SPOILERS! General Pokémon Anime Discussion

[Tazonite]

It's always interesting to learn more about the Rocket Trio and its sometimes nice to see them do things with them that isn't just them trying to steal the Pokemon of the day. Infact I'm looking forward to next week's episode which is Jessie focused.
Also I think we do need to see a bit more of James backstory, though we know the jist of it I'd like to see how he interacted with his parents before Jessibelle entered into the picture. Also what did he do right after running away and where did he go? I feel there's missing elements.

Well what movies specifically don't you like? As for the Best Wishes series, hmm, well here's a few topics I have opinions about though would like to hear what you have to say:

1. The beginning, specifically the plot point with Zekrom & Pikachu easily losing in the first gym.
2. Gen V's rival, Trip.
3. The Unova League.
4. How they handled Team Plasma's storyline.

I'm almost certain they'll screw up the plot for next week. Team Rocket used to be entertaining and likable, but now they are the most forced characters in the entire show. Unless they're in the focus without Ash involved, they are so unnecessary now. I miss it when they had those crazy jobs and did their own thing instead of only being focused on Pikachu, which I'm sure Giovanni would love to have. I remember Meowth's visions of how Giovanni's life would be so much better with the Pokemon they'd try to steal. In the Advanced Series was where this happened. Now they've unfortunately been turned to nothing. It sucks too. I'm sure there's something James did that we've forgotten about in Filler Episode #368.

The movies I don't look are Movies 14+. Victini's movie was so goddamn boring, and the gimmick of making two of the same goddamn movie didn't help. And really? They're going with the death card? You have to be kidding me. The fifteenth movie was boring too, and it was over before I knew it. Terrakion was nice, but I have no goddamn idea how Fighting types can use telepathy. Don't even get me started with their weird erection horns. Keldeo was admittedly a bit annoying, and Kyurem was there for no reason. And how the hell did he change forms? Reshiram or Zekrom would have to be chilling out in that cave in order for that to happen, and how Kyurem could even obtain the DNA Splicers is beyond me. Then we got Genesect. I don't know how the fuck they were able to screw it up so badly. First off, Mewtwo Mega Evolves out of nowhere. It just changes forms instantaneously. What's Mewtwo's goal? Stay Mega Evolved as long as possible? That's not a good plot idea! And I was really expecting old Mewtwo, so this new one who we know nothing about kinda pissed me off. Genesect don't do too much. They try to pull the sympathy card with this one Genesect, but it's so old I didn't even care at this point. Mewtwo didn't even need to be there. I was expecting the Cocoon of Destruction to be good, but they fucked that up too. It's so boring, I had to force myself to watch it. Diancie is okay, but I could never really understand her goals or motives. The Carbink didn't need to be talking at all, Diancie's talking makes only a little bit of sense since she's a Fairy. But it was all over the place. And I have no idea why Xerneas and Yveltal were there. Same goes with the three people with the starter Pokemon. And I guarantee you the Hoopa movie will suck too. I guarantee.

Trip was wasted potential. He was harsh, but not harsh enough to be a Paul clone. He had a lot of potential, but of course, why would they let that happen? This is the BW anime we're talking about. So they only have him come up like... once or twice. He beats Ash sometimes, but he barely beat Ash and they completely neglected him. When Trip finally did get to fight Alder, I had almost completely forgotten about why he had wanted too earlier. Speaking of which, Alder in his debut appearance was a huge dick to Trip. Which is a shame, because I like Alder a lot for the most part. That Serperior was awesome though.

I barely remember anything about the Unova League. It just passed by so quickly. There wasn't a thing to remember. Ash lost to a guy who almost forgot to sign up for the League, and the guy was a pretty big Richie ripoff too. The Eeveelutions dude won, which I'm sure pissed a fair amount of people off. But to be fair, he did deserve it. So okay, the League's over with- whatever- what's next? Oh- you want to know what's next? I'll tell you what's next. THE FILLER ISLANDS. I hated these islands so much. I had to sit through like... 26 episodes of Ash and co. doing absolutely nothing. It was horrible. I hate that way more than I do so the League.

Team Plasma's storyline.... It could've been worse, but boy, they did waste a lot of material there. Probably on purpose too.

Hope you had fun reading all of that.

Movie Update:
Some more Movie news, including about info on the dubbed version. First, starting with CoroCoro leaks, they announced Hoopa's Unbound Form (giving us some official artwork for it) though don't really tell us anything else besides its Psychic/Dark and is 16 times the height and 20 times the weight of Hoopa.

So finally this won't be the only way we know of Hoopa Unbound.

It also made some announcement about the 6 Legendary giveaways but I'll cover that over on the Event Discussion.

Later an announcement was also made about "Hoopa's Appear Plan" which to appear on April 23rd. It seems to be a special episode of the anime featuring Hoopa, though that's all that is known.

Moving on, as I said we have some dub news on the movie and that news is indeed the title and the dubbed version of the first trailer! "The Archdjinni of the Rings: Hoopa" has been retitled "Hoopa: Clash of the Ages" to probably reflect that 11+ other Legendaries are appearing in the movie aside from Hoopa and all are fighting. At least it now has a nice looking logo:

And they see each generation kept on adding too many Legendaries...

Anyway, here's also the trailer:

As you can imagine people are already compaining about Hoopa's voice. Personally I would have liked it to sound a bit more mischievous but it's alright by Pokemon's standards. Only other thing I'd point out is that they call the Prison Bottle the "Ancient Relic". Could he just be calling it an ancient relic and that's not its name? Possibly, though it sounds like that's what he's calling it as its actual name. Don't know what he said in the Japanese version, the Prison Bottle's Japanese name is "Jar of Binding" so if anyone knows Japanese you can correct me or not.

Well that's all I have to say. Kind of odd that isn't up on Pokemon's Official Website yet, though ever since the layout change its been kind of weird to navigate so for all I know it is there and I just missed it. Then again this was just posted today so may take them a few hours to put the announcement on the main site.

I KNEW IT! I KNEW THEY'D FUCK IT UP!

Well the recent intro seems to confirm who caught what Pokemon and maybe a bit of info on them:

Do I really need to tell you these are spoilers

Noibat: It seems like it'll be caught by Ash. The recent intro seems to indicate its quirk is that it has difficulty flying (and upon failing it cries). It also looks like it'll be the first one to join as its already in the group shots.

Alright, makes up a bit for the Goodra he lost. Though with it Ash has yet another Flying-type to his team making 3 of them flying (though luckily Noibat's part Dragon does neutralize its weakness to Electric. But still). If it have a difficult time flying as its quirk I guess that would be an interesting story, a Flying-type that can't fly when it should be able to with ease (especially if the first dual-type with Flying as its primary type, rubbing salt in the wound there). And I'm sure they'll probably have some gags with its ability to produce ultrasonic waves (probably from it crying due to failing to fly). Of course this this added to the team I'm curious what Ash's 6th Pokemon would be. One of my thought was a Skiddo/Gogoat but would that make it seem like he sort of copying Alexa? *shrugs*

Eevee: It seems like it'll be caught by Serena. The recent intro shows Serena watching it playing around and imagining it in a showcase.

Didn't we already do the Eevee thing with May? I'm just saying there's a whole batch of other cute Pokemon they can do, you don't have to do Eevee again. No? Fine, at least don't evolve it into a Glaceon.
So it looks like Eevee may have a similar story as Pancham. It likes performing so Serena is going to befriend and catch it. That or it likes to play around and Serena sees the potential of it being a Showcase star. I guess the big question with Eevee is, of course, what it'll evolve into. Will they go the obvious route and have it evolve into Sylveon or will they surprise us (I doubt she'd use a stone one it so I imagine the only options in that case would be Espeon and Umbreon; maybe also Leafeon if they decide to ignore it needs a Moss Rock). Speaking of Grass-types, is it wearing a Ivysaur bulb on its back in that image?

