Pokémon anime

I can see it. As pointed out, this League had a notably different format. Ash also changes teams between regions and focused on using them for his League matches.

Speaking of Guzzlord, two thoughts have been lurking in my head since it showed up again.

1. Is this the same Guzzlord that Ash encountered in that future timeline?

and if "yes"...

2. Is it from before or after Ash and Pikachu "sumoed" it through the ultra hole in their last encounter? (Time and space weirdness with ultra dimensions...)

Depending on the answer on the second question, it could have an effect on how much punishment it will be needing to be sumoed back through the hole again this time around.

Opinions regarding this line of thought?

Side note: I just realized that there was no special sequence for Lyancroc's final gambit.

If this was the win, I would have expected either each of the hits that Midnight landed to visually recall each of Ash's previous defeats or having the Failure Montage plastered throughout the final exchange.

Having each of Ash's wins counter a prior defeat goes partway,^note though I'll have to rethink what Gladion counters, but it just doesn't give the same "umph" at the point of impact... it's felt more at the fridge, which isn't conducive to emotional torque.

Hopefully Guzzlord doesn't eat the trophy.

Well there is one thing they could have Ash do...actually a few:

• Train all of his Pokemon who were neglected region by region or bring his hypothetical weakest/////underrated.
• Battle all of his main rivals and opponents he's never beaten: Ritchie, Harrison, Tyson, Tobias, Cameron, Virgil, and Alain.
• Try to defeat the Elite Four and all the Champions.

Sorry to change the flow, but I've been seeing people going back and forth on which league was the worst. People love to target Unova since it was arguably the worst arc of the anime (I think the title belongs to the Johto arc).

IDC if anybody disagrees with me, I think the Indigo League was the worst league ever. This is due to many factors: Team rocket kidnapping Ash and doing their best to keep Ash from participating in the league, the majority of Ash's Pokemon having little to no energy left to battle, and Ash's disobedient Charizard refusing to battle..

Also disband Team Rocket as a whole.

Kanto as a whole is such different animal compared to the rest of the anime. Makes you wonder how they'd completely rewrite it if they could.

Team Rocket has attempted (and failed) to capture Pikachu, so they need to give it up .

They will probably rewrite it with Ash losing the league the right way and him actually earning 4 out of the 8 pity badges he got.

Edited by MsCC93 on Sep 16th 2019 at 8:22:48 AM

Indigo, Hoenn, and Unova were bad, but Kalos was the worst for me. Ash did not deserve to win Indigo anyway, but the plot relevant interference by Team Rocket is one of the lowlights of the original series. Unova was the culmination of resetting Ash to level 1 by authorial fiat, and was always going to be garbage as a result; but I am not quite rock-bottomed there, because the training arc leading up to it had Ash hang with Cynthia, which I think was easily the best arc in the region. Hoenn was Ash deliberately shooting himself in the foot for no adequately articulated reason; at least the fights were decent.

Kalos ripped my heart out, and was the reason I stopped keeping up with the anime every week.

I have always liked Sinnoh, somewhat because of Tobias. Always Someone Better is something that comes up rather rarely in spite of Pokemon being a Shōnen Fighting Series at heart; a solid majority of Ash's losses after Indigo are a result of unfair circumstances or genuine mistakes on his part, rather than a thoroughly superior opponent like Tobias.

Edited by ViperMagnum357 on Sep 16th 2019 at 8:30:40 AM

I liked Krabby evolving in indigo and the dancing Bellsprout was kinda neat but there's not much to like in indigo compared to the other leagues. To this day I can't stand Richie. Even as a 7 yr old I couldn't stand him.

The Indigo League was the first league, so it being rough around the edges makes sense.

So with Sword and Shield coming out on November 15th, and the new series usually premieres within days of the game's release. We got approximately eight more episodes left of this season.

So I guess we're hunting down Mohn to close out the Aether family story arc.

Fair enough. I also think that the Unova league was the 2nd worst one in my opinion. I think I may be biased because I loved Bianca and Trip and I hated the treatment they got. They should have made it past the first round since they improved as trainers, and I felt that Cameron was a temporary Creator's Pet.

I don't think that Ash should have won the Indigo league either, but the way he lost left a sour taste in my mouth considering it was the most humiliating one. I also thought that Ash also got a lot of victories based on luck in that league (I'm talking about the match with his Krabby winning, despite him never battling with it). I think Ash became lazy and didn't train enough, and even Professor Oak called him out on this.

Despite the Johto arc being my least favorite arc, the only good thing about it was the league since it showed how much Ash grew as a trainer. Gary becoming much nicer to Ash after his loss helped as well.

