>>56282128Learning the behind-the-scenes of Journeys would be interesting. It's been said that they tossed out their original story map before the first episode ever aired, and it's publicly known that all the clipshow episodes near the end were due to a combination of TV Tokyo/ShoPro slashing their budget while insisting they nevertheless animate all the PWC battles, including the non-Ash ones, which was apparently not the original plan, meaning the animators got absolutely put through hell to meet those deadlines and had to cut corners.
As for the series at large, the big shift happened around the time Maki Kodaira got bumped out of the director's chair after JN054, just 5 episodes after Chloe got Eevee; then Project Mew swoops in at JN068 a few months later and completely changes Goh's quest. Suddenly, in less than 20 episodes, two of your three central characters have been given character facelifts. I'm not saying Chloe couldn't have changed, but surely it would've been better to dedicate more focus to her more asocial and Pokémon-skeptical outlook on life, perhaps develop her classmate friends as part of a parallel show-within-a-show deal, and then integrate Chloe into the Ash and Goh dynamic after a more natural slow-burn. And of course, that's setting aside how much better Ash's qualifier battles could've been by making use of the 20+ years of regional rivals and notable COTDs, or how they should've leaned more into Goh's "raised by the internet" childhood to make him more relatable to audiences.
