Pokémon anime

Care to elaborate?

I think it all stems by keeping Ash as the main character instead of going with the original plan of him winning the league and becoming champion. I kind of wish in the first season they could have closed Ash's story and moved onto the next one with the next generation. Then start over on and so forth.

All the characters from the OS, after Kanto, were essentially designed to be stagnant from the beginning of Johto so they could last hundreds of eps. That's also why Misty/Brock never really get any development on the main cast till they leave, almost all their character developed happened after they leave the group in their cameos and specials. Ash has to be re-tooled for every series, and TR is TR.

That was because the anime was intended to end right there.

The franchise becoming so massively popular prevented that from happening. In their own words, Ash is an icon like Mickey Mouse◊, so it'll never happen now. The anime is just a victim of its own success.

Plus, y'know, Pokemon's not a shonen anime, so the characters growing isn't a requirement. It's a kodomo anime, and those keeping the same characters for 20+ years is the norm.

Edited by Zoroark69 on Apr 3rd 2019 at 9:49:00 AM

Not really? The game plots have been either ignored completely (Kanto and BW Unova) or stuffed into tiny arcs (Johto, Hoenn, BW2 Unova, Kalos). Sinnoh is the only time the show bothered to put a modicum of effort into acting like an adaptation.

Edited by Karxrida on Apr 3rd 2019 at 12:31:13 PM

Kanto and Johto didn't even have plots to adapt. And Kalos' plot was near non-existent until the endgame.

Gens 5 and 7 are the only games to really have plots that span the whole game. In others, it's just a roadblock that occasionally gets in the way of your journey before being resolved right at the end.

Edited by Zoroark69 on Apr 3rd 2019 at 12:32:58 PM

A lot of the RBY Kanto plots were done away with in the anime. Silph co. was never featured in the anime, nor was the story of TR killing Cubone's mother and it becoming a ghost. Instead Lavendar Town just got that 1 episode. Nor did we see the Celadon Game corner, etc.

Yeah. That probably stems from how much thinner the plot was back in the early series.

Even then, around the time of Ruby Sapphire Emerald, the plot started picking up in the games, but the anime kept Team Rocket instead of retiring them and half assed the Groudon / Kyogre battle.

They did try a bit hard with Sinnoh, with multiple battles and encounters against Team Galactic, but I can't recall how the ending faired.

The Team Plasma battle was buggered due to Real Life Writes the Plot, and then regulated to post league (and I don't think they really dealt with the issues that N brings up well either).

Not sure how they did with Kalos, but there was that huge battle at the end against Lysander...which was probably overshadowed by Ash losing the league after a lot of potential build-up. Still, it's one of the few times there's been a big final fight against the team leader.

But basically, the anime is still tightly clinging to a lot of old tropes. I've criticized Takeshi Shudo for some of his ideas, but at least he had an endgame in mind (of letting Ash accomplish his goal). These guys running the show now just want to do the same shit forever.

Are you sure that it's not Pikachu that's the icon like Mickey Mouse?

Anyway, I think that having an Inevitable Tournament Arc, which was not in the original games,^note And is, thus far, only in the Post-Games of Emerald and B2W2, every single saga, is at odds with being a kodomo series. EDIT: The tournaments are high on the list of the series' original sins. The Strictly Formula of episodes from mid-Johto onward seems more in-line with a kodomo series than the Tournaments. They also seem more in-line than the overarching Villain plots, but that (mostly) comes from the games.

Once again, I think that the best way to handle Ash is to make him less Mickey Mouse and more James Kirk. Exploration is not at odds with kodomo if handled with kid gloves: It's natural for kids to want to see the world and all of its wonders, because kids have a sense of wonder. The adventure is enough to keep the kids; you don't need for Ash to want To Be a Master.

Nor is it required to adapt the games faithfully. You do, however, A: need to use the assets the games give you and B: integrate them in such a way as to keep the exploration theme. This is where Shudo went wrong: he went for "Realistic" Deconstruction and believed that Pokemon were all effectively aliens/mutants rather than an integral element of that world's society.

I would have used Let's Go! to start a Continuity Reboot,^note or else to expand on the CR that Pokemon I Choose You started, using what we now know about the Pokemon world. Part of the series would have the exploration focus as above, but it would also have a more internally realistic take on the Pokemon world. Granted, we're getting that somewhat in "Sun & Moon" with looks at societies of Pokemon.

Then again, you can't really do the exploration and societies thing if the #2 market bans episodes where Ash goes deep cover.

Edited by DonaldthePotholer on Apr 3rd 2019 at 8:36:03 AM

Shudo had no real "plans", just about everyone except Game Freak themselves was expecting Pokemon to end after Gen 2.

The whole reason Ishihara even had the made in the first place was to advertise the upcoming Gold & Silver games. The anime was always meant to live and die with the games they're promoting.

Edited by Zoroark69 on Apr 4th 2019 at 1:24:12 AM

Just caught the latest ep.

Man, Guzma chose the right mon for him huh?

I didn't get while Golispod ran when it pretty much had the fight won until I read up on it's ability.