If you're curious you can watch the into HERE. Other interesting things about the intro:

Commentary spoiler

0:12: Ash & Pikachu, what are you doing to Clemont & Chespin?
0:39: Ramos and Gogoat. An already done battle but I'm pointing it out for the next few characters that show.
0:40: Valerie and Spritzee. Valerie didn't originally use a Spritzee so that's already a change. Also is this going to be her ace Pokemon? The other Gym Leaders are using their aces. Would be odd to change her ace from Sylveon, or at least not to another fully evolve Fairy-type. I'm going to guess they're just showing off a notable Pokemon of their's, though that does make me wonder what her ace is (at the very least they could have had her use an Aromatisse).
0:41: Olympia and a male & female Meowstic. Double battle maybe? Would be interesting to see both Meowstics battle and see how their battling styles differ (if the writers even think of doing that).
0:44: Not a Gym Leader but still VERY notable: Alain and Mega Charizard X from the Mega Evolution special. COME ON ASH GETTING MEGA CHARIZARD Y! I don't care if Ash already has a Fire/Flying on his team and that would make 2/3 of his part Flying-types, Mega Charizard Y can pick up the slack! Or at the very least they can have Ash break out Mega Charizard Y when he needs it for an important battle and outside that time let Sycamore examine his Charizard.
0:48: Noibat is already on Ash's party yet Eevee isn't on Serena's, so I'm guessing Ash is getting it pretty soon.
0:51: BTW no change for Clemont (or Bonnie). At least evolve his Chespin and/or Bunnelby...
1:18: For those who don't recognize this kid, his name from Shota and he had a cameo appearance battling Clemont in Lumiose City when he went off to prepare for his Gym Battle against Ash. This maybe seems to indicate he may be a new rival to Ash(?) and his thing will probably be observing Ash's strategy. Don't know how true that is but if the kid thinks he's going to get any helpful info observing Ash, well, he better expects to lose a lot. He may want to follow Alain, at least Alain only loses to trainers he should lose to (Elite Four, Champions, syndicate leaders).
1:23: Once again, Noibat with the group but not Eevee. If they weren't planning on adding Eevee this early I wonder why they're showing it to us. Like Noibat is a spoiler but I have a feeling its being added soon so not that big of a spoiler, but in the group shots Eevee is no where in sight. Save the Eevee stuff when it's close to being added to the team, or at least until Ash catches Noibat.

I guarantee that it either stays Eevee or becomes Sylveon.

Gen V anime hate, lets start where it matters, the league and lack of evolved pokemon. Came.... The one who shalt not be named figth was painful to watch to be honest, unevolved pokemon everywhere terrible pulls and bad choreography, the fact that it was split on 2 episodes made it worse.

Also freaking oshawott, piplup was annoying, now put it on the main cast and do the same unevolved thing to keep it marketable that piplup did and you get the perfect recipe for fail.

The league... it could've been worse. Was disappointing, but I hate the Filler Islands a lot more than the League. At least the guy who won was likable and deserving. The Pokemon were a different story. Some were lucky to evolve during the early stages of the anime (Unfezant, Leavanny, Sandile -> Krokorok), but everybody else got tough luck. They wasted Scraggy, they completely wasted Snivy, they didn't even finish Pignite, they didn't finish Boldore, there was nothing redeeming about Palpitoad, I have no idea why Charizard was even there, Oshawott is a screenhog, Pikachu didn't even feel like he was there, and guess who that leaves us with? Krookodile. Fully evolved, had a decent enough of a story, was pretty strong... pretty much everything we should have gotten.

If it were up to me, the only ones who wouldn't evolve would be Oshawott, Scraggy, and maybe Palpitoad. Emboar should have happened, Gigalith would have been nice, and I'd have liked Snivy to at least reach Servine. I have no idea how they screwed it all up. Iris did nothing, Cilan was... decent- pretty entertaining at times, and Ash is stupider than ever. Seriously, this is the same person who tore through the Sinnoh region? Ugh. The only thing the characters had to pass off as personality traits were running gags (Sounds like Bonnie and Clemont actually).

MOD EDIT: DO NOT QUADRUPLE POST

 

[ScraftyIsTheBest]

Ah yes, the Best Wishes series. Where do we start? The BW series is widely hated on as the worst anime saga ever, and though sometimes the reasoning is irrational, there are indeed a lot of things it did terribly

First of all, is that this was a terrible transition from the DP series, which in my opinion was really good. Let's look at Ash, for one thing. I found him to be an incredibly respectable character that I could find myself holding good respect to and liking, and he showed some pretty darn good competence. The Gym Battles he had, his relations with other characters such as Dawn and even Paul, and his performance in the League were all nice to see (only for him to get his ass handed to some dude who runs LEGENDARY POKEMON). Now come BW, and to see Ash almost completely reset to what he was in the original series was just horrible to see. For example, Ash vs. Elesa was without a doubt the worst big battle in the anime that I have seen in any game, anime saga, or generation. Ash was horrifically stupid in that battle, acting like a total kid thinking he could monopolize the Gym Battle with just his Palpitoad, so much to the point where he deliberately left the Gym to go to the Pokemon Center, and was even almost disqualified because he had a hard time deciding how he would continue while completely ignoring Pikachu (which made Pikachu really pissed). There are many other instances where Ash acted horrifically incompetent and it was just sad to see him act so well...dumb. And the big deal? In my opinion, the Kanto Saga was horrendous. The Johto Saga was decent, but the Kanto saga is so ridiculously bad I cannot bring myself to watch that again.

Iris was also a disappointment if I say so myself. Now in the DP series, we had Dawn. Dawn was an awesome character in the anime, she was almost like the secondary protagonist of the saga and she along with Ash basically ran the damn show. And after how great Dawn was...Iris is just so...meh. She didn't really do much, and she just felt like a blatant ripoff of Misty. Her criticism of Ash and the "what a kid" meme got tiring fast, but more bothering is that there was an incredible amount of hypocrisy in Iris calling Ash a kid. She really never acted any more mature than Ash did. Her goal was to be a Dragon Master, and that's great. But quite frankly, she received minimal development as a character and was just incredibly passive overall, like I mean she was just there. All she had interesting going for her was her interactions with Emolga, Excadrill, and Dragonite. And looking now, it makes no sense that Iris has a right to own a pseudo-legendary yet other characters can't? Heck, NegaiShipping is by far the least popular shipping in the shipping community.

Furthermore, this series was flooded to the brim with rivals. And the big problem is that most of those rivals are either really shitty or have wasted potential as characters. Trip and Bianca, for one thing, are just blatant ripoffs of Paul and Barry. Paul and Barry had interesting dynamics with Ash, and Paul had a lot of backstory going on and his relations with Ash were just great and his development as a character was interesting. They honestly had one of the best rivalries I had ever seen. Barry was less interactive with Ash, but they still had a more friendly rivalry which felt a bit more comfortable, and Barry had nice comedic value with his hyperactivity and fining threats. Trip and Bianca lack that same luster. Trip was arrogant as hell and his insulting of Ash for being from Kanto was bland and annoying. Paul and Ash at least had a justifiable conflict due to their views and the backstory behind Paul's own views. Trip was just lackluster simply because he idolizes Alder and was prideful as hell. Bianca was just a pain in the ass and she acted so dumb it's incredible.

