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Introduction
As some might already know, I'm going to work with Pokémon Blogs (Alongside my Digimon Blogs), so I need to be sure of how the canon of the franchise works here. Luckily we have this blog to explain that, however, I think that the Pokémon Canon has a lot more to it than the blog shows (In fact, I would say that it's because of the standardized concept of canon that doesn't work with some franchises, as I explained in this blog).
So, I decided to do my own "Canon Analysis: Pokémon" blog. This thread will discuss two possibilities of what to do with Pokémon's canon.
Add more to what already is accepted
The current accepted Pokémon blog considers the following pieces of the Pokémon franchise as canon:
1) Core Games series;
2) Spin-off Games and other Tie-in media connected with the Core Series (Such as the Pokémon Ranger game series or the Twilight Wings anime series);
3) Pokémon Anime;
4) Pokémon Adventures manga;
5) Detective Pikachu and TCG (With less validity than the others).
The idea is that it's canon what is connected with the game series or was made with direct instructions from the Pokémon Company.
If nothing changes, we can at least add to this: Pokémon Masters; Magikarp Jump; Detective Pikachu (Game), Dengeki Pikachu and possibly Pokémon Conquest.
The blog has all the information for why those need to be considered as well. All of them have the same characteristics as the Pokémon anime and the Adventures manga, they were made with the overall rules of the series in mind and they needed to be sure that everything there fits with the world of Pokémon. The only that isn't the case is Pokémon Conquest, that at best has a tie-in event with the Core Game series and Nobunaga's Rayquaza is an available character in the B/W series, so it fits with the same rule as the spin-off games and tie-in media that is connected with the Core series.
What if we changed
One of the things that the original blog already considers is that a work can be considered canon, or at least "usable", if it was made with all the rules of Pokémon in mind. This is something that I explained in greater detail in my blog about Canon as a whole, but basically there are multiple ways of using the multimedia medium to tell the story of a world, and is perfectly possible to have totally not in-continuity stories and they still being valid to the world itself. Think of the world itself as the stage of a theatrical play, different versions of the script (Even ones that are 100% different from each other), but still the same material as a whole.
In these cases, it's not even necessary to have a multiverse to make every piece of a multimedia work canon in a way, it's simply unnecessary to have the very concept of "canon" there, as it's possible to have totally different stories taking place in the same "world". So, you can use any work to understand the world that the series takes place in and cross over the concepts through the works to know the big picture.
Since we already accept that certain concepts cross over from the manga and anime as canon, it is already an example of scaling the “setting”/“worldview”. In fact, the very idea of scaling the different versions of the games (Multiple versions plus their remakes) is already based on that idea. We don’t care about the continuity, the individual characters or anything like that. What we scale are the Pokémon themselves and the Pokémon World as a whole.
We accept the Core games, Anime and Adventures to work on that way because we have interviews that explain how they work on that subject. However, two interviews (From Detective Pikachu and Magikarp Jump) show that isn’t the case for only those products, but for any “Pokémon” work. All of that information is in the blog, but I’ll paste the info here so everyone can check.
First from Magikarp Jump with the director of the game, Koya Nakahata:
――People who have played Pokemon games have the image that Pokemon has some kind of worldview (世界観). When I played "Splash! Magikar" I thought if you were conscious of expressing the unique world of Pokémon. Were you aware of that?
Nakahata: We wanted to express the world view well, partly because we love Pokémon. I think that our "Splash! Magikarp" has elements that Pokemon hadn't so far, such as being able to laugh at it, seeing a slightly ridiculous side, and making mistakes. But this is the part that we put our own colors in it. On the other hand, when a Pokemon game comes out, Pokemon fans want to get in touch with the world of Pokemon. This game is a game that you can play as many times as you want in a day, and I think it's great for fans to be able to enjoy the world of Pokemon many times a day. That's why we wanted to give Pokemon fans a solid sense of the world of Pokemon. We wanted to bring out both our own colors and the worldview of Pokémon, so we were conscious of the original Pokémon setting.
Here the interviewer explained that from the player point of view, there’s a setting/worldview that is the world of Pokémon. Nakahata explains that it’s expected from the fans to have every new Pokémon game being a part of that world of Pokémon. As such even if Magikarp Jump, a Spin-off game, has some unique details, it still needs to fit with the original Pokémon setting.
