Can we have a "postmortem" thread on Sword and Shield, now that the Gen is officially over? It's been a very unusual generation from the start, and I want to discuss how and why.

For instance, does anyone else think it's weird how Turner, Masuda, and Ohmori were so central to the marketing of SwSh, but now there's nobody treated as the "face" of Scarlet and Violet?

There's also the fact that it's the first generation without a dedicated anime season. The anime changed format dramatically and while some of the gen's characters were featured, it leaned a lot more heavily on the returning characters from older gens. Is this something that will be unique to Sword and Shield, or has Go and Masters changed the way the series will be marketed in the future?

Another thing I've noticed is that Sword and Shield Pokemon, outside a select few shillmons, very rarely appear in marketing. Normally there's a blitz of marketing for new Pokemon as old Pokemon fall by the wayside, but this Gen centered a lot of old Pokemon. In fact a number of characters, such as Leon, have aces and Pokemon from other generations instead of new ones. In the Anime, Ash's Pokemon from Sword and Shield are the least utilized members of his team. In fact it feels like Gen 4 quickly eclipsed Gen 8.

Of course we can't leave out discussion of the Dex Cut, which is the single most controversial move in the entire franchise history. But it's also worth discussing how a huge number of moves got cut as well.

There was a rumor during the release season of Gen 8 that said
>The head of TPC thought the Switch would fail
>Forced development on the 3DS
>The switch became a historic success
>Scrambled to move the games over to the Switch

Could this explain why the games ended up the way they did? The anime could have had to enter production without a clear vision of SwSh's story, the marketing needed to press ahead with very little material so they needed human faces to sell it, cut features, etc?