>>27310804>I watched the anime in like 1999, back when I was dependent on it appearing on some awkward TV channel, so eventually lost track and never got around to re-following when technology caught up. Why was the decision taken to start cutting original characters and coming up with new ones every time?You're not the target audience. They don't bank on a returning audience, they have to keep it relevant for the 5-12s that'll be around and while Japan has a low turnover rate of those, it doesn't mean they're going to stop.
>"So why not develop that, create more and solve the problem? It's not like Hermione had much of her own arc. I don't know if Misty is popular here or not but there must have been some aspect of "group of friends together through it all" they knew they were losing when they took that decision."Going from the first question, the new characters are meant to promote the current games. Hell, Iris and Cilan tried to bring back the "Ash + 2 Gym Leaders" format with the region's respective leaders to characterize them a bit. Iris was kind of a look into handling Misty properly, for example Axew is a "baby" like Togepi but Iris' hands are free to do action girl stuff and she's been emphasized as a battler with no contest padding ahead.
So yeah, it's very much likely Misty was handled poorly because the writing of the time didn't plan much for her other than filling the role of "girl character."
Another issue is that Misty grows up in later Pokemon games, whereas Ash only exists for the anime (arguably starting as an adaptation of Red, but we're not discussing that) keeping his design malleable.
Not saying Misty can't get other outfits, the anime has made up 3 but it makes more sense to promote the current games.The use of Misty as a stand-in doesn't work as well since she's not a player character and re-tooling her to satisfy lapsed nostalgics over using a character you'll see in the current games sounds like shooting themselves in the foot.