The boy with the Lucario (he's so shitty I don't want to mention his name) was also the dumbest character I have ever seen in my life. He came to the Junior Cup late thinking it was just starting when it was already over. He even though the League was in the Johto region. He barely made it to the signups for the league. He though seven badges were needed to qualify for the League when you need eight. He thought a full battle was 5v5 when it's really 6v6. Want to know something even more sad? Even with the numbers disadvantage, he managed to win against Ash simply because his Riolu evolved into a Lucario, and he also in a way cheated by using a pseudo-legendary (Hydreigon). He was just a horrendously dumb character and the worst thing to have ever happened to this show by far.

The other rival characters weren't too bad but they didn't feel very relevant. Virgil was added so late into the saga and he didn't act much, the rescue team episode was really nice. But it was disappointing that Ash couldn't battle Virgil, because it would have been really nice to see Virgil and Ash have a good showdown. Stephan was also a really cool character, but aside from the Don Tournaments and the League, he didn't interact with Ash very much. He should've received a lot more screen time as they would've made a cool friendly rivalry. Burgundy and Georgia had potential, but failed to be very relevant characters. Burgundy and Cilan had very interesting interactions, and they had an interesting common goal: Strive to become S Rank connoisseurs. Yet, neither of them ever rose from their respective ranks in the connoisseur rankings. Nor did they ever train to become better connoisseurs. Burgundy remained a C Rank connoisseur and Cilan remained an A Rank coinnoisseur. They didn't conflict much at all except in the Don Tournaments. Same with Georgia. Iris and Georgia had an interesting heated rivalry but they could have capitalized on that a lot more. Heck, they could also have had Georgia make her revenge at the Village of Dragons and even try to bust Drayden. But no, that never happened.

Others touched on this, but Ash's crew of Pokemon felt very lackluster. It was very overloaded with Pokemon and there were too many, and all of them received little if any development or relevance. Oshawott was just there for marketing purposes. He was cute, but that's all he had going for him besides being adorable. Snivy had a very interesting personality but was not touched on a lot. Scraggy was neat, and I like Scraggy a lot but it wasn't too relevant either. Leavanny, Boldore, and Palpitoad did nothing notable. Unfezant was a waste as well and had no purpose except being just another early-game bird. That leaves us with Pignite and Krookodile. Pignite had interesting development as being found after being abused and abandoned by Shamus, and even confronting Shamus. Krookodile evolved fully and had a nice story. Both of these also proved formidable Pokemon in Ash's crew and were probably the few that really deserved to be there.

And finally, Dawn's guest appearance was also disappointing. She's an awesome character in this show, but she didn't do jack in her guest appearance in this saga. Her guest appearance also proved that Iris is contagious considering Dawn started teasing Ash too. After watching this, I dread the possibility of Iris returning for a guest appearance. I fear her contagiousness will get to Serena...and if that becomes the case...oh no...

Now with all this in mind, the BW series did do some things right. Cilan was a great character for his role as support and comedic relief, and his comical entertainment value was awesome: his role is to serve as comic relief after all, and boy he did that well. N was also a very interesting character during the Team Plasma Arc, and onto the Team Plasma arc topic, it was very interesting. N, along with Anthea and Concordia, were interesting characters. Ghetsis was as crazy as in the games, and Colress was a science geek to the extreme (an amplified Clemont, if I say so myself). It was alright, but it could've been better.

However, none of that changes the fact that BW did a lot of things pretty badly. This is why it gets a lot of hate, and in my opinion why I personally despise it.

Goddamn I wrote a fucking essay on the failings of the BW series. So TL;DR BW reset Ash in a horrible fashion, Iris was disappointing, the rivals all either sucked or failed to be as relevant as they should have been, and Ash's crew of Pokemon was too bloated, too little development. Dawn's appearance also sucked. BUT: Cilan was a cool character and the Team Plasma arc was interesting thanks to N.

 

[Antihaxxer]

BW was my favourite season until the last episode and the loss of Ash to a dumbass. The N thing was meh, and the DA was worse.

Lack of fillers, good Pokemon, a lot of evolutions, new moves, NO IDIOT TEAM ROCKETS. Lots of recurring characters and rivals ! I love that !

 

[Tazonite]

Ah yes, the Best Wishes series. Where do we start? The BW series is widely hated on as the worst anime saga ever, and though sometimes the reasoning is irrational, there are indeed a lot of things it did terribly

First of all, is that this was a terrible transition from the DP series, which in my opinion was really good. Let's look at Ash, for one thing. I found him to be an incredibly respectable character that I could find myself holding good respect to and liking, and he showed some pretty darn good competence. The Gym Battles he had, his relations with other characters such as Dawn and even Paul, and his performance in the League were all nice to see (only for him to get his ass handed to some dude who runs LEGENDARY POKEMON). Now come BW, and to see Ash almost completely reset to what he was in the original series was just horrible to see. For example, Ash vs. Elesa was without a doubt the worst big battle in the anime that I have seen in any game, anime saga, or generation. Ash was horrifically stupid in that battle, acting like a total kid thinking he could monopolize the Gym Battle with just his Palpitoad, so much to the point where he deliberately left the Gym to go to the Pokemon Center, and was even almost disqualified because he had a hard time deciding how he would continue while completely ignoring Pikachu (which made Pikachu really pissed). There are many other instances where Ash acted horrifically incompetent and it was just sad to see him act so well...dumb. And the big deal? In my opinion, the Kanto Saga was horrendous. The Johto Saga was decent, but the Kanto saga is so ridiculously bad I cannot bring myself to watch that again.

Iris was also a disappointment if I say so myself. Now in the DP series, we had Dawn. Dawn was an awesome character in the anime, she was almost like the secondary protagonist of the saga and she along with Ash basically ran the damn show. And after how great Dawn was...Iris is just so...meh. She didn't really do much, and she just felt like a blatant ripoff of Misty. Her criticism of Ash and the "what a kid" meme got tiring fast, but more bothering is that there was an incredible amount of hypocrisy in Iris calling Ash a kid. She really never acted any more mature than Ash did. Her goal was to be a Dragon Master, and that's great. But quite frankly, she received minimal development as a character and was just incredibly passive overall, like I mean she was just there. All she had interesting going for her was her interactions with Emolga, Excadrill, and Dragonite. And looking now, it makes no sense that Iris has a right to own a pseudo-legendary yet other characters can't? Heck, NegaiShipping is by far the least popular shipping in the shipping community.

Furthermore, this series was flooded to the brim with rivals. And the big problem is that most of those rivals are either really shitty or have wasted potential as characters. Trip and Bianca, for one thing, are just blatant ripoffs of Paul and Barry. Paul and Barry had interesting dynamics with Ash, and Paul had a lot of backstory going on and his relations with Ash were just great and his development as a character was interesting. They honestly had one of the best rivalries I had ever seen. Barry was less interactive with Ash, but they still had a more friendly rivalry which felt a bit more comfortable, and Barry had nice comedic value with his hyperactivity and fining threats. Trip and Bianca lack that same luster. Trip was arrogant as hell and his insulting of Ash for being from Kanto was bland and annoying. Paul and Ash at least had a justifiable conflict due to their views and the backstory behind Paul's own views. Trip was just lackluster simply because he idolizes Alder and was prideful as hell. Bianca was just a pain in the ass and she acted so dumb it's incredible.

The boy with the Lucario (he's so shitty I don't want to mention his name) was also the dumbest character I have ever seen in my life. He came to the Junior Cup late thinking it was just starting when it was already over. He even though the League was in the Johto region. He barely made it to the signups for the league. He though seven badges were needed to qualify for the League when you need eight. He thought a full battle was 5v5 when it's really 6v6. Want to know something even more sad? Even with the numbers disadvantage, he managed to win against Ash simply because his Riolu evolved into a Lucario, and he also in a way cheated by using a pseudo-legendary (Hydreigon). He was just a horrendously dumb character and the worst thing to have ever happened to this show by far.

