Darn, how did the Treecko survive this!? Does your Mudkip have a bad Nature or what?
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Unpopular opinions
- Thread starter antemortem
- Start date
Maybe finally on topic but the oras arc is so bad. Actually hold on
Good writing by itself: RGBY, Emerald
Good writing for a pokemon manga: XY, BW
Its fine: DP, PT, GSC
Oh wow this sucks ass: ORAS, SM, SWSH, FRLG, HGSS, BW2
Oh wow this sucks ass (unfortunately I love it): RS
I’d say that the appeal of returning characters carries ORAS for me. On that note FRLG and HGSS are masterpieces how can you dislike them. A big part for me that makes an Adventures manga good is how much it can distinguish itself from the games’ story, and with the games’ main plot already covered the remakes are free to do whatever. RB, GS, and BW/BW2, plus all the third versions, do this well enough, and while RS, DP, and XY don’t experiment as much as they could have, the writing is solid enough for them to be enjoyable for me. SM on the other hand… it just felt like the SM plot + obligatory quirky protagonist personalities. I read one volume of SwSh and it appears to have the exact same problem.
Oras and frlg are just fanservice which either stagnates or ruins the characters featured. Hgss is just badly written and very annoying to go through.
Rs is just badly written too. I just got obsessed with it because I have autism and haven't recovered since :(
This hits the nail on the head for the latter two. It feels like they're more reluctant to stray from the game plots than they used to be.
But then for the earlier volumes, like Yellow in particular, there's so little to go on from the games I guess they could enjoy that creative freedom. Later games have such defined plots that it's hard to stray too far.
It's frustrating because all the elements are still in place to make it great. Henry's special skill and Casey's quest are interesting enough but the plot just... isn't. Like a couple of people said, I think it does have to do with a perceived need to cover every character, every legendary/mythical (or at least most of them), and every location.
As someone who read the early days, then came back and read all the way up through HGSS (since my source for BW kind of ran out and I also ran out of steam)
This is why I hated HGSS. The two page spread that was just Archer telling me the type of every Arceus bordered on parody. It was just going down a check list of new things and characters they had to check in on a lot of the time.
Adventures is always kind of awkwardly, slavishly loyal to making sure a bunch of things from the games make it over but HGSS was the absolute nadir for me, no doubt not helped by it being like what 20 chapters? 30 chapters??
It made me appreciate the Platinum arc more and lemme tell ya I was not a fan of it despite generally liking the DP arc (it might be my favorite??)
I could write pages and pages about pokespe because it's been part of my life for yeaaars. extremely cringe but it's true. I don't want to derail this thread too much though so I'll just throw a few fun ones:
- Pokespe isn't really that dark or violent. A lot of mangas of its own age rating and genre get much more bloody and pokespes violence is very subdued. There's times where it gets bloody but ngl it just looks kinda edgy and stupid when they do it LOL (yamamoto can't draw violence to save his life)
- Pokespe isn't always better than the anime. Sumo anime sweeps sumo arc out of the water it's not even a joke. And a lot of times the comparison is just nonsensical (different audiences, genres and media.)
- Kusaka cant write romance and everytime it shows up its either very annoying or just ruins the characters outright if he focus on it for more than 2 seconds. Stop doing that my guy.
And finally: I like ruby. I wish he were in a better manga.
- Pokespe isn't really that dark or violent. A lot of mangas of its own age rating and genre get much more bloody and pokespes violence is very subdued. There's times where it gets bloody but ngl it just looks kinda edgy and stupid when they do it LOL (yamamoto can't draw violence to save his life)
- Pokespe isn't always better than the anime. Sumo anime sweeps sumo arc out of the water it's not even a joke. And a lot of times the comparison is just nonsensical (different audiences, genres and media.)
- Kusaka cant write romance and everytime it shows up its either very annoying or just ruins the characters outright if he focus on it for more than 2 seconds. Stop doing that my guy.