Complementing this, we have interviews with Hiroyuki Jinnai. He works at Creatures Inc and worked at the setting of multiple Pokémon games, and was also Producer, Supervisor and Advisor in multiple Pokémon games (Both Core games and Spin-offs) as well as for the Pokémon anime itself. I even found two new interviews that will help me here, one from Observador and another one from Famitsu.
――Observador: In relation to canon and continuity, Detective Pikachu is its own universe, or is something more ?
HJ: In the world of Detective Pikachu, the Pokémon doesn't come out of Pokéballs, nor do they battle with other Pokémon, therefore, we fell what happens here is distant from the rest of the original world. However, we tried to add many elements to the game, that would make the player feel that there's a connection between the two worlds. We would want that the players find and identify that moments.
--Famitsu: I'm going to go back and forth a bit, but what was the first image you had of the game as a whole?
Jinnai: The world view of "Pokemon" is very multi-layered. In the original "Pocket Monsters" series, the main games created by Game Freak, the story is mainly about Pokémon battles with the players themselves as trainers. And as I mentioned earlier, the story of Satoshi and Pikachu is depicted in the anime, making the world of "Pokemon" very rich. Other "Pokémon" games also offer new worlds to match their gameplay. In "Detective Pikachu," I had the image of enriching the world of "Pokemon" by developing a new story that is different from the main game and the anime. That's why I purposely eliminated the battle element in this work and focused on depicting the lives of people living together with Pokémon.
As you can see the concept of the Pokémon "worldview" (世界観) is very important to the franchise, and as Jinnai explained, it's in fact multi-layered (重層). It has the main series that is the basis for everything, but the anime and other games, each having their own unique aspects (As explained by Toshihiro Ono about the differences between the Pokémon anime and its manga adaptation) shows a different world, a different view of what the "Pokémon Worldview" is, making the world more and more rich.
And finally in an interview for The Verge (It's in the blog), we have Jinnai being very clear about having to follow rules, and how that isn't an expection or anything like that.
For Japanese game and toy maker Creatures, which is best-known for the Pokémon trading card game and multiple series spinoffs, the outlandishness of Detective Pikachu took a lot of convincing. “We really started with the concept of making Pikachu talk,” says Hiroyuki Jinnai, the producer of Detective Pikachu, who’s worked on the Pokémon franchise with creator Game Freak for more than two decades. The goal was to surprise people and alter the perception of the franchise’s most well-known face, Jinnai adds, in celebration of Pokémon’s 20th anniversary. “We really worked hard to come up with a justification and setting to make that work.” Jinnai, who’s also helped on and off as a producer and adviser on the Pokémon anime, says Game Freak has historically been quite protective of the world it's built. Executives at the game company, which operates as an independent entity with a stake in the Pokémon license alongside Nintendo and Creatures, often stopped writers on the TV program from taking liberties with pokémon, like imbuing the pocket monsters with too many human-like qualities. “It took a lot of convincing to let us break the rules,” Jinai says. The result is an utterly bizarre and yet lovably quaint video game that will no doubt find its place in the ever-expanding Pokémon canon.
Looking at the Pokémon Company webpage, this is stated:
I am often asked in interviews, “What does The Pokémon Company do for Pokémon?” When I answer, “We are a company that produces Pokémon,” I am often met with puzzled looks and asked, “What does it mean to produce Pokémon?” When this happens, I explain, “Imagine something like a talent agency. Talent agencies decide what jobs to give the people they represent, how to nurture their skills, how to cultivate them. In much the same way, our job at The Pokémon Company is to produce Pokémon, meaning that we think about what types of media our characters, such as Pikachu and Charizard, should appear in, what products to use them for, and how to nurture them,” and then the interviewer seems to grasp what it is that we do to a certain extent. But while this is an easy way to explain a part of what it means to produce Pokémon, it isn’t everything.
And in an interiew with Junichi Masuda at gamefreak, the following was stated:
Pokémon is owned by a number of companies, leading to a complicated relationship for the valuable brand and its parents. When asked if he could explain the relationship between Game Freak, Nintendo, and The Pokémon Company, co-founder Junichi Masuda turned to a white board behind him to draw out his explanation. After drawing circles for Game Freak, Nintendo, and former producer Creatures, Masuda explained. “Game Freak? We develop all the main Pokémon games. Originally, Creatures, they were the producers of the game. Nintendo was the seller of the games – the distributor. So that was the original structure of Pokémon games. In terms of who owns the rights to the games, it’s these three companies.” These days, Creatures mostly handles the Pokémon card game, and The Pokémon Company was formed in 1998 – shortly before the release of Pokémon Gold and Silver – to manage the brand and all of its assorted merchandising. In terms of genuine ownership, Masuda says it’s one-third each for Game Freak, Creatures, and Nintendo. “It’s a little more complicated than that in certain scenarios, like for example, the producing role that Creatures originally held went to The Pokémon Company, and a percentage of the rights went with that so there are certain complications, and it depends on the project, but there is no situation where Nintendo and The Pokémon Company will put pressure on Game Freak or something like that,” Masuda says.
