Interview with Lewtwo
Pokémon Archivist Lewtwo discusses the work he and his community are doing to preserve Pokémon media
Today we are interviewing Lewtwo, an archivist attempting to preserve Pokémon media, with support from friends and volunteers. His archive project includes an Asset Archive that aims to include every visual art asset, a music archive called Lewtunes & Goldenrod Radio, and a Footage Archive for game trailers, commercials, and other video footage. His work gained some online recognition in April 2023, when he announced that high quality artwork of the first 251 Pokémon, drawn by Ken Sugimori, had been discovered and given to the archive.
Thanks for agreeing to this interview. Please tell us about yourself and your archive project!
Lewtwo:
Hi! I'm Lewis. Whilst I'm primarily a YouTuber and general production whisperer for the Pokemon series, I've recently been getting into archival work, following a general need to clean up my own personal collection of video assets, which began in October of 2022.
Tell us about how you got into archiving. What encouraged you to focus on Pokémon?
Lewtwo:
I've always been interested in the idea of preservation, but never really had the opportunity to do so until I began sharing this collection with the public. Pokémon is a series I've been invested in ever since I began playing the series with Diamond in the late 2000s. It's such an interesting franchise with a deeply fascinating behind-the-scenes production, and I'm glad to have built up an audience that really values that sort of information and discussion.
I was able to take a look through the archive myself, and I am amazed by the amount of content already available. Can you explain the process that you go through to properly archive and preserve content, such as images, video and audio?
Lewtwo:
When it comes to preserving a specific piece of content, everything should be individually treated with care. For example, the way I archive 2D merchandise from the Pokemon Center involves a custom script used to rip the web assets at their largest quality, which are hidden on the website. I have entire bookmark folders and Tweetdeck columns dedicated to archiving new content the moment it is released on a variety of official accounts from all sides of the brand.
Scans are handled with express care by matching them 1-1 with official digital uploads of the same material, to the point where I spend hours creating custom color profiles to get everything looking perfect.
Video archival requires extremely specific settings and codecs to rip from a variety of websites, or members of my community ripping decade-old Press Kit ISOs with old trailers, to have other users then deinterlace that video.
Games that can't even be accessed (such as the various Pokemon arcade games) require video rips of any and all direct feed footage I can find to create perfectly looped GIFs, whilst community members in the countries where those games are active will scan in the physical media associated with those games at an absurd quality.
We have users making mods for games that allow for direct rips of animations, with others willing to record footage of every single move that's ever been in the series. It is genuinely an insane workload, and the established pipelines we have in place for archiving anything and everything is just unreal.
Pokémon is a gigantic franchise with a tremendous amount of content. Because of the significant amount of content, are you focused on specific parts of the franchise, rather than the whole thing?
Lewtwo:
Every part of this franchise deserves equal love, it's squarely a series designed by artists that just want to create, and their work deserves to be maintained no matter how initially temporary [it] may seem.
In April 2023, just prior to conducting this interview, your archival work got a lot of attention across gaming media, thanks to a contribution by Christopher Wells (@ExcaliburZero_Z), who shared some high quality artwork of the original 251 Pokémon, scanned from a Japanese Pokémon Gold & Silver Pokédex book. Despite the artwork being available for some time prior to this, it was the first time many people got to see Ken Sugimori’s artwork as it was intended to be seen. What was it like to discover these, and how have you coped with the attention it has brought to you and the project?
Lewtwo:
For the GS Zukan Scans of the Red & Blue Sugimori-style artwork, it was something I had been eyeing up myself for a while, but Chris delivered on it with some HQ scans of his own. It's been an incredibly stressful period having to recapitulate the same statements over and over again following my giant posts of clarification. I think there's a lot of totally valid criticism on how to handle such a big project, but so much of it became so intensely insulting and demotivating for my team. A lot of people need to remember that this is something we not only do for free, but something in our own personal time out of love for the series.
It’s amazing to think that even as long as twenty-five years after these artworks were made, they were never preserved. It feels like there’s probably tons of content hidden right in plain sight that many of us simply assume is already backed up. What’s the reality of the situation?
Lewtwo:
The reality of the situation is that we're literally losing access to content that was uploaded mere months ago, so having a large collection of some super-ancient art in this quality is such a big win. One day, we'll be unable to continue our work, but we hope that the discussion around this sort of thing never really dies out, so others can aid us in preserving the gargantuan history of this franchise.
Despite all the incredible work you, your friends and the many volunteers involved are achieving, is there a concern that The Pokémon Company or Nintendo may decide to strike the archive and put an end to everything you’ve accomplished so far?
Lewtwo:
It's possible that The Pokemon Company or Nintendo could nuke the archive, but the amount of backups we keep are relatively thorough and extremely easy for us to do.
Unrelated to any theoretical take-downs, I am curious to hear what steps have been put in place to ensure the longevity of the important work you are all doing. For example, have you got a contingency plan in case you lose your data?
Lewtwo:
I have no fears about it happening, but if it was to happen, we have so many systems in place to the point where it's not really a concern of ours.
What are some of the holy grail items you and the team would be overjoyed to discover?
Lewtwo:
To me, the holy grail would probably be some of GAME FREAK's oldest doujinshi in absurd quality, though they were literally stapled together at the very start - Tajiri or Sugimori themselves are likely the only people that still have those early issues.
Pokémon is such a far-reaching franchise, there are bound to be people out there who have some Pokémon related media that may not yet be preserved as part of your efforts. How can people contact you and your team and share what they have?
Lewtwo:
When it comes to people contacting me on some ancient Pokemon media to submit, our Discord for preservation work is definitely the right place, though reaching out through Twitter or Email is fine too!
Thank you for taking the time to speak to us Lewtwo, the work you are doing is incredibly interesting! Do you have any closing remarks you would like to share?
Lewtwo:
When it comes to preservation, the most important thing we can do is make people aware of the on-going effort, so we don’t miss anything along the way. A lot of it is hidden in plain sight! Above all else, our respect for the creatives behind this series is truly immense, and we’d love to have anyone on board that may be passionate about this sort of thing. Archival work is something that we can’t really do alone, so to see the responses we’ve been sent has been truly heartwarming. We’re eternally grateful!
A big thanks to Lewtwo for taking part in this interview and giving us an insight into the work he and his team is doing. You can find him on Twitter, YouTube, and Patreon.
Interview conducted on May 7th 2023
Interview published on July 6th 2023