Good job on getting these interviews. Impressive! Do us proud.
I have some questions you may want to ask, if you choose to:
- Do the characters age anymore? Is Satoshi now years older than 10, or will he eternally be 10-years-old? Timeless and ageless, like a Disney character?
- It's cool that after Johto, you guys got away from making most of the episodes take place in a random forest, and from Hoenn onwards, added cities, towns, beaches, etc. What made your team decide to do this?
- How many people work at the animation company OLM? How many episodes are you ahead of the currently-broadcasted episode on TV Tokyo?
- How do you make the decision to have someone let go of a Pokemon, even if their party isn't at the maximum of six Pokemon? Is it for marketing reasons, storytelling reasons, or some other reason?
- I've noticed that in the show, the Pokemon don't usually match the heights that Game Freak gives them in the games' Pokedex (Zukan) entries. How and why do you decide to give a Pokemon species a certain height for the TV show that's different from the games?
- When Pokemon Platinum comes out, will the show change its current title of "Diamond & Pearl" to promote Platinum?
- Please convince Media Factory and OLM to release more of the shows' background music on CD! It's such great music, and we'd love to have all of the 1997 to 2008 music on CD, and further yearly releases from thereon after!
- Would you also be able to release more art books of the backgrounds and Pokemon?
- How do you choose what type of voice a species of Pokemon gets? And if it says its full name, part of its name, or if it simply makes a sound?
- Do you do the voices first and then animate to that, or do you do the animation first and just add the necessary lip flaps afterwards?
- Will OLM and Media Factory ever be able to do proper DVD releases, rather than the "best of" collections of random episodes they're releasing now?
- Is there any way to convince Pokemon USA to release the English DVDs with Japanese audio and subtitles?
- Do you take suggestions from Game Freak as to which Pokemon to feature on the show, or do the writers get to decide? I remember reading in a Game Freak interview years ago that a few Pokemon are actually created every generation simply for the show -- especially baby Pokemon like Pichu and Pinpuku.
- How much work goes into creating backgrounds for the show, since they are still painted by hand and not digitally coloured in like the animation cells have been since late Johto.
- Since you have to create roughly 52 episodes a year, as well as a few TV specials, an ANA special, and a movie, how much time do you spend on each episode? Pokemon has a noticeably lower framerate than other shows with 13 or 26 episodes a season. Also, the characters tend to stand straight with their hands at their sides, in fists, quite often, due to an episode airing every week. And yet it's still a beautiful-looking show! But how are you able to do all that work every year?