Happy Anniversary! (Year Twenty-Two)

Dogasu's Backpack | Rants | Happy Anniversary! (Year Twenty-One)

By Dogasu
Posted February 1st, 2022

When you've been running a website for as long as I have it means you really enjoy working on it. How else could you devote a whopping twenty-two years of your life to a hobby like "talking about a Japanese kids' show" if you weren't still having an absolute blast doing it?

I think one of the things that keeps me so enthralled is how I am able to, against all odds, continue to find things to write about that nobody else out there seems to have even considered. It's honestly kind of wild to me. I've said this before but I'll say it again; if Pokémon was to end tomorrow -- no more video games, no more animated series, no more TCG or manga or music, no nothing -- I would honestly still have more than enough material in my backlog to last a lifetime. There are just so many hidden gems out there, so much undocumented content that I would be set for life.

The bread and butter of this website is the episode comparisons, those essays I do where I show fans how different the English version of the show is from the Japanese original. In 2021 I managed to do seven episode comparisons ("Fit to be Tide," "Pikachu Revolts," "The Crystal Onix," "In the Pink," "Shell Shock," "Stage Fight," and "Bye Bye Psyduck") and one movie comparison (Pocket Monsters The Movie "Koko"), and while that all may not seem like a lot to some of you the amount of information I managed to pack into each of those essays is something I'm really proud of.

Translations-wise, I did "Pocket Monsters" The Animated Series OST Liner Notes, a bunch of Pokémon Pia interviews, and an interview with Yuko Kobayashi about Shigeru's return to the Pocket Monsters TV series. Again, none of this content had ever been presented on an English-language website before.

And then there are the fun, miscellaneous stuff I did. These include Pocket Monsters The Movie "Revelation Lugia" -- The Ending Theme Saga, the page where I talk about the behind-the-scenes drama surrounding the music in the second Pocket Monsters movie; "Pocket Monsters," or "Pockemon" for Short, where I gather all the evidence I was able to find of the franchise using the "Pockemon" spelling back before "Pokémon" became the standard; the Magazine Guide, where I go over the various Japanese magazines that cover Pocket Monsters; and Kaori and her hiatus from voice acting, a page where I talk about why we haven't seen (or heard) Haruka appear in the TV series since 2009.

For me, these quirky and often overlooked aspects of the franchise are exactly the kind of thing I want to continue building on for years and years to come. If you want a spawn list of the Pokémon in Pokémon Legends Arceus or whatever then you can visit one of the dozens of sites out there that's reporting on that. But if you want detailed synopses of a Japanese podcast where the creators of the movies share behind-the-scenes stories, or a chapter-by-chapter breakdown of a Pocket Monsters manga that is only just now making its way to the US then Dogasu's Backpack is, and will continue to be, the place for you.

I always end these site anniversary write-ups with a set of predictions for the coming year. And so, without further ado, here's my completely half-baked, not-at-all serious predictions for what I think will happen with Pokémon in the year 2022:

Video Games

I think we'll get word of some sort of Pokémon Legends Arceus DLC announcement on Pokémon Day (Februrary 27th). There will be two sets of DLC (just like with Sword & Shield) with Part 1 coming out in Q2 and Part 2 coming out in Q3. We'll get another new legendary or two out of it, or at the very least a Hisui version of Giratina.
The first hints of Generation 9 will be revealed in the year 2022 with a 2023 release date. The Nintendo Switch games will be more like Pokémon Legends Arceus than Pocket Monsters Sword & Shield (there is absolutely no way Game Freak would be stupid enough to regress back to that old style of games, right...?) and will be set in a region based on a country in either South America, Africa, or Australia. I think we'll at least know the starters and the box legendaries before the end of the year.
Pokémon Go will start rolling out the Alola Region Pokémon in earnest (so, not just the regional forms) in 2022. Z-Moves will be introduced to the game as special attacks that will consume a set amount of candy every time you want to use one.
Spin-off game wise, I think we'll see another Pokémon Mystery Dungeon game and maybe something random like Pokémon Picross Switch or a Pokémon Scramble Switch.
Neither Pokémon Sleep nor Detective Pikachu 2 will come out in 2022 (or ever, for that matter) because I think those two projects have already been canceled.

Animation

I made this prediction last year, but I'll make it again; I do not think Pocket Monsters (2019) is going to wrap up after only three years. I think we'll still be following the adventures of Satoshi and Gou through Generation 9 (if not longer).
Returning characters in 2022: Lately this series seems to like having old characters who only got a single episode to themselves the first time around (Shijima, Genji, Erika, etc.) and so I predict that in the year 2022 we'll see Matis, Kyou, Hayato, and Tsukushi come back.
I also think we'll have Jindai come back for a Project Mew mission so that the show will (finally) get a chance to show off Regieleki and Regidrago.
Satoshi's will face at least two members of the Masters Eight but he won't finish the Pokémon World Championships until next year.
The show will do the absolute bare minimum to take advantage of the fact that this year marks the animated series' 25th year on the air. Maybe the anipoke_PR twitter account will give away replicas of an old Pikachu toy from the 1990s or something, but I don't expect to see much more than that.
I would love, love, LOVE it if Media Factory released a 25th anniversary Blu-ray box set of the 1997 Pocket Monsters series but I unfortunately do not think that is ever going to happen.
I no longer think we're getting Movie 24 in 2022. If we were getting a new movie this July then we would've at least gotten a teaser by now, and I don't see them going for another December release after the most recent film's box office performance. Also, Japan is facing a record number of new COVID infections thanks to the omicron variant so there's that, too. I don't see the 24th movie coming out until 2023 at the earliest.
This December will mark the 25th anniversary of the airing of Pocket Monsters (1997) Episode 038, "Cyber Soldier Porygon." Nobody in any sort of official capacity will do anything to acknowledge this, of course (the TPCi social media team tried it but hastily deleted it soon after) but I'm sure we'll see tons of ill-researched clickbait articles from people who want to capitalize on the anniversary. So my prediction is that we'll see a bunch of cringe-inducing articles...? (By the way, I do have some plans for the 25th anniversary myself but you'll have to wait until December to find out what those were).

Miscellaneous

This year will be the 25th anniversary of the Pocket Monsters Special manga so I expect we'll see some kind of anniversary book released similar to the PokéSpedia book we got for the series' 20th anniversary.
Last year was the first year in the franchise's entire history where we did not get any Pokémon-related CD released in Japan. Not a one! That probably sounds absurd to most of you -- most countries more or less gave up on physical CD releases years ago -- but Japan is still very much clinging onto the format. But not Pokémon, apparently! I therefore predict that we will not see any new CDs coming out in the year 2022. No Pokémon Legends Arceus soundtrack, no Yuki Hayashi TV series soundtrack, nothing. We'll still get digital releases for things like the theme songs and whatnot but I don't expect to see any more physical CD releases in the foreseeable future.

And that's about it! As the years keep on chugging by we keep bumping into new 25th anniversaries which means we're sure to have a lot of great nostalgia to look forward to in the next few years or so. I can't wait to see what's in store for us next!

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