The reason for why most multimedia franchises don't have most of their products accepted by their fandom as "canon" is due to the idea that spin-offs aren't canon by nature, or at least that there's no way that a company can handle all of that. This, however, isn't the case with Pokémon. As you can see from all the information in the blog and the new information from this thread, the existence of the multilayered Pokémon Worldview with content being shared among all the spin-offs and the idea that rules are needed to be followed, with the exceptions needing explanations to show why such difference exists, is accepted among everyone that worked in Pokémon in the recent years. Not only this simply something that everyone seems to accept, but the "Pokémon Company" exists to be sure that everything Pokémon-related fits with the Pokémon World always being in check with everything, if something goes to a direction that the Pokémon Company doesn't like, it can't happen.
We already accept the Pokémon anime and the Adventures manga (As well as some spin-offs and tie-in material) as canon due to "needing to follow the rules and show more of the Pokémon world", so with this we can be sure that this isn't something exclusive to a few material, but simply the very nature of how Pokémon works as a franchise.
Of course, this doesn't mean that "everything is canon in the same level", only that most of the multiple Pokémon material shows complementary information that explains how the multilayered "Pokémon World view" works. There are a few differences. Masuda even explained that one particular difference between the rules of the games and the anime is that in the games, Pokémon do not speak their own names, while the anime takes place in a universe where the Pokémon do speak their own names and maybe this is why the Pokémon are called by what they say by humans, something that didn't happen in the game world (At least a bit, since Pikachu does say its own name and now the same happens with Eevee, so how does that even work now ?).
It's also important to say that Pokémon still is a franchise with the concept of a "mystery uncertain lore" that does not explain everything in the world and multiple staff agree in simply leaving lots of question to the fans to try to answer. So there's a lot of complicated stuff here that we need to analyze to be sure that we can use the most about Pokémon.
TL;DR and Conclusion
Due to how Pokémon works as a franchise, if we remain with the rules that we already have, we should at least add games such as Detective Pikachu or Pokémon Masters to canon due to the same reasons that we already accept the anime and Adventures.
However, as I showed so far, Pokémon is a franchise with a multilayered world that has each product intended to make the world more rich and the Pokémon Company exists to make sure that everything fits as it's intended. However, there are still some differences in some works and things that does not cross over between works (Such as the Pokémon cries), but those are very few in number in relation to each individual work. I do think that having all of the Pokémon media being analyzed with "Canonicity Levels" (Such as with how the Holocron Continuity Database worked before the changes).
Since there's no official word on how that would work, I decided to give my own opinion on that.
[*]Core Canon: The core "Pocket Monsters" series that is mainly created by Game Freak or at least that has Gamefreak helping in the production;
[*][*]Example: The entire "Pocket Monsters" series
[*]Direct Complementary Canon: The spin-off games and tie-in material that are directly connected with the core series.
[*][*]Example: The Pokémon Stadium series (Includes Colosseum and XD Gale of Darkness), Pokémon GO, Pokémon Rangers, Detective Pikachu, Pokémon Masters, Pokémon Twilight Wings, etc
[*]Adaptations Canon: The manga and anime adaptations of the franchise.
[**]Example: The TV Anime "Pocket Monsters" Series, Pokémon Adventures, The Electric Tale of Pikachu, Pocket Monsters: The Origin, Pokémon Generations
Of course, this is only one suggestion, and isn't even the one that I agree the most. For example, I don't see any reason to have Core Canon or the spin-off and tie-in material that are directly connected with the series as different canon, as they are simply supposed to be "something that takes place in a region far away" , so they are still mostly the same world.
Anyway, this is how I think that we could work with Pokémon with the premise that Pokémon is a franchise in the unique position of having everything being in a way canon, so everything works to make the multilayered worldview of Pokémon more and more rich, and we should respect that.