Interesting hypothesis, Zoroark. Let's compare the timelines:

• Gold & Silver were originally set for "Late 1997"
• The anime launched on 1 April 1997.
• At "Nintendo Space World '97" (November), the games were moved back to March 98.
• In December '97, for reasons unrelated to the game's production problems, the Anime goes off the air for a time.
• When March '98 comes around, the game merely becomes "delayed" with no revised date.
• The Anime returned in April '98.
• Togepi debuted in Egg form at the end of May '98, and hatched at the end of June.
• Pokemon Yellow was released in September '98, but still no news on resumption of GS. The Anime had an episode based on a rare mini-game from that game in October.
• "Adventures in the Orange Islands" started in February '99. Soon thereafter, GS got a release date of June 1999.
• The release is eventually pushed back to 21 November. The Anime started its Johto adventures on 14 October.

Let's also examine the tale of the Badges:

• The first cour (13 episodes) ended just before Ash's 3rd Badge in Ep. 14.
• Ash got his 5th Badge in Episode 26 (end Cour 2)
• Ash got his 6th Badge in early November, i.e. mid 3rd cour, though by that point, the series had at least 2 months of episodes with Cinnabar island nowhere in sight.
• Ash gets Badge 7 in August '98; 4 months after the series resumes. Badge 8 is won a month later. So while there was 4 cour production time, there were 5 cour worth of episodes, which would have allowed for a dub syndication.
• The tourney and the events leading to it took up just over 1 cour of episodes, 4 months of production time.

Going by the pattern of the first 2 cour, it looks like Pokemon Kanto would have been a standard 4-cour Anime. While this would have fallen well short of the original release date, it would have matched up well with the "Space World" revision. Then again, the hiatus happened at the end of Cour 3, so perhaps 5-cour was a the more likely target; again, dub syndication.

The Orange Islands amounted to roughly 3 cour, so it's likely that the writers knew (or could guess) that the June '99 date would not hold, but the episode schedule seemed to point towards an October release.

Makes you wonder if the decision to have Misty leave was already decided somewhere around mid-2001 (R/S and AG came out November 2002 in Japan), because they had to be in the planning stages for the next arc almost a year in advance, and they already knew the R/S games would have a playable female character from the start. It really puts into perspective how early they decide these things months before any person watching or fans gets to see it.

Same for when they decided they would bring Dawn in DP, they probably knew at the beginning of Battle Frontier it would be May's last arc, and so on and so forth. It takes fans a year to see this stuff through TV or when it airs, but for them it's decided so early. The SM anime revamp was also decided probably when we weren't even up to the 8th Gym with Wulfric in XY. Crazy to think about it.

Lisa Ortiz got to voice Jessie's Lina Inverse reference in the dub. Of course, American kids who watch the show are probably wondering why her voice changed for that scene.

Edited by DS9guy on Apr 5th 2019 at 1:38:20 PM

Lillie got the Z-Ring, but she wasn't able to pull off the Z-Move, and Magearna is still inactive. And Mohn bought Magearna from an antique shop during his travels.

Lillie plans to reactive it.

Best thing though was the picture of Lusamine, Mohn, Wicke, and Faba in their younger years.

[1]◊

Lusamine looked like Lillie, Wicke was just an Employee at the time, and Faba looked rad.

Edited by Zoroark69 on Apr 7th 2019 at 1:01:00 AM

..God damn.

Faba did look pretty rad.

I admit, I'm impressed.

I'm more interested in Lusamine's dress: A proto-Guardian Black? EDIT: And I thought that her face was closer to Ash than Lillie; I wonder if Iris would agree.

Edited by DonaldthePotholer on Apr 7th 2019 at 4:06:59 AM

Hm... on the longshot chance of Ash winning this year, do you think that TPCi would imitate this commercial? At least one element is present. (And one is absent.)

(Spoilers for Golf on 4/14/19)

why would a japanese shonen anime for 7 year olds emulate an american golf commercial

wynaut

Because it makes good Parody:

In any event, continuing from a conversation in the main VG thread, did the Matori Matrix do anything during the Necrozma arc?

They got beat.

So typical Team Rocket I guess.

But who beat them, Ash and/or the Guardians, Necrozma, Nagandral, the Terrible Trio, or someone else?

Anyway, we had a month worth of buildup for the quest for Dr. Mohn... and now we're preparing for the Alola League. Specifically, the Junior Guardians are trying to play catch-up.

Seriously, with all of the Ultra Beasts save Kartana accounted for, and that one will be Ultra-Caught by the end of next month, there's no way to force a Friend-or-Idol Decision to have Ash (and Lillie & Gladion) skip the League in favor of finding Dr. Mohn. Ash missing the tournament because he was off on a heroic quest would have been the best way to cover The Artifact that has to happen Once a Season.

Instead, we'll have to go through the League for a cour as per standard and finding Dr. Mohn will turn out to be a Surprisingly Easy Mini-Quest only lasting a month.

...unless we find out that he's actually in Galar...

Kukui did it by going full Royal Mask (using his Incineroar after his Braviary is defeated).

He also ends up revealing his identity to Saubo.

Hey Pokémon thread, it's your resident dub watcher here with another question. In today's dub episode, the group went to Poni island and tried Poni radishes for the first time. Were they called radishes in the original too? Their color and spicy flavor reminds me more of horseradish than radish. Thanks in advance!