Here’s some quick shots of some new stuff for my Magma/Aqua collection–my first settei! I’ll be framing these babies later in the week.

“Settei” are reference sheets that animators use to make sure that characters are drawn consistently between episodes/teams/individual artists. These settei have the generic male and female team grunt designs, but also the individual “background grunts” for Team Magma that pop up throughout the Hoenn saga, as well as Team Aqua’s submarine. It’s pretty neat to see these designs make it all the way to final animation!

Another cool thing to notice is the dates. See how the grunt designs were finalized at the end of September 2002? The Ruby and Sapphire games weren’t released until late November of that year. The anime has to get info about new games from GameFreak ahead of time, so that Ash can arrive in a new region right when the new versions hit shelves. That’s also why you’ll see the next gen’s Pokémon start to pop up in the anime months before new games are released.

Ahhh, I’m so excited to own these settei! My goal is to have as many Team Aqua and Magma animation references as possible, so if you ever see or hear of any for sale, let me know right away! I’m willing to pay very handsomely for this sort of thing.