Pokemon Star Comments on Cynthia's Return to the Anime

10/09/2021 06:26 pm EDT

The voice behind Cynthia commented on the Sinnoh League Champion's return to the Pokemon anime with the newest episode of Pokemon Journeys: The Series! The newest iteration of the anime has broken the franchise trend of seeing Ash only exploring the newest region introduced in the video games, and instead has seen Ash (and new hero Goh) making their way through every past region seen in the anime thus far. Ash has come face to face with some familiar faces from the series' past along the way, so fans had been holding out hope that the fan favorite champion Cynthia would show up in the new anime as well. 

After much anticipation, Cynthia has officially returned to the anime with the newest episode of Pokemon Journeys in Japan. While it's a smaller re-introduction than fans had been hoping to see, it's clear that it's planting the seeds for a much bigger return to the anime at a later date. The voice behind Cynthia, Tomo Sakurai, was excited to return to the anime after so long as well, and revealed her thoughts about the Champion (and her Garchomp)'s return with the official Pokemon Twitter account: 

Sakurai's comments about her return (as translated by @DogasusBackpack on Twitter) begin as such, "I guess it's been about nine years since [Cynthia's] appeared in the [Pokemon] animated series. The idea of me getting to come back and play her again after all these years had never even crossed my mind and so when I found out I'd be coming back I couldn't help but let out a thrilled, yet dignified "Alright!" I'm excited to be reunited with [Ash] and Pikachu after so long, both as [Cynthia] and as Tomo Sakurai, and so I tried to make sure to apply those feelings to their reunion scene." 

Speaking about that reunion, Sakurai teased that we'll eventually probably get to see a battle between Ash and Cynthia soon, "And when you think of [Cynthia], you gotta have [Garchomp]! [Cynthia] is both the Sinnoh Region's Champion and one of the members of the [World Coronation Series]' 'Masters Eight' and so at some point I'm thinking she's going to have to have a battle with [Ash] right? I think this upcoming episode will remind us of how strong her partner [Garchomp] is and so I hope you fans who've been watching the [Pokemon] animated series all this time, as well as all you fans who have shown so much love for [Cynthia] in particular, will look forward to this episode airing. 

But what do you think of Cynthia's return to the Pokemon anime after all this time? Let us know all of your thoughts about it in the comments! You can even reach out to me directly about all things animated and other cool stuff @Valdezology on Twitter!

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