Pokemon's Legends: Arceus Animated Special Might Have Already Shot Itself In The Foot
Pokemon has announced a new anime special based off Pokemon: Legends Arceus coming to Netflix next month, and that should be great news. Legends: Arceus was a breath of fresh air for the Pokemon formula, and while change has come slowly for the behemoth and there's still a lot of work to be done with Pokemon staying stagnant for far too long, the series is finally starting to evolve. It has put down the Everstone and is growing into something deeper, with Scarlet & Violet taking its cues from Legends: Arceus (plus a little bit of Breath of the Wild) to become even more expansive. Legends: Arceus is still a big contender for my game of the year and my favourite mainline game since HeartGold, assuming we don't count Let's Go. Unfortunately, the animated special already feels like a misfire.
Legends: Arceus is set in the distant past of the Sinnoh region. So distant, in fact, that it contains a few species of Pokemon that have apparently since died out and is known by a completely different name: Hisui. This is part of what makes Legends: Arceus so appealing. The mechanics are simpler, to accommodate for the fact that the people know less about Pokemon and therefore do not have an established battle meta for held items. We also see Poke Balls being built by hand and the Pokedex currently in the midst of being written. These are all fascinating concepts that the game takes full advantage of, tasking you with tracking a whole range of Pokemon behaviour in order to fill in the hand-written Dex. Unfortunately the animated special, which is uniquely placed to offer even more depth, will be ignoring all of this entirely.
Related: Pokemon Needs To Play With Its Balls More
That's because the Arceus special will not be set in the
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