Why do Male player characters and some female player characters never appear in the anime?

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JapaneseVersionFan22

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Gold, Brendan, Lucas, Hilbert, Hilda, Calem, Sun and Moon could have just appeared as one of Ash's rivals depending on the region. Why can't the writers think of those?
 
For the males, it's probably because Ash fills their role anyway and they don't see reason to add them. I agree that it would have been interesting to have them as rivals though.

For the females, I guess it just varies depending on when they want a rookie trainer.
 
I think the anime could work really well as an adaptation of the Pokemon Adventures manga, like several animes like Naruto and Bleach are adaptations of mangas.
 
Because Ash isn't just Red's anime counterpart; he's the anime counterpart of ALL of the male protagonists.

And the female companion is always a character who appears (in the story) regardless of which gender option you choose.

Gens 1 & 2: There is no female playable character, so MIsty gets the role
Gen 3: May appears a rival if you choose Brendan
Gen 4: Dawn is a supporting character if you choose Lucas
Gen 5: Hilda doesn't appear outside of the Battle Subway, so Iris gets the lead role
Gen 6: Serena is your rival if you chose Calem
Gen 7: The other protagonist doesn't appear in the game at all, and the story focuses heavily on Lillie
 
There's a distinction between filling in for the respective hero role and being the male counterpart in the anime continuity.... at least in Pocket Monsters terms.

For instance, representations of the male players other than Red have appeared in the anime before. But other than Kenta (the counterpart for the GSC player character), none of them played an actual role in the anime, they just appeared as cameos.
 
I've heard that....
  • Index
    • Ash was supposed to win the Sinnoh League and make Hilbert the next protagonist. But the writers, still wanting Ash on the show, made him lose again. Since Ash didn't get replaced by a male game character, could Game Freak had given strict orders to the anime writers that the game male protagonists should stay silent forever?
     
  • Index
    • martianmister said:
    Satoshi always steals the male one's style.
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    Ash has to remain the lead male figure and too many male characters may overshadow him which is what the anime writers don't want to do. I think the anime writers try to choose some characters which clash with Ash's personality (this has been seen a lot with Ash's rivals e.g. Paul and Trip) or have been very popular e.g. Brock.
     
    EscLucy said:
    Ash has to remain the lead male figure and too many male characters may overshadow him which is what the anime writers don't want to do. I think the anime writers try to choose some characters which clash with Ash's personality (this has been seen a lot with Ash's rivals e.g. Paul and Trip) or have been very popular e.g. Brock.
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    But they even didn't think of making some of the male game characters appear as Ash's rivals.
     
    EscLucy said:
    Ash has to remain the lead male figure and too many male characters may overshadow him which is what the anime writers don't want to do. I think the anime writers try to choose some characters which clash with Ash's personality (this has been seen a lot with Ash's rivals e.g. Paul and Trip) or have been very popular e.g. Brock.
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    I'm sorry, but... Why are replying to me if you're not disagreeing with what I said? Or, if you're not talking about what I said? I wouldn't normally say anything but it's not the first time that you're doing this either.
     
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    JapaneseVersionFan22 said:
    Ash was supposed to win the Sinnoh League and make Hilbert the next protagonist. But the writers, still wanting Ash on the show, made him lose again.
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    I just want to point out this is a baseless theory that got out of hand; someone put it on a motivational poster several years ago and a lot of fans spread the word as if it was official info.

    JapaneseVersionFan22 said:
    Since Ash didn't get replaced by a male game character, could Game Freak had given strict orders to the anime writers that the game male protagonists should stay silent forever?
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    I doubt it, but I think they could have gotten orders to design Ash's clothes basing them on the male protagonist's outfit ever since DP. And since both Ash's design and his role on the story is similar to that of the game protagonist, it'd be pretty redundant to include the latter in the show.
     
    martianmister said:
    I'm sorry, but... Why are replying to me if you're not disagreeing with what I said? Or, if you're not talking about what I said? I wouldn't normally say anything but it's not the first time that you're doing this either.
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    I was trying to build on what you had said with my own opinion.
     
