Man, I've been looking through a bunch of these comments about my paraphrasing of what Yuyama said in that recent interview and there's... quite some interesting takes there.
So here's the thing... that was not some post written in disgruntled anger over his direction. I'm NOT upset over his direction, hell, I said elsewhere that my impression is that he was never particularly on board with PM2019 making Satoshi suddenly get some absurd power boost and become the best trainer in the world, and that MPM was him steering the show back on track.
The post was also not an OPINION, it was some quick summarizing of what he was actually doing as opposed to what some people were assuming he was doing, in response to a post asking why we needed another Latias/Latios plot:
1) The reason we got a Latias/Latios plot is not because Yuyama felt we needed one. We got one because he wanted a running subplot about a Pokemon observing Satoshi throughout these episodes before eventually asking him for help. He picked Latias as this Pokemon not because he wanted to do something with Latias (and Latios) specifically. Not because he wanted another Latias/Latios plot. Not because of anything related to movie 5. But because of the specific qualities of Latias as a species (flight, invisibility, etc). And now that the series has ended, we know that nothing particularly important came of the entire Latias thing.
2) The reason Kasumi and Takeshi were in MPM was not because Yuyama had any specific plans for those two characters. It's not because he had any episodes in mind that necessitated them being there. It's because he felt Satoshi needed travelmates for these episodes. The specific characters were picked afterwards. He doesn't remember exactly why they went for those beyond "everyone just kinda agreed", but the reason they're in the show is ultimately because he didn't want Satoshi to travel alone, not because he wanted Satoshi to travel with Kasumi and Takeshi again or because he had some Kasumi- or Takeshi-specific plans in mind. And now that the series has ended, we know that nothing particularly important came of those two specific characters being there for another couple episodes.
3) The purpose of episode 9 was not to write out the Rocket trio or set up some big finale involving Satoshi taking out Sakaki or whatever else was being speculated. It was because Yuyama wanted to do an episode where the old Rocketmons came back. And now that the series has ended, we know that nothing particularly important came of anything that happened in that episode.
4) Most of the episodes in MPM were written because they needed more episodes in the show and came up with something they felt like doing. Yuyama spells out quite clearly in the comment for episode 8 that they came up with by essentially going "okay, we need another episode, any ideas?" "We didn't do an episode about Ghost types yet, we could do that." "Good idea. Hey, these zukan entries about Juppeta being a possessed puppet searching for its former owner are pretty interesting and we never did an episode about that concept. Let's do that." They weren't concluding dangling plot threads or setting up some sort of big finale that would relate back to plot points established throughout these episodes, they were just coming up with episodes until they had 11 of them. And now that the series has ended, we know that the final episode was pretty standalone and nothing particularly important came of anything that happened in any of the prior 10.
None of this is opinions, it's all straight facts from the interview that was right there for people to read.
Of course, I could've written this indepth breakdown of what I was actually trying to get across two weeks ago had people actually bothered asking instead of just having weird debates among themselves on other websites where all relevant context is ignored, but...