The other rival characters weren't too bad but they didn't feel very relevant. Virgil was added so late into the saga and he didn't act much, the rescue team episode was really nice. But it was disappointing that Ash couldn't battle Virgil, because it would have been really nice to see Virgil and Ash have a good showdown. Stephan was also a really cool character, but aside from the Don Tournaments and the League, he didn't interact with Ash very much. He should've received a lot more screen time as they would've made a cool friendly rivalry. Burgundy and Georgia had potential, but failed to be very relevant characters. Burgundy and Cilan had very interesting interactions, and they had an interesting common goal: Strive to become S Rank connoisseurs. Yet, neither of them ever rose from their respective ranks in the connoisseur rankings. Nor did they ever train to become better connoisseurs. Burgundy remained a C Rank connoisseur and Cilan remained an A Rank coinnoisseur. They didn't conflict much at all except in the Don Tournaments. Same with Georgia. Iris and Georgia had an interesting heated rivalry but they could have capitalized on that a lot more. Heck, they could also have had Georgia make her revenge at the Village of Dragons and even try to bust Drayden. But no, that never happened.

Others touched on this, but Ash's crew of Pokemon felt very lackluster. It was very overloaded with Pokemon and there were too many, and all of them received little if any development or relevance. Oshawott was just there for marketing purposes. He was cute, but that's all he had going for him besides being adorable. Snivy had a very interesting personality but was not touched on a lot. Scraggy was neat, and I like Scraggy a lot but it wasn't too relevant either. Leavanny, Boldore, and Palpitoad did nothing notable. Unfezant was a waste as well and had no purpose except being just another early-game bird. That leaves us with Pignite and Krookodile. Pignite had interesting development as being found after being abused and abandoned by Shamus, and even confronting Shamus. Krookodile evolved fully and had a nice story. Both of these also proved formidable Pokemon in Ash's crew and were probably the few that really deserved to be there.

And finally, Dawn's guest appearance was also disappointing. She's an awesome character in this show, but she didn't do jack in her guest appearance in this saga. Her guest appearance also proved that Iris is contagious considering Dawn started teasing Ash too. After watching this, I dread the possibility of Iris returning for a guest appearance. I fear her contagiousness will get to Serena...and if that becomes the case...oh no...

Now with all this in mind, the BW series did do some things right. Cilan was a great character for his role as support and comedic relief, and his comical entertainment value was awesome: his role is to serve as comic relief after all, and boy he did that well. N was also a very interesting character during the Team Plasma Arc, and onto the Team Plasma arc topic, it was very interesting. N, along with Anthea and Concordia, were interesting characters. Ghetsis was as crazy as in the games, and Colress was a science geek to the extreme (an amplified Clemont, if I say so myself). It was alright, but it could've been better.

However, none of that changes the fact that BW did a lot of things pretty badly. This is why it gets a lot of hate, and in my opinion why I personally despise it.

Goddamn I wrote a fucking essay on the failings of the BW series. So TL;DR BW reset Ash in a horrible fashion, Iris was disappointing, the rivals all either sucked or failed to be as relevant as they should have been, and Ash's crew of Pokemon was too bloated, too little development. Dawn's appearance also sucked. BUT: Cilan was a cool character and the Team Plasma arc was interesting thanks to N.

Ash lost some IQ points. I mean, he did so well in Sinnoh. How did he start sucking this badly?! I don't even understand how that's even possible! He was indeed completely out of character in Elesa's battle, even though Palpitoad was a good choice. I understand that in the world of the anime, it's kinda of possible for a bad Pokemon to be good, but you know that you suck when you are being swept by a goddamn Tynamo. The Kanto saga was at least funnier, and there was more plot. Plus, this was Ash's first time, so his incompetence was a bit more excusable. But man, I have a lot of shit to say about that Charizard, who lost Ash the goddamn league- the whole thing Season 1 was building up to. They built up to all-powerful Charizard causing its trainer to be disqualified. What were they thinking?!

I'd technically argue that Dawn is a bit one sided, but she did act a lot like Ash did, and the characters complimented well. Iris did, at the very least, have something to separate her character from the previous ones. She did have a bit more character in that even though she acted like an expert, there were still some faults that she knew kept her from perfect. Her behavior also worked well too. But she didn't do anything useful, she never accomplished anything, and what potential she did have was put towards running gags and putting Ash down, and she never admitted to showing that she still had lots to learn herself. It was just- Ash is a rookie. He's such a stupid rookie. Those rookies and their rookieness.

Yeah, there were a bit of a handful of rivals. DP had a decent amount of them too, but most of them weren't bad (except Conway and Kenny and Ursula..., those annoying little f%ckers). Nando had an interesting thing going for him, Barry's fining threats got pretty old, but he did work out pretty well and I liked him overall, Paul had great motives and outstanding performance, and even some of the coordinators like... Nando... and Zoey- were pretty good characters too. Trip definitely could have worked, and his pride never really felt forced. I think the only thing that hurt him was the lack of backstory, which I more so blame the "writers" for. Georgia was as annoying as Iris, and what sucked most about her is that she had almost victories against Iris, even when she deserved it. I mean, Dragonite disobeying Iris should have easily gave Georgia the win. But apparently, poorly training a Pokemon means that you'll beat trainers who have a better relationship with their Pokemon. So much. But we're talking about rivals. Burgundy could have been an interesting, but she never showed a hint of development and used up all of her screentime being an annoyance, unfortunately. Stephan was okay, but it was unfortunate that he had this terrible running gag as one of the key things to remember him by. And while he only did relevant stuff in the Filler Tournaments, he did a damn good job in them. Him and Montgomery with the Throh Vs. Sawk thing was awesome, and the battle was amazing. That Throh is my fucking idol (lol). And I think Virgil was lucky to be added late in. We've had characters like this before in Morrison and Richie before. Virgil got lucky by being introduced late enough for the writers to have little time to fuck up his character. I'm glad he won. Bianca was a bit ditsy, and what I didn't was first off- the running gag. For the most part I liked her, but her character was all over the place. She did have some nice moments with her dad (Bianca's dad is entertaining), and she had some interesting moments (Sawk's muscles). While I guess you could view her as a bit dumb, I feel like she just moved a bit too quickly. Kind of a ripoff of Barry, but she had things to separate herself from him

Cameron tried too hard to be all of the past rivals that filled his role in previous seasons. Way too hard. He felt forced. They tried to make him cool by giving him some nice Pokemon, but that didn't work. It's like if you gave a preschooler a Metagross. He has these cool things like Lucario, Ferrothorn, and Hydreigon, but it didn't change how forced he was. I cringed at the episode where they established his interactions with Ash. It felt like I was watching a romantic montage with two gay guys. Not that I have a problem with gays- in fact, if you were a homophobe, I'd squash you- but I'm trying to say that the whole thing was so cringeworthy. They tried to take things from other rivals' characters and add them to his, but it just came altogether so horribly, like a broken vase fixed by a gorilla. With duct tape. His way of beating Ash also sucked pretty hard as well.

I agree with what was said about Oshawott. No comment there. Snivy, Scraggy, Leavanny, Unfezant, Boldore, and Palpitoad needed way more attention. Pignite and Krookodile were awesome though. Not much more to really add on to this part of the topic.

