so 56 eps are cut (technically the plasma arc is self-contained. If taken out completely 64 eps are cut)
Bare Bones guide for Unova... 4,7,13,18+19,23-25,28,33+34,37-43,47+48,m14,59-61,77,82-87,96+97 (end) (and nothing of value was lost)
Unova 658-799 ...1877 is ash's 16th b-day
Alrighty then, um I hafta put up a disclaimer here, and I may have said this already, but in this case repeating myself is only a measure of full disclosure. Once Gen II had run its course and Johto was finished I dropped out of the fandom entirely. Cut to 7 years later and the Gen II remakes come out, they're totally awesome. I then backtrack and try out Platinum and Coliseum, find congruent results if a small mite lacking. Gen V gets announced, I play it, so fucking great.
So there I was, late summer of '12, 400 or so of them critters caught and the 5th gen sequels still a couple months away and, I thought to myself “Dammit! I want more Pokeymanz!” My buddy Mark suggested I watch the anime, if nothing else it would kill a lot of time (2 ½ months to be exact without really rushing through it) so I did.
To my surprise, I really enjoyed it, and not just the nostalgia trip from the OG either, AG and DP were both great as well. So you can imagine, I was all psyched and ready to start on BW the series that was based on the games that had brought me fully back into the fandom. So I watched “In the Shadow of Zekrom” bw1 and I felt betrayed. I hated it, still do in fact.
True, Unova got more tolerable (barely) as it went on, and there are some extremely epic moments (few and far between), but I'll be perfectly happy when gen VI comes out and I can wash my hands of this entire mess. In a way, one “good” thing came out of bw1, without the ire brought forth by it, this entire document might not exist.
With that said, Let's head out, hopefully with as much negative bias and unnecessary swearing removed as possible. It may be a whole new world we live in, and things might not always be black and white, and sometimes we may not know which way we are supposed to go, but I can tell you I really sincerely could be anywhere but here, maybe on the road to Viridian? (6 music puns, 1 compound sentence.)
day 1777 ash+pikachu arrive in unova, they get fucked up by zekrom, meet trip and SOMEHOW lose to him, a brand-new trainer... this anime has stupid writers. {bw1}
day 1778 they meet iris, ash apparently has contracted amnesia and needs to be reminded on how to catch Pokémon, team rocket is forced by giovanni to leave all their Pokémon behind. {bw2}
day 1779 ash catches a pidove, jessie is revealed to have caught a woobat, team rocket has gained like +100 in wisdom and rolled d20s on their competency checks {still bw2}
day 1780 ash catches oshawatt that's been following him around,a sandile starts stalking him too{bw3}
So...all that stuff happens. Instead of talking about it, let me compliment Best Wishes on the only thing I can see improvement in. It looks nice, really pretty, actual current with this decade kinda sorta, major animation upgrade. Now that that's out of the way, let's start tearing into this horrid piece of {expletives deleted to save time}
Now, there's absolutely no getting around this fact. As I've stated a number of times, Ash is an idiot hero, like 90% of shonen protagonists this comes from his real father Goku, but the writers... they just killed him and I'm getting ahead of myself. The reason I lumped bw1-3 together was in an attempt to cut down on different walls of text. Though at this point consolidation is somewhat pointless.
Still... begin at the beginning, and at said beginning, the writers shoot themselves in the foot. The narrator says point blank, in the original Japanese even, that Mr. Ketchum is still 10 years old. WHAT! Until this point, my fan made time-line notwithstanding, Pokémon obviously ran on comic book time.
(2013) Since I mentioned this thought in the introduction for this whole blog I won't redetail it here, but suffice it to say on Ash Ketchum's desk in the same scene that exposites his supposed age one can spy the soothe bells he won in that tag tournament with Paul, a wooden Teddiursa that May gave him, and what could either be his Orange Islands trophy, or the trophy he got for having that exhibition match with Palmer.
