Takeshi Shudo: Myths and Misinformation

Like most online communities, the Pokemon fandom has absorbed a lot of received wisdom over the years about how the show was made. This included various assumptions about the personalities behind the creation of the show and headcanons that people took seriously as canon. Most of it is bullshit. I had to unlearn a lot of it, so I'm going to try to help with some of the more common ones I've run into.

Myths About Revelation Lugia and Emperor of the Crystal Tower

1. Did Takeshi Shudo create Lugia?
Kind of. GameFreak has designed a few Pokemon over the years in order to be used in the movies -- i.e., most "mythical Pokemon." Lugia's creation seems to have come from an idea that Shudo came up with that Ken Sugimori then designed. Lugia's purpose was to be the mascot for Movie 2, but it ended up being a box legendary for Pokemon Silver, much to Shudo's surprise.

A lot of hay has been made about Shudo's views on Lugia due to Dr. Lava's excellent column about it. Even Dr. Lava has had to push back on fans on twitter, saying "I think some might've been a game of telephone from a video I wrote (linked in the original tweet). Shudo created the CONCEPT of Lugia for the movie, he didn't design it." This pretty well sums it up.


2. Did Takeshi Shudo disprove Pokeshipping (the fan pairing between Ash and Misty)?
Yes and no. Shudo had much to say about Misty's role in Movie 2, but here's the part you want to read:

Kasumi has no romantic feelings for Satoshi. If Kasumi's romantic feelings for Satoshi were to become one of the themes of "Pokemon," the entire structure of the "Pokemon" series would be destroyed...Even if Kasumi develops romantic feelings for Satoshi, she cannot interfere with the relationship between Satoshi and Pikachu. Even if a childish love affair with Satoshi were to develop in Kasumi, if it were depicted, "Pokemon" would have another built-in theme, and the basic theme would not only be complicated but also diluted. In "Pokemon," even if Kasumi has romantic feelings, they are only as significant as the condiments in a dish, and the condiments that complicate the flavor of the theme of "Pokemon" are clearly an obstacle. To begin with, the character of Kasumi does not have any romantic feelings for Satoshi. Kasumi may indeed be old enough to fall in love, but "Pokemon" is neither a girls' manga nor a cellphone novel.

Sounds pretty definitive: Takeshi Shudo, Pokemon's head writer and the writer for Revelation Lugia, did not want to write a romance between Ash and Misty.

Because of the shipping element, a lot of people tend to skip over the rest of the column, either calling Shudo a quack for denying their OTP or just ignoring the context in order to trash talk others. Shudo's specifically talking about how he wrote Revelation Lugia, where Misty's relationship with Ash is a pretty significant subplot. His intention was not to put in a straightforward romance, because that would make Misty boring and ordinary, and Shudo's main claim to fame was being able to write "attractive" girl characters. You should not take this to mean that none of the writers ever did, or that any of the other hints throughout the series weren't there. Shudo had a tendency to not reveal his entire thought process to the people he worked with.

Just don't get pissy when it doesn't happen 26 years later. And stay out of my comments section.


3. Did Shudo intend for Movie 3 to be about a rampaging T-Rex that killed everyone but was told no because it was too dark?
No. He wanted to write a movie where a T-Rex fossil revived and went on a rampage. He pitched it as a typical action movie, where Ash & co. and Team Rocket would eventually stop it, but he wanted to use the premise to address the lack of real world animals in Pokemon's setting. It wasn't rejected because it was too dark, though. It was rejected because Masakazu Kubo, the executive producer for the Pokemon anime and movies, thought that a movie from the perspective of an inorganic being wouldn't sell tickets. He had produced the Bakusou Kyoudai Lets & Go! movie that had a similar premise (with an anthropomorphized car), and it was a commercial flop. He felt the third Pokemon movie would do the same.


4. Did Shudo decide to get rid of Misty in favor of Team Rocket at the end of Johto?
No. I made a video about it. Watch it. Stay out of my comments section.