    Well, Ash is too iconic right now to just be replaced by the games' playable characters, but he plays a similar role so he becomes their anime counterpart to some extent, especially since BW when his design started to be loosely based on the games to help cross-promotion.

    For their female counterparts, though, I guess we only get to see those who play a role as NPCs as well as playable characters being introduced in the anime, that's what I've noticed but I might be wrong.
     
    KyseL said:
    Well, Ash is too iconic right now to just be replaced by the games' playable characters,
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    And when you think about it, it's not really a baseless fear that replacing him would be a ratings killer, at least compared to other shows that cling to their status quo.

    I mean we've had plenty of material from The Legend of Raikou to the XY specials focusing on other characters as well as the Non-canon Origins. The fact we have many would suggest they do, okay. Okay enough to merit more, but likely not enough to convince the higher ups that it should be the rule.

    Now one could argue that all of the material lacking Ash and Pikachu might not have had the best creative teams and them merely doing okay with the audience is more because of the writing. Origins for example is a nice throwback to the early games and even has some nice moments like Red actually getting to progress from rookie to champion or things like explaining that Gym Leaders have Pokémon of varying levels in case some trainers hail from elsewhere in Kanto.

    But yeah I think it needed to have more episodes to cover Red's journey plus going indepth with all of his Team Rocket encounters since they prioritized showing the Gym match between him and Giovanni (and on that note maybe setting up his willingness to retire TR because Red helped him to regain his lost innocence).

    Regardless, I think it's a lot easier for the higher ups to believe that material focusing on other leads simply fail because they aren't iconic.

    That said, I'd be curious as to what the ratings of all of those specials were compared to the main anime episodes.
     
    Rockapheller said:
    As for Mega Evolution specials, the ratings were slightly less than regular show but not mention-worthly less.
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    Noted, plus I think I recall hearing that Origins wasn't as well received in Japan as it was with English audiences. Like I said there were definitely obvious creative problems, but it's easy to see it's performance being a deterrent towards taking more of a creative risk in the anime.

    Plus the fact that Brock for example was kept on even in Advance and DP was likely because of how the audience react when he was absent for the Orange Island, as opposed to merely assuming that retiring his character would hurt ratings. The fact he doesn't return as a regular at the end of BW or the beginning of XY definitely suggests that the target demo were fine with him being retired.
     
    Well, there's a difference between a side-story kind of thing and the main series. It's why a lot of spin offs have more liberties, because they are divorced from the main series and you're not taking away from one to put into the other. So yeah, while having a different character be the lead in a side story / special or whatever would not cause problems, it's an absolutely different story when you replace the main character with someone else, especially on one of the longest running shows out there.
     
    KyseL said:
    Well, there's a difference between a side-story kind of thing and the main series. It's why a lot of spin offs have more liberties, because they are divorced from the main series and you're not taking away from one to put into the other. So yeah, while having a different character be the lead in a side story / special or whatever would not cause problems, it's an absolutely different story when you replace the main character with someone else, especially on one of the longest running shows out there.
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    True, but I think it would be fair to estimate that stories like the Raikou special even the out of continuity* Origins might have been a testing ground to see if changing things all the way could work, but again ratings while not at the bottom didn't measure up to the money maker.

    Yeah at this point it might be too late to replace or age up the character and taking things in a different direction, I wouldn't discount the possibility if they had a reason to believe it would be in their interest profit wise, or to put it simple when the Cinnabar Island Volcano freezes over.

    But again since Brock was reinstated onto the main cast after the Orange Island episodes, he wouldn't see a permanent departure until Sinnoh ended. So for a time he was pretty much in the same boat as Ash, Pikachu and the Rocket Trio, but once proven that the target audiences could care less they dropped him the same way Paul did with Chimchar.:cautious:
     
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