Tom

If a game is announced, takes many many years to come out, and it feels shallow/rushed/unpolished/bad nevertheless, and you're asking yourself "what did they spend all this time doing," the answer is almost always rebooting production multiple times

As an addendum in this specific case since I think it wasn't widely picked up on at the time (certainly I didn't hear any chatter, at least), giant Singaporean government subsidies straight up requiring delivery of a new IP may also go a long way to explaining why this game didn't end up on the chopping block despite its protracted history unlike multiple other games shown off during that period that notably wound up canned.

i feel like when we look back on the gamecube's history, not enough attention is paid to the fact that one of the launch window games was an exclusive (exclusive!) universal studios japan game where you hang out with woody woodpecker

youtube on my phone keeps feeding me ads of some space battleship yamato mobage where yuki mori is just standing around in a bikini and my only response is,

"you're right, phone, leiji matsumoto could draw exactly one kind of pretty anime lady, but it was exactly the right kind of pretty anime lady for me and i wish we as a society would go back to blatantly ripping him off again"