Wait you might say, when I bring up comic books, what about a reboot, a fresh start to the franchise, what if the writers meant to do that instead? I'd reply; say that would make perfect sense if one were to assume that Ash really did set out exactly on his 10th birthday and that after ep80 when Ash leaves the Indigo League he returned home and Pr. Oak was invited by Pr. Juniper to come to Unova instead of by Pr. Ivy in the Orange Islands. That would be a fine idea, except for all the stuff on his desk.
As Ash got all that stuff in Sinnoh (except maybe the trphy) that series happened (also Dawn's obligatory cameo proves it) and the Lily Valley League was filled with cameos of Ash's old teams, which means every episode that aired before this is still canon, which means according to the writers the entirety of the show took place within a year. There is not enough NO in the world for me to hurl outwards, so I'm just going to ignore that revelation, because even if you allow for a breakneck no rest 1ep=1day pace, change his canonical birthday, and remove all filler, there's still no way he'd make it to Unova without at least being 12.
I digress though, I haven't even gotten to the major problem with bw1, that thing with Zekrom and Trip. So, once they arrive Ash is normal, looking at all the cool new stuff when out the fuck of nowhere comes Zekrom who is all like “TASTE MY LIGHTNING AND FEAR!” Only reason I can come up with for why Zekrom did this was because he felt threatened by Pikachu's presence on the continent. All things considered, that makes perfect sense.
They rush to Juniper's get Pikachu checked and find nothing wrong. So Trip pops in, and wants a starter he picks Snivy, guy after my own heart. Then he proceeds to belittle Ash as an idiot from out of the sticks, I retract my previous compliment. Because yeah, Ash isn't exactly bright but he knows a hell of a lot more than you do newbie. Trip then notices the super rare Pikachu that Ash has he wants a fight, they do, and he loses. In this case, “he” means Ash. Again, and I'll be saying this frequently... WHAT!
There is LAZY WRITING which Pokémon has in abundance, there's STUPID WRITING like that crock about his age, and then THERE'S FUCKING HIGH-END BULLSHIT LIKE THIS!!!
Right, took my finger off the ctrl key. <ahem> Apparently Zekrom's preemptive strike did have an effect, it temporarily mind you, broke Pikachu's electrical abilities. That's logical, Pikachu's ability shown throughout Sinnoh was Static and not Lighting Rod after all so he wouldn't have an avenue for absorbing all that power, so he'd be offline for awhile. Yet, it didn't hamper anything else, by the looks of it; it didn't even hurt that much after the fact.
So then a question, with the facts being what they are, is there any conceivable reason outside of authorial mandate that Trip's Snivy was able to dodge Pikachu's Iron Tail or for that matter his Quick Attack? No, no, No, no, No, and yet it happens.
Gary is Ash's rival, this is simple Truth. Paul was Ash's rival up till Ash finally beat some decency into him at the last minute somehow. Trip will never be the rival of Ash Ketchum, as his victories are akin to Ritchie's; only serving to force the plot along, with no weight or depth behind them. It's not that Trip's a bad guy, he's only condescending, which makes him far better than his immediate predecessor as a person. Beyond that however, he's really just a walking talking prop. Get used to that, it's a theme of Best Wishes.
Picking up after that mess, we have bw2, the introduction of STFU Lady and Useless Whiny Baby and I'm not sure which epithet refers to Iris or Axew, perhaps both for equality's sake. Yes, Iris broke the pattern, I don't care or like Ash's new hanger on at all. Oh wait, she's not his new hanger on, because apparently Ash forgot how to use a gosh darn Pokéball and Iris has to tell him... and she has a fucking catchphrase about calling Ash “such a kid” even though she acts pretty fucking childish... and Axew does shit all nothing, sure by the end Piplup was a whiny baby but he wasn't useless, he did things... and its like the writers were like “you know how Misty was an endearing tsundere who knew more about everything next to Ash?” “Let's make a character that gets aggravated at the drop of a hat for no reason and then make our hero forget really obvious crap so he can be told how to do it again”... and fuck all my rage it's going up and up. Apologies if that was incoherent, but I cut that up for time.
(2013) I am aware that Iris's catchphrase is supposed to be hypocritical and funny because of that. I however am not laughing, at all.