As some might already know, I'm going to work with Pokémon Blogs (Alongside my Digimon Blogs), so I need to be sure of how the canon of the franchise works here. Luckily we have this blog to explain that, however, I think that the Pokémon Canon has a lot more to it than the blog shows (In fact, I would say that it's because of the standardized concept of canon that doesn't work with some franchises, as I explained in this blog).
So, I decided to do my own "Canon Analysis: Pokémon" blog. This thread will discuss two possibilities of what to do with Pokémon's canon.
Add more to what already is accepted
The current accepted Pokémon blog considers the following pieces of the Pokémon franchise as canon:
1) Core Games series;
2) Spin-off Games and other Tie-in media connected with the Core Series (Such as the Pokémon Ranger game series or the Twilight Wings anime series);
3) Pokémon Anime;
4) Pokémon Adventures manga;
5) Detective Pikachu and TCG (With less validity than the others).
The idea is that it's canon what is connected with the game series or was made with direct instructions from the Pokémon Company.
If nothing changes, we can at least add to this: Pokémon Masters; Magikarp Jump; Detective Pikachu (Game), Dengeki Pikachu and possibly Pokémon Conquest.
The blog has all the information for why those need to be considered as well. All of them have the same characteristics as the Pokémon anime and the Adventures manga, they were made with the overall rules of the series in mind and they needed to be sure that everything there fits with the world of Pokémon. The only that isn't the case is Pokémon Conquest, that at best has a tie-in event with the Core Game series and Nobunaga's Rayquaza is an available character in the B/W series, so it fits with the same rule as the spin-off games and tie-in media that is connected with the Core series.
What if we changed
One of the things that the original blog already considers is that a work can be considered canon, or at least "usable", if it was made with all the rules of Pokémon in mind. This is something that I explained in greater detail in my blog about Canon as a whole, but basically there are multiple ways of using the multimedia medium to tell the story of a world, and is perfectly possible to have totally not in-continuity stories and they still being valid to the world itself. Think of the world itself as the stage of a theatrical play, different versions of the script (Even ones that are 100% different from each other), but still the same material as a whole.
In these cases, it's not even necessary to have a multiverse to make every piece of a multimedia work canon in a way, it's simply unnecessary to have the very concept of "canon" there, as it's possible to have totally different stories taking place in the same "world". So, you can use any work to understand the world that the series takes place in and cross over the concepts through the works to know the big picture.
Since we already accept that certain concepts cross over from the manga and anime as canon, it is already an example of scaling the “setting”/“worldview”. In fact, the very idea of scaling the different versions of the games (Multiple versions plus their remakes) is already based on that idea. We don’t care about the continuity, the individual characters or anything like that. What we scale are the Pokémon themselves and the Pokémon World as a whole.
We accept the Core games, Anime and Adventures to work on that way because we have interviews that explain how they work on that subject. However, two interviews (From Detective Pikachu and Magikarp Jump) show that isn’t the case for only those products, but for any “Pokémon” work. All of that information is in the blog, but I’ll paste the info here so everyone can check.
First from Magikarp Jump with the director of the game, Koya Nakahata:
――People who have played Pokemon games have the image that Pokemon has some kind of worldview (世界観). When I played "Splash! Magikar" I thought if you were conscious of expressing the unique world of Pokémon. Were you aware of that?
Nakahata: We wanted to express the world view well, partly because we love Pokémon. I think that our "Splash! Magikarp" has elements that Pokemon hadn't so far, such as being able to laugh at it, seeing a slightly ridiculous side, and making mistakes. But this is the part that we put our own colors in it. On the other hand, when a Pokemon game comes out, Pokemon fans want to get in touch with the world of Pokemon. This game is a game that you can play as many times as you want in a day, and I think it's great for fans to be able to enjoy the world of Pokemon many times a day. That's why we wanted to give Pokemon fans a solid sense of the world of Pokemon. We wanted to bring out both our own colors and the worldview of Pokémon, so we were conscious of the original Pokémon setting.
Here the interviewer explained that from the player point of view, there’s a setting/worldview that is the world of Pokémon. Nakahata explains that it’s expected from the fans to have every new Pokémon game being a part of that world of Pokémon. As such even if Magikarp Jump, a Spin-off game, has some unique details, it still needs to fit with the original Pokémon setting.
Complementing this, we have interviews with Hiroyuki Jinnai. He works at Creatures Inc and worked at the setting of multiple Pokémon games, and was also Producer, Supervisor and Advisor in multiple Pokémon games (Both Core games and Spin-offs) as well as for the Pokémon anime itself. I even found two new interviews that will help me here, one from Observador and another one from Famitsu.
