Why didn’t the Battle Frontier arc wasn't on the Sevii Islands?

matt0044

matt0044

追放されたバカ
Joined
Jun 29, 2010
Messages
3,353
Reaction score
556
Think about it. Seven Islands, seven facilities. The Anime writers had a new land they hadn’t yet explored but they just went with Kanto… because.

This just makes me scratch my head. Anyone else feel like the Sevii Islands were a missed opportunity?
 
I honestly thought of the Sevii Islands as more of the games version of the Orange Islands, although I know this isn't canon. Since they already spent the previous abnormal arc on a chain of Islands they maybe wanted to switch things up, and I also believe they wanted to return to Kanto for the 10th anniversary nostalgia. It would have certainly been cool to see the Sevii Islands in the anime in some capacity, but I liked the battle frontier being in Kanto, especially because it allowed for some revisit of some other old things.
 
The Sevii Islands actually did appear in the anime. In the Pokémon Chronicles episode "The Search for the Legend", Ritchie visited Mt. Ember although this was overlooked when they dubbed it (they called it Mt. Magma instead). So the Sevii Islands definitely do exist in anime canon, it seems.

To answer the thread question, I just don't think the writers ever thought of this option. The way you're describing it does seem nice; I would've liked seeing Ash travel through the Sevii Islands and 7 islands for 7 facilities sounds like a nice idea. They probably had reasons for revisiting Kanto though. For example, they needed a solid region to have May do something as well, and I think the Sevii Islands would not have been suitable for Contests.
 
Last edited:
ii kanji said:
Why?
Click to expand...
Well... the Sevii Islands are pretty small and I doubt they would have made them bigger in the anime. It has been shown that many Coordinators participate in Contests, each needing 5 ribbons to participate in the Grand Festival. They would've needed many Contest Halls scattered around these seven islands to make it believeable, which I personally just can't imagine.
 
I think that the Sevii Islands might have been just too small of a location. There are only seven islands to work with, which might have been too small to do both the Battle Frontier and another round of Contests for May. They could spend a good amount of time on each island, but it might have been a bit tricky to pull off, especially with each island having enough Contests for Coordinators to potentially get into the Grand Festival. While they didn't use the fact that they were in Kanto all that much during the Battle Frontier and after rewatching the arc, I can see why people would consider it Kanto in name only, it did give them more room to add the Battle Frontier and Contests than I think a small group of islands would.
 
Hidden Mew said:
I think that the Sevii Islands might have been just too small of a location.
Click to expand...

Except a few things:

The Anime's infamous for embellishing the geography of each region. Route 4 in Unova's changed from a total desert in the games to mountains, forests, the works in the Anime. Further more, the Sevii Islands get their names from how they were supposedly created in seven days and there are other islands like the one for Ho-oh, Mew and Deoxys. Who's to say the Anime couldn't add a few more islands for May's Contest arc?
 
-They thought that after the Orange Islands and the Hoenn Islands arc it would felt too repetitive.
-They wanted a more generic location to base episodes on.
-The Pyramid Battle's secret location would be obvious for those who played the games.
 
matt0044 said:
Except a few things:

The Anime's infamous for embellishing the geography of each region. Route 4 in Unova's changed from a total desert in the games to mountains, forests, the works in the Anime. Further more, the Sevii Islands get their names from how they were supposedly created in seven days and there are other islands like the one for Ho-oh, Mew and Deoxys. Who's to say the Anime couldn't add a few more islands for May's Contest arc?
Click to expand...

That's certainly true that the anime does change up the geography of each region. Even with that in mind, I don't think that adding a few more islands would have necessarily solved the issue with May's Contests. A lot of Coordinators end up at the Grand Festival, so they would need more than just a few islands to pull it off. I doubt that the Sevii Islands would be as big as a regular region, even in the anime, so I'm not sure if that would have been enough. They already had to cram in a lot of battles for both Ash and May while they were in Kanto. I don't know if that would have been any better if they had to travel to different islands frequently.

They just might have not been interested in another island centered arc. They already had to travel through sea during the tail end of Hoenn, so going to another islands area might have been seen as too repetitive. Plus, going through Kanto gave them an already established area for them to work with instead of going with a brand new area.
 
Hidden Mew said:
Plus, going through Kanto gave them an already established area for them to work with instead of going with a brand new area.
Click to expand...
Maybe but they didn't really revisit much of Kanto's old locations or callback much to the Original Series aside from Misty or Brock's family. It might as well've been the Sevii Islands since they made up more stuff to cram into Kanto.
 
matt0044 said:
Maybe but they didn't really revisit much of Kanto's old locations or callback much to the Original Series aside from Misty or Brock's family. It might as well've been the Sevii Islands since they made up more stuff to cram into Kanto.
Click to expand...

Yeah, they didn't really take advantage of the Kanto setting as much as they could have, but I think it made more sense to go there than going to the Sevii Islands. It was around the tenth anniversary I think and FR/LG were still recent games, so Kanto being the location of the Battle Frontier made sense. They were able to combine promoting FR/LG and Emerald at the same time. They did make up more areas for Kanto to make it feel more like Hoenn 2.0 than Kanto, but I don't see how the Sevii Islands would have been much better in that regard. It would probably feel like Sevii Islands in name only and it would be more difficult to set up the different Contests for May and Battle Frontier for Ash. I just don't really see how the Sevii Islands would have been such a massive improvement over Kanto for this arc.
 
