YMMV / Pokémon the Series: Sun & Moon

• Accidental Aesop: Given that Ash finally winning a league, and would later go on to become the strongest champion in the anime all happened to start from the series he attends school, many have (somewhat jokingly) suggested that the overall Aesop of Sun and Moon is to stay in school if you want to succeed.
• Accidental Innuendo: Episode 8 ("Lillie's Egg-xhilirating Challenge") has Ash asking Lillie if she wants to do some "practicing." He's talking about touching Pokémon, but Lillie's tone of voice and the look on her face afterwards make it look like she thought Ash was suggesting something completely different.
  Ash: Hey, Lillie!
  Lillie: Hm?
  Ash: How about doing some practicing?
  Lillie: Do you mean what I think you mean?
  Ash: Yeah! Let's practice touching Pokémon!
  Lillie: (mouth wide open) Uh...
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Is Faba acting as The Atoner out of genuine shame for his actions and a desire to better himself, after having an offscreen Heel Realization? Or is he only using Crocodile Tears because he’s desperate to keep his job in any form and avoid prison time? His general goofier and friendlier demeanor suggest the former, even if he still retains some of his old habits^note such as using hypnosis to cheat in the Alola League, though it was to try and win an exhibition match with his idol The Masked Royal, and foul play in a sporting competition is much less egregious than wiping one's memories to keep damning secrets under wraps., and his inventions post-Aether arc were designed to be helpful to those who once opposed him. He's slowly shown to be regaining ground within the Foundation as the series progresses, proving that Lusamine trusts him.
• Arc Fatigue: The trials. With huge gaps in between each of Ash's trials (albeit to deal with other plot points), it makes what most consider the main plot feel relegated to C-Plot status. ^note There is a 38-episode gap between Ash's grand trial with Olivia and his first attempt at a grand trial with Nanu, which rivals some of the gaps between Ash's Gym battles in Sinnoh. It's a bit more glaring than in prior series since Ash isn't Walking the Earth and normally stays put on Melemele Island where he attends school (with occasional visits to Akala). Basically, Ash made progress in the island challenge when the writers felt like they showcased the newest game plot point and tie-in long enough.
• Ass Pull:
  • Ash's decoy strategy with Rowlet was viewed by many as outright cheating especially given how it somehow worked while inside Venusaur's flower.
  • Also from the Alola League, Hau is declared winner of his battle against Ash, but once Hala discovers Rowlet was only sleeping and not fainted he persuades the ref to overturn the ruling. This runs counter to every prior series which indicated all ref calls were final and non-negotiable. Furthermore, Rowlet taking a nap could be seen as him not taking the match seriously and choosing to forfeit the match, like Charizard did during the Indigo League. So Ash should’ve lost the match on two counts, yet he’s given the opportunity to wake up Rowlet and turn the battle around.
• Base-Breaking Character: Shares a page with the rest of the franchise.
• Broken Base: See here.
• Contested Sequel: Perhaps the biggest case of this in the anime. Fans either praise it for breaking from a stale formula, having a much more expressive art style, animation, and cast, its lighthearted and comedic tone and its focus on slice of life, or dislike it for being directionless and poorly paced, several old and new characters being mishandled or poorly represented, the downgrade in battle presentation, and seemingly putting more focus on incidental stuff than what should be the main plot. There's little middle ground to be found.
• Creepy Awesome: Mimikyu in the anime runs off its sheer hatred and contempt of Pikachu because of how much love he gets. Fans enjoy this for being somewhat of a Take That! to the species while being highly disturbing, especially the animation of the Disguise ability.
• Critical Backlash: When the anime trailer was first shown, there was a massive Tainted by the Preview among the fanbase due to several factors such as the overly "gag show"-ish nature, Ash's apparently hideous face, the removal of Serena, the much more "rounded" animation style, Ash's apparently hideous face, the fallout and resentment against the anime due to the Kalos league, the school setting, and Ash's apparently hideous face. When the first episode was released, many fans retracted their opinion as while Ash did become wackier, he still was competent. Despite this, the show was still very controversial due to the other reasons listed above.
• Designated Monkey: Ash in this series is seen as this by some people. While past series did give him some Butt-Monkey qualities, the comedic and slapstick tone of Alola, as well as Ash's Fish out of Water status, means that he ends up receiving far more comedic abuse than even his co-protagonists, such as in episodes like "Treasure Hunt, Akala Style" (where his Stoutland yanked down his pants and repeatedly licked him at every opportunity while the others were all serious) or "Real Life...Inquire Within" (where Ash is forced to crossdress while Kiawe and Sophocles are not for seemingly no reason other than humor, though he is at least given proper clothing just a few moments later). Given that Ash is still the usual Nice Guy he's always been for the most part in SM and rarely deserves such punishment, treating him like a punching bag feels undeserved for a part of the audience. This does get downplayed by Ultra Legends where Ash screws up less often and the slapstick is more indiscriminate, and Ash also gets the ultimate bone throw of winning the Alola league, while several of the other students are rather quickly eliminated.