I didn't care much for Dawn, and I felt like she tried to be May. I mean, you could've just as easily brought May to Sinnoh and most things would stay the same, except without Piplup, which is a plus. Having May alone would have been great since she never got any moments with that weird kid in the green shirt that they kidnapped from Petalburg City. I don't know if that's exactly what that kid did, but I remember disliking him so much that I didn't even care. May's appearance was disappointing, so Dawn's was one I didn't really care for anyway. She came at the wrong time with Meloetta in the picture. Iris wouldn't fit well in the Kalos series, so if she came back, I'd be a bit surprised. Dawn also overstayed for way too long, and the last thing I wanted was Piplup and Oshawott TOGETHER. That's two goddamn screenhoggers for you. Whatever.

Cilan was a good character. He did take some getting used to, but looking back, he was serious when he needed to be and served as both a good comic character and an authoritarian. Team Plasma was decent, with a fair enough of a pace. No complaints. BW sucked overall, the movies were awful, the rivals and Pokemon were lackluster, there was derailment for veteran characters. It was a mess. Kalos is kinda healing it up, and is pretty decent overall. Only thing that sucks is that they still don't know how to make movies. End of story.

 

[precita]

The Johto saga was far worse than Best Wishes, with its only good point being the league and some of the funny TR fillers. Then again most of my dislike for Johto stems back from when I was a kid and it was airing for the first time, and I remember being bored to tears waiting for something interesting to happen week after week.

Of course the bigger picture here is the Johto saga pretty much bombed the original trio as a group forever. People have forgotten this as the years have gone by, but the original reason Misty was removed from the anime was due to the backlash of the Johto seasons and her character getting stale and flat at the time. The writers clearly placed the blame on the original trio for how Johto was received, and after Hoenn started and May and the Contests became popular, its what obviously led to Misty's early permanent departure from the series.

This is on top of the fact that Johto pissed people off due to Charizard and Squirtle's departures (even if they weren't permanent, we didn't know that at the time), the GS ball being dropped and abandoned, the sheer mas of fillers, etc.

I guess only the oldest pokemon fans who were active back in 2001-2002 will remember this now, since this all happened nearly 15 years ago. Its kind of funny because its why everyone knew from the start that both the original trio and Misty would never be used for the main cast again, and sure enough here we are 12 years later and that turned out to be true.

 

[leadintea]

The Johto saga was far worse than Best Wishes, with its only good point being the league and some of the funny TR fillers. Then again most of my dislike for Johto stems back from when I was a kid and it was airing for the first time, and I remember being bored to tears waiting for something interesting to happen week after week.

Of course the bigger picture here is the Johto saga pretty much bombed the original trio as a group forever. People have forgotten this as the years have gone by, but the original reason Misty was removed from the anime was due to the backlash of the Johto seasons and her character getting stale and flat at the time. The writers clearly placed the blame on the original trio for how Johto was received, and after Hoenn started and May and the Contests became popular, its what obviously led to Misty's early permanent departure from the series.

This is on top of the fact that Johto pissed people off due to Charizard and Squirtle's departures (even if they weren't permanent, we didn't know that at the time), the GS ball being dropped and abandoned, the sheer mas of fillers, etc.

I guess only the oldest pokemon fans who were active back in 2001-2002 will remember this now, since this all happened nearly 15 years ago. Its kind of funny because its why everyone knew from the start that both the original trio and Misty would never be used for the main cast again, and sure enough here we are 12 years later and that turned out to be true.

Yeah, I agree that Johto was pretty bad. In fact, Kanto and Johto were, IMO, the worst sagas in the series, but I think the reason why many criticize the BW saga is because the series was getting better and better till that point. I mean, BW was what made me get back into Pokemon, but it was a rather lackluster series when all is said and done. Kanto and Johto were bad, but I thought they had some rather funny moments to make up for their atrocity, but BW was just a boring mess that didn't go anywhere.

 

[Phione]

It has been confirmed that Ash's Noibat will hatch from an egg. In the next episode, it looks like it will compete in some sort of "Sky Relay". We're also getting another Pikachu special featuring Luchador Pikachu.

 

[Brytmonlee]

While the Filler Islands for BW was bad, it still doesn't compare to the year of fillers in DP. It took an entire year for Ash to get his eighth badge, and this is only since his seventh. At this point, DP is getting over-romanticized due to BW, especially when fillers were handled way worse in DP than in BW.

 

[Pikachu315111]

While the Filler Islands for BW was bad, it still doesn't compare to the year of fillers in DP. It took an entire year for Ash to get his eighth badge, and this is only since his seventh. At this point, DP is getting over-romanticized due to BW, especially when fillers were handled way worse in DP than in BW.

Not to mention all the fillers meant they had to skip the DP Battle Frontier despite saying Ash will go through it after battling Palmer. *sigh*

 

[precita]

DP was long as hell, but I'm more forgiving of it simply because of all the plotlines, recurring characters, and great battles it had. Yeah, you could probably chuck a good 1/3rd of DP's episodes out the window, but there was still a lot of good stuff there.

Brock was a completely dead character though, by that point he had no reason to be in the show anymore. There were also some other aspects of DP that weren't handled well, like the excessive Piplup promotion and some of Dawn's rivals like Kenny/Nando were either handled poorly or were pointless. Even despite all that DP is still one of the strongest arcs of the anime.

I did like some aspects of BW, but when taken as a whole its easy to see why that arc was so poorly received. XY tries to be a mix of AG and DP though, so its a bit better received.

 

[Norne]

Piplup ghost still haunts us with oshawott and chespin...

 

[Tazonite]

While the Filler Islands for BW was bad, it still doesn't compare to the year of fillers in DP. It took an entire year for Ash to get his eighth badge, and this is only since his seventh. At this point, DP is getting over-romanticized due to BW, especially when fillers were handled way worse in DP than in BW.

Yes. That is true. But our difference here is that our NON FILLER EPISODES were actually GOOD.

Piplup ghost still haunts us with oshawott and chespin...

And Piplup kinda came from Torchic.

DP was long as hell, but I'm more forgiving of it simply because of all the plotlines, recurring characters, and great battles it had. Yeah, you could probably chuck a good 1/3rd of DP's episodes out the window, but there was still a lot of good stuff there.

Brock was a completely dead character though, by that point he had no reason to be in the show anymore. There were also some other aspects of DP that weren't handled well, like the excessive Piplup promotion and some of Dawn's rivals like Kenny/Nando were either handled poorly or were pointless. Even despite all that DP is still one of the strongest arcs of the anime.

I did like some aspects of BW, but when taken as a whole its easy to see why that arc was so poorly received. XY tries to be a mix of AG and DP though, so its a bit better received.

DON'T TALK SHIT ABOUT MY NANDO!

 

[Pikachu315111]

Gen V anime hate, lets start where it matters, the league and lack of evolved pokemon. Came.... The one who shalt not be named figth was painful to watch to be honest, unevolved pokemon everywhere terrible pulls and bad choreography, the fact that it was split on 2 episodes made it worse.

Also freaking oshawott, piplup was annoying, now put it on the main cast and do the same unevolved thing to keep it marketable that piplup did and you get the perfect recipe for fail.

Ash not having evolved Pokemon on his BW team was a major problem that shouldn't have existed in the first place. Now I'm not saying all of Ash's Pokemon should be fully evolved (like if they wanted to keep Pignite as it is to have that little brother relation to Charizard that would have been fine), but most of them should have been fully evolved. Where did all the experience they got from battling go? It's also not like any of his BW Pokemon showed a reluctance to evolve, the writers just for some reason never let Snivy, Oshawott, or Scraggy evolve. Personally by the the Unova League I think Ash's BW Pokemon should have been Pikachu, Unfezant, Dewott, Pignite, Serperior, Scrafty, Leavanny, Seismitoad, Gigalith, & Krookodile. Or they could keep either Palpitoad or Boldore as is and have them evolve during a battle or during the Plasma/Decolora Islands arc.

