon and more than what the Musical is likely to get (also, in the case of Pokéathlon, it arrived pretty late for the generation for them to do much with it)

As for no Johto revisit or Platinum/HGSS BF: simple - if they had time to fill till next gen like they had between AG and DP, they'd probably make a Johto revisit with the new BF, but since there was no need for such a thing and a new gen was ready to go, they didn't need to do that and instead made that Johto Festival little arc and focused a lot on gen 2 Poké

And for game characters in general - it seems that every gen they focus on them more than previously