Just saw this and wanted to say: RIP
Episode 941: One Last Battle with Ash! Serena's Choice!!
Episode 942: Farewell, Ash Greninja! Xerosic Strikes Back!!
Idk how many episodes will be after those 2 for xyz, but I began to have similar feelings with how Gen 4 ended. For Gen 4, the league was over, they said their goodbyes (Brock leaving had me in tears), but what they didn't do was showing Ash reaching Pallet Town. Normally he'll arrive home and eventually get an incentive to go to whatever next region there is, but they just skipped that and started Gen 5. Prior to the post above with the screenshot of Ash with his mom and Mr. Mime, I was gonna say there was a good chance of something similar with Ash sorta not arriving in Pallet Town and just starting off for Gen 6.
Might just be from the animation, but I feel like the island captains look way too young. Generally when you look at gym leaders, most of them are older than Ash, some by a few years (Jasmine, Flannery, Brock) and some who are adults (Lt. Surge, Blaine, Juan, Ramos). So I feel like that's a bit odd, not to mention that 3 (I think 3) of them are shown are shown in his class when Ash walks in.
I'm also curious to know about the pacing in Sun and Moon. There's 4 Island Challenges instead of 8 gyms, and there hasn't been any mention of the classic league system Ash partakes in. Based on what it says from Serebii, there's a task/request by the Captain such as looking for something, then a battle with a Totem Pokemon, and then finally a battle with the Kahuna of the island. There's also the school he's going to and who knows what they'll do with that (sounds weird to go to school and graduate without going there for a full year). Idk how far they can stretch that, but I feel like it won't/shouldn't be too long with there only being 4 of them. Xyz's looking to be about 135 episodes and BW was 143 (with 30 being Decalore Islands), and this time around, things are a bit different. In BW and XY, they saved Team Plasma/Flare stuff for pretty much after the league, but based on the trailer, I think they're getting right into Team Skull similar to how they did with Rocket and Aqua/Magma. So the series may end after the league (or whatever it is), or we might get stuck with something similar to Decalore Islands. However, if they decide to skip this route and bring Ash back home to do something like revisit gyms or possibly try out the new battle frontier from Gen 4 (this would go great with a Gen 4 remake), but either way, I think it'd be convenient if this one sorta went by a bit quickly.
As for things I dislike so far (not too many things to like so far lol), biggest points would be animation style along with Ash's character design. Xyz had really good graphics and they really shine during moments like when Ash battled Shota and Alain in the league. I would've loved it if they had kept that animation going, but now it just looks plain weird. I recently started watching One Piece starting in June, and while that animation took a while to get used to, I feel like this one might take a bit longer to get used to given the stage at where this show is (20 years into it vs. first 100 episodes). As for Ash's design, I can't say I like it mainly because of the animation style along with the fact that he went from being 10 to 7 years old. His body looks a bit smaller/shorter than before
As for things I'm curious about, there's "Will Pikachu be reset to level 1?" and then there's "What Alolan forme pokemon will Ash get?" A new series a new chance for Pikachu to start off as a beast (I wish lol), but seeing as how they've changed a lot of things, this is one of the things I would like to see as a new change. As for the second question, this one's a mystery because of how many Alolan forme mons there are (there's probably a good deal of them that haven't and probably won't get seen before the game comes out) along with guessing what Ash would actually get.
I can't say this series doesn't give off a BW vibe, but seeing as how XY really took off midway through with xyz, I think it's fair to say that there's still some potential with this one. Really sad to see Xyz end just like Gen 4 did, but hey, at least we got to see what's probably the best this show will ever be, and I'm grateful to have had that opportunity. I love Gens 1-4 like everyone else, but aside from Ash's battle with Paul (mainly with Infernape), I can't say any season of Pokemon has had me constantly excited for between multiple episodes. The graphics/animation made it feel nice too, so it's sad to see that go as well. So yeah, enjoy Xyz while we can :)
On a side note, this series (XY) might end in time before Trump or Clinton get elected to end the world ;)
