Who do you purpose we keep out of the list?

Honestly I think almost everyone past Bill is too niche, save for potentially Anthony, Rebecca, and Kaiser. The first seven or so feel like they left the most notable impact (Samurai is the first COTD and led to Metapod evolving, AJ/Joe/Giselle are referenced in Yellow, Melanie and Damian are tied to Ash's Kanto starters, Bill is a game character). Mandi and Jeanette I feel can be cut as well based on the precedent that league one-shots aren't added for the other series.

In terms of one shot characters in Pokémon Journeys, Eeveelution trainers and Pokémon World Coronation Series Participants can stay due to their importance to Chloe and Ash respectively (and the fact that Drsana would theoretically go there). Cut Ash's friends and the Master 8 section since all of Ash's friends have appeared in Journeys (technically with May and Max) and the Master 8 is just the regional champions plus Alain.

As for the other shot characters, here are my thoughts:

• Hodge is not a one shot character since he has another appearance (making him a recurring character). Keep.
• Leader also appeared multiple times, not a one shot character. Keep.
• Jacqueline can be cut unless you consider her inspiration to Goh's Sobble to be extremely crucial.
• Laxton can be cut.
• Wikstrom should be moved back (though I prefer him to be in a category that is not a pile of one shot characters).
• Pinery appears twice and is the one who gave Chloe her Eevee. Keep.
• Gizmo Bilt could be keep or cut depending on how important you think his role in Goh's Drizzile evolving into Inteleon is.
• Ilunas is heavily connected to Soleil's character, who is one of the Eeveelution trainers. I say keep.
• Tiara can be cut since her episode importance is more about Goh meeting Cynthia.
• Drake should be moved to Ruby and Sapphire (AG) page because he first appeared there.
• Cassidy and Butch. Appeared as recurring Team Rocket members. Cut.
• Wallace. Appeared in DP first. Cut.
• Lisia. Keep because she's a game character and essential to Serena's story (and technically May as well).
• Gladion. Part of SM cast. Cut.
• Paul. Part of DP cast. Cut.

Edited by Shadao on Apr 12th 2024 at 7:20:42 AM

Since Wikstrom appeared in multiple episodes of Journeys, he could simply be considered part of the supporting cast, at least if we're assuming he stays on the Journeys page. Basically the same category as Lisia.

I say cut Jacqueline and Gizmo Bilt, they're incredibly forgettable and have zero relevance past their one episode. Lowkey think Ilunas could be cut too, or at least merged with Soleil since he has nothing going for him other than that. Other than that, agreed.

I have no new suggestion about which characters to cut, but my thoughts on the consesus so far:

• Characters who are adapted from and have significant roles in the video games: 100% keep (e.g. Lisia and Drake, although the latter appeared first in AG and should be moved there)
• Characters who appear more than one episode: Strong keep because I think this would be enough to treat them as recurring characters (e.g. Pinery)
• Characters who became a Canon Immigrant or appeared in other adaptations: Keep only when the folder contains significant amount of related tropes (e.g. Samurai, who is a one-off but his folder covers novels and Yellow appearance, so it seems too extreme to just remove it)
• Characters who helped the main cast or traded Pokemon with them, but in just one episode: Leans over cut because this seems to happen a lot in the anime to be notable
• (Journeys) Characters who are from the other series: Cut, doesn't have to announce every single reappearance as separate folders

Generally speaking, folders without tropes or low effort examples should be removed without exception.

Actually yeah, now that you mention it there's a lot of one-shots from the other series that took or cared for one of Ash's Pokemon, and none of them have folders either. Anthony and Kaiser can probably be cut too based on that.

Is there any opposition to moving the folders based on debut? To recap: Steven, Drake, and Agatha would move to AG, Wallace would move to DP, and Wikstrom and Drasna would move to JN.

I still say that Wikstrom should be XY considering that Diancie and the Cocoon of Destruction was his only appearance for years.

Hi!

That's more of a consequence of AG, DP, BW, and XY being in the middle of the Pokémon series, which has relatively less focus on recurring characters that aren't rivals. OS only got the One-Shot Character page in the first place because First Installment Wins bias. I think Anthony could stay if we can look through the other caretakers and give them a character folder, especially if they appear more than once.

That reminds me. McCann should have a folder in the DP Supporting Cast given that he appeared more than once in the DP series and was responsible for Gliscor's Put on the Bus.

Edited by Shadao on Apr 14th 2024 at 11:14:22 AM

Seems like we're far from reaching agreement with one-shot characters, so how about cleaning up the rest of the character page first and resume discussion? Is it okay to use this split as a new index?

FYI, I backed up the one-shot characters on Sandbox.Pokemon Character Cleanup One Shot Archive so we can still refer to that after removing the old pages.