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Myths About Pokemon: The Animation The Novel

1. Did Takeshi Shudo write that 10 year olds have sex in Pokemon?
Wishful thinking on Resetera's part, but no.

Here is the excerpt that people quote to support this:

When children complete primary school at the age of ten, they are legally considered as adults....This is the “All Primary School Graduates are Adults Law”. Or PGAL (Primary Graduates Adulthood Law) for short. Basically, as of the April following your tenth birthday... you are able to gain a Pokémon License and are permitted to carry Poké Balls to capture Pokémon. However, due to a law for preserving natural habitats, you are only permitted to have six balls at a time. Of course, there's more to being a legal adult than the right to own Pokémon.

All adult rights are granted. Under 18s don't qualify as minors, not even 14 or 15 year olds. For example, if you were to steal something from a convenience store, the consequences would be more than just the shopkeeper getting mad at you, the police would arrest you. And no matter how much your parents try to apologise, you are still culpable as an adult. The most important point of this law is... after leaving primary school you make your own life choices.

You can strive to achieve higher education or take over the family business. Naturally, you're free to search for a job you like as well. If they were so inclined, an eleven year old boy and girl are even free to marry without parental consent. You are considered an adult right down to details like traffic violations. ... And you pay taxes like an adult too.

One of the main things Shudo tried to do as head writer was establish some realism within the Pokemon setting. In doing so, he added lore that, for the most part, hasn't been contradicted by later games and anime. One of the things that doesn't make sense about Pokemon Red and Green, if looked at objectively, is why a child is allowed to own supernatural animals and use them to fight others, and travel around the entirety of Kanto on his own. Shudo added some tongue-in-cheek lore about 10 year olds being legal adults to make this make sense. Marriage was one example of this; no one ever brings up taxes though. I wonder why.

In the same chapter, Shudo discusses Delia Ketchum's former marriage, which happened when she was 18. This is the only relationship in the novels, and it pretty clearly establishes that sexual relationships are socially not cool until you're 18. In a later chapter, an elderly man implied to be Ash's great-great-grandfather asks Misty if she's Ash's "betrothed," with the following reaction:

“What's your relationship with that boy?” The old man asked.

“Huh?” Misty asked in return.

“Are you his girlfriend or are you betrothed to him or something?”

“Betrothed?” Misty was unfamiliar with the word.

“It means you're making plans for marriage...”

“Marriage...!? I'm only ten years old.”

Worth noting for additional context: Takeshi Shudo was vocally against lolicons when talking about his work on Magical Princess Minky Momo. He referred to them as "perverts, and denounced people for treating anime girls as sexual objects. No, he did not want to imply that minors had sex in the Pokemon world.

2. Did Takeshi Shudo imply that Ash's mom was in an adult magazine?
No. She appeared on the cover of PokePals magazine when she was 17:

While Ash wouldn't notice due to being with her all the time, most people would consider her quite the beauty, in fact, when she was 17 she appeared on the front cover of the new year bumper issue of “Pokémon Pals” alongside a flower Pokémon known as Bellsprout.

This is the same magazine that publishes the top 10,000 trainers each month, so unless the Pokemon world's equivalent of Playboy was also read mostly for the articles, it seems to be a typical magazine. People would've made this connection if they actually read the novels.


3. Did Takeshi Shudo imply that Ash's mom secretly hated him?
No. Shudo says a lot about Delia in the first chapter of the novel, but I think this quote sums up what is a very emotionally complex description about as succinctly as possible:

Delia wiped the tears from her eyes and wiped them on her shoulder. ... Tears, huh... I'm still young, but I'm already the mother of a full fledged adult at my age... I've had to put on a brave face as his mother... I can recall all the past ten years with Ash, ten years, ten months and ten days... All of the hardships... The times it was too painful to go on... Motherhood really was a struggle... But it was worth it. This is how Delia felt the day her only son left home.

4. Did Takeshi Shudo suggest that Professor Ivy was a lesbian?
No.

I don't even have an interesting takedown on this. Someone on twitter said it with zero basis in 2020 and a bunch of vulture culture sites picked it up without any critical thinking because they don't know their ass from their elbow. Somehow, ComicBookResources undercut Resetera and other Pokemon fans in being the easiest to take bait.

5. Was Takeshi Shudo's portrayal of the Pokemon world in the novels dark?
I don't know how anyone who watched Mewtwo Strikes Back, complete with the Ambertwo stuff, would find anything objectionable in the novels. As I said, there are added elements of realism and slight deviations from the anime's canon, but nothing that really changes the perception of the world for the worse.

