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Titles: Gotta Catch Ya Later!/サヨナラ…そして、たびだち！/A Farewell... then a Departure!
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Its been a while since I've seen this episode so I watched it again recently. As a goodbye episode it was fairly well done. Its kind of ironic looking back at this episode now, knowing that Misty never does come back to the show in any of the following arcs. Her departure from the series was quite permanent and she has remained off the series for 9 years.

Did the writers originally plan to have Misty leave for good, or was she originally intended to come back like when Tracey replaced Brock, but then they brought Brock back? I always assumed she stayed gone because May was more popular and everyone liked the Contests, so they had no reason to bring her back. I wasn't online when AG was airing back in 2003-2006, but from what I've read online May was the most popular character in the series at the time so the writers decided not to bring Misty back. Its also why May came back for Battle Frontier and the DP saga's Wallace Cup and Misty didn't appear at all. I would have liked to see Misty still appear in the series, but I know she's probably not going to.

I suppose if we see anyone in Best Wishes it'll be Dawn though if the pattern holds.

Going off various things the producers have said... Takeshi was not originally meant to return. He was replaced by Kenji because the shows was being brought outside Japan, and the producers were worried that international (read: American) audiences would find Takeshi's character design racist. When it turned out this didn't happen, they brought him back in.

Kasumi's replacement, on the other hand, was done to "refresh" the show, which had started to grow somewhat repetitive and stale. Advanced Generation was a revamp which, among other things, got rid of the old Pokemon to properly focus on the new ones, and replaced the character whose main purpose was to have a girl as part of the group with a new girl character, this one with an established goal and a "newbie trainer" storyline that gave them a lot more to work with.

Wow... I would have been seriously p***** off if the writers had decided to get rid of Takeshi altogether just because they didn't want to 'shock' some over-zealous anti-racism association member? Ugh... Well, when you think of it, it's not really surprising the writers almost decided to do just that (getting rid of Satoshi), since there HAS been (and still is nowadays) people claiming Pokémon actually taught 'Satanism' to helpless, pure, innocent children...

Unlike Dent, which is a perfect replacement for Takeshi in the BW series, with its own unique personality, Kenji was a really poor one... he was nothing but a pale copy of the character he was supposed to replace, minus the insane love for (beautiful) women.

Yes yes, I do like Cilan. It did seem like Brock was going to leave the show here too at the end of Johto, but I already knew about him returning for AG so his return was spoiled for me.

I suppose Misty was never brought back because May was just too popular, and they didn't want to go back to an older character. So May replacing Misty became permanent, even if it might not have been intended at first.