Was BW for testing things for XY anime?

[Supreme Leader Palpitoad]

Many people here(me too)have many complaints about BW. How Team Rocket has been handled, how the main characters have been handled for example. But maybe this is only a try out for the XY anime. The writers want to see what the fans think is okay. Any thoughts?
I am sorry if a thread like this already exists but I have not found anything.

 

[Master Cyrus]

If it was I think ash should only bring Pikachu and a single pokeball to capture the cute water to kalos.

 

[Moe]

It might perhaps explain some of the dramatic shifts in pace and character development we saw, but I certainly can't imagine it starting out that way, as that would require foresight.

At least if BW was a test bed we should get far more consistency with XY as their decisions would be a result of reviewing what they think was right/wrong about BW.

If their handling of Team Rocket is anything to go by, I think they will end up undoing a lot of positive changes from BW by trying to do an anti-BW instead of trying to find the ideal middle between DP and AG that I'd suggest would generally be considered where the series should head.

I think a lot of the BW ideas were good, but they just didn't execute. For example I'd say at this point bluntly that BW is a failed test for Ash catching more Pokemon and rotating through them - but that's because instead of true rotations with varied lineups and strong development across the board, you got focus on a small group of his Pokemon at the expense of the others. So what lesson would you take out of that? The safe option of just having fewer Pokemon storylines to deal with, or to attempt to do a better execution of Pokemon development and rotation the second time round?

Basically - even if BW was a testing ground, I don't think they are going to take the right messages out of it.

 

[Slkitzle]

Well, it would make sense, I guess. Certain parts of BW are just so different from the others and somewhat erratic that I think they could pass as trial and error. Like, there have been a bunch of tournaments, which wasn't really there before... like, man... I just blew my own mind. /takes a puff from joint
I jest, but I see where you are coming from. I hope that in X and Y they have things that are more like Episode N or the new Decolora arc than stuff like the Junior Cup, or whatever. I guess they were trying to find a balance between action and bleh.

 

[Paulisthebest]

If you ask me it seemed more of a "filler" season to me in that it really didn't seem that memorable or well written to be a saga, don't ya think?

I mean as usual region sagas start we have Ash going to a new place to start catching new Pokemon and enter that region's league. But this season it seemed a bit underplayed don't you think?

We see Ash collect the badges but he doesn't have a contest friend on his team and the characters he does travel with have goals but not goals that would make for extended story arcs. Like Cilan here and there we see movie, detective, cook and Pokemon conisuer (can't spell that word for the life of me so let's just say Pokemon Appraiser) but we really don't see anything come of it like will he reach S class at the end of the series? If he does it might be out of the blue or something...with Iris um yeah just let me leave and soon pretty please???

It seems to me that BW is testing what its like for Ash to have his badge quest being #1 out of the 3 people in the group, him catching more than 5 or 6 Pokemon to see if its too much and too difficult to develop them individually enough, etc.

To me it seemed like a backfire with the league being highly underplayed in my opinion, I mean it just seemed to come and go. Zero cameos (neither did Sinnoh but we did see Mr. Goodshow) and there were too many other tournaments in this region that made the league just seem like another one of those tournaments that Ash doesn't win...

So, that is why BW seems like another region that will just not be memorable to me at all, heck despite the 100s of fillers Johto seemed like a real season to me. Unova seems like a set-up region like Orange Islands or Battle Frontier for Johto/Sinnoh and they were better written than this.

Well, guess the writers had to do something to bridge the gap between the release of DPP and X/Y. And the horrible result; Pokemon BW and B2/W2

 

[Almonds]

If it was testing, everything except Episode N was pretty much fail.

 

[Winterdaze]

No. Just no.

Why would they give the current cohort of children watching the show the shaft just to use them to product test for the next lot? All I'm reading is "Grr I don't like what they've done, so it better have all been a test so they can make it up to me!"

