From time to time the internet makes us happy, recovering pieces that we thought had been lost forever, even if they arrive many years late. Back in 2011, the anime of ‘Pokemon’ it was going to have a relatively small arc but it was going to be very impactful for the series… even though they never aired, and for a reason that made a lot of sense at the time.
Team Rocket didn’t take off again
This arc of two chapters was going to be called ‘Team Rocket vs. Team Plasma‘, and it would mark a very significant moment in the Black and White saga. The episodes were actually already finished and ready to air, but they were canceled at the last minute.
Because? Well because andn these chapters an incident was shown that completely destroyed a cityand according to the show’s schedule, they would have aired right after the massive earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan in 2011. This massive disaster killed nearly 20,000 people and devastated the country, so obviously It was not the best time to broadcast episodes with this theme.
The Pokémon Company assured that they would be issued later, but they were kept in a drawer and were not shown either in Japan or internationally. Twelve years later, ‘Pokémon’ fans have organized themselves and have been able to access the scripts for these episodes. Originally a crowdfunding had been organized to buy them, but finally the owner decided to share them for free.
The dashes of ‘Team Rocket VS Team Plasma (Part 1 & 2)’ have been translated by fans and are already available online so that the followers of ‘Pokémon’ can even know how these chapters would be.
The plot was to show how Giovanni, the leader of Team Rocket, was made with a mysterious mineral known as Metheonite, and was going to use it to conquer the Unova region. But Team Plasma stole the Metheonite… and his power slipped away. So the result was a huge disaster that destroyed entire buildingsand with the earthquake so recent, the images were too real and similar to what was happening at that time in Japan.
Regarding the complete chapters, yes some teasers that were broadcast at the time are preserved and that they already let us see how the tone was going to be, but for now it will be necessary to see if The Pokémon Company dares to take them out of the drawer, because the fans are determined to preserve all the lost history of the anime.
Although these are not the only episodes with earthquakes that the anime has decided to skip. In the Ruby and Sapphire saga there was also another chapter with an earthquake that was not broadcast either and since then the anime has decided directly to dispense with any other mention of earthquakes and get rid of problems.
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