――Observador: In relation to canon and continuity, Detective Pikachu is its own universe, or is something more ?
HJ: In the world of Detective Pikachu, the Pokémon doesn't come out of Pokéballs, nor do they battle with other Pokémon, therefore, we fell what happens here is distant from the rest of the original world. However, we tried to add many elements to the game, that would make the player feel that there's a connection between the two worlds. We would want that the players find and identify that moments.
--Famitsu: I'm going to go back and forth a bit, but what was the first image you had of the game as a whole?
Jinnai: The world view of "Pokemon" is very multi-layered. In the original "Pocket Monsters" series, the main games created by Game Freak, the story is mainly about Pokémon battles with the players themselves as trainers. And as I mentioned earlier, the story of Satoshi and Pikachu is depicted in the anime, making the world of "Pokemon" very rich. Other "Pokémon" games also offer new worlds to match their gameplay. In "Detective Pikachu," I had the image of enriching the world of "Pokemon" by developing a new story that is different from the main game and the anime. That's why I purposely eliminated the battle element in this work and focused on depicting the lives of people living together with Pokémon.
As you can see the concept of the Pokémon "worldview" (世界観) is very important to the franchise, and as Jinnai explained, it's in fact multi-layered (重層). It has the main series that is the basis for everything, but the anime and other games, each having their own unique aspects (As explained by Toshihiro Ono about the differences between the Pokémon anime and its manga adaptation) shows a different world, a different view of what the "Pokémon Worldview" is, making the world more and more rich.
And finally in an interview for The Verge (It's in the blog), we have Jinnai being very clear about having to follow rules, and how that isn't an expection or anything like that.
For Japanese game and toy maker Creatures, which is best-known for the Pokémon trading card game and multiple series spinoffs, the outlandishness of Detective Pikachu took a lot of convincing. “We really started with the concept of making Pikachu talk,” says Hiroyuki Jinnai, the producer of Detective Pikachu, who’s worked on the Pokémon franchise with creator Game Freak for more than two decades. The goal was to surprise people and alter the perception of the franchise’s most well-known face, Jinnai adds, in celebration of Pokémon’s 20th anniversary. “We really worked hard to come up with a justification and setting to make that work.” Jinnai, who’s also helped on and off as a producer and adviser on the Pokémon anime, says Game Freak has historically been quite protective of the world it's built. Executives at the game company, which operates as an independent entity with a stake in the Pokémon license alongside Nintendo and Creatures, often stopped writers on the TV program from taking liberties with pokémon, like imbuing the pocket monsters with too many human-like qualities. “It took a lot of convincing to let us break the rules,” Jinai says. The result is an utterly bizarre and yet lovably quaint video game that will no doubt find its place in the ever-expanding Pokémon canon.
Looking at the Pokémon Company webpage, this is stated:
I am often asked in interviews, “What does The Pokémon Company do for Pokémon?” When I answer, “We are a company that produces Pokémon,” I am often met with puzzled looks and asked, “What does it mean to produce Pokémon?” When this happens, I explain, “Imagine something like a talent agency. Talent agencies decide what jobs to give the people they represent, how to nurture their skills, how to cultivate them. In much the same way, our job at The Pokémon Company is to produce Pokémon, meaning that we think about what types of media our characters, such as Pikachu and Charizard, should appear in, what products to use them for, and how to nurture them,” and then the interviewer seems to grasp what it is that we do to a certain extent. But while this is an easy way to explain a part of what it means to produce Pokémon, it isn’t everything.
And in an interiew with Junichi Masuda at gamefreak, the following was stated:
Pokémon is owned by a number of companies, leading to a complicated relationship for the valuable brand and its parents. When asked if he could explain the relationship between Game Freak, Nintendo, and The Pokémon Company, co-founder Junichi Masuda turned to a white board behind him to draw out his explanation. After drawing circles for Game Freak, Nintendo, and former producer Creatures, Masuda explained. “Game Freak? We develop all the main Pokémon games. Originally, Creatures, they were the producers of the game. Nintendo was the seller of the games – the distributor. So that was the original structure of Pokémon games. In terms of who owns the rights to the games, it’s these three companies.” These days, Creatures mostly handles the Pokémon card game, and The Pokémon Company was formed in 1998 – shortly before the release of Pokémon Gold and Silver – to manage the brand and all of its assorted merchandising. In terms of genuine ownership, Masuda says it’s one-third each for Game Freak, Creatures, and Nintendo. “It’s a little more complicated than that in certain scenarios, like for example, the producing role that Creatures originally held went to The Pokémon Company, and a percentage of the rights went with that so there are certain complications, and it depends on the project, but there is no situation where Nintendo and The Pokémon Company will put pressure on Game Freak or something like that,” Masuda says.