And finally: I like ruby. I wish he were in a better manga.
I feel like the dark/violent stuff is carried on entirely from people always seeing the panels of charmeleon cutting arbok in half this aint your mama's pokemon!!!!!!! stuff and just extrapolating from there because that stuff tends to fall off fast when you burn through the arcs lol
In general I wonder how much general "popular fandom consciousness" opinions about Adventures are like that, hedged in those first couple generations of manga.
DP arc was great. The main trio just meshes too well together.
Whenever I read "When you think of Pokémon..." I was like:
Bingo.
It was one scene in Lavender Town of all places. People need to get over it. By now, it's about as "Dark and Violent" as Legends: Arceus because sometimes them kids get hands put on them. It's not usually more than just getting grabbed by the collar, so there's that too.
This. The manga always adapts EVERYTHING related to the games one way or another and then adds its spin to it. This is also why the remake arcs tend to be bangers, they got more creative freedom.
The difference is that now they got more stuff to weave in, most of it bad because the games' stories suck.
Also, all this RS arc slander is suspect tbh. Besides the obvious problem at the end, the arc was very well done and portrayed the conflict involving Team Magma and Team Aqua in an interesting way.
DP arc was great. The main trio just meshes too well together.
Whenever I read "When you think of Pokémon..." I was like:
LOVE the characters, don't get me wrong, the arc itself is just a bit too slow for me to enjoy going back to it.
I have many feelings about RS. It's a love-hate relationship
Hareta's manga is better than Adventures/SPE DP manga 
As for what I remember for RS...
RS Manga marked the beginning of humans hyper prioritized over Pokemon. Sapphire's weird savagery (no not meme callousness, I mean feral) got dropped extremely quickly (admittedly it was weird), and she pretty much gets no development afterwards. Ruby on the flip is fairly interesting in NOT being likeable unlike most game based protags, and the reasoning on him hating to battle was fine.
Wally is interesting, he got respirators to aid his asthma after recuperating, and his purpose on finding Rayquaza showed his skill. Though it's weird he's given more dev than May
I like that the writer had bias for Team Aqua. Having him control media coverage to doubly screw Team Magma was great, and surprisingly well thought out. It was also nice seeing the reporters be the ones to stop the corruption, instead of the kid protags
Didn't care too much for Magma's Tabitha and Courtney, though the latter got some weird shipping going on with Ruby in some fanart
However as I said, the priority on human rep meant Pokemon personality and dev got sidelined. This was even lampshaded by Norman later in his fight with Ruby, on how Swampert was more aware of the danger of the situation despite being dismissed by Ruby. Sadly Swampert was the only mon that arc to have a noted personality besides Feebas and Plusle/Minun, and even that was barely shown outside the beginning when they met, and the Norman fight.
I remember Werster saying the anime focuses a lot more on representing the Pokemon compared to Adventures, and I have to agree. After Gen 3, Adventures kind of stopped caring, while the anime still at least tries to hype and individualize mons
RS's attempt of having Celebi for Mirage Island was lame, and "them being away from everyone for 21 days" after the Kyogre/Groudon showdown is absurd. This also is kind of shows another issue Adventures had: it really shouldn't have piled on everything to be in the same continuity. It made remakes even weirder to adapt, and the roster bloat got really bad later
I enjoyed it, but it really should've been the end. FRLG's arc I didn't even finish and got bored by despite Deoxys
As for what I remember for RS...
RS Manga marked the beginning of humans hyper prioritized over Pokemon. Sapphire's weird savagery (no not meme callousness, I mean feral) got dropped extremely quickly (admittedly it was weird), and she pretty much gets no development afterwards. Ruby on the flip is fairly interesting in NOT being likeable unlike most game based protags, and the reasoning on him hating to battle was fine.
