I feel that while pokémon themselves weren't the protagonists of BWs story, that they had an important function in the plot because of team plasma/N. It's a more human centric story because it's about humans ideals and their place in the world alongside pokémon, so they need to be more featured. You're right about dppt though lolBW's stories
In large part I think this is also down to how BW onwards the arcs have stuck so much more rigidly to the game story. There simply hasn't been the room for stuff to develop in the way the older chapters did. The RBGY and GSC arcs in particular meandered a lot, with loads of little side-stories and semi-standalone chapters akin to filler episodes in anime - you'd get an issue that was devoted to capturing a particular Pokemon, or the training/evolution of an existing team member. This happens much less in the later arcs. I'm reading XY atm and it's so tightly constrained; nearly every single thing that happens serves the central arc, and there's barely any time to breathe. BW is a bit better for this but it's where this trend started.I feel that while pokémon themselves weren't the protagonists of BWs story, that they had an important function in the plot because of team plasma/N. It's a more human centric story because it's about humans ideals and their place in the world alongside pokémon, so they need to be more featured. You're right about dppt though lol
I agree this is a big flaw abt more recent pokespe arcs. The older ones weren't that great, it's a simple shounen manga etc etc but the pokemon of the protags were as much of characters are the protags themselves. Red's entire team, Greens charizard, blue's jiggly & ditty, yellows entire team again, Gold's aibo/exbo/sunbo, silvers sneasel & murkrow, crys mega and archy. They all had at least one pokémon that was involved in their character development and story.
Things start falling a bit with rse imo. While ruby and emerald were given teams that have a lot of thought put into them, sapphire got the short end of the stick just like her. Her pokemon were less developed and often only had one or two showcases in battles, but not much else. They still get decent stuff, but her starter Toro for example falls really flat compared to Ruby's zuzu and emerald's sceptile.
By dppt, the pokémon slowly became more of backgrounds/tools. Each dexholder was assigned one partner pokémon that would be more present in the arc (Pearl with Chatler, dia with Lax, Platinum with Piplup). But the rest of their teams feel more like random catches that they get for battling (Pearl literally grabs 3 random mons to fill his team in the middle of the battle and they're Never addressed or developed).
BW is. weird. Black harks back to the older arcs better development of his pokemon, but in compensation white sets the standard of the ENTIRE team being nothing more than means to an end. As soon as she loses her tepig, not a single mon in her team has any kind of charm, development or spotlight. And when she gets gigi back, we don't even get to see any character growth from her.
BW2 is weird because both dexholders basicially only have One mon and everything else is more so just legendaries/random borrows, so like, I guess their entire team is developed? Considering whi-two has One mon in foongy, and Lack-two has just dewott and then 3 legendaries for the plot.
After XY it's over. While the mons will sometimes be important in a backstory, sometimes a plot point, 99% of the time they will lose all relevance and the arcs become just about the dexholder themselves. All they're there for is the pokemon battles, or to fit a certain theming (Y has a fletchinder because shes a sky battle person. X has a bunch of mega mons because hes the mega evolution guy. Sun has a litten and a meowth because hes got a cat face, Moon has a bunch of poison mons because shes a chemist etc). It is such a pokemon-less pokemon product that it's kinda astounding
The sadder thing, Norman in Adventures notes how Ruby wasn't paying attention to his mons during their big fight
It was a warning
I like how everybody refers to Blake and Whitley by their original names for how unbelievably absurd they areLack-Two has a blade-themed team btw
Casey and Henry are so jarring. Now we are using real names for main characters!? Goddamnit, I hate the English version.Im not calling him Blake that idiot is lack-two forever. Same with casey and henry, thats schilly and soudo god bless
"Pok" and "Leg"? Or perhaps just two random names starting with P and L. Peter and Laura. Percival and Liliana. Porush and Linda. Prakash and LaWanda.I like how everybody refers to Blake and Whitley by their original names for how unbelievably absurd they are
Imagine if they did a PLA arc lmao
Well, only where we don't have colours. "Sword" and "Shield" would be really jarring first names even by the standards of the manga imo.Casey and Henry are so jarring. Now we are using real names for main characters!? Goddamnit, I hate the English version.