In summary this girl isn't really a character. She's a pointless rehash of part of an actual character, whose back story we don't even get until the point where her aggravation has become an innate part of herself and we, or at least I, don't care anymore.
Let's stop now and recall happier times. 4 episodes ago, say about 3 weeks within the story and 5 weeks IRL Ash fought 2 legendairies at the League and beat them into the ground, Pikachu himself taking on one single handedly. What the fuck happened to that? I just want a reason, I'll even take a dumb one
From that tangent, let's examine the other sudden character changes and by that I mean derailments this series has. Namely Team Rocket is back! This time that ain't having any crap from anybody. What, did they get high marks on their remedial villainy tests? Or is it an equilibrium, Ash's intelligence being inversely proportional to TR's threat level?
Not to say I don't like Jessie, James, and Meowth's serious business faces, they're the only thing that saves BW from being taken out back and shot, I just want to point out that, much like Ash's regression, it's out of place. Over the course of 657 episodes, Team Rocket became more and more ineffectual, excusing seldom flashes of brilliance, and now all of a sudden they're back to being top cats of the organization?! Just because Giovanni appeared to believe their lying mission reports and expressed confidence in them? Are we then to conclude that TR's failures came about solely because of a lack of job related self-esteem?
In reference to my Monarch comment on dp35, I'm sad to say that now Team Rocket is playing to the other extreme. They aren't funny anymore. Although I will never understand what the writers did to our hero, I can understand the agenda as it concerns the trio. Revitalize them as viable threats for a new status quo OK I can get behind that, but did you have to cut out all the jokes? Being funny is an integral part of who Jessie, James, and Meowth are. The newest motto is pretty cool though, good job on that.
Continuing along that line, what kind of contrived damned fuckery is that huh? Kicking Wobbufett out of the anime, who along with Yanmega and Seviper, actually are native to and found in Unova! Seriously, you can find them in-game on the east side once you beat the main story! Adding on to that, both Carnivine and Mr. Mime (Jr.) are added retroactively to the ecosystem circa Black and White 2, So the only one allowed to go is Meowth, the complete foreigner. Man, Matori's sort of stupid, I think Giovanni should look into hiring a new secretary.
Ash's ninja manuever for this series opening is to jump straight up out of a tree and grab on to TR's balloon to rescue Pikachu. Oh and Oshawatt, who has been following Ash from Juniper's lab helps out and joins the team, another saving grace from Best Wishes, Oshy is hilarious. He tries way too hard to be suave and cool. However, the writers felt at the last minute that Ash needed to be stalked more, before adding on to his roster again, so they have “inferior Squirtle-Kamina 2.0” or, “really dumb sunglasses for no reason” Sandile, start where Oshy left off.
Ash also got his new bird, what else would you expect? Whatever the distant future new region is called, when Ash gets another avian there, Pidgeot needs to come back and then Ash can have a whole team of 6 birds to make a ferocious flock, because why not. Speaking of birds Ash, along with that sandile and his friends, rescue some Pokémon from boiling to death in a lake (long story) some of those Pokémon were more pidoves, why the heck didn't they just fly away?
(2013) August 1st 2012-October 23 2012 That's how long it took to catch up with the then curren bw99, then I kept up with it to the League and dropped it afterwards. So once the blog gets to bw108 I'll actually be writing new posts instead of copying them.
I won't mince words, I sincerely hate Best Wishes as whole even though it does have a few redeeming qualities. So glad Kalos will be starting up in a couple weeks. Anyway, just felt like I should give everyone a fair though obvious warning. I can't really explain my fervent distaste. My fan theory about Ash's real skill aside, I'm well aware of the as Strong as They Need to Be and the power limiters Pikachu (and presumably the rest of his team) get at the end/beginning of a series. The way they did it here though, ugh! You think it's because I went through 13 some odd years of a show that quickly and actually saw some slow, really slow to be sure, but still definite character development that was destroyed instead of the snails crawl to nowhere it would have been if I had never dropped out of viewing?
Next time... Everything sucks and it's terrible, and it's stupid and it won't get better for quite some time... and Light Yagami is not-Brock eps 4-10
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