A Famous Misty x Ash Scene Made Pokemon’s Original Writer Very Angry

One Ash and Misty scene early on in the Pokemon franchise made the original head writer for the anime, Takeshi Shudo, surprisingly angry. Before his passing in 2010, Takeshi Shudo shared a series of notable blogs in which he talked about his experiences as the head writer for the Pokemon anime and its first few films between the first five years of the franchise. Turned around and translated by notable Pokemon historian and enthusiast Dr. Lava, Shudo revealed quite a few surprising developments behind the scenes painting a much different view of the anime than expected.

As he wrote about an experience during the writing of the second film, Pokemon The Movie 2000: The Power of One, Shudo revealed that the scene where Misty saves Ash from drowning initially made him quite angry. It was a number of different factors at play, but ultimately the fact it seemed forced to make fans cry is what potentially put him over the edge.

Shudo opened up about one of the first meetings for the second film, and how one of the first comments had already made him angry, “The first comment I heard in the meeting surprised me. ‘Which one is the scene that’s supposed to make you cry?’ ‘The what?’ I never had any intention of including a scene that’s supposed to make you cry.”

Elaborating further Shudo revealed why this inquiry in particular made him angry, “Since [I was young], I’ve been trying not to write scripts that force tears out of people. If someone happens to cry because of my script, they’re not my tears — the tears belong to that individual viewer. These kinds of tears are their treasure. If a writer is planning ‘where to make them cry,’ ‘where to make them laugh,’ ‘where to put the spectacular reveal’ — it means that writer is guiding the audience’s every emotion. The audience should cry when they feel like crying, laugh when they feel like laughing, and if the film is boring, get bored and walk out of the theater.”

Noting that he asked then director Kunihiko Yuyama before the meeting to chime in during the meeting in his stead, Shudo revealed he was angry when Yuyama designated the Misty saving Ash from drowning scene as the one that makes you cry. As for why, it seems that most of his frustrations stemmed from Shudo’s ideas differing so much from the rest of the team.

But what do you think? Did you expect this Ash and Misty scene to have such a heavy emotion behind? Did it in fact make you cry when watching the film all those years ago? Let us know your thoughts in the comments or talk to me directly about all things anime and other cool stuff @Valdezology on Twitter!

via LavaCutContent