Pokemon Anime General Discussion

[Dantemustdie00]

The writers are hell bent on making Ash and his female companion lose whatever final tournament no matter what, shoot Ash should've won the Sinnoh league, but they put him up against a dude that had 2 freaking Legendaries on his team (and likely others), then they had him lose to that incompetent Cameron in Unova.

Ashy boy is fated to lose dude, unfortunately, they want to keep him as the protagonist of the series instead of focusing on someone new.

[Tails spin]

11 minutes ago, Dantemustdie00 said:

The writers are hell bent on making Ash and his female companion lose whatever final tournament no matter what, shoot Ash should've won the Sinnoh league, but they put him up against a dude that had 2 freaking Legendaries on his team (and likely others), then they had him lose to that incompetent Cameron in Unova.

Ashy boy is fated to lose dude, unfortunately, they want to keep him as the protagonist of the series instead of focusing on someone new.

Ash is only really destined to win meaningless leagues ( Orange League, Cuz I doubt even he remembers winning their or anyone outside of Pummelo Island) or the Battle Frontier which was severely downplayed in the anime.

 

what really sux is that the Sinnoh Elite Four got sooo much focus, especially Aaron,Flint and Lucian. And on top of that we finally got an explanation on how the Elite four is challenged that it looked like Ash was going to win the Sinnoh League and challenge at least one of the Elite Four members.

[Dantemustdie00]

8 hours ago, Tails spin said:

Ash is only really destined to win meaningless leagues ( Orange League, Cuz I doubt even he remembers winning their or anyone outside of Pummelo Island) or the Battle Frontier which was severely downplayed in the anime.

 

what really sux is that the Sinnoh Elite Four got sooo much focus, especially Aaron,Flint and Lucian. And on top of that we finally got an explanation on how the Elite four is challenged that it looked like Ash was going to win the Sinnoh League and challenge at least one of the Elite Four members.

What's sad is that all that character development for Ash in Sinnoh and the Battle Frontier was thrown out the window for the Black and White series. The worst of it was the Gym battle against Elesa.

[E-122-Psi]

Truthfully the actual tournaments were always the most boring part of the show to me, compared to the actual adventuring and Team Rocket face offs, which they shown at least a bit more willingness to shake up the formula with (if still not that much).

The first series was kinda interesting because Ash and Pikachu were the scrappy underdogs and kept getting into scrapes with the Gym Leaders (along with two of them joining him), but after that they slowly became dull and predictable, so their part of the journey wasn't as fun.

[Kuzu]

Whole show became boring for me after a while, everything about it is extremely formulaic that I just wasn't invested anymore. 

[Agie]

I'm with you. I just stopped caring entirely around the Hoenn arc. While the games managed to win me back, and I admit even Gen III wasn't as bad as it was made out to be, but the anime reminds me of why I was driven away.

I'm only really willing to watch the older episodes. Dunno if it's nostalgia or what, but there it is. The newer ones require me to be a special kind of bored for me to even think about it.

If the writers are worried the show will end if they takes risks...well, I think the show already has more episodes than it'll ever need, especially with this formula.

I'd rather see the show actually take a risk, like replacing Ash with a new main character, and other changes, and be cancelled as a result. If nothing else, it'll finally be put out of its misery.

[Tornado]

7 hours ago, SurrealBrain said:

I'm only really willing to watch the older episodes. Dunno if it's nostalgia or what, but there it is.

That's because there was actually effort and talent involved with the show's production up until about halfway through Johto. Nostalgia helps, but the first couple of seasons were far more tightly plotted and arc driven than they had any right to be.

[E-122-Psi]

It's not really one of those shows I sit through the entire continuity, but every now and then there's a noteworthy episode worth checking out (eg. ones that showcase one of their era's Pokemon or rare formula breakers such as the 'competent Team Rocket' episodes). At this point it's kinda like watching the Road Runner cartoons, they're fun in doses, especially finding the ones with the best jokes, but there's little incentive to watch all of them in a row.

It's one of those shows I often cringe at but often take a lot of grudging enjoyment out of (especially the Team Rocket humour). 4Kids put a lot more charm into that than their usual dubbing atrocities, giving it a very nostalgic saturday morning cartoon feel. As a kid I insisted to my younger brother it was crap, and yet I couldn't deny the reason Meowth was (and still is) my favourite Pokemon.

[Mania Pipe]

This show used to be interesting to me, especially during the Hoenn and Sinnoh saga, but during the early BW arc not anymore.

14 hours ago, SurrealBrain said:

I'd rather see the show actually take a risk, like replacing Ash with a new main character, and other changes, and be cancelled as a result. If nothing else, it'll finally be put out of its misery.

This. I know it's wishful thinking, but I so agree with this. It probably would make me actually watch the show again.

[Kuzu]

There's also the fact that Cartoonnetwork decided to put this show in the death time slot at 7am lol.

[Tails spin]

22 hours ago, Kuzu the Boloedge said:

There's also the fact that Cartoonnetwork decided to put this show in the death time slot at 7am lol.

