Lugia’s Explosive Birth, as well as the first movie, Mewtwo Strikes Back, were both lucky films to work on from the perspective of a scriptwriter. Because right before Mewtwo Strikes Back, an unfortunate incident occurred — a flashing sequence in the Pokémon anime caused a substantial number of viewers to have seizures. So I think the film management team was so busy dealing with the seizure situation, that they didn’t have time to worry about the script of the first movie.

Mewtwo Strikes Back ended up exceeding all our expectations and became a huge hit. This led the film’s main producer to say, “I have some concerns about certain aspects of the first movie, but since it was such a huge success, I won’t interfere with the second one. I just want you to put ‘Explosive Birth’ in the title.”

I mentioned this once before — during a big meeting (in which even game development and distribution staff participated), the name “Lugia” was chosen by a majority vote. Since Lugia was a Pokémon I designed myself solely for the new movie, I was surprised it ended up getting used later in the games and TV show. I can only imagine what was going on in the game development and TV show departments.

Months and years pass. Ash grows old, then one day suddenly he looks back on his past. He remembers his childhood fondly. The adventures he had with his amazing Pokemon, the friendship, the coexistence.

Maybe Ash wasn’t able to experience these things later in life. However, as a kid there was Pikachu and lots of other Pokémon, Jessie and James, and Mewtwo… And so much more — elderly Ash remembers everything that happened during his adventures as a young boy.

He can hear his mother’s voice. “Go to sleep already, you’re setting off on your journey tomorrow.” The next morning, he is woken up by his mother. He’s a young boy again, leaving his house excited to start a new adventure.

He’s going on a journey not to catch Pokémon or become a Pokémon master, but to discover the meaning of existence, to discover how to coexist with others.

I thought about writing a fourth movie, but I couldn’t come up with any ideas.

If I wrote it, I would have used the story that I had planned for the final anime episode. The Pokémon would stage a rebellion much like Spartacus in ancient Rome. Although at first glance Pokémon appear to be friends with humans, they would realize they’re actually being used like slaves, which would lead to an uprising. Pikachu would become the leader of the revolt and end up fighting with Ash. Team Rocket, who are in possession of lots of sinister Pokemon (including Meowth, who can translate the Pokémon language into human speech) would try to mediate the conflict, but they’d do a poor job of interpreting and only make things worse…

That’s all I came up with. However, an episode like this would break the rules of the Pokémon world and make it impossible for the series to continue. Continuing into perpetuity is the series’ objective. If it could ever be produced, I think it would literally have to be the last episode ever.

I tried to think of a different plot, but I couldn’t.

But in this case it was a movie script, so there was a big meeting with lots of people — which is rarely the case when it’s just a script for the Pokemon TV show. The first comment I heard in the meeting surprised me.

“Which one is the scene that’s supposed to make you cry?”

“The what?”

I never had any intention of including a scene that’s supposed to make you cry. Since [I was young], I’ve been trying not to write scripts that force tears out of people. If someone happens to cry because of my script, they’re not my tears — the tears belong to that individual viewer. These kinds of tears are their treasure.

If a writer is planning “where to make them cry”, “where to make them laugh”, “where to put the spectacular reveal” — it means that writer is guiding the audience’s every emotion. The audience should cry when they feel like crying, laugh when they feel like laughing, and if the film is boring, get bored and walk out of the theater.

“I won’t talk much during the big Pokémon meeting… So, if anything happens, I’m leaving it to you,” I told the movie’s director [Kunihiko Yuyama] beforehand. So when that question was raised, he jumped in and made up an answer. “It’s when Misty saves Ash from drowning.”

I didn’t say anything, but I was pretty pissed — I still remember, even though the meeting was about 10 years ago.