Hidden Mew said:
I just don't really see how the Sevii Islands would have been such a massive improvement over Kanto for this arc.
Click to expand...
Well, there would've been interesting locations to see. Look 'em up.
 
While I'm still not convinced that the Sevii Islands would have worked for the Battle Frontier saga, I do think it is an interesting region and would have been a nice location for another kind of arc/saga. The Sevii Islands do have a lot of interesting features and the anime has shown that they can really bring game locations to life. I would have even liked following Ritchie on his journey through the Sevii Islands in a short spin-off series, if they could've come up with a storyline for him there. Perhaps fighting against the Sevii division of Team Rocket like in the games. It's sad its minimal appearance in Chronicles is the only thing we'll ever see of it in the anime.
 
matt0044 said:
Well, there would've been interesting locations to see. Look 'em up.
Click to expand...

I've played through FG/LG. I know what the Sevii Islands are and the locations in them. You don't have to tell me to look them up as if I'm unfamiliar with them. I might reading too much there, but the tone just bothered me too much. It came off a bit too condescending and rude.

I just think that out of all of the problems the Battle Frontier arc had, Kanto being used instead of the Sevii Islands wasn't one of them. Sure, it would have been nice if we got more than just a brief appearance in Chronicles, but I don't think that was a major problem with the Battle Frontier arc or that it would have been immensely improved the arc as a whole.
 
The Battle Frontier was suppose to be in Hoenn so the writers messed that up. Sevii Islands is the game version of Orange Islands.
 
Alexander said:
The Battle Frontier was suppose to be in Hoenn so the writers messed that up. Sevii Islands is the game version of Orange Islands.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure if I'd call that a mess up. Since they were already pretty much done traveling through Hoenn, I don't think that the writers would have been interested in Ash and his friends heading back there right away for the Battle Frontier, especially when they wouldn't want to have easy access to each of the Frontier Brains in one small location.
 
matt0044 said:
Maybe but they didn't really revisit much of Kanto's old locations or callback much to the Original Series aside from Misty or Brock's family. It might as well've been the Sevii Islands since they made up more stuff to cram into Kanto.
Click to expand...

I think the goal of promoting Pokémon FireRed and Pokémon LeafGreen wasn't revisiting Kanto locations, but instead showing off Generation I Pokémon that players could catch in the remakes. Ash had already journeyed across Kanto once and it's not like the region has a large number of amazing landmarks worthy seeing again. The writers showed us Pallet Town, Mt. Moon, Saffron City, and the Indigo Plateau. It's enough, really. What were people expecting to see? A dead Marowak in the Pokémon Tower? Pff.

May's team was changed to reflect that she was in Kanto. She got a Squirtle and an Eevee (both of them were used a lot in her Pokémon Contests) and she spent an entire episode trying to catch an Arcanine. Also, one of her major battles in the Grand Festival was against Harley's Wigglytuff and all of the Pokémon used by Solidad are from Kanto.

Ash used Snorlax in one of his Frontier challenges. The writers gave us a battle between Charizard, one of Kanto's fully evolved starters, and Articuno, one of Kanto's Legendary Pokémon. Tucker used an Arcanine in his Double Battle against Ash and Spenser used a Venusaur, which is another one of Kanto's fully evolved starters.

I'm just listing a few things I remember from the top of my head. I'm pretty sure there were a lot more episodes focusing on Kanto Pokémon which in my opinion is better than seeing some of Kanto's boring unnotable cities. The writers did a good job promoting the Kanto remakes, especially when compared to the abysmal lack of Pokémon Omega Ruby and Pokémon Alpha Sapphire promotion in the main series (which consists of Sawyer and Cosplay Pikachu popping up in the Poké TV segment).
 
Hmm, I had liked the battle frontier arc and May's Kanto Contest arc too. But sometimes I feel like they should have just made Ash's Hoenn journey a four-year saga like they had done with Sinnoh.
They were able to flesh out Dawn's contest arc nicely because of that, and honestly May deserved something similar too.

And they could've made Ash's Hoenn league quest just as epic as DP. He could've came top 4 in Hoenn itself and then top 2 in Sinnoh probably.
Of course they would've still needed a strong rival like Paul in Hoenn. Maybe they could've made Gary change his goal after Hoenn league?

Contests in Sevii islands MIGHT have worked if they would've added like a ton more locations or something. But I think they must have already known about Sinnoh by the time Battle Frontier started.
And the news of 'Ash travelling through Kanto again' would definitely grab the attention of a lot more viewers, especially old ones, instead of him travelling through Sevii Islands. That would be just yet another new place in the eyes of most viewers.
 
Please note: The thread is from 10 years ago.
Please take the age of this thread into consideration in writing your reply. Depending on what exactly you wanted to say, you may want to consider if it would be better to post a new thread instead.
Back
Top Bottom