Why was Steven replaced by Lance in the Magma/Aqua finale?

matt0044

matt0044

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It's just... like they decided to just because. No real reason.
 
Oh no. There was a reason. Steven simply believed that the Magma/Aqua ordeal was beneath him, and called Lance for a Champion Favor. Lance, also interested in the idea of seeing Ash again, happily agreed and placed himself in another generation's crisis without batting an eyelash.
 
Considering that this is the first series where Ash travels to new region with a fresh start, my guess was that they were trying to make the transition between the original and the Advanced Generation a bit more smoothly as opposed to a complete restart. Since Lance is a much more well-known Champion than Steven at the time, it was a nice continuity nod to the original series, much like the episodes featuring Misty returning for a short while. It should also be noted that this was the first generation that tried a lot of new things that haven't been done before, as demonstrated by the contrast between the Aqua/Magma plot and the later Team Galactic plot.
 
Maybe OLM really likes Lance and/or isn't so fond of Steven? Maybe they figured that Steven already got his obligatory appearance and that was enough? I dunno. Why they chose not to use Wallace here, I don't know. This makes me wonder when the writers found out about Juan and Emerald.

Not really related, but episode 27 of AG ("A Three Team Scheme") features Team Magma and Team Aqua looking for the Cave of Origin, and the place they suspect to be the Cave turns out to just be an ancient shrine. The real Cave of Origin never appeared in the anime. Makes you wonder what kind of climax the writers had planned that they presumably had to scrap because of Emerald.
 
Ambipom666 said:
Maybe OLM really likes Lance and/or isn't so fond of Steven? Maybe they figured that Steven already got his obligatory appearance and that was enough? I dunno. Why they chose not to use Wallace here, I don't know. This makes me wonder when the writers found out about Juan and Emerald.

Not really related, but episode 27 of AG ("A Three Team Scheme") features Team Magma and Team Aqua looking for the Cave of Origin, and the place they suspect to be the Cave turns out to just be an ancient shrine. The real Cave of Origin never appeared in the anime. Makes you wonder what kind of climax the writers had planned that they presumably had to scrap because of Emerald.
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If that was the case, why not show Rayquaza?
 
matt0044 said:
Ambipom666 said:
Maybe OLM really likes Lance and/or isn't so fond of Steven? Maybe they figured that Steven already got his obligatory appearance and that was enough? I dunno. Why they chose not to use Wallace here, I don't know. This makes me wonder when the writers found out about Juan and Emerald.

Not really related, but episode 27 of AG ("A Three Team Scheme") features Team Magma and Team Aqua looking for the Cave of Origin, and the place they suspect to be the Cave turns out to just be an ancient shrine. The real Cave of Origin never appeared in the anime. Makes you wonder what kind of climax the writers had planned that they presumably had to scrap because of Emerald.
Click to expand...

If that was the case, why not show Rayquaza?
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Considering that Giratina never showed up in the Team Galactic Finale, despite having Cyrus summon both Dialga and Palkia at the same time and that Platinum was already released, the Magma/Aqua plot might have been already far in development when Emerald was announced. Though I'm not sure completely, since it felt like Team Magma and Team Aqua were treated as an afterthought.
 
My guess is that they had no idea how to handle the Team Magma/Aqua climax. This was their first attempt at trying to cover the beginning and end of the new evil teams, so they had problems with adapting their storyline in general, including how to end it. Since they never established that Steven was the Champion of the Elite 4 in the anime, as I believe they just said that he was a powerful trainer, and had no connection to Team Magma/Aqua, maybe they thought that it was better to use Lance. He didn't have any connection to the teams in the games, but I guess they thought that it would work anyway given how his job as a Pokemon G-Man could require him to work in other regions besides Johto.
 
FR/LG promotion maybe? no idea if they actually existed then but eh.

Steven's anime role was underwelming though.
 
This nearly made me rage quit the anime. As a dedicated Steven fangirl, I was devastated. D: Lance is cool too, but he already had his shining moment in the anime, geez.

And yes, Steven's episode was very underwhelming. Plus, his English dub voice......-shudders-

His German voice, though. <33
 
I presume the third generation of games caught the anime writers off guard.
From RSE onwards there was a major departure from the roots of Pokémon: a new region with no ties to the previous ones, two new villain organizations unrelated to Team Rocket, a completely new E4 and champion, you couldn't even transfer Pokémon from previous generations to the new games. I think they were not ready for such a shift and wanted to keep some ties to the previous era either by not knowing how to deal with the new stuff or trying to make a more soft transition.
I presume it was a mix of both since they chose to start the fresh start approach for Ash to advertise the new Pokémon, but at the same time used Steven way too poorly and gave way too much focus on Lance for it to be good planning.
 
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Steven could've been a G-man for the Hoenn region (we wouldn't know at first due to his work being confidential obviously).
 
For the same reason that Cynthia returned in Best Wishes and dealt with Unova's "biggest crisis" instead of Alder. It's called favoritism.
 
Lance is a member of the "Pokémon G-Men," a sort of CIA/FBI equivalent in the universe of the Pokémon anime. The reason Lance was there was because he was assigned the mission of infiltrating Team Magma and stopping them (as well as Team Aqua) from proceeding with the Groudon/Kyogre swap. They never confirmed that Lance and Steven were the regional Champions in the anime. Besides, when has the anime ever followed the plot of the games that closely? The fact that Team Rocket's still around under Giovanni's control is more than evidence enough that they're keeping the games and anime separate.
 
Silktree said:
For the same reason that Cynthia returned in Best Wishes and dealt with Unova's "biggest crisis" instead of Alder. It's called favoritism.
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She was there in Undella in the games to be fair.
 
matt0044 said:
BUT... she was there.
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So Lance's role would have been perfectly fine if he had randomly appeared in the Hoenn games without any connection to the story climax?

Both Alder and Cynthia appeared in the Junior Cup arc, which made sense. But Cynthia was the one that stuck around for the Team Rocket climax. That's called favoritism.
 
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matt0044 said:
Silktree said:
matt0044 said:
She was there in Undella in the games to be fair.
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She simply battled the player without having any relevance to the story.
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BUT... she was there.
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Steven was in HGSS actually contributing to a sidequest regarding the Latis and nothing was ever said about him in DP when they showcased Kotone for HGSS marketing. Likewise, Cynthia had no reason to be in BW when Alder could had done her role just perfectly fine.

It really seems they favor one champion over the other. Even though out of all the champions in the games (excluding Blue), Steven was the champion who was involved in his corresponding game more than anyone else (second only to Cynthia), and yet the anime decided to simply ignore all of that and give him a single episode that could be easily skipped over without hurting the plot.
 
Yato said:
It really seems they favor one champion over the other. Even though out of all the champions in the games (excluding Blue), Steven was the champion who was involved in his corresponding game more than anyone else (second only to Cynthia),
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I'd say that Alder was more involved than anyone else. Steven and Cynthia just appeared in the climax (the latter only appearing in Platinum) without any build-up. Alder may have lost to N, but Steven just joined the player for a tag battle Maxie and Tabitha in Emerald, and Cynthia didn't battle anyone.
 
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