 

[Madame Pika]

Well, you could say that each season is testing ground for the next. Can we make this show and how do we do that? (Kanto). Can we get away with putting barely any effort in? (Jouto) Can Satoshi share the show's spotlight and still shine for himself? (Houen) Can we have strong rivals who also take a large share of the spotlight? (DP) What the question is in Best Wishes I don't know but I think that all these questions have effected the next series from them one way or the other.

In terms of being a big filler experiment though, I kind of doubt it.

 

[Cresselia92]

I don't think that the purpose of this series was to test the ground for XY, but more a way to improve from DP.

The gaps were too long? They shortened them.
The group lacked dynamic? They replaced the previous companions for new ones.
The TRio was acting too silly? They changed their behaviors.
Ash lacked captures? They reintroduced the rotation.

And so on. They've always analyzed the previous series and attempted to fix the errors and to try to satisfy the audience. It's pretty much a given that they'll see what BW did wrong and try to avoid some mistakes for XY.

 

[97SaturnSL1]

If BW was testing for X and Y then Pokemon needs to replace the staff with people who didnt design the Ford Pinto, Chevy Vega and the Chrysler 2.7 engine. those three epic fails are the automotive comparison to how BW is. If X and Y is going to use this platform then it will end up like being caught in smart car between two semis. I do hope they cut down on the filler episodes because with the amount of fillers, i thought Quickcrete was sponciering the show... I hope they for XY use the formula for the first gen

 

[Playerking]

If it was testing, everything except Episode N was pretty much fail.

Nah, the only part I didn't like was the start of season 2. Everything before that and after the league I personally enjoyed/am enjoying.

To answer the question, whilst I can see that the writers have sort of changed up some norms that the anime is know for, but doing that just a test? I doubt it.

 

[Hidden Mew]

I think that the ideas they put out for BW were tests, but not for the XY series. With every series/saga, the writers tend to change something around to see what works and what doesn't. BW is doing the same thing, although it felt like they were trying out a lot of ideas in the early part of the series. Most of the ideas in BW were good, but suffered from poor execution. Like with other series, I'd like to hope that they'll learn why some ideas didn't work and further improve on the aspects that did work to make them better for the next series, but that isn't just BW in that case, so I don't see them using a whole series only for testing out ideas for another.

 

[Cybersai]

Its possible like AG was a testing ground for DP.

The only reason DP kept Contests and used a female co-star and had a mature Ash is because AG proved the concept worked right before.

 

[YamiiDenryuu]

While they were certainly trying new things (in line with Gen V being a semi-reboot/shaking up of the franchise in general), I don't think it makes any sense for an entire region worth of episodes to just be a test for the next region.

 

[Moe]

The only reason DP kept Contests and used a female co-star and had a mature Ash is because AG proved the concept worked right before.

Not the only reason, game feature promotion ranks quite high as a reason to do anything.

Which makes the fact BW heavily relied on something that wasn't in the games - the battle clubs - to push along the storyline outside the Gyms very odd to me. Indeed BW probably had the least relevance to the game storyline and key features than the anime has had in a while. Though if they were trying to test if the anime could take a path away from the game storylines you'd assume they'd try and actually have a decent storyline for the anime to follow, not just have nearly nothing.

Even the latter phases of BW show totally polar ways of going about it - the terrible execution of the World Tournaments compared to the very good Episode N plot which tied reasonably into the B2W2 game plot; and then on to an anime only set of islands to finish things off. If they are using BW to try things they are certainly getting their money's worth on different paths to take.

 

[Cybersai]

Battle Clubs were obviously meant to take the place of Contests. The writers knew going back to two sidekick characters would mean a lot of filler, so they tried to give them a role int hat.

Also characters like Georgia and Burundly resembled coordinators and I could have easily seen them being in contests had they come a saga earlier.