• Memetic Badass:
  • Bewear was already a powerful Pokémon upon its debut in the games, being able to destroy anything in its path by accident, but its anime counterpart ramps this up to the point where it can leap several bounds into the air and on top of buildings, and even run so fast that it can tread water^note For the record, Bewear can't even learn Surf. Bewear even manages to top this feat by running on water for at least three days without any sign of exhaustion, from Kanto to Alola. When finally forced to battle, it fought toe-to-toe with not one but three Ultra Beasts, managing to keep a stalemate with Buzzwole, and outright destroying Pheromosa. The one and only time it ever got decisively overpowered was against Guzzlord, and even then was the only character shown able to keep pace with it individually without Z-Moves.
  • After its heavily controversial Bait-and-Switch victory against Hau, fans of Sun and Moon began to hype up Ash's Rowlet as a godlike figure that literally sleeps on its opponents to assert its dominance.
  • Ash's Lycanroc gets a lot of hype for being the Pokémon that finally allowed Ash to win a Pokémon League based on the games, particularly in comparison to Greninja.
  • Due to Ash winning the Pokémon League for the first time, it is common for SM fans to portray this series' Ash as the most badass incarnation yet, especially when compared to XY Ash or even DP Ash. The fact that his design is more childish, the League's standards were much lower compared to previous Leagues and in retrospect make him the first ever League Champion of a region by default.^note Due to no previous League Champion having been recorded and registered in Alolan History and it being the first ever Alolan Pokémon League did nothing but enhance the reputation.
• Memetic Psychopath: Mimikyu, particularly since Meowth is constantly terrified of what it's saying and unwilling to translate it for anyone since he finds it too disturbing to repeat.
• Moral Event Horizon: Viren proves himself to be an irredeemable scumbag when he orders his Electivire to launch a Thunder attack on Mimo, Kiawe's little sister, for the family protesting against turning their ranch into a resort hotel.
• Nausea Fuel: For some, many of the odd faces◊ made by Ash and co. This is especially evident with a shot of Ash screaming with his mouth wide open, which among other things, shows his uvula screaming alongside him!.
• Older Than They Think: There is an early episode where Team Rocket defeats both Pikachu and Rowlet, leaving Ash with no usable Pokémon at the time. Many fans said this was the first time this happened, but it wasn't. It actually happened back in Pokémon the Series: Black & White, where Ash needed Oshawott, then under Juniper's ownership, to save him and Pikachu from Team Rocket.
• Preemptive Shipping: Due to a combination of factors (including several trailer scenes emphasizing Lillie, Lana, and Mallow together, the previous series own use of the trope, and non fans of Ash and Serena trolling the Ash and Serena fans), a tendency to ship Ash with all three of the girls became a prominent pre series meme. After the series started airing this died down as each individual girl was focused more on their own ships with Ash, becoming somewhat popular but not nearly as much as other ships with Ash such as with Misty and Serena. The earlier multi ship didn't go away completely, but it was never as prominent as it was in jokes prior to the series airing.
• Signature Series Arc: Both the Nebby arc, which served as a truncated but effective adaptation of the Sun & Moon games' plot, and the Alola League for being the League tournament that Ash finally won, to say nothing of the highly praised final battle between him and Kukui.
• Strangled by the Red String: Kukui and Burnet fall under this for some fans: while in the games and Pokémon Adventures they're a married couple from the beginning, the anime opted to show them fall in love and get married during the show starting with Burnet's introduction during the Aether Foundation arc. However, they only shared four to five significant scenes that could be classified as romantic throughout the arc before the final episode of it features their wedding after very few hints toward it. For some, this comes across as them ending up together because canon dictated they should.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: See here.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: See here.
• Unexpected Character:
  • After both having been absent from the show for years and their exclusion from the 20th movie, very few (if any) fans were expecting Brock and Misty to make a guest appearance. Not that anyone complained, of course.
  • Forget Brock and Misty. Jigglypuff (yes, that Jigglypuff), who has been absent from the anime for nearly fifteen years, also reappeared a few times.
  • Few were expecting the main cast to capture Mythical Pokemon this series, though Mallow's Shaymin sticks out as the most random due to being a Generation IV Pokemon with no marketing ties to Gen VII.

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