Pokémon anime

WHAT

SCREW FRIDGE LOGIC, I found that scene so touching. I cried to it!

edited 23rd Jun '09 12:01:16 PM by GlennMagusHarvey

Well when you're basically playing out the anime on your gameboy at the same time and there's no benefit at all to letting your Pokemon go, Ash's decision...kinda seems stupid. I know, weird, cross-media fridge logic, but it still made me mad.

I cried over it several times via proxy, you could say.

Actually, I felt the show made more sense, and the game was unsustainable, what with people catching all the Pokémon in the world and never releasing them and such.

Edit: Fawriel, that song isn't even used. On the other hand, the show used a partial karaoke version of the theme song for the Bye Bye Butterfree scene and used a special A major version of The Time Has Come for the Pikachu's Goodbye scene.

edited 23rd Jun '09 1:36:26 PM by GlennMagusHarvey

Well that's the thing; I wasn't thinking about it in terms of what "everybody" was doing, I was thinking about it in terms of what I was doing as a player, because that's what the game gave me. It was like "Here, go out and catch these 150 pokemon, and watch this guy on TV try and do the same" And drawing comparisons between my decisions and Ash's were inevitable. But I guess that's what happens when you get into a craze right as you're growing out of its target audience.

edited 23rd Jun '09 12:12:20 PM by THX1138

I know I kept an unevolved pikachu with me out of "tradition", despite my playing blue version.

I ended up getting pretty attached to my Venusaur. Never put him in a box and always had him in my team.

I built a team on the following constraints:

• must contain final evolution of starter (venusaur)
• must contain an unevolved pikachu
• must have all five HM skills
• must have a way to deal with most types

I had:

• fearow: had FLY and dealt with grass, bug, flying, and ground-attack-using enemies.
• graveler: had STRENGTH and dealt with normal, fire, flying, electric, rock, poison, and (sometimes) ice. and dragons too, since it made hyper beam do half damage, and could super-effect dragonite with rock throw. General purpose for defensive tanking, since it resists lots of types. Not yet evolved to golem due to lack of chance to trade it with anyone.
• pikachu: dealt with water and flying enemies.
• gyarados: had SURF, and dealt with rock, ground, and fire enemies.
• kadabra: had FLASH, and dealt with poison and fighting, and defensively against psychics. General-purpose for killing things dead quickly. Not yet evolved to alakazam due to lack of chance to trade it with anyone.
• venusaur: evolved from starter bulbasaur, had CUT, and dealt with water (including water/ice), rock, and ground enemies. Also my highest leveled pokémon.

Quite unfortunately, I had no good ways to deal with psychic, ice, and dragon types. Oh well. I still muscled my way through Lorelei and Lance. (I hate Lorelei's jynx for a reason.)

edited 23rd Jun '09 2:05:19 PM by GlennMagusHarvey

Hm, maybe I should look at my Blue version again...before I got my Wii I was replaying that.

Charizard (Flame): Slash, Earthquake, Ember, Swords Dance

Nidoking (Doku): Ice Beam, EQ, Strength, Surf

Hypno (Pendulum): Headbutt, Hypnosis, Psychic, Confusion

Jolteon (Sparkz): Swift, Thunder Wave, Thunderbolt, Quick Attack

Dodrio (Fleetfoot): Drill Peck, Growl, Fly, Fury Attack

Victreebel: Razor Leaf, Growth, Acid, Sleep Powder...I know, he doesn't have a nickname.

My Jolteon and Hypno may have been inspired from my Fire Red team...I believe I was getting everyone properly leveled for the Elite 4 using the Missingno glitch, as they're level 42 (and we all know the Kanto Elite had the highest levels until DP).

I don't want to be the Serious Business guy, but there's a pokemon parties thread in the Video Game subforum. Also, let me ask about the anime...

Whatever happened to Gary? I heard he was back to being a trainer and more badass than ever, maybe he'll be the one kicking Paul's butt? (wishful thinking)

EDIT: actually, thinking about it, it makes a lot of sense, Gary teaching Paul the lesson he himself learnt from Ash.

edited 23rd Jun '09 2:46:01 PM by Noimporta

Who's Paul?

Is that the show equivalent to the GSC rival?

The new rival. An insufferable Jerkass who treats his pokemon like crap and is obsessed with winning. Pretty much, a standard Pokemon player.

edited 23rd Jun '09 3:31:19 PM by Noimporta

Hey that also reminds me, I can't remember the name of the episode but what was the deal with that guy back in the original show who treated all his pokemon like shit, but still kicked Team Rocket's ass? I recall...he had a Sandshrew and made it swim in water to train even though it was weak to water. Dude felt like a total Gary Stu to me back then, even though I didn't even know the term.