My word of advice is to please read the novels. They have been translated into English for several years. They are some of the best Pokemon media out there. If you're a Shudo hater that likes Misty? You'll love this. Come on, you know you want it. Stay out of my comment section until you do.

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Other Myths

1. Did Takeshi Shudo kill off the main character of another anime because he was mad at a toy company?
Yeah, he did that shit.

It was Minky Momo, and in the sequel anime he gave her parents AIDS because he felt like people weren't taking the AIDS crisis seriously (this was 1992). I haven't watched all of Minky Momo myself, but these are apparently all very poignant and well done within the context of the show. Crunchyroll has Minky Momo, so give it a try.

2. Did Takeshi Shudo intend for Ash to age?
Yes, but.

Shudo's idea for Pokemon's ending is pretty well known: he wanted Pikachu to lead a Spartacus-like rebellion and Team Rocket would act as the mediators for the conflict. The final scene was intended to be Ash as an older man reminiscing about his days as a youth and then flashback to being a child again, and going out to seek the meaning of life, yada yada. There's also that old trailer of the first movie with an adult Misty, and maybe in a pre-Porygon world, the movie would've included that scene. Who knows?

The entire premise is reminiscent of Stand By Me, which he references as an inspiration for the "theme" of Pokemon he got from the games prior to working on the anime. From that column where he cancels Pokeshipping:

The theme of "Pokemon" is the relationship between the fictional creatures called Pokemon and humans, and the growth of a boy named Satoshi (which means the childhood of all humans) into an adult, for better or worse. At least, that was the theme I intuitively decided on when I took on the task of series organization for "Pokemon." I have already mentioned in this column that an important theme of "Pokemon" is to make a so-called "Stand by Me." It is an extremely universal human theme that we all grow old and become adults, even if we don't want to, and I myself have discussed this theme many times in episodes of "Magical Princess Minky Momo."

That being said. Nowhere in Shudo's columns does he bring up the concept of Ash aging within the canon of the series. From what I can tell, the intention was to have Ash be 10 years old up until the final scene, by the end of which he would revert back to being 10. There was never any intention to have Ash age as the series progressed.

Let's take a side bar and go over the Ash aging phenomenon, since this has become something the fandom has bitched about a lot recently. For reasons.

There was a longterm belief in the western fandom that Ash was aging as the show progressed. Arguments include showing that events in the anime show time passing and, admittedly, genuinely impressive day-counting to baseless assumptions that his design changes over the years suggest that the creators intended him to age.

Most of these assumptions come down to a desire by the fanbase to see him age, rather than anything in the show.



Pokemon works on a floating timeline, similar to Doraemon, your favorite comics, or many other long-running animated shows. The Simpsons has a yearly Halloween Special and several episodes that flashback to a relative point in the past that keeps getting pushed forward -- in a few years, Homer Simpson will officially be a zoomer, despite starting out old enough to be a baby boomer. Even if one can "prove" that time has passed in the Pokemon world, Ash stays 10 years old. The creators and publications on both the Japanese and western sides of the company have been consistent in this.

Hideki Sonoda, the writer for most of the Pokemon movies, had the following to say in a 2003 interview for Movie 6: "But in the case of "Pokemon," the characters don't grow up, and there is a time-stopped setting unique to fantasy, so I am always struggling with how to make it interesting."

Director Kunihiko Yuyama has been consistent in referring to the setting of the anime as an eternal summer's day," with constant confirmations that Ash is forever 10 years old.

And of course, the show itself references his age at the beginning of every series starting with Best Wishes.

People also like to point to changes in his design over time. While the art style changes depending on the director and character designer (these roles tend to change over the course of 26 years), there isn't that much of a difference beyond initial perception:

Going back to Shudo now. If I am wrong, and Shudo wanted Ash to turn 11 at some point in the show, then that wasn't his decision to make. You will find that a lot of Shudo's ideas didn't come to fruition for one reason or another. He wanted the show to end when it was supposed to, and then move on to another main character. That didn't happen. It's a shame it didn't either, because this whole conversation would be moot by now if it did.