I think Brock and Misty still might be better options than Ash's Pokemon to split from the original series cast, since both of them star in multiple series too (OS/AG/DP/JN for Brock, OS and JN for Misty). But otherwise, no issues with the new index.

Edited by BlastVision on Apr 15th 2024 at 3:15:03 PM

Agreed. Brock has Pokémon in AG and DP and SM, and it would be strange to see them all grouped in the OS Main Cast. And Misty also gained new Pokémon in the AG and JN era too also not present in OS.

In contrast, May, Dawn, Iris, Lemon Siblings, and Serena do not gain really any new Pokémon to complicate the matter here. Only evolutions.

May only evolves her AG Eevee into Glaceon. Dawn evolved Cyndaquil into Quailava. Iris's Axew full evolved and Gible was really a cameo. Clemont's Bunnelby evolved into Diggersby. And Serena only evolved Braxien into Delphox. Thus, it's easy to keep them in their respective main cast page of each series. The only exception is Gladion's Shiny Nihilego, but that's in Journeys, a sequel series to the SM.

Because of this, these two have significance to be considered major recurring characters alongside Ash, Pikachu and Team Rocket. Thus, it would make sense to group them as Misty and Brock.

Hmm. They do have more presence then the other companions and their entries are also pretty long. So spliting Misty and Brock as its own page would be like this.

• Characters.Pokemon The Original Series: Estimated ~220k
  • Characters.Pokemon The Original Series Misty And Brock: Misty+Brock. ~162k
  • Characters.Pokemon The Original Series Main Cast: Tracey+Rocketmon+Ash's Pokemon. ~149k

I'll do this in replacement of the current suggestion. Are there any more or is this good to go through?

Sounds good to me.

Alright, let's start the split. I'm gathering all the posts here to put it in edit reason. This is a pretty huge move and I'm gonna do Horizons and AU movies first; any help for the main anime series is welcome.

To-do

• Re-organize the pages into new split
  • Do not send the old pages to Cut List yet; make them redirects for now so to make sure wicks are properly moved first
• The 3 AU movies get a separate index
• Characters.Pokemon Horizons The Series will be all merged and unmark some early reveals due to Late-Arrival Spoiler
• Tag every new character page with "Do not create a subpage without discussion" warning like this so that we don't have to repeat this cleanup
• Consensus on recurring canon characters with earlier/later appearance (e.g. Wikstrom) is not reached yet, so they'll remain in their old position for now. One-shot characters are also not decided, so do not put one-shot characters in the new page yet; I've backed them up at Sandbox.Pokemon Character Cleanup One Shot Archive so that we can still look it up after the cleanup and continue discussion

Edited by SpaceKABOOM on Apr 17th 2024 at 2:25:02 AM

Why does Paul get his own page?

Ah, one more small detail I noticed, but Pokemon The Original Series Misty And Brock should just be Pokémon: The Series — Misty and Brock. It's more consistent with the other character-specific pages, and more fitting since the page covers their Pokemon caught across numerous series.

EDIT: Because his page is too long to merge with the others. If his folders are merged with the DP cast the page goes over 250k characters, which is roughly the preferred limit.

Edited by BlastVision on Apr 17th 2024 at 9:39:23 AM

Ok

Yeah, that makes sense, so I moved the page again to Characters.Pokemon The Series Misty And Brock and made the original page a redirect. Will send it to Cut List when indexes are all fixed.

Paul had nowhere else to go unlike other pages. As BlastVision said, Paul's CSP is the longest, with 120k characters, when most others barely reach 80k. The other character pages for Diamond & Pearl also happen to be long, so there was no way to merge it to them without reaching the recommended 250k limit. I checked Paul's page and it wasn't like the page is bloated with ZCE, so I just left it be.

---

I finished the move and fixed Characters.Pokemon The Series accordingly. We only have to fix Characters.Pokemon and make the old pages redirects for now (for reference, this post of mine lists all old pages inside the 'Current' folder). I'm taking a break for a while so any help is appreciated.

The organization is good, but it showcases a problem with characters across the series. Agatha would look out of place in AG without some kind of folder to indicate that she's part of the Indigo Elite Four. Likewise, Steven Stone doesn't have any appropriate category in AG because he barely appears in AG (just one episode and one mention). If we're doing first speaking appearance, we must resolve this.

Yeah, that is still an issue, but the amount of unnecessary subpages was a bigger problem so we'll have to finish that first.

How many of such characters exist, anyway? I've spotted some characters and gathered them here. The categories are how they're currently listed in the page and the episode numbers are from Bulbapedia.

The Original Series

• Agatha: Is a Gen 1 character and listed under "Indigo League". Didn't appear until AG132 as a one-shot character.

Ruby and Sapphire

• Wallace: Is a Gen 3 character and listed under "Gym Leaders". Didn't appear until DP075 where he acts as a supporting role for context arc. Re-appeared in JN105 as a one-shot with his Gen 6 design.