I used to like Richie as a character, but I started disliking him because of his undeserved victory over Ash and the fact that he comes off as a bland Gary Stu copy of Ash.

The idea behind Richie was obviously and apparently said so, "Ash, but competent", but they didn't show that much for it.

My favorite Ritchie moment is when he and Ash both obliviously give their Pokeballs to Team Rocket in disguise. Even 'Ash but better' still falls for their tricks XD

That soured his character, to me. I mean the viewers are rooting for Ash, and the last thing they wanna see are trainers that act so much better and mature than Ash. I don’t hate him, but he is one of my least favorites.

With Gary, at least he’s a rival and he was one step ahead of you in the games as well (despite him never winning a battle with you), so he can be excused.

It’s like anybody falls for Team Rocket’s disguises.

Nobody disagrees with you Ms CC. The Kanto League was actually pretty lame. The actual SERIES however was pretty great.

All leagues had good battles. But Unova only had 1 good battle, the Ash Vs. Stephen one. That battle was great and I recommend people watch it if they only watch one battle from that league

The Kanto league would have worked if Ash genuinely lost down to poor training, but having it down to Team Rocket and poor refereeing and everyone showing No Sympathy took away all the karma (say what you will about Alola, at least they remembered sleeping does not equal disqualification). Kanto had this kind of mean tint to it where everyone was out to get Ash over rookie mistakes. I mean he was impetuous but they played everything against him enough you felt bad for him (not to mention most of the people who called him out were equally arrogant and couldn't practice what they preached, Misty came off more like a kid who'd suffered the same crap and wanted to pick on someone lower down the chain).

The other leagues kinda contrived his defeats at times, but they didn't have the same callous "You suck, Ash, even if you did get screwed" tone to them.

Edited by Psi001 on Sep 16th 2019 at 4:30:05 PM

According to some CoroCoro leaks, it looks like Ash will be the protagonist for a Sword/Shield anime. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=451&v=Mzvmf9ngeNA

Edited by lalalei2001 on Sep 16th 2019 at 8:47:16 AM

I am honestly really happy about that. March on, my dopey Pokemon boi

I have one question:

Since the CNN article has declared that Ash is now a Pokémon Master because he won a Pokémon League, how widespread is this misconception is among fans?

I think we might have a new entry for Fandom-Enraging Misconception for the Pokémon subpage.

The power of social media now spreads things outside the confines of the pokemon fandom when all this stuff was just posted on forums and nowhere else. Ash's loss in the Kalos league too, which is probably why this happened.

Social media didn't exist in the early 2000's and still wasn't that big back around 2010ish, so stuff like Ash/Tobias never registered outside the pokemon fandom. Even stuff like misty/brock appearing in SM was reported on random news sites and social media, you'd never see stuff like that advertised outside the pokemon fandom before (misty's AG cameos certainly weren't, but that was back in like 2004-2005, lol)

Sometimes I shudder to think what might have happened if social media existed in 2002 when Misty left, back then all of that was confined to pokemon forums from mostly kids complaining. Imagine if Misty fans harrassed the writers/animators on twitter had it existed in 2002/2003? Instead they were ranting on pokemon forums at the time nobody ever saw. Otherwise Misty have been brought back the same way brock was and lasted a long time, till the end of DP at least.

Edited by precita on Sep 17th 2019 at 4:25:23 AM

X5 You basically summed up another reason of why I think the Indigo League was the worst league for Ash. Ash was made out to be this whiny Sore Loser for getting upset with losing, when he had every right to be angry.

The OS arc also had this Grey-and-Grey Morality thing between Ash and the other characters. Ash started out as this brash and immature trainer who would get overconfident when he just so happened to obtain a few winning streaks. On the other hand, the other characters (like Gary, Misty, Brock, character of the day, etc) would constantly belittle Ash's training skills despite him being a rookie trainer.

Although Misty was a jerk to Ash, the only things that could be said in her defense was that she was completely justified in being upset that her bike was destroyed. Ash would even roast her many times as well, unprovoked (I mean, just look at the Youtube videos).

This is why my unpopular opinion of this show is that I preferred BW Ash over OS Ash due to the former being much more mature and well-skilled as a trainer.

The OS was kind of a Crapsaccharine World. Everyone was mostly some form of an asshole contrast with everyone being generically nice nowadays.

Sudo had a very cynical take on the show, and would have straight up had a Downer Ending if the show didn't become the cash cow it is today.

But with Ash in particular, he was blatantly The Slacker back then. He did everything he could to avoid training and then act like he knew it all. His league loss, while contrived as hell, is meant to reflect that since he could not control Charizard due to his poor work ethic.

Edited by BlackYakuzu94 on Sep 17th 2019 at 11:44:04 AM