There was a time when KidsWB did the same thing. Yet 11 year old me woukd force myself to wake up at 6:30 am to watch it.

[Tornado]

I don't think replacing Ash is much of a necessity in the sense that it wouldn't accomplish anything. There's nothing inherently unsalvagable with where he is now as a character. The problem is more that every time they attempt to actually do anything with the show in general they throw it out and essentially reboot the series every time a game is released. Even then there wouldn't automatically be problems if they just want every season to be it's own thing with its own stories in line with whatever game it's supposed to be a commercial for (the Hoenn season wasn't very good, but it was clear at least that they were in the area from R/S/E, so it could have worked if R/S/E were more interesting themselves), but they are so lazy about it now that episodes between most seasons are almost interchangeable other than whatever color Ash's jacket/hat is and whatever chick is with him.

[Sonictrainer]

Magearna Movie Trailer

 

[AdventChild]

19 minutes ago, Sonictrainer said:

Magearna Movie Trailer

 

@1:16 Don't know why, but I expected a Titan to peak its head over the walls.

[Kuzu]

I know the episode comes on tomorrow, but I love how it spoils Noibat evolving into Noivern.

[Dejimon11]

On February 27, 2016 at 7:45 AM, Kuzu the Boloedge said:

There's also the fact that Cartoonnetwork decided to put this show in the death time slot at 7am lol.

Sonic Boom had the same issue and look at how that turned out.  

[Kuzu]

6 hours ago, Dejimon11 said:

Sonic Boom had the same issue and look at how that turned out.  

Getting very little promotion in itself?

[Radiant Hero Ike]

Movie looks fun. Hopefully it'll be a bit more entertaining than Hoopa, which wasn't bad but, wasn't all that interesting either.

[Dejimon11]

1 hour ago, Kuzu the Boloedge said:

Getting very little promotion in itself?

I'm talking about how successful the tv show was and got renewed for a 2nd season despite it's timeslot  

[Big Panda]

This talk of the leagues got me thinking about something:

If the anime did come to an end after the Kanto saga as was originally intended, would Ash have still lost at the Indigo League?

[Spin Attaxx]

That trailer got a resounding meeeeeeeeh from me, if only because of how the Azoth Kingdom (if that's what it's called) looks. When you use "a city filled with clockwork machinery" as a description for your setting, it provokes more imaginative images than "yet another generic European hillside town, but with gears here and there". I was hoping for something more mechanical, like a steampunk Cybertronian city or something.

And we have an obviously evil human male with a big metal transport base for our villain. Because lord knows we've never ever had one of those for a villain before :U

[Celestia]

22 hours ago, Detective Panda said:

This talk of the leagues got me thinking about something:

If the anime did come to an end after the Kanto saga as was originally intended, would Ash have still lost at the Indigo League?

That's a good question. Never really thought about it before, but...I assume he would have won--in fact, maybe we would've gotten a League more similar to the games, just taking on the Elite Four and then the Champion?

[precita]

On 3/2/2016 at 3:35 PM, Ernest-Panda said:

This talk of the leagues got me thinking about something:

If the anime did come to an end after the Kanto saga as was originally intended, would Ash have still lost at the Indigo League?

No, Shudo would have had him give up being a trainer.

In general though, the anime is much better in Japanese and every arc post-Johto has been better than it. Misty and Brock never really got any character development in the series after the original Kanto arc, so they both became stagnant and flat characters from the moment Johto started till the time they left the show.

Almost all the companions after Misty/Brock were handled better than they were, especially May and later Dawn who got the best arcs, battles and developments of all the female characters, but Bonnie/Clemont are also fantastic. Cilan was cool too.

Basically you have to watch the anime for the right characters. Post-early Johto Misty/Brock are just boring. They both should have been axed at the start of Hoenn, since May was the first well developed character of the series, and it would have been nice to see Brendan brought along as well in some form.

[E-122-Psi]

The Hoenn and Sinnoh eras had some steps over Johto, though suffered as a result of dragging some old characters and concepts longer than they should have (eg. Team Rocket and Brock being Flanderized into gags). This was likely because Johto was sorta the point the original creator left and the series had gone on longer than it intended. Unova felt like the point they realised things were getting stale so made loads of experiments and changes and saw how it fared. Kalos at this point seems to be them taking the results and editing the original formula accordingly, trying to get all the best bits of the previous eras. It feels a bit watered down in places, but it is probably the most varied era of the show because of it.

And yeah, apparently the show was to have ended after a couple of seasons. It had a rather bizarre finale planned that sounds like something out of 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes' with the Pokemon becoming independent from their trainers and Ash realising the ambition of 'Pokemon Master' was a pipe dream he grown out of.

[precita]

The main reason the show is bogged down is Team Rocket and Brock staying after the original series ended. If they must keep Ash around, the least they could have done was gotten rid of TR and Brock like they did with Misty at the end of Johto. There running gags had long gotten stale even back then, yet they made us sit through them for a decade after.

The problem is the writers don't know how to develop characters past their initial episodes. None of the characters from Kanto developed any further in Johto besides a change in Pokemon.