Vol. 1, Issue 22 - Interview with Lewtwo
An interview with Pokémon Archivist Lewtwo, who discusses his work in preserving Pokémon media with his community. We also have the latest Pokémon news, and more from our mailbag!
Welcome to issue 22 of the Johto Times! In this issue, we are sharing an interview with Lewtwo, a Pokémon archivist attempting to preserve the franchise’s media, which includes visual art assets, music, and video. As a huge fan of game preservation, it was important to me that we highlight the great work people like him are doing for the Pokémon community.
Additionally, and for anyone interested, I was a guest on episode 135 of the Pokémon Variety Hour podcast, which aired on June 26th 2023, where I discussed Johto Times, shared my opinions on the Pokémon franchise, and played a Pokémon guessing game! You can check it out here (caution: explicit language use).
News
New information has been revealed about Pokémon Concierge, a stop-motion animation by Netflix which will be released in December 2023. The story focuses on a concierge named Haru, who works at a resort exclusively for Pokémon. This information, along with a release window of December 2023, was revealed during the Netflix panel at Anime Expo last week. Check out the Studio Visit video below, which provides a great insight into the huge amount of work going into the project!
Source: Anime News Network, Serebii
Pokémon GO is celebrating its seventh birthday today, and a special event has begun in-game to mark the occasion. During Pokémon GO's 7th Anniversary Party, players can obtain special costumed Pokémon, such as Wartortle and Blastoise wearing party hats. They can also make the most of Event Bonuses, Timed Research and more from Thursday July 6th at 10:00am to July 12th 2023 at 20:00 local time. Full details can be found at the source link below.
Source: Niantic
Just before we published this issue, we saw that the Pokémon Company released a new trailer for Pokémon Sleep, along with detailed information on how the app works. Android users can now pre-register on Google Play to get notified when the app goes live.
Source: Pokémon
Feature: Interview with Lewtwo
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.
Mailbag
Want to be a part of our newsletter? You’re welcome to submit content including (but not limited to) questions, fanart, short stories, memories, photographs of your collection, or even Pokémon tattoos! We will happily publish them in our mailbag and share them in future issues of our newsletter. This week, we have an addition from Luca, a Pokémon fan from Germany, who has shared a Pikachu he made out of wood when he was a child.
Hello I wanted to send you my wooden made Pikachu. Since I was tiny I also enjoyed watching Pokémon as I think everyone here does. In art class around the 7th grade here in Germany (around age 12) we had a project to make a wooden figure of something.
I decided to [do] Pikachu because I was really into Pokémon at that time. Plus I had a friend then who had the nickname Pichu since she was cute and tiny. Well it was cool to make and it only took like 12 hours in total with the waiting time of drying.
Luca Torres, Germany
Hi Luca, thank you so much for sending in your wooden Pikachu! This is obviously something very special that you created during your childhood, and I think it’s great that you kept hold of it all these years later. I hope Pokémon has continued to be something you have found enjoyable in the years that have followed.