The reason for why most multimedia franchises don't have most of their products accepted by their fandom as "canon" is due to the idea that spin-offs aren't canon by nature, or at least that there's no way that a company can handle all of that. This, however, isn't the case with Pokémon. As you can see from all the information in the blog and the new information from this thread, the existence of the multilayered Pokémon Worldview with content being shared among all the spin-offs and the idea that rules are needed to be followed, with the exceptions needing explanations to show why such difference exists, is accepted among everyone that worked in Pokémon in the recent years. Not only this simply something that everyone seems to accept, but the "Pokémon Company" exists to be sure that everything Pokémon-related fits with the Pokémon World always being in check with everything, if something goes to a direction that the Pokémon Company doesn't like, it can't happen.
We already accept the Pokémon anime and the Adventures manga (As well as some spin-offs and tie-in material) as canon due to "needing to follow the rules and show more of the Pokémon world", so with this we can be sure that this isn't something exclusive to a few material, but simply the very nature of how Pokémon works as a franchise.
Of course, this doesn't mean that "everything is canon in the same level", only that most of the multiple Pokémon material shows complementary information that explains how the multilayered "Pokémon World view" works. There are a few differences. Masuda even explained that one particular difference between the rules of the games and the anime is that in the games, Pokémon do not speak their own names, while the anime takes place in a universe where the Pokémon do speak their own names and maybe this is why the Pokémon are called by what they say by humans, something that didn't happen in the game world (At least a bit, since Pikachu does say its own name and now the same happens with Eevee, so how does that even work now ?).
It's also important to say that Pokémon still is a franchise with the concept of a "mystery uncertain lore" that does not explain everything in the world and multiple staff agree in simply leaving lots of question to the fans to try to answer. So there's a lot of complicated stuff here that we need to analyze to be sure that we can use the most about Pokémon.
TL;DR and Conclusion
Due to how Pokémon works as a franchise, if we remain with the rules that we already have, we should at least add games such as Detective Pikachu or Pokémon Masters to canon due to the same reasons that we already accept the anime and Adventures.
However, as I showed so far, Pokémon is a franchise with a multilayered world that has each product intended to make the world more rich and the Pokémon Company exists to make sure that everything fits as it's intended. However, there are still some differences in some works and things that does not cross over between works (Such as the Pokémon cries), but those are very few in number in relation to each individual work. I do think that having all of the Pokémon media being analyzed with "Canonicity Levels" (Such as with how the Holocron Continuity Database worked before the changes).
Since there's no official word on how that would work, I decided to give my own opinion on that.
[*]Core Canon: The core "Pocket Monsters" series that is mainly created by Game Freak or at least that has Gamefreak helping in the production;
[*][*]Example: The entire "Pocket Monsters" series
[*]Direct Complementary Canon: The spin-off games and tie-in material that are directly connected with the core series.
[*][*]Example: The Pokémon Stadium series (Includes Colosseum and XD Gale of Darkness), Pokémon GO, Pokémon Rangers, Detective Pikachu, Pokémon Masters, Pokémon Twilight Wings, etc
[*]Adaptations Canon: The manga and anime adaptations of the franchise.
[**]Example: The TV Anime "Pocket Monsters" Series, Pokémon Adventures, The Electric Tale of Pikachu, Pocket Monsters: The Origin, Pokémon Generations
- Complementary Canon: All the spin-off games and tie-in material that aren't directly connected with the core series
- Outdated/Non-canon: As the series evolved, some information was retconned, and is still being retconned, constantly. Some information even from the Core Canon might not be canon anymore, or in the future, due to that.
Of course, this is only one suggestion, and isn't even the one that I agree the most. For example, I don't see any reason to have Core Canon or the spin-off and tie-in material that are directly connected with the series as different canon, as they are simply supposed to be "something that takes place in a region far away" , so they are still mostly the same world.
Anyway, this is how I think that we could work with Pokémon with the premise that Pokémon is a franchise in the unique position of having everything being in a way canon, so everything works to make the multilayered worldview of Pokémon more and more rich, and we should respect that.
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