Yeah, they banked WAY too much on Oshawott. Piplup worked because Dawn as a coordinator so she didn't really need it to be powerful just skilled, and even then there was an episode where it was struggling with evolving. However Oshawott doesn't have that excuse; it was constantly battling, had an attitude of a battler, and being Ash is a trainer going for the Pokemon League so he does need more power. Now if they wanted they could have it evolve to Dewott and stop there, all that it would have changed was it using two scalchops. It would have provided Ash a bit more power (he would also have Seismitoad for Water-type backup) and maybe even opened up more story for Oshawott/Dewott's character (like maybe it having a rivalry with Cameron's Samurott).

I'm almost certain they'll screw up the plot for next week. Team Rocket used to be entertaining and likable, but now they are the most forced characters in the entire show. Unless they're in the focus without Ash involved, they are so unnecessary now. I miss it when they had those crazy jobs and did their own thing instead of only being focused on Pikachu, which I'm sure Giovanni would love to have. I remember Meowth's visions of how Giovanni's life would be so much better with the Pokemon they'd try to steal. In the Advanced Series was where this happened. Now they've unfortunately been turned to nothing. It sucks too. I'm sure there's something James did that we've forgotten about in Filler Episode #368.

The movies I don't look are Movies 14+. Victini's movie was so goddamn boring, and the gimmick of making two of the same goddamn movie didn't help. And really? They're going with the death card? You have to be kidding me. The fifteenth movie was boring too, and it was over before I knew it. Terrakion was nice, but I have no goddamn idea how Fighting types can use telepathy. Don't even get me started with their weird erection horns. Keldeo was admittedly a bit annoying, and Kyurem was there for no reason. And how the hell did he change forms? Reshiram or Zekrom would have to be chilling out in that cave in order for that to happen, and how Kyurem could even obtain the DNA Splicers is beyond me. Then we got Genesect. I don't know how the fuck they were able to screw it up so badly. First off, Mewtwo Mega Evolves out of nowhere. It just changes forms instantaneously. What's Mewtwo's goal? Stay Mega Evolved as long as possible? That's not a good plot idea! And I was really expecting old Mewtwo, so this new one who we know nothing about kinda pissed me off. Genesect don't do too much. They try to pull the sympathy card with this one Genesect, but it's so old I didn't even care at this point. Mewtwo didn't even need to be there. I was expecting the Cocoon of Destruction to be good, but they fucked that up too. It's so boring, I had to force myself to watch it. Diancie is okay, but I could never really understand her goals or motives. The Carbink didn't need to be talking at all, Diancie's talking makes only a little bit of sense since she's a Fairy. But it was all over the place. And I have no idea why Xerneas and Yveltal were there. Same goes with the three people with the starter Pokemon. And I guarantee you the Hoopa movie will suck too. I guarantee.

Trip was wasted potential. He was harsh, but not harsh enough to be a Paul clone. He had a lot of potential, but of course, why would they let that happen? This is the BW anime we're talking about. So they only have him come up like... once or twice. He beats Ash sometimes, but he barely beat Ash and they completely neglected him. When Trip finally did get to fight Alder, I had almost completely forgotten about why he had wanted too earlier. Speaking of which, Alder in his debut appearance was a huge dick to Trip. Which is a shame, because I like Alder a lot for the most part. That Serperior was awesome though.

If it were up to me, the only ones who wouldn't evolve would be Oshawott, Scraggy, and maybe Palpitoad. Emboar should have happened, Gigalith would have been nice, and I'd have liked Snivy to at least reach Servine. I have no idea how they screwed it all up. Iris did nothing, Cilan was... decent- pretty entertaining at times, and Ash is stupider than ever. Seriously, this is the same person who tore through the Sinnoh region? Ugh. The only thing the characters had to pass off as personality traits were running gags (Sounds like Bonnie and Clemont actually).

Oddly if BW did anything right it was with Team Rocket. You're right that Team Rocket's old routine got boring so it was actually nice to see them treated with some respect which let them become a real threat whenever they encountered Ash & co. the few times that they did. For once they felt part of a bigger picture instead of just 3 goofs running around trying to catch Pikachu and/or the Pokemon of the day thinking/hoping the boss would like it.

14th Movie: What do you mean by the death card? Ash almost freezing to death or Victini "sacrificing" itself? Eitherway the movie did feel gimmicky with there really being no difference except at the beginning where Damon was appeasing to one of the villages. Going back to the deaths, Ash almost freezing to death felt kind of forced, like once they had Reshiram and Zekrom realize the Dragon Force was tearing the world apart they didn't know how to end it from there. It also made Victini's sacrifice moot, especially when it came back perfectly fine out of nowhere. What was the point?
15th Movie: I kind of liked this one, if only because there was resemblance of a story. The movie was about Keldeo realizing responsibility, consequences for his actions, and accepting he has limits. Of course it still has it problems, like Kyurem felt shoved in there. It changing forms also made no sense, honestly they should have kept the Tao Dragons out of the movies and instead had the anime follow the game's story.
16th Movie: Now there was a good idea here, having the two manmade Legendaries face each other, but the story was a mess. They introduced a 2nd Mewtwo which felt unnecessary, especially when they pretty much have it do the same thing the first Mewtwo did (though at least in the anime they can potentially have both Mega Mewtwo X and Mega Mewtwo Y).
17th Movie: It was a bit odd that the Carbink could talk, but that's not really the movies problem for me. The movie's problem was shoving in Yveltal in there when it has really nothing to do with the plot. The plot is Diancie getting the power to create the Heart Diamond to keep her kingdom from crumbling, though Diancie is too naive and wants to see the outside world to really understand the urgency in this (until its nearly too late). She has to seek Xerneas to absorb its Fairy Aura and this would allow her to make the Heart Diamond. That's the main plot, they have some thieves go after her because, well, she can make diamonds to have antagonists but that still fit in. Then out of nowhere comes Yveltal and it changes to a movie of stopping Yveltal which was pretty much all for naught until Xerneas stepped in. Look Pokemon Company, just because you have one of the mascot Legendaries in the movie doesn't mean you need to other. Besides people watching the movie want to see the mythical Pokemon in action and not the mascot Legendary which should be getting its time in the spotlight in the anime.

It felt like they didn't really know what they wanted to do with Trip. Honestly Trip felt a bit racist toward Ash, immediately not liking him because he was a foreigner (at least that how I saw it). They didn't really didn't give Trip any time to develop (which is something you can say with all the BW rivals, it felt like none got any closure), we honestly know only two of his Pokemon (Serperior and Conkeldurr) with any other we see him have being really nothing to note.
As for Alder, I do think they made him too lean back and goofy but I do think on the surface they sort of hot his character (though like many other of the extra BW character they never really gave him much development, which is a shame as out of all the Champions I feel Alder has the most interesting backstory).

They really did nothing with Iris. She's suppose to be a Dragon Master in training but doesn't really do anything to work toward that goal, even if its just training Axew which is what she's suppose to be doing. We say in an early episode that Axew dreams of fully evolving, yet Iris doesn't seem motivated enough to act on her or her Pokemon's ambitions. Cilan was fun but just there to replace Brock's role as team mom, he made sure Ash and Iris didn't starve and get lost. Though Cilan had a goal, it felt like the writers had no clue how Cilan should advance toward that goal.

