The newly translated entry is mainly about Kasumi, but nevertheless, it should be also interesting for Team Rocket's fans.
Found
here.
#201 "I'm sorry. I forgot about Kasumi" 09-11-2011To make the TRio prominent in „The Revelation Lugia”, I also had to firmly depict individuality of every other character that appeared less in the movie. I had a hunch that my preparations were done well, but to make assurance double sure, I tried to look again at the appearing characters. As a result, I noticed that my depiction of one important character is weak and I panicked a little. It was the main girl who was travelling together with Satoshi, Kasumi.
Why is she travelling together with the leading character Satoshi? I wrote about this earlier, but there’s an answer to Kasumi’s words „It’s just a coincidence that the place where I want to be is where Satoshi is”. „The Revelation Lugia”’s guest character, Flora, said provocatively „Are you Satoshi’s girlfriend? He has such a bad taste” – however it was a provocation towards Kasumi’s existence in the movie, so to speak, they were inflammatory, tit for tat like words. There were also people who felt that there’s a hidden agenda in the line „It’s just a coincidence that the place where I want to be is where Satoshi is” - implying love interest in Satoshi which wasn’t even noticed by Kasumi herself. But, this was a fake (cheat) scene prepared by me to make Kasumi’s presence stand out.
Kasumi doesn’t feel love for Satoshi. If her love for him became one of Pokemon’s plots, it would break all the Pokemon series’ structure. Pokemon’s theme is relation between fictionals creatures and people and also growth through think and thin of the young boy (this means an age period for both boys and girls), Satoshi. At least this topic was intuitively decided during the time when I was responsible for Pokemon series’ structure.
I already stated in this column that Pokemon’s important theme was like in the movie “Stand By Me”. Even if people don’t want it, they get older and become adults – I came up with this extremely universal human theme in the episode of “The Magic Princess Minky Momo”.
In Pokemon however, the most important theme is relation with fictional creatures, which was added to that theme. For Satoshi, who’s a child, Pikachu is th partne he can count on. For example, even if Kasumi fell in love with Satoshi, it wouldn’t be able to interrupt relation between Satoshi and Pikachu.
If it was implied that Kasumi developed a childish kind of love for Satoshi, Pokemon would be constructed from different topics and the fundamental theme would not only become complicated, but dispersed.
If Kasumi’s love towards Satoshi happened in Pokemon, it would be nothing more than seasoning added to cooking - and, to be honest, for Pokemon’s theme, seasoning that makes taste complicated would be only a disturbance.
So from the start, there’s no such factor in Kasumi’s character as love towards Satoshi. Surely, it may be that Kasumi was in the ager when girls fall in love, but “Pokemon” isn’t either a shoujo manga nor a cellphone novel.
That’s why, out of all the characters appearing in the Pokemon anime series, the one with the weakest existence is Kasumi. It was decided from the start, when Pokemon anime was during planning, that Satoshi will be character travelling with friends, because if it was only the boy and Pokemon it would become tasteless and it would be hard to introduce to the girls’ audience. This existence could be compared to a parsley in a dish. It doesn’t need to be there, but the dish looks better if you add it. Occassionally, there are people who like parsley in their dish, but it’s a minority.
To make matters worse, in the early days of the series’ construction, the scriptwriters of Pokemon were all men, so Kasumi’s character lacked individuality. It would be good if she expressed delicate subtlety of changeable girl’s character, but in reality, Kasumi is only a stereotypical tomboy.
Even if we don’t appear much, we’re the real main characters telling Pokemon story… that is, self-aware TRio (that’s what I told voice actors, which they understood at once and since the first TRio’s appearance they were memorizing the motto – I’m ashamed about this, but even if I wrote it, I couldn’t memorize it – I wrote about this earlier, but they were enthusiastic to make it popular at all costs) who are different from Kasumi.
Since the beginning, you could feel the TRio’s presence in Pokemon anime much more than Kasumi’s, who’s ranked as the main character. In reality, when I was thinking about the Pokemon anime at first, my last intention was to make the TRio eternal main characters of the Pokemon world who’d surpass growing up Satoshi.
Let’s come back to Kasumi. I’ve been worrying about Kasumi’s weak sense of presence since the anime first started. That’s why I took into consideration Kasumi’s presence in my script, even if it might be superficial. I also tried to make Kasumi’s lines hold emotions unique for her. From the start, I was put under great responsibility for the initialization of the Pokemon anime. My attempt to raise Kasumi’s sense of presence was out of sympathy. Pokemon is the anime that carried out a replacement of the main character Takeshi, because of some facial features of the Asian people the foreign countries might not accept. But in the end, we could see that he was accepted even in the foreign countries and came back to the anime as we know.
