Doctor Oak said:
Personally, I was more horrified by how horrible the episode itself was. If it's to be believed that it was actually written by the Americans, then thank God they haven't been able to write anything else.
I think over at Bulbagarden they discovered it was a co-production with 4kids. Which is funny enough, because it turned out to be PUSA's first dub and 4kids didn't even get to do it.
But yeah, the mere fact that a "virtual reality" Mewtwo was in it, Prof. Oak owning a Dragonite out of nowhere, and Misty returning out of the blue....all signs pointed that it was aimed at Americans from like the first year of the show during 1998.
Funnily enough the special also wound up being Misty's final appearance in the series, and if it weren't for that, her final episode would have been AG134 which aired back in 2005. The writers never bothered with the character since. I think that's more proof it was American-centered, because the writers were trying to phase Misty out of the anime at that point down to Tracey levels.
Makes me wonder if we'll get a 15th anniversary special now, but now that Ash has had 8 travel companions, I imagine it would be way too much to expect everyone to return and for the writers to track down their Japanese VA's. Honestly at this point I don't expect to see any of the older main characters ever again outside of montages or flashbacks. The anime has now gone on so long that most kids watching Pokemon today have likely never seen any of the older episodes and thus have no attachment to the older characters.
I guess when a series airs for 15 years, the fanbase is so fractured because old fans grow up and are now in their 20's and younger fans come in who never see the older stuff.