>>35219429Pichu was a clone and was added likely as promotion of either the movie (which had the Pichu Bros short) or was simply a low effort clone to pad out the roster.
Greninja was picked by Sakurai because he found Greninja to have the most interesting potential moveset, but honestly I think Gamefreak just told him straight up to put Greninja in since they need to decide things like the designated shillmon of a generation way in advance.
The problem here is that we're in that awkward position between generations, and we aren't 100% sure if the next game will be in Gen 7 and be the DP remake, or Gen 8, but if we put in consideration the possibility that Sakurai started working on S5 as soon as he finished Bayo's DLC, GF likely told him to put in a Gen 7 mon.
If I had to guess, I'd say we're getting a Gen 7 newcomer and then a Gen 8 mon as DLC, Alternately we could just get Squirtle and Ivysaur back, I'd be pretty content with that. If they had to cut a singe Pokemon, I'd hope for it to be Lucario. Greninja stole his spotlight hard, and Mewtwo even harder. The dude has no niche left for him, is one of the least played characters in Smash, and is slowly falling into irrelevancy.
