News of fifth-anniversary project for the Pokémon MOBA mobile game is drawing a mixed reaction.

Adapting a franchise with as whimsical a setting as Pokémon to live-action is no easy feat, but 2019’s Detective Pikachu beat the odds and turned out to be a successful crowd-pleaser. Since then, there have been no fewer than three Sonic the Hedgehog movies that have further shown that audiences can be convinced to show up for mixed human/video game character casts, and yet there still hasn’t been another live-action Pokémon production.

That’s going to be changing soon, with the announcement of a new live-action Pokémon drama series, though it comes with a few catches.

First, this isn’t going to be an adaptation of any of any existing Pokémon anime arc, nor will it be tracing the path of any of the mainline Pokémon games. Instead, it’s Pokémon Unite, the free-to-play MOBA/multiplayer online battle arena spinoff game developed by China’s TiMi Studio Group and co-published by Chinese mobile game giant Tencent Games and the Pokémon Company. The live-action drama is part of Pokémon Unite’s fifth anniversary celebration, with the game set to hit the half-decade mark since its release later this year.

According to the announcement, the live-action Pokémon Unite drama will tell a completely new story. This isn’t a shock, considering that, by nature of being heavily focused on competitive multiplayer play, the game itself doesn’t really have much in the way of a narrative or characters. For that matter, it’s not currently clear whether the drama will take place within the game’s world or if it’s going to follow Pokémon Unite players in the real world, a definite possibility given the game’s e-sports presence. If it goes the latter route, there might not even be any Pokémon that appear in a capacity other than gameplay graphics for the matches the human characters compete in. Pokémon Unite is also being billed as a “short drama,” implying episodes less than 30 minutes in length and also likely a low episode count.

Casting and story details will be revealed at a later date, and the numerous question marks left hanging over the live-action Pokémon Unite series at this stage, combined with Pokémon Unite being a somewhat divisive part of the franchise whose fanbase doesn’t always overlap cleanly with the larger anime and mainline game enthusiasts, have resulted in a mixed online response to the announcement.

“Don’t you have other things you should be working on?”
“Work on Unite’s gameplay before you go making a drama series.”
“Who exactly is this being made for?”
“Sounds like an interesting enough idea to me.”
“Totally looking forward to this! Can’t wait to see who’s going to be in it.”
“Don’t forget to show scenes of the game’s microtransactions.”

Also not yet announced is a release window, but with the Pokémon Unite game’s fifth birthday coming up on September 22, odds are the live-action adaptation will be arriving sometime around then.

Source: Twitter/@poke_unite_jp via Hachima Kiko
Top image: Twitter/@poke_unite_jp
● Want to hear about SoraNews24’s latest articles as soon as they’re published? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!