>>53476273Basically there was a non-compete clause from 4Kids, but what Rachael Lillis said was the truth out of all the he said she said that happened then between the old and current VAs: they absolutely could've broken the contracts and jumped ship to continue work on the dub for the rest of Series. But TPCi had already decided while 4Kids was finishing up Season 8 during 2006 to recast and overhaul everyone working on the Series from EP001 then, behind the scenes and sneakily essentially. It was also to cut costs as Taylor etc. said on production as PokeMania popularity had ended by then.
There was almost an instantaneous drop in the voice acting and script writing quality from the change, especially in BF/early DP it was the most jarring pre-XY onward to JN, IMO.
Over time, you can feel the intro quality got hurt hard too, the DP Rap was the worst OP in the entire series (I hate a lot of Goldfarb's OPs but that was the absolute worst ever) and it came during TPCi's early DP Era.
