Live Blogs The Great Walk to Masterhood: "Gotta Ketch'um": The Story of Ash

Kaoz2014-04-26 11:17:24

So... Pokémon. About a year ago before Black and White 2 hit the States, I decided I had absolutely nothing better to do than marathon through the anime. Results were mixed, Kanto was a fun nostalgia rush, Johto was filler hell and I didn't remember that. As I was one of those kids who dropped the show when they dropped Misty, Hoenn onward was all new to me.

It was all going fine till Best Wishes Episode 1... but I digress. Long story short as I went through the show, I took notes, made comments, and had a fanmade timeline going, because yeah Comic-Book Time is one thing I get that, but did the narrator have to definitively say that he was still 10? When the audience can clearly see on his desk mementos Ash has gotten on his journey? Still, that's a rant for a later time.

Warnings, The follow posts will continue Enjoyment, Outrage, Swearing, and (worst of all) Personal Opinions and Fan Theories (The Horror!) If any poor soul is prepared to go on I just have one question: Are you a boy... or a girl... Welcome to the World of Pokémon off to Pallet we go. Here's what you're in for.

Evolutions count as seperate pokemon, assuming they evolved after capture. 69/647 out of 649 that Ash has caught/seen +3 Kalos Pokémon (Gogoat, Helioptile, Noivern) missing porygon2 and porygon-z

{pikachu, butterfree, pidgeot, bulbasaur, charizard, squirtle, kingler, primeape, muk, haunter, tauros {x30}, lapras, snorlax, bayleef, quilava, totodile, heracross, noctowl, donphan, larvitar, swellow, sceptile, corphish, torkoal, glaile, ambipom, staraptor, infernape,torterra, buizel, gliscor, gible, unfezant, oshawatt, pignite, snivy, scraggy, leavanny, palpitoad, boldore, krookidile} -1 if you only count aipom and not ambipom which I do, add +2 if you count the raticate and beedrill he had for like half an episode if that which I obviously do not.

1. times ash should have died= 26
2. of battles/badges ash won on technicality or cheating= 6/4
3. of battles/badges ash won fair and square= 206/47 (battles involving Team Rocket are not counted)
4. of battles lost= 52 (battles that are interrupted or uncompleted or that end in a tie are not counted)
5. times ash saved world= 11-15 (depending on the exact definition of world peril/Ash saving it)

Total eps that are "bad" filler and can be cut: 251/800

Total eps that are IMO opinion terrible enough to be non-canon: 5

Level of Canonicity each movie has from high to low, 1st [] definite canon, 2nd pretty much canon, 3rd circumstantial evidence in canon, 4th nothing says it can't be canon, 5th incompatible with canon:

[8,1,10],[4,2,13],[3,7,5,11,6,16],[9,12,15],[14]

Personal Enjoyment Rankings for the movies 1st [] must watch, 2nd good, 3rd poor but watchable, 4th terrible:

[9,8,3,1],[13,5,14,2,11],[12,16,15,10,4],[7,6]

(Posted July 19, 2013)

How this guide/time-line/dissertation/rant thingy/WTFIDK/huge block of text is organized...

1st is an abridged episode guide with all (bad) filler episodes skipped and about where the movies fit in the time-line placed accordingly, for any future viewers.

2nd is the actual time-line of Ash's journey with accompanying episode # and brief summary of what happens, followed by any personal thoughts I had/have when I watched it (note filler episodes are included in this.)

3rd Character-specific bios/rants, 4th Ash's trainer stats for the region, 5th Any final thoughts on eps,movies, whatever I didn't go over yet... I hope at least one person is interested enough to read this, so it doesn't feel like I wasted my time for nothing... Anyway enjoy.

Comments

CaellachTigerEye Since: Dec, 1969

Aug 1st 2014 at 2:42:22 AM

Nope... sorry mate, you blundered there. Big time.

The movie(s) take place in between the Archeops episode BW036 (though it should be BW037), and Luke's introductory episode BW038.

See, this is actually WHEN they were meant to air in the original Japanese debuts of the episodes - with M14, both versions, in the week between those two. Because two episodes were scrapped, all the OTHER episodes got pulled back two weeks, and because of that the movie first debuted right after the first Club Battle arc episode (BW039. THIS is why you're confused, dear boy.

Not only that, but the viewers in Japan had ANOTHER week in which the anime took a break (for Naruto Shippuden to have a double-episode, which was caught up with the Nimbasa Subway 2-parter), which meant that after Part One of the Nimbasa Town 4-part Tournament, they had two weeks of nothing PKMN related before the next 3 episodes aired, week after week.

6 weeks waiting for a single arc to wrap up could not have been fun back in Japan, and the sad thing is that the gap was meant to be just before they met Luke. I can't help but wonder if this is the reason they did stupid sh*t like throwing a Filler episode in the middle of the Unova League - because for some reason, they thought the audience didn't have the attention-span togo for more than 3 episodes without some sort of break

Gah... Stupid earthquake/tsunami for ruining things so much - bad enough you KILLED people, including kids, but then you couple that with braindead writers and... kablamo! Not that the show didn't have problems already in BW (so much wasted potential, even for me), but throwing the blame in the wrong place like I think the writers did (which is why the so-called "World" Junior Cut was such a farce) just makes it worse...

I'm going to go into a corner and cry, before I plot to write fanfiction which makes SOME of this stuff look better than canon made it...