Happy Anniversary! (Year Fourteen)

Dogasu's Backpack | Rants | Happy Anniversary! (Year Fourteen)

By Dogasu
Posted 02-13-2014

I honestly don't see how 2014 is going to be able to come close to topping 2013 in being just flat-out amazing.

Of course 2013 was big because it had stuff like a new generation of games. I currently have 150+ hours in my copy of Y and I'll probably get close to double that by the time I fill out my Pokémon Zukan so I'm pretty sure I'll be playing that one for a while. But for me, personally, 2013 was a year where a lot of really amazing shit happened. First of all, I MET THE ROCKET-DAN. I TALKED TO THEM AND THEY TALKED TO ME AND IT'S BEEN ALMOST A YEAR SINCE THAT HAPPENED BUT I STILL CAN'T BELIEVE HOW AWESOME THAT WAS. That right there guarantees that 2014 will absolutely suck in comparison, but 2013 was also the year when the Rocket trio stopped being so freaking awful and went back to being fun again.

The year also marked the end of Generation V, which is important to me because it marked the first full generation for which I was in Japan the whole way through. I was here for everything: the lead-up during the last year or so of Diamond & Pearl, the games' release, the sequels' release, and the lead-up to Generation VI. And it's all been pretty awesome. Being in the country where these games come from and seeing how they hype things compared to how it's done back home has been quite interesting and I loved having a front row seat to everything. I've been living in Tokyo for the majority of the Generation as well and so I've had regular access to the major real world events that have been going on the last few years.

Will I still be in Japan when Generation VII rolls around? Maybe!

A few years ago I decided that I really needed to take more advantage of the fact that I live in Japan and have access to all this cool stuff that other English fansites do not. And not to toot my own horn or anything, but I think I've been doing a pretty decent job of doing that. In 2013, I did a write-up on the aforementioned Rocket-Dan Secret Live event, I wrote about Nakagawa Shouko's book, I profiled various Japan-only manga series, and translated interviews from these pamphlets that you could only get at theaters showing The Extreme Speed Genosect and the Awakening of Myuutwo. I strive to create content that you can't find on any other site and I while I do wish I could have done more I think I did a pretty decent job of that this year.

This was also the year I did the "Myuutwo Mondays" thing, a two-ish month long event where I would post some Myuutwo-related update every Monday. I'm actually surprised I got all those updates done on time, to be honest; there were some weeks where I really, really cut it close. But I'm glad I gave myself those deadlines and actually stuck to them. A lot of the updates I made were things I had been planning for years but just never got around to doing so finally getting those over and done with gave me a huge sense of accomplishment. I like having a version of the first movie comparison that I'm no longer ashamed of! And being able to say "Kanzenban" and having people actually know what I'm talking about is something I've been looking forward to for years. There are still a few more Myuutwo Strikes Back-related things I want to do (a comparison of the Kanzenban version of the Birth of Myuutwo short, information from some of the guide books, a look through Shudou Takeshi's blog posts on the movie, a profile on Ichimura Masachika since English language information on the man is ridiculously difficult to find, etc.) but I got pretty much the bulk of everything I wanted to do with that done.

(And maybe I'll do something similar with the other movies? There's not as much to cover with, say, the Lugia movie as there was with the first one, but there's still quite a lot out there for me to dive into. Would you like to see "Lugia Lundis" become a thing?).

We're in a new year now, so, like every year, I want to make some predictions of what I think will happen in 2014:

There won't be any new main series games this year because we just had two years in a row with new entries. We'll still get video games, of course - Smash Bros. is coming up soon(-ish?), and I imagine we'll probably get another Mystery Dungeon by the end of the year - but I don't see another main series game coming out in 2014. At the most, I'd say we'll get info about an upcoming third version (I don't think they'll pull the sequel trick again) toward the end of the year in preparation for a 2015 release.
In the TV series, I think Satoshi will get badges two through six in 2014. I feel like the days of us having huge, four year long sagas are behind us and that XY will probably last about as long as Best Wishes! did. I think the Flare-Dan will make an appearance in 2014 as well and I'm fairly confident they'll refrain from using the "ultimate weapon" storyline from the games. I'd like to be surprised, of course, but I doubt the TV series will make them anything other than a group who's out to steal pokemon.
2014 is TV-Tokyo's 50th anniversary and the network said they'd be doing something special with Pocket Monsters sometime during the year. What will that be? I would love for it to be them doing HD remasters of the original series and airing that on, say, Tuesday nights, but I think it's probably more realistic to expect something like a one-off TV special instead. Maybe Pocket Monsters The Origin 2 Gold & Silver? Or something related to this year's movie, similar to last year's Myuutwo special?
I've already said this elsewhere on the site, but I'll repeat it here: I think this year's movie will feature an unannounced Mega Evolution that will only be made available as DLC in XY. Yes, even with the recent announcement of Diancie being the "other" pokemon.
I think Darkrai will win the poll going on in Japan right now and will become the pre-order ticket bonus.
CD-wise: We'll get the J'Deez CD, a soundtrack for Smash Bros, three versions of the ending theme to The Cocoon of Destruction, and a soundtrack featuring the BGM from said movie. I also see the TV series replacing the current opening theme sometime in 2014 so that'll get a single as well. Ending themes...I'm thinking three new ones in 2014. That brings us up to ten CDs. I hope we get a Best Wishes! background music compilation in 2014 as well, so that'll bring us up to eleven.
Manga-wise: I think Pokémon The Legend of the Ryuu-Oh will only run up until the April issue of CoroCoro Comics. After that, the manga adaptation of The Cocoon of Destruction will take its place and run from the May 2014 issue to the July 2014 issue of CoroCoro. As for Pocket Monsters Special, I think we'll see a (rushed and disappointing) conclusion to the B2W2 storyline in the graphic novels toward the end of the year.

And that's it! The next time I write one of these it'll be to celebrate my site's fifteenth anniversary. Can't wait!