 

[Jukain]

This question assumes that they knew all along that they were going to have to transition to the 3DS and fast. I kinda question how much they anticipated what was going to happen here. It is plain they knew this gen was going to be short, but the later eps also indicate they were caught with their pants down and no longer knew what to do. They were plainly trying out several things, but I don't think it was in anticipation of the next gen. I don't know how most of those are going to be interpreted, but it seems the conclusion has already arrived for TR. They want TR as they were before BW happened. If any of the "experiments" failed, it was that one. I find it to be a pity that people felt that way, but the thing I didn't like about BW TR was that they didn't seem to have any focus. Just a random two parter after the last. The others, it wouldn't matter too much if they failed or not since I don't think they think those aspects matter. (ash's development, the rotation/pokemon development, the main rival/other rivalries, the premise of the companions, and the overall tone of the show) The reason those such as myself that were dissatisfied by this experience have been waiting this long because we know a new gen means new standards. Even though I know every saga also has it's own identity, it is plain that the mentality didn't really change between Hoenn and BF, and the same happened between the Unova League, Episode N, and DA. As long as it's still BW, they will continue with what they're doing. XY means a new slate and we can start anew. It still doesn't look good because even with a change of saga, they didn't change the nature of the show to me. This is what I hope for in XY, but I fear we are not going to get it since the experiences from BW are inconclusive.

 

[Supreme Leader Palpitoad]

The only reason DP kept Contests and used a female co-star and had a mature Ash is because AG proved the concept worked right before.

Not the only reason, game feature promotion ranks quite high as a reason to do anything.

Which makes the fact BW heavily relied on something that wasn't in the games - the battle clubs - to push along the storyline outside the Gyms very odd to me. Indeed BW probably had the least relevance to the game storyline and key features than the anime has had in a while. Though if they were trying to test if the anime could take a path away from the game storylines you'd assume they'd try and actually have a decent storyline for the anime to follow, not just have nearly nothing.

Even the latter phases of BW show totally polar ways of going about it - the terrible execution of the World Tournaments compared to the very good Episode N plot which tied reasonably into the B2W2 game plot; and then on to an anime only set of islands to finish things off. If they are using BW to try things they are certainly getting their money's worth on different paths to take.

That is just what I mean. They do a lot of different things. Why should they do that if not to try out new stuff.

 

[SammyW27]

Nope!

The producers & creative staff are ALWAYS mixing & matching ideas from series to series. And please note that various events keep happening to make them alter course whether they like it or not. In BW's case, the Seismic Disaster pretty much derailed their plans for the saga. Black2/White2 and Gen 5's shortness further complicated things.

I don't see BW as them testing things. They do that with EVERY region/saga. Things just really didn't turn out like they planned this time :-(

Here's hoping they do better in Kalos!

 

[Hidden Mew]

Its possible like AG was a testing ground for DP.

The only reason DP kept Contests and used a female co-star and had a mature Ash is because AG proved the concept worked right before.

Contests worked in AG, but I don't think that was the only reason they were kept in DP either. The fact that they were still in the fourth generation games was much more of a factor as to why they were still present. If D/P/Pl didn't include Contests, then DP wouldn't have had Contests. It's doubtful that they would have continued Contests in DP just because of their success in AG since Contests had even more significance in DP and yet were dropped for BW.

Battle Clubs were obviously meant to take the place of Contests. The writers knew going back to two sidekick characters would mean a lot of filler, so they tried to give them a role int hat.

Also characters like Georgia and Burundly resembled coordinators and I could have easily seen them being in contests had they come a saga earlier.

They probably did want to use the Battle Clubs as a means of getting other characters besides Ash battling more often, but it was terribly executed. If they continue on with mini-tournament arcs in the next series, I seriously hope that they won't be as rushed and have such repetitive structure as the Club Battles in BW. Though, I'd prefer it if they just went back to side-quest for the female character, either Contests or something new, but they could do both. I could see Burgundy as a Coordinator, although I'm not sure about Georgia.