XY

• Alexa: Is a Gen 6 character and listed under "Supporting Cast". First appear in the Black and White anime in BW134 during the Decolore Islands filler arc. Is both recurring character in BW and XY.
• Wikstrom: Is a Gen 6 character and listed under "Kalos League". Did not show in the TV anime. Showed up in a serial movie Pokémon: Diancie and the Cocoon of Destruction but as a cameo with no speaking role? First appears in JN056 as a recurring character with proper characterization.
• Drasna: Is a Gen 6 character and listed under "Kalos League". Didn't show up in XY. Is Ash's major oppoenent in JN103 during World Coronation Series arc.
• Steven Stone: Is a Gen 3 character and listed under "Mega Evolution Specials". Shows up in AG022, but only as a one-shot without mentioning he's the Hoenn Champion. XY's Mega Evolution Specials are where he gets a proper characterization as the champion and is also a major supporting character in XYZ season. Appears again in Journeys as a supporting character.

Journeys

• Drake: Is a Gen 3 character and it's on Characters.Pokemon Journeys The Series One Shot Characters. First appears in AG101. Later again in JN088. He's a one-shot character in both.
• Lisia: Is a Gen 6 character and it's on Characters.Pokemon Journeys The Series One Shot Characters. Didn't appeaer during the XY anime. First appears in JN105 as a one-shot character supporting Chloe.

Is this all or are there more?

That's all the characters that TV Tropes have. But if you look into characters that TV Tropes doesn't have character folders for yet may get them in future, there are more characters in the grey area.

Lei (Kukui and Burnett's newborn son) for example is technically a JN character, but he was foreshadowed in the last episode of SM and greatly tied in the world of Alola.

Mohn appeared in the flashbacks in the SM series and was made the next goal of Lillie and Gladion in the SM finale, but he only made his true physical appearance in JN.

---

• Alexa is honestly the biggest headache because it was obvious as to why she appeared in BW. She's not really a BW character, but rather a character that acts as a means to bring Ash to Kalos (since she was introduced in July 18, 2013, in Japan... but the very first preview of the XY series happened in June 30, 2013). And she's heavily tied to XY series as well given that her sister is a Gym Leader, and she did help Ash and friends on many occasion in the Kalos region. I would group her in XY cast rather than BW cast.

• Agatha is easy to move to the AG section since the AG would also be dealing with the Kanto Frontier Brains, so it doesn't feel out of place. In fact, I would divide AG into two sections: Hoenn and Kanto.

• Wallace can be in supporting cast for DP.

• Steven Stone and Drake should be put under the category of Hoenn League in AG.

• Wikstorm and Drsana should be placed under Kalos League in JN. If Bea and Marnie are classified as a Galar characters despite being Ash's main opponents in the World Tournament, then Drsana and Wikstorm can be grouped together.

That's my two cents.

Edited by Shadao on Apr 18th 2024 at 1:39:23 AM

All of that seems pretty reasonable to me.

There's also Aipom/Ambipom, which might be the biggest headache yet. She was caught by Ash in AG but plays far a more important role in DP after she stows away and later gets traded to Dawn. Yet her bond with Ash is still recognized multiple times after the trade, to the point where she appears alongside Ash's AG Pokemon in the Leon battle.

She's simultaneously Ash and Dawn's Pokemon at the same time, but given that she's ultimately far more associated with Dawn I think she should stay on the DP page.

Remember, Ash's Buizel is not part of Dawn's Pokémon folder despite being caught by Dawn first. There are technicalities in Pokémon, like Clemont technically owning Dedenne. But we don't categorize Dedenne as Clemont's Pokémon because Dedenne is always seen with Bonnie and thus associated with her the most.

To put more context regarding Steven Stone, while he did appear only once in the AG series, he was actually foreshadowed in two episodes, "Stairway to Devon" and "Which Wurmple's Which?". In fact, that's the only reason why Ash and friends even met him in the first place. They were looking for him. So there is enough of him to be in AG category rather than XY category.

To make Agatha's folder (and the Hoenn Elite Four characters) fit naturally in the AG character page, I would recommend these headings:

Hoenn

Gym Leaders

Hoenn League

Kanto

Indigo League

Battle Frontier

Edited by Shadao on Apr 18th 2024 at 3:47:57 AM

Worth pointing out if we go through with that, OS's cast should be rearranged as well. Same types of headers for Kanto, Orange Islands, and Johto.

Journeys would ideally be rearranged to something similar, but it's gonna be real tough to figure out with how all over the place the cast is. Not sure if we actually need a Galar League challenge section when half of them aren't in the PWC, not to mention Leon isn't a Gym Leader.

One more thing to note is that there should be redirect links for most of the "gray area" characters. Whichever series we go with for Alexa, for instance, there should be a redirect on either BW or XY.

Edited by BlastVision on Apr 18th 2024 at 7:47:03 AM