I mean, not to entirely disagree but in the RS chapter I did think that the deaths themselves were dark. Like, to me the impact of that moment was something I recall being really shocked by, just because it felt like a massively brutal upping of the stakes compared to the RBY and GSC chapters.---
While we are talking about Pokémon Adventures, I wish people stop calling the manga dark, because it made me expect more deaths in the narrative.
I get it's Pokémon and it should still be family-friendly and blah blah blah, so clearly, I must be in a minority for believing the manga should have a few more permanent deaths here and there. Not necessarily in every arc, but maybe once in a while.
And yes, I did write "permanent deaths". Because two things that really bother me in Adventures are:
The lack of deaths first. No really, who actually died in the manga? All I could think of are Archie, Maxie, Malva, and Orm, a member of Team Rocket appearing in the FRLG arc. I thought of Lysandre at the end of the XY arc, but apparently he survived with a broken spine.
- The lack of deaths even among villains.
- Deaths being undone.
In short, most villains actually survived. Some of them did get properly defeated, but several others didn't. I'm still baffled at Will and Karen joining the Johto Elite Four in the HGSS arc, for example.
For the second point, the lack of permanent death, the Ruby and Sapphire arc's finale immediately comes to mind:
But the Archie and Maxie situation in the ORAS arc actually, genuinely pissed me off.Hoenn is badly damaged by a fight between two kaijus? Several named characters died on-screen?
Celebi goes brrr. We all hate it, the classic reset button ending that was not properly foreshadowed at all.
Seriously, in the Emerald arc, it is established that Archie's and Maxie's bodies are falling apart, so they were offered a magical suit of armor by a character whose mere existence piss me off to this day. Anyway, Archie kills Maxie and takes the armor. So Maxie is dead.
Then, at the end of the Emerald arc, Archie loses his armor and couldn't suit up again before disappearing into light. So Archie is also dead.
View attachment 571551AND YET FOR SOME REASON THEY ARE STILL ALIVE SEVERAL ARCS LATER!?!? And there's LITERALLY ZERO EXPLANATION FOR NOW THEY FUCKING SURVIVED!??!§? AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!
KalosianPorygon is having technical difficulties. Please stand by.
This could be done with a frenzied (Origin Forme) Dialga either sending the DPPt trio to the past or sending the PLA cast to the present."Pok" and "Leg"? Or perhaps just two random names starting with P and L. Peter and Laura. Percival and Liliana. Porush and Linda. Prakash and LaWanda.
I'll stop now. Realistically if there'd been a PLA arc I imagine it'd have been Diamond and Platinum in Rei and Akari's outfits ala Crys/Lyra in the HGSS chapter (and Pearl probably shoehorned in somewhere too)
Hey I think there are some deaths in movies' manga like the strange dude in the zoroark movie that falls from a High place.Casey and Henry are so jarring. Now we are using real names for main characters!? Goddamnit, I hate the English version.
---
While we are talking about Pokémon Adventures, I wish people stop calling the manga dark, because it made me expect more deaths in the narrative.
I get it's Pokémon and it should still be family-friendly and blah blah blah, so clearly, I must be in a minority for believing the manga should have a few more permanent deaths here and there. Not necessarily in every arc, but maybe once in a while.
And yes, I did write "permanent deaths". Because two things that really bother me in Adventures are:
The lack of deaths first. No really, who actually died in the manga? All I could think of are Archie, Maxie, Malva, and Orm, a member of Team Rocket appearing in the FRLG arc. I thought of Lysandre at the end of the XY arc, but apparently he survived with a broken spine.
- The lack of deaths even among villains.
- Deaths being undone.
