Lost Pokémon scripts surface after 12 years, reuniting us with Ash and Pikachu one last time

Recently Pokémon suffered an upsetting loss. Ash and Pikachu, the faces of the series, concluded their journey to become Pokémon masters with an emotional final season of their animated show.

But all is not yet lost, as two scripts for episodes that never aired have appeared years after their cancellation. The two lost episodes, titled 'Team Rocket vs Team Plasma Part 1 & 2', were originally part of the Pokémon Black and White series, and were originally supposed to air in March 2011. As the title implies, the episode would have seen the two teams of antagonists face off against each other for control of a powerful item called Meteonite. Presumably, Ash, Pikachu, and their friends would intervene and put a stop to both of the groups before they caused any major harm.

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Unfortunately, the episodes were cancelled before airing due to a tragic real-world event, the Fukushima nuclear disaster, which happened following the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011. This was especially poor timing for the episodes, which featured a scene showing a large blast sending shockwaves across a wide radius, which obviously wouldn’t have gone down well given the nuclear disaster.

Following the cancellations, the scripts disappeared until April 2023, when a Bulbagarden user called ObjectionMan announced that they may have tracked down someone who owned copies of the lost episode scripts and was willing to sell them. The owner then decided that they’d simply give them up for free, and they can now be enjoyed online through the Bulbagarden forums, both in their original Japanese as well as an English translation.

It’s perfectly understandable why the episodes never got the chance to air, but luckily fans of the Pokémon show can enjoy the missing stories, over 12 years since they were scrapped. It’s just a shame we never got to see them in animated form.