Wally is interesting, he got respirators to aid his asthma after recuperating, and his purpose on finding Rayquaza showed his skill. Though it's weird he's given more dev than May
I like that the writer had bias for Team Aqua. Having him control media coverage to doubly screw Team Magma was great, and surprisingly well thought out. It was also nice seeing the reporters be the ones to stop the corruption, instead of the kid protags
Didn't care too much for Magma's Tabitha and Courtney, though the latter got some weird shipping going on with Ruby in some fanart
However as I said, the priority on human rep meant Pokemon personality and dev got sidelined. This was even lampshaded by Norman later in his fight with Ruby, on how Swampert was more aware of the danger of the situation despite being dismissed by Ruby. Sadly Swampert was the only mon that arc to have a noted personality besides Feebas and Plusle/Minun, and even that was barely shown outside the beginning when they met, and the Norman fight.
I remember Werster saying the anime focuses a lot more on representing the Pokemon compared to Adventures, and I have to agree. After Gen 3, Adventures kind of stopped caring, while the anime still at least tries to hype and individualize mons
RS's attempt of having Celebi for Mirage Island was lame, and "them being away from everyone for 21 days" after the Kyogre/Groudon showdown is absurd. This also is kind of shows another issue Adventures had: it really shouldn't have piled on everything to be in the same continuity. It made remakes even weirder to adapt, and the roster bloat got really bad later
I enjoyed it, but it really should've been the end. FRLG's arc I didn't even finish and got bored by despite Deoxys
Tombstoner in my hack is physical, and this Mudkip was special based, so...
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Sorry, but I hated the very ending of the FRLG chapter. The "heroes are turned into stone" part.
And Sird is the worst villain of all official Pokémon media, and part of why I don't like the "villain with mysterious motivations" trope.
I think Sird’s fine. It was interesting to see the infighting between the Rocket admins which also prevented the final segment from being a “boss rush” which is never fun in written form, with the other two admins ending up fighting Sird the story is free to focus on just Giovanni followed by Sird as the final battles rather than all four. I do agree that Red and Yellow turning to stone is weird and unnecessary, surely they could have come up with a better way to get the RBY protags to appear at the end of Emerald than the deus ex machina that is petrification.
Ooh, manga discussion let's go!
- I have this old tierlist I made and most of it still holds up. Although nowdays I'd swap DP with RS, bc the characterization it did for the Sinnoh story is just genius, and I'd also swap ORAS and BW2 (literally trash vs garbage).
- I find it ironic that Sapphire is supposed to specialize in conquering gyms (battles), and Ruby is supposed to be the coordinator, but Brendan seems perfectly skilled in both contests and battles, to the point it could beat a trained (thanks, ORAS...) Salamence and capture a Celebi even with his early team (thanks, ending of RS). It sucks to admit but I don't like what the RS arc turned into later, although it still manages to reach some of the highest highs in Adventures.
- FRLG still holds up as my favorite of the arcs, everyone gets their moment to shine in different ways. Red vs Giovanni 2, Silver revealed as Giovanni's son for the first time ever in any media, Yellow going overdrive, Green getting her parents back, even the ending was a dramatic way to close this (although it raises the question how tf a Darkrai can pertrify people).
- The next arc, Emerald, begins very slow and I can understand people getting impatient specially with how FRLG ended, but Emerald's backstory and development pays off better and the second half, and we get the closest to an avengers endgame moment in the end. Plus, it's the most accurate representation of the Battle Frontier, so cool points for that.
- Sird is such a huge disappointment, not in FRLG/DP tho, but the fact that this villain was built up for two arcs as an evil manuipulator and then she just...dissapears forever is such a disservice. But hey, maybe she can still come back, like the first Deoxys in ORAS, but the excitement is not gonna be the same...
- I may be mean towards Gen 6 and Kalos as a whole but PLEASE give XY arc a chance if you haven't to. I'm pretty disappointed that SM didn't do much to improve the lacking points and the result was just kinda the same story as the games (I love the alola games tho), with two protags with little traits aside from the guy being greedy and the girl being good at everything and anything. SWSH seems to follow this same direction but I like the extra bit of focus Bede gets.