Ah yes, the Best Wishes series. Where do we start? The BW series is widely hated on as the worst anime saga ever, and though sometimes the reasoning is irrational, there are indeed a lot of things it did terribly

First of all, is that this was a terrible transition from the DP series, which in my opinion was really good. Let's look at Ash, for one thing. I found him to be an incredibly respectable character that I could find myself holding good respect to and liking, and he showed some pretty darn good competence. The Gym Battles he had, his relations with other characters such as Dawn and even Paul, and his performance in the League were all nice to see (only for him to get his ass handed to some dude who runs LEGENDARY POKEMON). Now come BW, and to see Ash almost completely reset to what he was in the original series was just horrible to see. For example, Ash vs. Elesa was without a doubt the worst big battle in the anime that I have seen in any game, anime saga, or generation. Ash was horrifically stupid in that battle, acting like a total kid thinking he could monopolize the Gym Battle with just his Palpitoad, so much to the point where he deliberately left the Gym to go to the Pokemon Center, and was even almost disqualified because he had a hard time deciding how he would continue while completely ignoring Pikachu (which made Pikachu really pissed). There are many other instances where Ash acted horrifically incompetent and it was just sad to see him act so well...dumb. And the big deal? In my opinion, the Kanto Saga was horrendous. The Johto Saga was decent, but the Kanto saga is so ridiculously bad I cannot bring myself to watch that again.

The other rival characters weren't too bad but they didn't feel very relevant. Virgil was added so late into the saga and he didn't act much, the rescue team episode was really nice. But it was disappointing that Ash couldn't battle Virgil, because it would have been really nice to see Virgil and Ash have a good showdown. Stephan was also a really cool character, but aside from the Don Tournaments and the League, he didn't interact with Ash very much. He should've received a lot more screen time as they would've made a cool friendly rivalry. Burgundy and Georgia had potential, but failed to be very relevant characters. Burgundy and Cilan had very interesting interactions, and they had an interesting common goal: Strive to become S Rank connoisseurs. Yet, neither of them ever rose from their respective ranks in the connoisseur rankings. Nor did they ever train to become better connoisseurs. Burgundy remained a C Rank connoisseur and Cilan remained an A Rank coinnoisseur. They didn't conflict much at all except in the Don Tournaments. Same with Georgia. Iris and Georgia had an interesting heated rivalry but they could have capitalized on that a lot more. Heck, they could also have had Georgia make her revenge at the Village of Dragons and even try to bust Drayden. But no, that never happened.

And finally, Dawn's guest appearance was also disappointing. She's an awesome character in this show, but she didn't do jack in her guest appearance in this saga. Her guest appearance also proved that Iris is contagious considering Dawn started teasing Ash too. After watching this, I dread the possibility of Iris returning for a guest appearance. I fear her contagiousness will get to Serena...and if that becomes the case...oh no...

Now with all this in mind, the BW series did do some things right. Cilan was a great character for his role as support and comedic relief, and his comical entertainment value was awesome: his role is to serve as comic relief after all, and boy he did that well. N was also a very interesting character during the Team Plasma Arc, and onto the Team Plasma arc topic, it was very interesting. N, along with Anthea and Concordia, were interesting characters. Ghetsis was as crazy as in the games, and Colress was a science geek to the extreme (an amplified Clemont, if I say so myself). It was alright, but it could've been better.

However, none of that changes the fact that BW did a lot of things pretty badly. This is why it gets a lot of hate, and in my opinion why I personally despise it.

Goddamn I wrote a fucking essay on the failings of the BW series. So TL;DR BW reset Ash in a horrible fashion, Iris was disappointing, the rivals all either sucked or failed to be as relevant as they should have been, and Ash's crew of Pokemon was too bloated, too little development. Dawn's appearance also sucked. BUT: Cilan was a cool character and the Team Plasma arc was interesting thanks to N.

Ugh, the Elesa battle, completely forgot about that. What the F@#$ was that about? Okay, even if he just planned on sweeping with Palpitoad, WHY DID HE LEAVE ALL HIS OTHER POKEMON BEHIND?! Even if he didn't think he would need them, what if Team Rocket showed up or another situation where he needed more than just Pikachu and Palpitoad? That entire battle was very unlike Ash honestly. One of Ash's strongest traits is thinking on the sleeve of his wrist yet here as soon as is strategy fell apart he looked like an absolute idiot. As soon as he ran out Elesa should have disqualified him, saying if he didn't have the respect to come with a full team he doesn't deserve the Badge.

As I said, Vergil should have been the one to knock out Ash. It would make sense market wise as Eevee was getting a new Eeveelution next gen (true we didn't know that at the time, but it was foreshadowed a bit with Vergil's Eevee having a difficult time choosing what to evolve into. If we ever see Vergil again I wouldn't be surprised if Eevee had evolved into a Sylveon). Stephan was a better rival to Ash than Trip was, making me wonder whether they should have either combined the two from the start or cut one out to put more focus on the other. Bianca was mainly there because she's in the games, though honestly they kind of robbed her of her character development she got in BW2. When Ash & co. went to Aspertia Town and met Cheren she should have also been there in her BW2 clothes and revealed since the League she decided to become Juniper's assistant. Now I do like that Iris and Cilan did get their own rivals, but as you said its disappointing they didn't really do anything with them. They could have used their rivals to help push them toward their goals, but they were sort of dropped at some point giving them no closure. Okay, Georgia respects Iris a bit more maybe but Burgundy was just comic relief in the end. They could have had maybe Cilan help Burgundy improve her Connaisseuse skills and she'll realize that Cilan wasn't being mean to her but just brutally honest (heck, maybe even by the end have her become a B-Rank with his help (and maybe also reveal what he needs to do to become a S-Rank)). As for Georgia, I can maybe see her challenging Drayden though I don't think it would have been right for her to appear in the Village or Dragons. Actually, I'm kind of hoping that when Iris makes her cameo in Kalos that Georgia also appears revealing she's been training Fairy-types.

Dawn and Cynthia appearance was lacking since, well, it was really random. They both pretty much came out of no where and since there was no contests Dawn didn't have anything to do. Don't know how they could have fixed that, but Dawn's appearance did feel inconsequential, at least compared to May's guest appearance in Sinnoh (Misty's in Hoenn was also sort of random, but it did have a major development in her character and she made another appearance later on that felt more natrual).

I don't think they handled many of the Plasma characters right. N was okay but sometimes he was WAY too "Pokemon are superior to people", like the time he told the rescue worker he shouldn't be using Pokemon to rescue people (it's one thing N thinking that people are abusing Pokemon by having them battle for entertainment, but using Pokemon to rescue lives isn't. Especially when people are also risking their life AND they're also saving Pokemon lives too). Anthea and Concordia I felt were off as they were sort of meant to be human anchors for N, but in the anime they pretty much hated people. Ghetsis and Colress I guess was okay, just they didn't get much development.

The Johto saga was far worse than Best Wishes, with its only good point being the league and some of the funny TR fillers. Then again most of my dislike for Johto stems back from when I was a kid and it was airing for the first time, and I remember being bored to tears waiting for something interesting to happen week after week.

Of course the bigger picture here is the Johto saga pretty much bombed the original trio as a group forever. People have forgotten this as the years have gone by, but the original reason Misty was removed from the anime was due to the backlash of the Johto seasons and her character getting stale and flat at the time. The writers clearly placed the blame on the original trio for how Johto was received, and after Hoenn started and May and the Contests became popular, its what obviously led to Misty's early permanent departure from the series.

This is on top of the fact that Johto pissed people off due to Charizard and Squirtle's departures (even if they weren't permanent, we didn't know that at the time), the GS ball being dropped and abandoned, the sheer mas of fillers, etc.

I guess only the oldest pokemon fans who were active back in 2001-2002 will remember this now, since this all happened nearly 15 years ago. Its kind of funny because its why everyone knew from the start that both the original trio and Misty would never be used for the main cast again, and sure enough here we are 12 years later and that turned out to be true.

