Was Ruby's Celebi planned or a happy accident?

[matt0044]

Celebi’s reset button in the RS arc’s finale is infamous but whether it was a last minute stint or not is something I find hard to partial out. That is, when Ruby takes out his mysterious sixth Pokemon, Sapphire recall back to their first meeting when the Seviper was curb-stomped by one of his Pokemon but didn’t see who like we the readers.

It could’ve been that the mystery was set up to be something else and when Kusaka started killing off Steven, Norman and Courtney, his editor urged him to undo it for some reason (a commonality in kids Manga) and they would try to make it look like it was planned all along in plain sight when not really.

Storytelling is something of an magic trick where you hope to make it all come together and look like you were in control the entire time. Contrary to popular belief, it often relies more on writing by the seat of your pants even when you have a planned trajectory for the overall plot. This is especially true of Manga creators who have INSANE deadlines for one chapter alone. Akira Toriyama anybody?

However, with Celebi, the transparency is pretty apparent to any reader. Yet that still leaves us with the question. Did Kusaka plant that seed to later grow or was it just a happy accident that he had a dangling plot thread to tie up?

I'd like to encourage a civil conversation and maybe discuss how complicated writing a story can really be.

 

[Almonds]

I think it was planned all along. Ruby never revealed a sixth pokemon to that point. (His Swampert, Milotic, Delcatty, Mightyena, and Castform are the regulars of his team - his Ralts was under Wally's care for the majority of the plot)

But either way, I think it was nicely done to fix a plot that could have been tragic/messed up.

 

[Hidden Mew]

I haven't re-read the R/S chapter for awhile, but it did feel more like a plot device more so than something they had planned all along. It was a quick way to instantly undo the deaths during that big battle. In retrospect, it probably should have been more obvious to me that something like that would happen when established characters like Norman and Steven died. They obviously wouldn't want the arc to end on a tragic note and I don't blame them there.

I don't mind that they undid it, but just how they did it since it felt too sudden. It's true that we didn't see Ruby's sixth Pokemon, but I don't think that they made a big deal about a mysterious sixth Pokemon on his team during the series. If there was a bit more foreshadowing for Ruby's sixth Pokemon, then I think that the Celebi twist would have felt more natural instead of coming out of left field.

 

[matt0044]

established characters like Norman and Steven died.

I always wondered what'd happen if they did die. Would it hurt further arc?

If they had to be revived, I feel like this should've been part of the Jirachi arc where they decided to revive not just the Dex Holders...

 

[Hidden Mew]

I always wondered what'd happen if they did die. Would it hurt further arc?

If they had to be revived, I feel like this should've been part of the Jirachi arc where they decided to revive not just the Dex Holders...

It probably would have ended the arc on a more sober note than it needed. At least when the Dex Holders were turned into stone, it was more than an intense cliffhanger rather than a tragedy. Using Jirachi to revive everyone would have felt like a more natural way to undo it, especially when finding Jirachi was the main goal of the Emerald arc, but I don't think that they'd end an arc with dead prominent supporting characters.

 

[matt0044]

It probably would have ended the arc on a more sober note than it needed.

I guess. Though I still wonder if Kusaka or Yamamoto have mentioned anything about this decision. Were they hoping to write a backstory about how Ruby met Celebi but didn't have time? Maybe tie it into how the GSC chapter ended?