In short, most villains actually survived. Some of them did get properly defeated, but several others didn't. I'm still baffled at Will and Karen joining the Johto Elite Four in the HGSS arc, for example.
For the second point, the lack of permanent death, the Ruby and Sapphire arc's finale immediately comes to mind:
But the Archie and Maxie situation in the ORAS arc actually, genuinely pissed me off.Hoenn is badly damaged by a fight between two kaijus? Several named characters died on-screen?
Celebi goes brrr. We all hate it, the classic reset button ending that was not properly foreshadowed at all.
Seriously, in the Emerald arc, it is established that Archie's and Maxie's bodies are falling apart, so they were offered a magical suit of armor by a character whose mere existence piss me off to this day. Anyway, Archie kills Maxie and takes the armor. So Maxie is dead.
Then, at the end of the Emerald arc, Archie loses his armor and couldn't suit up again before disappearing into light. So Archie is also dead.
View attachment 571551AND YET FOR SOME REASON THEY ARE STILL ALIVE SEVERAL ARCS LATER!?!? And there's LITERALLY ZERO EXPLANATION FOR NOW THEY FUCKING SURVIVED!??!§? AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!
KalosianPorygon is having technical difficulties. Please stand by.
I was talking about the Pokémon Adventures manga specifically. When people say "the manga", they are talking about Pokémon Adventures.Hey I think there are some deaths in movies' manga like the strange dude in the zoroark movie that falls from a High place.
Bro evolved crobat only to Have flavour of having évolution of the pokemon the grunts Have.Even though he notably evolved his Crobat
Still haven't finished FRLG cuz by then I got bored and realized remakes would tire me, but I agree about the horrid shafting of Sapphire, as much as I liked seeing Ruby actually growMy love hate relationship for the rs arc is immense and im not even gonna touch my hate hate relationship with oras but my entire unpopular opinion is that the relationship between ruby n sapphire pretty much set rs to be doomed from the start, because kusaka cannot write romance and he is really bad with Writing Women. Also I think sapphire should have been the main character and im saying this as like ruby fan number one in the world
Its so bad. its genuinely so bad she gets NOTHING all she does is basic barebones protag stuff like 3 times, no character development and then gets shoved in the stupid aircar lol.It was so numbingly obvious they didn't know what to do with her. She randomly is feral first chapter, then drops that immediately and does basic campaign stuff. Most you have is her helping Wattson, then after Ruby's entire char arc she's back to help stop big bad without much of her own personal struggle
It hurts more too cuz the fucking NPCs get development as they become aware of Team Aqua's manipulation of media (which speaking of, love that Archie was actually competent). Even Wally gets more stuff, directly having his sickness addressed (though from what I heard Em drops him hard for an OC...)
Boy howdy a Pokémon series not having time to develop itself properly and has to rush to keep up a schedule, where have I seen that before? /sIn large part I think this is also down to how BW onwards the arcs have stuck so much more rigidly to the game story. There simply hasn't been the room for stuff to develop in the way the older chapters did. The RBGY and GSC arcs in particular meandered a lot, with loads of little side-stories and semi-standalone chapters akin to filler episodes in anime - you'd get an issue that was devoted to capturing a particular Pokemon, or the training/evolution of an existing team member. This happens much less in the later arcs. I'm reading XY atm and it's so tightly constrained; nearly every single thing that happens serves the central arc, and there's barely any time to breathe. BW is a bit better for this but it's where this trend started.
Not to mention that in the older chapters captures tended to take more time and effort, but there's an unfortunate tendency in the later arcs for characters to obtain Pokemon very quickly and effortlessly. Y decides she needs a Pokemon capable of Mega Evolving: boom, she finds and captures an Absol. Pearl gets told "fill up your team" by Wake, and quickly captures three Pokemon. The Plusle and Minun Ruby and Sapphire partner with are recurring characters; contrast that to how, in the ORAS chapter, Sapphire has already caught a Kirlia and it evolves into Gallade basically straight away. And then is barely used. This did happen in the older chapters too, but as noted they generally took a lot more time to flesh out at least some team members. Emerald very awkwardly gets three new team members at once, but we'd spent a lot of time with his original three before that (and let's be real his new three were only ever there to be paired with other dex holders' team members and make Gen IV babies).
