By Dogasu
Posted January 2nd, 2021

The idea that any of us could have possibly predicted anything about the year 2020 is, looking back on it now, completely laughable. But I foolishly tried to anyway, and for tonight's update let's do what I do every year and check back to see if any of the stuff I thought would happen in 2020 ended up coming true.

Video Games

The most obvious thing to predict about Pokémon Sword & Shield this year what old Pokémon will be added back as part of the upcoming Expansion Passes. At the moment we know that 200 Pokémon will be coming back and, based on pre-release materials, we've figured out 84 of them. So, that leaves us with 116 Pokémon yet to be announced. My prediction of those 116 Pokémon can be seen here; the ones with purple backgrounds are the ones I think are coming back. Special thanks to Joseki over on resetera for creating the initial image.

My prediction of who was going to come back was here, and this below is who actually returned. Click on the image to view a larger version.


I think I did...alright? The obvious part I messed up was the Ultra Beasts (I guess I didn't think they'd be coming back for some reason?) but everything else, I think, is more or less fine.

The Pocket Monsters Sword & Shield video game soundtrack will come out within a month of the second Expansion Pass' release. It'll contain all the music from the main games, the expansion pass, and the Rainbow Rocket stuff from Ultra Sun / Ultra Moon. It'll be digital only as Japan (finally) moves away from CD releases.

This still hasn't happened, for some reason. What are they waiting for, exactly? Did the more recent soundtrack releases not sell so hot and so they decided to just not bother releasing anything for Sword & Shield? Or is there some other reason?

Also, Japan is still very much releasing physical media in the year 2020; I got two Pocket Monsters CDs just last month!

With Pokémon Home, I remember how rocky the start of Pokémon Bank was (it was basically unusable for the first month) so I'll say that users will experience the exact same thing this time around as well. I predict Pokémon Home will be unusable for the first two weeks or so.

The Pokémon Home launch was mostly fine...? There were definitely some hiccups, of course, but I'd say the launch went much, much better than Bank's did.

With Pokémon GO, I don't see us getting Generation 6 this year. I think 2020 will be all about rolling out the rest of Generation 5 with maybe a few random Galar forms (I'm looking at you, Maggyo) thrown in.

We got Generation 6 starting earlier last month (December 2nd) so I was wrong there. Happily, I was right about the Galar form stuff; we got Galar Nyarth, Kamonegi, Zigzaguma, Darumakka, Maggyo (!), and all their respective evolved forms.

Staying with Pokémon GO for a moment, I also think we're going to see the rest of the non-Arceus Gen 4 Mythical Pokémon this year. Regigigas will appear in regular raids for like a week before disappearing., just like Deoxys did. Phione eggs will be exclusive to a Special Research mission.

We still haven't gotten Phione or Manaphy, oddly enough. Regigigas has popped up in a few Special Research missions in the past but it never showed up in any regular raids.

One of the six new DLC fighters in Smash Bros Special (Ultimate) will be a Generation 8 Pokémon. Maybe the new fighting legendaries will take up a single slot the way Byleth does?

So far, no! This year we got Min Min from Arms, Steve / Alex / Zombie / Enderman from Minecraft, and Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII. There are still three slots left in the game's Fighters Pass 2 so who knows what 2021 will bring us!

A sequel to Pokkén Tournament will come out in Japanese arcades in 2020 with a home port announced for 2021.

This sure didn't happen at all, did it! The only Pokkén-related news I've seen this year is when the Nintendo Switch Online service offered a free trial + 30% off the Switch game Pokkén Tournament DX back in the summer. Other than that, absolutely nothing.

Animation

It's tough making predictions about Pocket Monsters (2019) because the whole thing just seems so...listless, you know? I am not super high on the new series at the moment but if I had to make a prediction I'd say that the show will turn the Galar League into a worldwide event that will allow participants to earn the necessary badges even from outside the Galar Region. The Galar Gym Leaders will still appear; they'll just be out of the country. So for example Yarrow's Gym Challenge will take place in Kalos or Rurina's challenge in Houen.

Most of that did not happen at all, though Saitou's battles with Satoshi did take place outside Galar (one in Kanto, one in Johto) at least. We also got to see Kibana a few times this year but he was in Galar the whole time.

I also think the Sun & Moon family will be absent from whatever episodes take place in the Alola Region, because the new series is dumb like that.

I'm so happy to be wrong about this! I didn't think the show would actually do it because of the logistic nightmare it must have been to get all those voice actors to come back (and especially with everything going on this year) but they actually managed to pull it off!

Gou's Pokémon Bestiary will make it to...let's say, 173 Pokémon. I'm choosing that number based on the assumption that he'll catch an average of about three Pokémon per episode and that we'll get 50 episodes in 2020. That brings the number up to 150. He has 23 Pokémon as of this writing and so 150 + 23 = 173.

He has 68 Pokémon right now, which is waaay less than the 173 I predicted. To be fair, we didn't end up getting 50 episodes in 2020 thanks to that hiatus the show took in the spring (we only ended up getting 42) so I'm betting I would have "only" been about 100 Pokémon off if all the episodes had aired as scheduled.

The Rocket trio will continue to barely appear, and I don't see them showing up in any more than 40% of the episodes that air in 2020. The voice actors will continue to complain about this in interviews, as they should.

Unfortunately I got the "they will continue to barely appear" part right. The trio appeared in 23 of the 42 episodes that aired in 2020, which puts their appearance rate for the year at 54.76%. That's better than the 40% I had predicted in January of last year, but it's still pretty effing abysmal.

We already know that the mythical Pokémon set to be revealed on February 27th will also be in Pocket Monsters The Movie "Koko." So what I will predict for the new movie is that this new Pokémon will have the ability to jump between parallel universes in a way that sorta-kinda resembles time travel. So, for example, it'll visit a timeline where the baby we see in the trailer grows up to become the jungle boy we see swinging through the vines, and then also a timeline (dimension?) where the child grows up in a more urban setting.

Haha, Zarude can't do any of that! It can't even speak human language or anything cool like that!

Twilight Wings is going to have an episode that deals with an original (as in non-game character) dying.

A lot of fans think John died at the end of "Moonlight," so maybe I can count this one as a win...?


Miscellaneous

We'll get our first news about the American live action Red & Green Blue movie sometime in 2020. I'll even go as far as say we'll get an announcement of a couple of the movie's lead actors by year's end...?

Nope! No news on this project whatsoever!

The Pocket Monsters (2019) manga will make it until the end of the year.

I haven't been posting about it on the site but the Machito Gomi manga is still very much going on. Last month's chapter covered the last two Sword & Shield arc episodes, for those of you who care.

A new short promotional manga - three chapters, tops - will be released to promote the Expansion Passes.

You would think so, but nope!

Finally, 2021 is going to be the franchise's 25th anniversary and so I think we'll start hearing some of the plans for that starting around December.

We got a 25th anniversary logo back in November so that sorta counts, right?



...and that's it for my 2020 predictions! I'll be posting my 2021 predictions when I do my website's anniversary write-up later this month.