Pokémon anime

In the anime proper? We still have a lot more SM episodes to go.

We also have the whole Necrozma stuff.

One thing I like is they're really experimenting with new art styles for Ash now with these new designs/animation. After Ash looked roughly the same for 20 years, with XY basically being the pinnacle of the old animation style, now they have SM Ash's design, Movie 20 being a reboot, and now Movie 21's more anime-ish design.

Honestly this would have been a good solution if they have to keep Ash forever. The original Ash should have been wrapped up after a certain series (let's say either DP or XY), and if they have to keep an Ash/Pikachu around, just do reboot versions every few years similar to how DC/Marvel reboot their superheroes with new cartoons, movies, comics, etc.

Instead they made the mistake of keeping the same Ash and continuity over 20 years, hence all the complaining gen after gen of Ash losing, his companions leaving, etc. If they just wrapped up the old continuity properly, no one would complain if we had a rebooted Ash/Pikachu every new gen. It seems like they're only just now experimenting with this, when this should have happened decades ago.

These guys are slow.

I tell you this much; if Ash finally does win a league, people will likely react with a IT TOOK YOU FUCKING LONG ENOUGH! rather than a Congratulations.

That's not his fault, but it'd be fair...that is if anyone even cares. It took him twenty years. I imagine his Memetic Loser status will just be increased because he's been doing this for so long.

Oh my god Ash looks so weird.

While we don't even know much about the movie, I'm with Donald in that Ash seems really superfluous at this point.

edited 11th Dec '17 2:21:38 AM by Karxrida

Both he and Team Rocket have been unnecessary for years.

Honestly, for all his flaws: (Vanilla Protagonist, Idiot Hero, Memetic Loser, and early in the series something of a Bratty Half-Pint), I feel a lot of pity for Ash.

From the start, he was done wrong, being seen as boring by Shudo, who cared more about Team Rocket. Then he was continually denied the opportunity to win the league, being forced by the big wigs in charge to keep losing (and X and Y shows that not even making it to the finals will change that) so that he could continue his journey because they are convinced that if he wins even one time, they'd have to retire him (which may not have been so bad to be honest), and of course, most people who are fans of the series hate him and the anime because they consider him to be everything wrong with the series, being as the anime is the most well known face of the franchise.

All this could have been avoided if they'd just shown some guts, let Ash bow out and brought in someone new. At the same time, I have to admit that the series might not still be here if they'd done that (as Digimon has shown that bringing in a new hero and cast is rather hit or miss).

I'd say that the harsh thing in Diamond and Pearl wasn't that he didn't win the league but that he lost to a guy who just spammed legendaries. On the other hand, the loss in XY was just bad narrative design wholesale. Is there a single Pokemon fan who wasn't massively salty about that loss?

edited 11th Dec '17 6:13:06 AM by Sigilbreaker26

Ash looks almost girlish to me. So weird.

The gyaru girl better have Jynx.

New pic and summary for SM 055

[1]◊

"Professor Kukui has told Ash he has something important to tell him..."

edited 11th Dec '17 7:31:40 AM by Zoroark69

Alola league coming bois. Ready for Ash to lose to Gladion.

And man, that pic couldn't be anymore unsubtle if it tried.

I really don't think Gladion will be the one to beat Ash at the league. It's always been an anime-original character.

Since Alola isn't a real league they could let him win similar to Orange Islands or Battle Frontier. Assuming there is something for him to do. His final battle will probably be against the teacher who is the champion in the games.

I'm hoping the announcement isn't Kukui and Burnet's engagement or something. One Rescue Romance seems rushing it a bit.

@Handsome Rob There's something rather heart wrenching about Ash, since he spends so much time travelling from region to region to achieve his dream but never gets any closer, and often times it feels less his own poor training and more because of ridiculous fate or because he spent so much time helping others achieve their dreams instead. It's the Necessary Fail for him to go on continuing to the next region and help more people out, yet if anything just gets more sunny and selfless and Adorkable with each turn.

He has almost a sad Klonoa-like vibe to his role, just being dragged around by higher forces to help others, never given his fair chance to appreciate his own livelihood (though he at least gets to keep Pikachu throughout the whole thing).

edited 11th Dec '17 1:01:43 PM by Psi001

Karxrida: The irony is that this time last year I was saying the exact opposite: that Ash should have been excised from the Anime but still been in the Films. I mean, I for one thought that I Choose You was supposed to have been a Jumping-On Point, insofar as it would show how Ash and Pikachu first met once more. And it was... but not for the Anime; instead it seems to have been for this second timeline.

I have to disagree with Precita about having Ash & Pikachu "Rebooted": What makes Ash different from any other Player Character? The only thing I can come up with is that he has a stable of Pokemon from past regions that he can use if he chooses to do so. And even then, that's only different from latter gen PCs in that they're not technically the same character, though, for this exercise, they can be considered to have the same player, which means the same access once you get near or past endgame.

Continuity Reboots (and Comic-Book Time, for that matter,) work better for Super Heroes insofar as most of them are adults (adults can hide "not aging" better than kids) living in the same city facing (mostly) the same foes. Heck, you could even say the same for The Doctor if you considered "city" to be "universe".

Ash is a pre-teen traveling to different regions taking on different Gym Leaders (or equivalent) and Evil Teams (aside from our Terrible Trio). Interestingly enough, what Rob and Psi said is why I want Ash to effectively be the Pokemon World's equivalent of The Doctor and be in it for the adventure more than the competition. He shouldn't be questing to "win" so much as "live".

