I sorta stopped watching the anime in full after the DP saga ended, because after Ash lost the league again despite all that Elite 4 build-up it proved to me that Ash is a dead character and the writers can't have him win a league making the whole point of the show pointless.
There wasn't any Elite 4 buildup. Or at least, I wouldn't consider meeting the Elite 4 members and Champion buildup. It always seemed more like they were taking advantage of game related character while they were still marketing relevant, as opposed to waiting until years later to introduce all of the Elite 4 members. While Ash was at his best during DP in regards to his skills, he still wasn't capable of posing a serious challenge to the Elite 4, even if he used his older Pokemon. The Elite 4 were always shown as having incredibly skills and Ash could barely scratch them. He'd put up a good fight, but he wouldn't be able to beat them. The idea of Ash winning the Sinnoh League seemed more like a possibility to me because of facing Paul in the final round sounded like a reasonable possibility given the attention their rivalry had over the series.
I also wouldn't say that Ash not winning a league makes the point of the show pointless. The main point is to promote the newest Pokemon and games through the show and in that sense, it covers that point. The show has always been more about the journey, rather than the destination. If anything, Ash turning down the Battle Frontier position at the end of AG should have made that more obvious. He achieved an accomplishment much more impressive than winning a league and could have obtain an honorable position, but he didn't. If they were really interested in giving Ash an ending, they could have made him a Battle Frontier in his home region to create the sense that he had come full circle, but they didn't.
CyberCubed said:
I only did watch about 35 episodes of Best Wishes (random episodes, mostly the important ones) because I couldn't stand what the saga did to Ash regressing him into a rookie again.
XY makes Ash competent again which is nice, but it still doesn't have any of the sense of plot or rivalries that DP had. I feel like people only think XY is good because its coming after BW, but I still don't feel its as strong as the two arcs before that. I do like Clemont and Bonnie and they're loads better than Brock but that's about it. Serena is just here for fanservice waifu material.
XY may not have the rivalries that DP had, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. After how BW handled the rivalries, I think that a series without any major rivals would be good and they have proven that they can make a good series without giving Ash a rival at least. As for the sense of plot, I don't know how much of that DP had twenty-two episodes in. Besides the rivalry with Paul and Dawn's Contest arc, the only other subplot that I remember the series had going on was Hunter J, although it would probably be more accurate that she was a sign of conflict given that she didn't really have a storyline beyond showing up and stealing Pokemon from time to time. All things considered, it's still really early into XY's run, so of course it wouldn't seem as good as AG and DP right now. At this point, I could only say that I like it so far more than BW and that may not last. For all I know, something can happen down the line to make it worst than BW for me, although hopefully that won't happen, so it's still a bit too early to judge the series, at least that much.
I also don't like XY just because it came after BW. Even if it came after DP, I'd still like it. Ash would still have good skills, Clemont and Bonnie would still be really fun and Serena would still be pretty likable with some nice potential. I still wouldn't say that Serena is just there for fanservice waifu material. They don't maker her crush on Ash the only thing about her or that she is completely devoted to him or that she ignores the others in favor of Ash. I think that you're just focusing on the crush angle too much. They recognize that she has a crush, but that isn't the only thing about her and even when they have focused on it before, like when she asked Ash if he remembered her or when she explained why she wanted to find him again, those weren't the main focus of those respective episodes.
Jacob T. Paschal said:
I just watched
Pocket Monster: Best Wishes Episode #69. Goodness, Fuuro is the closest thing we've had a 'villain' gym leader. She lacks regard for the pride of her soldiers and her enemies. She needs an ass-kicking and I'm hoping the competent Satoshi shows up to their battle in Episode #70.