Oh yeah, forgot many didn't like Johto. Personally Johto didn't really have that much of an impact on me, but I can see where some would say that's possibly worst than being bad. I don't feel Misty was to blame or the season not being widely acclaimed, its the writers fault they didn't do much with her (though I did like they had her win the Whirl Cup). But hey, she is one of the characters who I felt got closure once she left and even some development afterwards so it wasn't a bad thing.

Brock was a completely dead character though, by that point he had no reason to be in the show anymore. There were also some other aspects of DP that weren't handled well, like the excessive Piplup promotion and some of Dawn's rivals like Kenny/Nando were either handled poorly or were pointless. Even despite all that DP is still one of the strongest arcs of the anime.

I did like some aspects of BW, but when taken as a whole its easy to see why that arc was so poorly received. XY tries to be a mix of AG and DP though, so its a bit better received.

Hey, at least Brock is off becoming a Pokemon Doctor now, finally free from what has become a glorified babysitting duty. :P

I actually liked Nando, I thought it was neat to have a character who wanted to be both a trainer and a coordinator. I kind of wanted him to win both the Grand Festival and Sinnoh League, but at least he had good battles before getting knocked out in both. Kenny though was sort of just there, heck they might as well have just made him Lucas for all the difference that would have done.

I'm not going to judge XY just yet, I want to see what they do with the Team Flare plot.

 

[Brytmonlee]

Yes. That is true. But our difference here is that our NON FILLER EPISODES were actually GOOD.

I may have misspoke when I said over romanticized. Over rated seems like a better choice of words, because, when you get right down to it, it is still the Pokemon anime.

 

[precita]

The main problem with Johto is it was literally just Kanto again, except everything was worse. Misty lost most of her personality and temper that made people like her in the first two seasons, (and looking back on her now, after they increased the roles of female characters with May and Dawn especially, it made people realize Misty didn't do anything), and Ash's Johto team was a step down from his classic Kanto team, as well as most of his Pokemon teams after.

Also the filler was ridiculous. There were no plotlines in Johto at all, so literally nothing happened between Ash's Gyms but filler. Gary only appeared in like 3 episodes so it felt like Ash had no rival in Johto either.

And this is on top of the fact that Johto just abandoned plotlines like the GS ball, Charizard and Squirtle were abruptly left behind (which doesn't matter now, but at the time we didn't know if they would come back or not), and so forth.

I guess Johto is just so old now that people don't care anymore, but its where most original fans stopped watching the anime for a while, and some never came back.

 

[DragonWhale]

So today, Ash broke Trick Room (literally) with Hawlucha's X-Scizzor, on the basis that TR is a psychic-type move and bug is super effective on psychic.

I think it's the first time in XY that a game mechanic was completely butchered lol, not counting 100 acc moves missing.

 

[Pikachu315111]

So today, Ash broke Trick Room (literally) with Hawlucha's X-Scizzor, on the basis that TR is a psychic-type move and bug is super effective on psychic.

I think it's the first time in XY that a game mechanic was completely butchered lol, not counting 100 acc moves missing.

There was one time that Skyla used her Swanna's Aqua Ring to heal off Burn (caued by Cilan's Stunfisk's Scald). Aqua Ring does not heal Status Ailments, it only heals a small amount of HP at the end of every turn.

 

[Tazonite]

DP was long as hell, but I'm more forgiving of it simply because of all the plotlines, recurring characters, and great battles it had. Yeah, you could probably chuck a good 1/3rd of DP's episodes out the window, but there was still a lot of good stuff there.

Brock was a completely dead character though, by that point he had no reason to be in the show anymore. There were also some other aspects of DP that weren't handled well, like the excessive Piplup promotion and some of Dawn's rivals like Kenny/Nando were either handled poorly or were pointless. Even despite all that DP is still one of the strongest arcs of the anime.

I did like some aspects of BW, but when taken as a whole its easy to see why that arc was so poorly received. XY tries to be a mix of AG and DP though, so its a bit better received.

There was one time that Skyla used her Swanna's Aqua Ring to heal off Burn (caued by Cilan's Stunfisk's Scald). Aqua Ring does not heal Status Ailments, it only heals a small amount of HP at the end of every turn.

Eh, it's not like Hawlucha broke the trick room by having Pikachu electrocute it to create thunder armor, where Hawlucha was SOMEHOW strong enough to survive it.

 

[Norne]

There was one time that Skyla used her Swanna's Aqua Ring to heal off Burn (caued by Cilan's Stunfisk's Scald). Aqua Ring does not heal Status Ailments, it only heals a small amount of HP at the end of every turn.

I could swear that aqua ring actually heals burns, or probably I'm getting confused with the ability.

 

[Karxrida]

I could swear that aqua ring actually heals burns, or probably I'm getting confused with the ability.

You're thinking Hydration. The stupid thing is that Swanna does get that ability.

 

[Norne]

You're thinking Hydration. The stupid thing is that Swanna does get that ability.

I was referring to water veil wich renders the user immune to burns. But yep the only novelty of aqua ring is that it is snatchable.

 

[Pikachu315111]

Eh, it's not like Hawlucha broke the trick room by having Pikachu electrocute it to create thunder armor, where Hawlucha was SOMEHOW strong enough to survive it.

Touch'e.

You're thinking Hydration. The stupid thing is that Swanna does get that ability.

So in other words they could have just had Swanna use Rain Dance so it could activate Hydration thus staying within the game mechanics *sigh*.

 

[precita]

Do you ever find it amusing how non-anime fans always pick apart the anime for the wrong reasons? As seen in this thread:

http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/the-bad-of-the-anime.3539469/

I mean the anime does have some real flaws, like the sheer mass of fillers, Ash's character not being able to progress, and some weird decisions over the years...but this is not one of them. You would think after 18 years people would realize its a kids show completely different from the games.

 

[mertyville]

I think the anime got a lot better but it still feels wierd like Pikachu using Iron Tail to jump on Draco Meteor and there are many "try hard" scenes like when that nerd thinks about how awesome Ash is or Ash still having amnesia of what type is super effective to which (yeah, I know the purpose it to introduce new people to Pokemon, but the moment Ash starts using his older Pokemon that idea is out of the window).

Also the movies got a lot better. For me the Arceus movie was the worst and I can't believe how somebody can fuck up a movie about the god of all pokemon. The Kyurem movie was really entertaining for me, because we saw Keldeo's training and reaching his Resolution to fight Kyurem while I still wonder why that no human were in that random town in which Ash and his friends stole the zeppelin and train.

But I am still on the opinion that Ash should be replaced by a new main character like Digimon and Pokemon Special/Adventure do. Pokemon is not a series that you can act like the character is timeless because there is progression in the story and nobody with common sense would believe that Ash is still 10 and fought in 6 leagues which each take 8 month or so before they start. Therefore I don't think one can compare it to something like The Simpsons.

 

[Magcargo]

Its far too late to replace Ash. He's been in far too many episodes for the writers to just cut him off from the anime. Its a huge shame too, because if the writers had decided to cut him from the anime earlier, then I believe its overall quality would have been MUCH higher.

The primary reason many of the anime's shortcomings exist in my opinion is because the writers insist to keep Ash as the main character for as long as the pokemon series goes. This is a large issue because it greatly limits Ash's character and forces him to make a huge number of both questionable and stupid decisions throughout the series for newer viewers. Having a new protagonist would at least make these stupid decision understandable, as well as allow a greater diversity of side characters and antagonist to be added into the series.

The writers even had the absolute perfect opportunity to replace Ash with a new protagonist after "Memories made of Bliss", which would have been the perfect conclusion to his story. But instead they still use him as the main protagonist in Best Wishes and not only reveal the shocking truth that he's still ten years old, but also show us that his Pikachu lost to a low level Snivy despite being able to defeat a Latios only a handful of episodes earlier. Ridiculous.