An earthquake changed one of Pokémon’s most promising seasons

polygon.com:

The Pokémon Black and Whitegames are lauded for their thoughtful story, ingenious antagonist team, and well-oiled gameplay. As such, their inevitable anime adaptation would have a lot to live up to. In another reality, it might have met that challenge, too. At first, the plot that the evergreen Ash Ketchum and his pals seemed to be facing in the world of Pokémon the Series: Black & White was a breath of fresh air. And it was headed to an explosive two-parter, one that promised a shake-up in a change-resistant series. The kind of event that fans would spend years talking about.

Until two episodes of the Pokémon anime suddenly rhymed with a real-life tragedy.

Ash Ketchum’s journey is one of endless restart without reinvention. With each new region, he retains Pikachu as his best bud/franchise mascot, and he gets a new team, new friends to travel around with, and a new league tournament to set his sights on. However, Black andWhite had brought something different to the long-running game series, and if adapted properly into the anime, they could’ve provided a similar jolt.

For over a decade, parents and PETA alike had been confounded by what they deemed as “virtual cockfighting” in the games, with fantastical laser pets sicced on one another. And Black and White’s enemy team, a cultish operation by the name of Team Plasma, declared that it sought to liberate Pokémon from humankind’s control. Now a game was finally addressing the fridge logic of Pokémon… as much as it could. Turns out that Team Plasma was evil. Battling is kind of a communal thing between Pokémon and trainer, and for the most part, the Pokémon dig it! Nonetheless, when it came time to filter the game’s world and story through Ash Ketchum, expectations were