I think that Sabrina would be more along the lines of a villain Gym Leader. Skyla was more of a jerk with a cocky attitude than anything else. Competent Ash rarely shows up in BW unfortunately and I don't think he showed up for that battle. He does make an appearance in the battle against Brycen. That was probably the best Gym battle in BW as it was the closest to a DP quality Gym battle that series got. I think that he disappears again for the rest of the series after that battle though.
mumbo said:
Greninja is so popular - it's in Smash Bros.! - that I think they may fast-track its evolution to that stage this time around. Like, by the end of the year I'd say it'll be a Greninja.
Oh yeah, I forgot about Greninja being in the new Smash Bros. game for a moment. That does make it more likely that Ash's Froakie will evolve, but I doubt that they'll make it evolve that fast. The only starter that they evolved that quickly was Charizard. Every other starter Pokemon that has evolved has taken at least a year to do so and fully evolved starters tend to happen near the tail end of a series.
Jacob T. Paschal said:
Finished
Best Wishes Episode #70. Of course Iwane Masa'aki would come in and do a bunch of aerial battle cuts. It was easy to suspect when Satoshi first used Hatooboo that it would evolve during the gym match, but I'm glad to see he did anywhere.
Wow, Satoshi sure did capture a lot of different
Pokemon during
Best Wishes.
XY has avoided giving him too many up to this point, but I have to wonder how that will change once the series enters into its second and potentially third year?
One thing I got really tired of during the BW Gym battles was how often a Pokemon would evolve at the last minute or learn a new move to give Ash the victory. It was primarily due to how there was no training to justify their evolutions or new moves most of the time. Tranquil barely appeared and was one of his more forgettable Pokemon. Ash did capture a lot of Pokemon during BW. I think that they wanted him to use just Unova Pokemon and Pikachu in the Unova League, so they decided to make him capture a lot of Pokemon to serve as his reserve Pokemon. It wasn't one of the better ideas given that they struggle to balance out the screentime with a full team, so giving him more Pokemon wasn't the best choice. It also didn't help matters that he primarily used Oshawott, Pignite, Scraggy and Krokodile. Most of his other captures were used so infrequently. I doubt that's going to happen in XY though. Given the smaller amount of new Pokemon, I'd expect that he'll catch five or six Pokemon, which would honestly be for the best. Ash's best teams work best when he has a small number of Pokemon. The Pokemon tend to have more personality, some of them develop and they are trained to make their growth justified.
Jacob T. Paschal said:
I've also watched Episode #85. Iwane Masa'aki sure did have a lot of fun providing key
animation for Dogas. He really dug back into the 1990s with the comical faces Dogas would make. I'm glad Homika was used as the eighth gym leader. Her poison Pokemon are treated with quite a bit of gravitas, so much so that she is only using three in her battle with Satoshi. It is also nice to see Episodes #85-86 aired as a one-hour special. It's not often a on-hour special is dedicated to a gym battle.
I remember that match. I think that they made that match a two-parter because they really wanted to glorify Roxie in order to hype up B2/W2. The episode aired about a week before the games were released, so they probably wanted to get kids excited about battling against Roxie, which is primarily the main reason she became the eight Gym for Ash. They also wanted to save Drayden for Iris, even though the anime didn't really establish a connection between the two. He appeared in a flashback battling Iris early on in the series, but he wasn't mentioned again until they got to the Village of Dragons. I didn't mind that much myself, especially when there was no way Ash's Unova Pokemon could take down Drayden's Dragons in a believable way. My probelm was that they hyped up Roxie at the expense of Ash. She is so strong that it took Ash six Pokemon to defeat just three of her Pokemon. That's absolutely terrible, especially for an eighth Gym. All that match showed was how Ash was not ready for the Unova League at all. The fact that Roxie kept giving him handicaps, like having more Pokemon than her and curing Pignite of its Posion, didn't help matters either. Winning because of Pikachu's Static ability kicking in was also pretty cheap. Despite losing the match, Roxie came out looking like the stronger trainer. I think that the battle against Elesa was much worse, if only because Ash relying on just one Pokemon to sweep a Gym battle was incredibly stupid and out of character, but this was still a pretty bad Gym battle.