As the show continues, and the ratings start to go downhill, the drama that is substitution of the main characters and rivals under the pretext of strengthening is held. And when it came to substitution of the main characters, the most endangered one was Kasumi with her low sense of presence.
It’s not like that I wanted to replace her. But charming personality and sense of presence was necessary. I was making efforts, but to me, the TRio’s sense of presence was more important. The TRio also had skills of their voice actors as their presence felt satisfactory. They couldn’t be replaced. Even if 10 years have passed since I stopped writing scripts for Pokemon, the TRio’s existence is firm. Once in a while, there seem to be the episodes when I don’t know what they’re for, but if the TRio stopped appearing in Pokemon, it would be no longer Pokemon. I’ll go so far as to say that they’re landmark beings of Pokemon. Even when other villains appeared, the TRio was unperturbed. It’s impossible to substitute them. I feel sorry about Kasumi, but I considered the TRio to be the most important.
Moreover, it may be only my one-sided view, but both higher-ups and and scriptwriters of the Pokemon production were mostly male. Men in this business, are attracted to various female charms, but they’re poor at getting them out (but this is my own, narrow view). In reality, according to my experience, many people of this business are unskillful in making advances to women. So, in my opinion, the secret of courting women is getting their charm out and praising them.
As a digression, I have a strange theory, but I think that when courting a woman, it’s more efficient to tell her 100 times “You’re pretty” or “You’re beautiful” than attract her attention. Of course, it’s not worth considering if you don’t know her beautiful features nor features you want to get beautiful…. If you do so, your partner also will become beautiful for real. I agree with the opinion saying that it’s because both partners, a man flattering a woman with compliments and a woman who’s being complimented get under influence of autosuggestion.
This is also the secret of creating a charming woman in the script. This is another digression, but in the most recent movies, dramas and anime created by male scriptwriters and supervisors, women are so uncharming, that it’s shocking. Even if it may look like they’re charming, but this is only thanks to actress’ looks, acting ability and sense of existence. Occasionally, when charming female characters appear in various productions, it turns out that supervisors and scriptwriters are female. In other words, women understand the charm of their own gender and they’re good at getting it out. And then, you would think that male supervisors and scriptwriters are good at creating charming male characters, but it’s not like that. They appear as male figures distorted in some way, someone who you wouldn’t want to associate with as friends. Back in the old days, there were male supervisors and scriptwriters who were skillful at getting out female charm, but I wonder what happened to people these days? But enough of digressions. The one who couldn’t create charming Kasumi was me, responsible for the series’ construction.
I was planning to do it in some way in “The Mewtwo’s Counterattack”, when Satoshi said “I wonder, why I’m here?” and I wanted to make her to tell the theme of the movie with a meaning “We exist because we exist. And it’s fine this way”, but as the TRio said “Somehow it’s a very good feeling” in the last scene, Kasumi’s existence was blown off. In “The Revelation Lugia”, I prepared a scene where Kasumi rescued Satoshi who nearly drowned in the sea. She was resuscitating Satoshi by giving him artificial respiration, but in the script she was really only knocking many times Satoshi’s chest as he wasn’t breathing. If Satoshi dies now, what will happen to my existing position in the Pokemon? – it wasn’t like she wanted Satoshi to live because she loved him, but rather, I had an intention to show her filled with anger that her own existence would become even weaker, if Satoshi died. Because higher-ups thought that this scene could have been misunderstood by people in foreign countries as being too violent, knocking has been erased. As you couldn’t see Kasumi’s anger in this scene, it unfortunately made people get the wrong idea that Kasumi’s desperate attempt to save Satoshi was a sign of love. However, in this case, she’s nothing more than general, stereotypical girl. She ended up being very ordinary girl buried among many individual characters in “The Revelation Lugia”.
Later, new series of Pokemon appeared and Kasumi was replaced by another girl. However, whether the new girl was more charming than Kasumi or not, was beyond my control. One of the things connected to my job as the series constructor I feel sorry about is that I couldn’t pull out Kasumi’s charm. I also felt sorry for the voice actress, but even if I was being told by other people that “Mr. Shudo is good at writing girls”, Kasumi’s case was quite painful for me.
Ah, that reminded me that I’m not done yet with “The Revelation Lugia”’s talk. I can hear just now voices of the TRio saying “Write whatever you like! After all, the TRio are us…”. Also, the editor of Anime Style is telling me “Let’s get beyond ‘The Revelation Lugia’ talk arleady”. I’m sorry. Please forgive me, because next time I’m going to write about the TRio’s role and their awareness in “The Revelation Lugia”.