Lack-Two has a blade-themed team btw (he has Kabutops, Gliscor, and Escavalier in addition to his others, and they all have a Serious nature). But yeah, they're barely fleshed out and are only relevant inasmuch as they contribute to a theme.
A couple? It was more like 10, the B2W2 chapter only finished a year or two ago.Boy howdy a Pokémon series not having time to develop itself properly and has to rush to keep up a schedule, where have I seen that before? /s
Joking aside, I’m guessing that the people who work on the manga just don’t have time to work in each individual arc like they used to because of time and any other issues. Like didn’t the Gen 5 manga got put in limbo for a couple years, I remember that being a thing that happened.
I think that's one of those things that people love in fangames or similar, but specifically because it's not going to be a thing in any "mainline" titles and probably not be a thing in spinoffs. A hack* having you playthrough as a Magma Grunt/Silver/N/etc could be really interesting, and having an actual char for the NPCs to interact with would be nice. And I played through an Emerald Nuzlocke using codes to steal pokemon and had a blast. But GF is married(with good reason) to the idea of the "blank slate protagonist", and making the player evil just won't happen EVER in their child-friendly series. So it's safe to speculate about how fun it would be, without ever risking GF actually making it and it sucks.I'm also going to jump back in with another unpopular opinion: I have very little appetite for a game in which the main character is a member of Team Rocket or any other villainous team (former or otherwise).
As someone whose only knowledge of Gen 5 is second hand, Team Plasma seems like the one team actually malicious team (as in not anything from Team Skull onward) where having the player be a (former?) grunt would actually work really well. Team Rocket was the mafia, Team Aqua and Magma were environmental terrorists, Team Galactic was like a doomsday cult or something, and Team Flare were fascists, but Team Plasma had a benevolent front so convincing that half the grunts genuinely believed in it and continued to pursue that goal even after Ghetsis fell in BW1. Having the player be a member of Old Team Plasma circa BW2 doesn't seem that unworkable.And while Team Rocket has no real ideology beyond "steal Pokemon for profit" all the other teams are too idealogical for it to feel natural that they'd left it: having the player be an ex-Team Aqua or Team Plasma grunt wouldn't work at all
Now, I think something we could do with seeing more is the main character having a bit of a backstory, especially when, as in Black and White, the characters are meant to be a little older. Hilbert and Hilda are designed to look around 17: did they really never once catch a Pokemon before then? They could have studied at the local trainer's school, they could work on a farm or ranch with Pokemon on it, they could even be friends of the local gym leader and be learning from them.
You could have a protagonist who isn't necessarily ex-Team Plasma, but at least supported their stated goals strongly enough that they released their Pokemon. The game begins as any other Pokemon game does, but instead of receiving their first Pokemon, they're starting again as a trainer. The backstory doesn't have to be fleshed out much more than that, but even with scant detail I think it could be an emotionally compelling foundation for a Pokemon story. It also basically lets the PC be any age you like, which is a nice bonus.As someone whose only knowledge of Gen 5 is second hand, Team Plasma seems like the one team actually malicious team (as in not anything from Team Skull onward) where having the player be a (former?) grunt would actually work really well. Team Rocket was the mafia, Team Aqua and Magma were environmental terrorists, Team Galactic was like a doomsday cult or something, and Team Flare were fascists, but Team Plasma had a benevolent front so convincing that half the grunts genuinely believed in it and continued to pursue that goal even after Ghetsis fell in BW1. Having the player be a member of Old Team Plasma circa BW2 doesn't seem that unworkable.
Not me because those names are garbage.I like how everybody refers to Blake and Whitley by their original names for how unbelievably absurd they are