The original writer of Pokemon had their ups and downs with the anime, but Takeshi Shudo appears to have liked the franchise more often than not. However, it seems the screenwriter was not always pleased with Pokemon. Thanks to a recent translation dump, fans have learned more about Shudo’s final work on Pokemon, and it was there the writer said he felt like dying after a change was made to Lugia which he could not correct.
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For those curious about the ordeal, it came to light recently when Dr. Lava arranged for a new translation to be made of Shudo’s old blog. It was there information about the writer and his feelings on Lugia came to light. As it turns out, the writer wanted Lugia to be both female and male, so Shudo was upset when the anime gave the Legendary Pokemon an undeniably masculine voice.
“Advertisements had already been aired. It was too late, we couldn’t suddenly change Lugia into a female… I was gulping down alcohol and drugs. I started to feel like I wanted to die,” the writer said.
Clearly, it looks like the decision to make Lugia overtly male in the anime hit a nerve with Shudo. The writer put in a lot of effort creating the Legendary, and it was a first for the franchise. Shudo was the first anime staffer to create a Pokemon, and Lugia was quite the impressive monster to craft. In his drafts, Shudo wanted his Pokemon to be a maternal creator of life, but that did not come across in the anime clearly. And for Shudo, that offense was something he simply could not stomach. In the months leading up to Shudo’s death, the writer wrote obsessively about Lugia and his original vision for the Pokemon which would never be fully realized. And without its creator around, there is no telling how Lugia has changed over the years as opposed to what the Pokemon could have been.
Are you surprised by how defensive Shudo was of Lugia? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @MeganPetersCB to talk all things comics and anime!
