Pokémon fans have found the episode script dating back to 2011 and canceled because of the earthquake that took place at the time.
Since its first episode in 1997, Pokémon has been collecting cult episodes. It must be said that with more than 1,200 episodes to its credit, the animated series has had the opportunity many times to mark history. But at the same time, some episodes sometimes fall by the wayside. This was the case of the episode The virtual soldier Porygon which had caused the hospitalization in 1997 of 685 young Japanese for epileptic disorders. It was broadcast only once, then deprogrammed.
This is also the case for episodes Team Rocket vs. Team Plasma. Following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the two parts of this double episode were postponed to a later date, before being definitively canceled due to the destruction of the city of Velocity. An accident caused by the confrontation between the two Teams but which was not welcome given the tragedy affecting Japan. The precise content of these episodes then fell into oblivion, before resurfacing recently.
On the Bulbagarden forum, a member by the name of ObjectionMan announced that he learned that someone had purchased the scripts for these episodes in 2013. To obtain the scripts from this buyer, ObjectionMan raised, with the Pokémon community, 4,000 dollars (i.e. just over €3,649). Once the scripts were obtained, ObjectionMan shared them for free by compiling them into a single Google Drive folder visible to everyone.
An exciting script abandoned 12 years ago
If the content is written in Japanese, Internet users have translated the script into English. This gives a long document of 37 pages, with the dialogues of the episode in their entirety. The script has us follow Sasha and her team, along with Officer Jenny and Professor Keteleeria. In these episodes, the group stumbles upon an excavation project in the desert, run by Team Rocket. She is looking for an object called Meteonite, a kind of miniature sun that allowed the Buried Castle to remain active at a time when volcanic ash darkened the sky.
But when Jessie and James, the legendary agents of Team Rocket celebrate their success, members of Team Plasma join the party. They are also joined by Keteleeria and Beladonis, the famous detective who reappears several times in the series. The script also explains that Meteonite’s energy is very fluctuating and syncs to Pikachu, causing its power to overflow.
That’s when, according to the script, Team Plasma springs into action and tries to steal the Meteonite. But it ends up destroying a huge area around it, which includes the city of Velocity. Subsequently, the script explains that Sasha and Pikachu manage to destroy the stone.
The destruction of the city of Velocity is probably the element that convinced the production to cancel these two episodes. The comparison between this fictional event and the reality could have caused controversy in Japan. But the simple fact of having had access to authentic scripts is in itself a victory for lovers of the license.
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