- I have this old tierlist I made and most of it still holds up. Although nowdays I'd swap DP with RS, bc the characterization it did for the Sinnoh story is just genius, and I'd also swap ORAS and BW2 (literally trash vs garbage).
- I find it ironic that Sapphire is supposed to specialize in conquering gyms (battles), and Ruby is supposed to be the coordinator, but Brendan seems perfectly skilled in both contests and battles, to the point it could beat a trained (thanks, ORAS...) Salamence and capture a Celebi even with his early team (thanks, ending of RS). It sucks to admit but I don't like what the RS arc turned into later, although it still manages to reach some of the highest highs in Adventures.
- FRLG still holds up as my favorite of the arcs, everyone gets their moment to shine in different ways. Red vs Giovanni 2, Silver revealed as Giovanni's son for the first time ever in any media, Yellow going overdrive, Green getting her parents back, even the ending was a dramatic way to close this (although it raises the question how tf a Darkrai can pertrify people).
- The next arc, Emerald, begins very slow and I can understand people getting impatient specially with how FRLG ended, but Emerald's backstory and development pays off better and the second half, and we get the closest to an avengers endgame moment in the end. Plus, it's the most accurate representation of the Battle Frontier, so cool points for that.
- Sird is such a huge disappointment, not in FRLG/DP tho, but the fact that this villain was built up for two arcs as an evil manuipulator and then she just...dissapears forever is such a disservice. But hey, maybe she can still come back, like the first Deoxys in ORAS, but the excitement is not gonna be the same...
- I may be mean towards Gen 6 and Kalos as a whole but PLEASE give XY arc a chance if you haven't to. I'm pretty disappointed that SM didn't do much to improve the lacking points and the result was just kinda the same story as the games (I love the alola games tho), with two protags with little traits aside from the guy being greedy and the girl being good at everything and anything. SWSH seems to follow this same direction but I like the extra bit of focus Bede gets.
Oh I mixed up Sird with Carr. Carr makes a pretty good villian (although of course the focus is Giovanni/Deoxys vs. Red/Mewtwo) but I agree that Sird’s role was lacking.
Man, now I wanna read the manga again.
Fellas if your girl...
Wears sci-fi clothes...
Has huge rear...
And name contains 2 and B...
That's not yorha_no._2_type_b
That's Galactic Grunt B-2 from the best Pokemon manga, Pokémon Diamond and Pearl Adventure!
Wears sci-fi clothes...
Has huge rear...
And name contains 2 and B...
That's not yorha_no._2_type_b
That's Galactic Grunt B-2 from the best Pokemon manga, Pokémon Diamond and Pearl Adventure!
This ain't Hareta, so no. Not goat :P>y’all’s doing the mouthtalkerings about the manga
>y’all’s forgetting the most GOATtastic, the GOAT of GOATs, the GOATldy doatldy of all Pokémon manga that were, are, and are to come
>tfw
smh my head
red pulling down his pants and stretching his scrotum up to his waist as well as clefairy taking a fat shit was peak fiction on god>y’all’s doing the mouthtalkerings about the manga
>y’all’s forgetting the most GOATtastic, the GOAT of GOATs, the GOATldy doatldy of all Pokémon manga that were, are, and are to come
>tfw
smh my head
Not sure if cursed or amazing but you get a like
Here's an unpopular opinion: SM is an okay story by RPG standards that stands out more because mainline Pokemon plots in general tend to be weak, and is still bogged down storytelling-wise by franchise tropes and incompetent presentation/QoL implementations that games have known about and/or dealt with since 2001.
Oh hey someone besides me who read this one.Hareta's manga is better than Adventures/SPE DP manga
I read it too, and I really hope
Hareta's manga is better than Adventures/SPE DP manga
is sarcasm