The Shockingly Shoujo Roots of The Pokemon Anime.

In my post about 1992 I mentioned that Wedding Peach homage in the Erika episode of Pokemon as indirect evidence Pokemon might have been influenced by Sailor Moon and linked to Suede's corresponding Pokemon Journey episode as that's where I first learned of this piece of trivia.  At the time I made that I didn't recall exactly what Suede had said about it so I've since re-watched it and done some more research.  Suede was actually quite understating the connection, it goes beyond just one common staff member.

Nintendo didn't just create their own animation studio out of thin air when they decided to make an Anime for Pokemon.  But they did interestingly choose a then young and up and coming one called OLM (Oriental Light and Magic).  Wedding Peach was OLM's first TV Anime having previously only done a couple of obscure OVAs.  And this is technically still the Studio in charge of the Pokemon Anime to this day.  The creative staff of the two Anime by no means completely overlap, but quite a bit of overlap does exist, from series director Kunihiko Yuyama to Yuji Asada (Suede's favorite Storyboarder), Hideki Sonoda (who previously worked on Shoujo projects like Attacker You! and Hikari no Densetsu), Sayuri Ichishi, Norihiko Sudo and even the Sound Director and Photography Director as well as the two OLM producers.

Wedding Peach was a successful show at the time, regardless of how many critics may see it as the most egregious Sailor Moon copycat, and it seems the success of Wedding Peach was a major factor in how they got the Pokemon gig, it seems to have been the biggest thing they'd done prior to Pokemon.

As far as using this as evidence of Sailor Moon possibly directly influencing the Pokemon Speak trope.  While as a fan of Wedding Peach I sometimes get defensive of the idea that it's just a Sailor Moon knock off, there is no doubt in my mind the people who made Wedding Peach must have been watching Sailor Moon.  And I've found there is indeed some staff who worked on both Wedding Peach and Sailor Moon, but I've yet to find a single person who worked on all three (besides Voice Actors but they aren't the creative staff), like Sukehiro Tomita who was a key writer for Wedding Peach and had previously worked on the first three seasons of Sailor Moon and the first two movies, also Wedding Peach's character designer had previously worked on Sailor Moon including the R movie.  That means past Sailor Moon staff and future Pokemon staff were working together, sharing ideas and talking about stuff.

Knowing about this interesting connection between Wedding Peach and Pokemon makes me oddly want to see Wedding Peach characters added to Super Smash Bros.  Maybe one of those people who make Smash Mods can do a Wedding Peach one?

OLM has recently started doing Live Actions stuff, including it seems one of the few Live Action incarnations of the Magical Girl Warrior Sub-Genre, the Girls x Heroine! Series.  I hope there's a legal way for me to try watching that.  I actually don't know if they were involved in making Detective Pikachu at all.

The fact that some of Pokemon's original Japanese voice cast had previously done Wedding Peach and/or Sailor Moon is also interesting.  Though perhaps not that surprising, Japanese Seiyu get around just as quickly as Dub Actors, more so even since in Japan this industry isn't divided between two different States, it's pretty much all recorded in Tokyo.

Let's start with the one Japanese Pokemon voice everyone can recognize, Pikachu.  Ootani Ikue had previously been Sailor Tin Cat in Sailor Stars the last season of Sailor Moon which ended a few weeks before Pokemon went on the air.  The voice of Chibi-Usa was the Japanese voice of Sabrina the Saffron Gym Leader.  And Usagi herself has been three different Pokemon characters including Domino in Mewtwo Returns, and she was Potamos one of the more entertaining Wedding Peach antagonists.  While the main female leads of Wedding Peach only did occasional if any Pokemon voice work, the two male leads of Wedding Peach became the Japanese voices of Brock and James.

But perhaps most relevant to how I started this is that Momoko the main protagonist of Wedding Peach was also the Japanese voice of Erika on both the series and in the recent reboot movie.  Why is Erika the only Gym Leader featured in that movie?  I enjoyed it cause Erika was kind of the most misrepresented in the original series and her scene in that movie felt much more like who she is in the Games.  But the staff may have simply wanted to work with their original star Seiyu again (and yes some of the staff was still the same, particularly the main director).  She was also Aitwo (Amber Two) in the origin of Mewtwo add on to the first movie, so maybe she'll be in the upcoming remake as well?

Takeshi Shudou was never involved in Wedding Peach or Sailor Moon it seems but did create Magical Princess Minky Momo which also had Junki Takegami as a writer and Kunihiko Yuyama as the director.

Update: I found someone who worked on all three of Sailor Moon, Wedding Peach and Pokemon.   Hisashi Kagawa who's mostly credited as an animation director or "key animation" and occasionally Character Design.  He's worked on a lot of other stuff too, he really gets around.

And another person Wedding Peach and Pokemon have in common is Art Director Katsuyoshi Kanemura.

Satoru Iriyoshi had previously worked on Goldfish Warning! the predecessor to Sailor Moon's time-slot, and then Ghost Sweeper Mikami and Marmalade Boy which were in the future Pretty Cure Timeslot.

Yukiyoshi Ohashi was a Pokemon writer who'd previously worked on Cutey Honey Flash, Mahou No Angel Sweet Mint and some Akko-Chan reboots.  And it as turns out they also wrote a lot of Wedding Peach, Shikichi Ohashi is the same person, AnimeNewsNetwork is just confused.

Massaki Iwane made his debut as an Anime Director doing Pokemon where he's become a fan favorite.  But he had previously done Key Animation for 7 episodes of Wedding Peach starting with the third.  Often ones that were also Yuji Asada episodes.