We’ve noted only a few of the leaks that came out of the Game Freak hack a little while ago out of respect for the developer and the team behind the games and other material. We don’t like spoiling things here, as we’d rather you just experience them yourselves. However, this story about the Pokemon anime, and specifically the end of Ash Ketchum’s run on it, caught our eye for multiple reasons. The biggest one is that, according to the tweet below, the company wasn’t impressed with how Pokemon Horizons was shaping up, and the fact that Ash was just simply going to “be done” after Pokemon Journeys wrapped up seemed to irk them something fierce.
As a result, they delayed the new anime had to be rewritten and delayed, and that led to them making the epilogue series with Ash Ketchum, that way he could have a “proper sendoff.”
Pokémon Horizons had a very troubled development.
Game Freak didn't like the direction the anime producers were going for, initially a lot more focused on Liko, and they were worried about abruptly replacing Ash.
The first 12 episodes had to be rewritten and the anime was… pic.twitter.com/ZLC7W0o9a3
— Centro LEAKS (@CentroLeaks) October 17, 2024
The irony of this is that while Game Freak’s heart might have been in the right place, the results are a lot harder to justify. For example, as I noted in my Pokemon To Be A Pokemon Master Review, Ash DIDN’T get a proper sendoff due to it being a bunch of filler episodes with Brock and Misty.
Second, Pokemon Horizons (in my opinion and others) isn’t the same quality as the Ash anime. That’s actually why I stopped reviewing it, as it was so bad to me that I stopped watching it. And it’s clearly not on the level of popularity that Ash’s was. So, again, good intentions…not the best results.