And on that note, the Alolan League is a "Real" League insofar as it's a League in the games; the fact that it's newly formed and doesn't have Gyms notwithstanding. And for Ash to compete in it would be a lose-lose:

• If he wins here, it somewhat twists the knife of the loss in Kalos: Super Greninja Forme can't win it for Ash but Borb and his 3 friends can?
• If he doesn't, then it's the whole Memetic Loser line again.
• Either way, it would be at least as bad of a Writer Cop Out as having Alain beat Ash for the sake of keeping Ash without a win: This time, it was supposed to have been different in that Ash wasn't in a Leaue System and his goal was not to win but to graduate.

Now, if Kukui is going to make Ash the offer I alluded to in a prior post, that of becoming part of his inagural Elite Four, then things get somewhat interesting:

• If Ash seems to honestly consider it in the first offer, we'll know that he won't accept in the end, but we should at least see Ash struggle with the choice. (I hope...)
• If Ash rejects it flat out, then all the tension drops... unless he suddenly accepts later; which should mean the end of the series. At least if Ash wins a tournament, he has the theoretical option of declining to enter the Champions League until he "knows" he's ready. If he accepts an Elite Four/Frontier Brain/etc. position, then that's it: he effectively becomes a Desk Jockey. (At least relative to the free range adventurer he presently is, "School Setting" notwithstanding.)

edited 11th Dec '17 5:40:25 PM by DonaldthePotholer

I'm honestly just surprised we'll likely never see Lillie in a movie considering her Ensemble Dark Horse status. Even the creators were aware enough of it that they decided to give her a happy ending in USUM.

Game Lillie was a much bigger deal than anime Lillie. She's practically the main character in the story in the games. In the anime Ash is still the star and she has to share spotlight with 5 other SM characters. And while she's getting a lot of focus now in her game arc, after it ends she may not have much to do for the rest of the saga.

Even with 4 characters (I'm not counting Ash because he's the protag), Lillie has still gotten a lot more attention than the others even before this arc, and will continue to do so after this arc ends because she's this gen's equivalent to the previous female companion characters.

I don't think we really have to worry about Lillie. It's the others who I'd worry about not doing much after this arc. They had been pretty much irrelevant right up until now; most of the arc focused on Ash, Lillie, and Gladion, the others didn't really play much of a part until the final two episodes of this 10-episode arc.

edited 11th Dec '17 8:27:04 PM by Zoroark69

P Retty sure we'll go back to slice of life filler that focuses on them after this. That's what they did before. They're just Out of Focus now because Ash, Lillie, and Gladion are the central characters of this arc.

Focus episodes, yes.

Slice of Life... not necessarily, or at least not exclusively.

In the (officially) Post-End Game Content of original SM, the player is tasked with finding the Ultra Beasts due to the residual energy they got from going through an Ultra Wormhole.

How many of our heroes went through the wormhole with Nebby?

All of them.

Which means that, at any time, any of the other 9 Ultra Beasts could appear to any of the Class out of thin air.

Of course, Mallow, Sophocles, and possibly Lana and Lillie probably wouldn't be able to measure up in battle.. but there may be other ways to tame some of the UBs...

edited 12th Dec '17 6:01:31 PM by DonaldthePotholer

Since the video isn't working: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xL_u1OlfHU

Older Ash in Pokemon Go.

edited 12th Dec '17 8:04:15 PM by WorldTurtle2

Summary and voice cast for SM055

• Ash has returned to the Alola region from the world of the Ultra Beasts after rescuing Lusamine with the help of Solgaleo and everyone from the Pokémon School. But then Solgaleo disappears from his sight?! In addition, Professor Kukui tells Ash he has “something important” to tell him…

Olivia is back again for this episode, as is Mallow's father.

edited 13th Dec '17 7:24:45 AM by Zoroark69

Maybe they're all coming back to tell Ash about an Alola league challenge. I really hope we don't have to sit through dozens of more slice of life fillers again now that the main arc is done. The Sun/Moon anime unlike past sagas really does lack some proper structure letting us know what Ash is supposed to be doing.

True, but at the same time I don't want waste time with another league.

None of us will be dumb enough to believe he'll really win (it was incredibly naive for any of us to think he would in X and Y, even with all the clues, but that's only in hindsight really), and lets be honest with ourselves: even if he did win, who would actually care?

That ship sailed years ago, with a lot of people standing at the harbour thinking maybe it will come back today, and then the X and Y news reported that it sunk to the bottom of the ocean...and exploded.

So there's no real winner no matter what they go with, but at least the slice of life fillers are enjoyable. They won't force him to fail at that.

Is it really filler when Ash's stated goal this saga is to graduate and unlike Leagues there's nothing he needs to do specifically to do that? I'm way behind (22 was the last episode I watched.) so I don't know how many Kahuna's he's beaten but I was under the impression that facing them was a side gig for him rather than his actual goal.

He's beaten two Kahunas (Hala and Olivia) and two Totem Pokemon (Gumshoos and Lurantis).

He received Normalium from Gumshoos, Electrium from Tapu Koko (Hala was going to give him Fightinium, but Tapu Koko swapped it out), Grassium from Lurantis, and Rockium from Olivia.

So right now, he has the equivalent of four badges.