This guy.

edited 23rd Jun '09 3:41:38 PM by Noimporta

Whatever happened to Gary? I heard he was back to being a trainer and more badass than ever, maybe he'll be the one kicking Paul's butt? (wishful thinking)

He's appeared in a couple episodes...Pokemon Hunter J's second appearance, Gligar's evolution episode; but Paul's acting like more of a rival than Gary ever was. Amusingly, Dawn thinks that since he's related to Prof. Oak, he's good at senryuu too.XD

Exactly, Gary is more of a The Minnesota Fats nowadays, and that's why he would be perfect to save the day.

edited 23rd Jun '09 4:06:38 PM by Noimporta

Either way, I eagerly await the day Barry finally meets the guy he's been fanboying over and sees him for the asshole he is.

"Can I just say that way back in the day when I was into Pokemon, the cartoon was one of the first things that started killing my interest in the franchise? I mean I was in fifth grade and all but even then I thought that Bye Bye Butterfry episode was beyond stupid, and here's why: up until that episode, you've been beaten over the head with HOW VERY VERY VERY IMPORTANT THE BOND BETWEEN A POKEMON AND ITS TRAINER IS AND HOW ITS THE TRUE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP and all that jazz and how inspirational Ash's friendship with Pikachu is and then everybody goes and does a 180 and suddenly its YOU'VE GOT TO LET BUTTERFRY GO, ASH! ITS THE NATURAL ORDER! And then...the series goes back to status quo (as far as I could tell, I haven't watched the show in years). Seriously, Bye Bye Butterfry is the Broken Aesop that heralds the world-crushing Broken Aesop of the first movie. Its like Silver Surfer heralding Galactus except instead of everybody on Earth dying, its just kind of stupid."

I think the biggest issue I had with the show was how big of a Wesley Pikachu was, but that could probably be said of the franchise as a whole (since Game Freak gave it that freaking Light Ball because cute little Pikachu shouldn't have to evolve! Sickening). THX's post reminded me of how much I disliked the rodent, since they played a similar empathy card, but of course they couldn't get rid of the face of the franchise! At least from hearsay, Pikachu hasn't been that prominent in recent episodes and from what I've seen, but unfortunately there's now Piplup.

On another note concerning the Broken Aesop, I kind of recognized the whole disconnect between the whole "Evolution is bad!" motif of the first seasons and the evolution-heavy later seasons, but at this point I didn't care. I'm just overjoyed they ditched that horridly Anvilicious moral.

When I listened to this for the first time after like twelve years, I got chills.

In a good way, you know.

Pikachu's a Wesley? But... the intended demographic loves him. Are there seriously now more adults watching this show than kids?

Well as I recall, in the original games even if you didn't evolve your pokemon, they still learned high level techniques as they leveled up so there was some justification for the evolution is BADWRONG Aesop (though in the games, you could turn this into a devious mind-game in the early meta-game which seems hardly in keeping with the tone and theme of the show) but yeah, I did feel at the time like Pikachu was being shoved down my throat. Again though, in fifth grade at the time.

edited 30th Jun '09 5:12:32 PM by THX1138

I always just accepted Pikachu as a main character. Pokémon without Pikachu would have been like Yu-Gi-Oh without Yami Yugi.

"Well as I recall, in the original games even if you didn't evolve your pokemon, they still learned high level techniques as they leveled up so there was some justification for the evolution is BADWRONG Aesop (though in the games, you could turn this into a devious mind-game in the early meta-game which seems hardly in keeping with the tone and theme of the show)"

I felt that was really a moot point, though, since despite holding off evolution, you're still going to get them to their final forms anyways, but the early anime pushed not evolving the Pokemon at all. Honestly, there are only a few Pokemon sufficiently distinguished from their evolved counterparts to make that actually viable.

I've noticed that seemingly most people's fondest memories of the anime come from the Indigo season, so it's strange that mine come from the Hoenn arc. May's cowardly Torchic evolving into the spirited Combusken was such a surprising watershed moment, especially since I once joked about preparing for the scream after said evolution. The one thing that would top that would be the Lilycove contest where she masterfully improvised a stellar solution to a screwup moment. I guess the main thing I liked about those moments and May's character in general was that I expected her to be another cute but worthless animated chick, and I was pleasantly proven wrong.

I'd stopped watching long before they reached Hoenn.

I never regularly watched the show at all until late (~7th/8th badge) Johto, on account of not knowing (and possibly not even getting) the channel it came on... It kinda dragged on for me, though, and I gave up watching around Flannery. I picked it up again later in the arc, then got bored again during the Battle Frontier.

Eventually, I decided to give D/P a shot, and I've actually liked it. (Catching up on the Battle Dimension reruns, and watching Galactic Battle as it's dubbed; I guess I'll catch up on the first season somehow later.)

Still, I am rather nostalgic for the tone of the Indigo episodes; the world felt slightly less Pokemon-obsessed. Also, the Orange Island arc forced them to avert Ghibli Hills, making the episodes a little more distinct visually.