Pokémon anime

Not to burst people's bubble, but I'm sure the Anime's use of the starters is largely influenced by Smash Bros. as well.

Greninja and Incineroar proved to be popular, so it's only natural the Anime would push them to capitalize on that.

The problem is a lot of this stuff is decided ahead of time before they know how any fans will react to it. Sakurai flat out chose Greninja in early 2013 before the games were even announced to the public. He also said he was deciding between Decidueye and Incineroar and went with the latter just because he wanted to do a wrestler-type fighter. Meanwhile Pokemon like Mewtwo (in 2001), and Lucario (in 2008) were clearly added after they had already become popular in the anime or games.

In terms of the anime, I do think the writing staff decide ahead of time what pokemon Ash will have for a gen before it even begins, although they clearly decide things mid-saga like with Meltan who didn't even exist at the beginning of Gen 7.

Well, yeah. It wasn't a coincidence that Ash's Kalos team, bar Pikachu, happened to be among the most popular Pokemon of the gen. And Infernape ending up being the spotlight stealer of his, though I was genuinely surprised Ash didn't get Riolu/Lucario. Then we have Charizard for multiple examples.

If anything the fact Greninja and Incineroar both ended up metagame hits as well was a surprise, especially that latter with the Aslowla complaints.

Helped that Greninja looked cool, everything else ended up breaking the scale in it's favor.

Wait, now I'm confused. Vaguely remember people being certain, or remarkably hopeful, Ash would get Greninja due to it's popularity.

Edited by Cross on Oct 13th 2019 at 1:38:00 PM

Sakurai must have good taste to anticipate which Pokémon starter people will love. And evidently, so did the anime team. I mean, why else would they give Ash only Froakie as his XY starter if they didn't anticipate how popular Greninja will be?

Heh, back then, I suspected that Froakie must have a badass final form if the anime team was comfortable to associate it with Ash before Greninja was revealed.

What I mean was, when Sakurai decided on which Pokemon he was going to add, The Anime decided that "hey, let's push this mon too" since pretty much any character added to Smash Bros. is guaranteed an increase in popularity, because it's Smash Bros.

Lucario is kind of the exception to this rule since, it had already proved to be popular long before it debuted in Smash. And the Kanto starters are basically iconic all on their own by virtue of being the Kanto starters.

Inciniroar wasn't even that popular at first, and was arguably the most divisive of all three of the Alolan starters. But simply being in Smash Bros. inevitably increased its popularity, as they probably predicted it would, so it kind of makes sense they'd give Inciniroar such a push.

The fact that both it and Greninja ended up being amazing in the metagame was purely coincidental though.

I mean you don't really have to be in Ash's possession to be popular. See: a lot of the Pokemon not in his team.

Wasn't Ash's Incineroar kinda spoiled from the very first leaks since they had Ash in them?

There is that sketch of Ash and Mallow sitting on grass next to an Incineroar laying on ground, but Lana's water starter is there too completely unevolved, so it's likely just random concept art.

I'm tempted to watch all of Litten's eps now up to the league ep, it was easily Ash's most well developed Alola pokemon, along with how well developed Kukui and his Incineroar was. It's funny that despite Alola having a lot of random eps, when you focus on the eps on each pokemon or the main cast, this saga actually had some very proper development and plot structure for almost all the humans and pokemon on the cast. Problem is it's all scattered around over 140 episodes and a lot of random slice of life stuff, so you got to specifically watch certain eps to see the character arcs.

You know, I’ve really got to say that all of these initial possibilities for this new Pokémon anime that are going around here have all really gotten me a little bit confused about how to feel about it, honestly.

I mean if it turns out that this really is a full-blown out reboot of the series, then, on the one hand; it does, at least, offer the chance to give Ash a story where he can have a beginning with a bit more respect to his character. But, on the other hand; not only does this make the last few years of the original Pokémon anime a little bit pointless to a certain degree, but, it also seems to me that ending the original show on a series like Sun and Moon feels a little bit off. I mean, while it is true that they did actually have Ash officially win a League conference for once, it still feels like Ash could have had a better series to have that kind of achievement, you know? Ending on Sun and Moon; it just feels kind of underwhelming to me, honestly.

And, if it turns out that Ash does end up going back to all of the other regions for whatever reason, then, on the one hand; that does offer the chance to see a lot of the old characters and locations again. But, on the other hand; not only does this put my initial fan hopes that Ash has become something of a legendary figure within the other regions that he has already visited into jeopardy, it, um, it-it also has me a little bit worried about how all of those particular possible returns and reunions will actually play out within the series, especially when I consider just how well that both Dawn’s initial Unova region return and both Misty and Brock’s first Alola return went, which, um, didn’t exactly work for me completely when I first initially watched all of those particular episodes.

Does, um, d-does anyone here have anything to say about all of this?

Sun and Moon is awesome, so I can't really sympathize.

Next saga feels like an evolution of SM, probably taking the better aspects of it and improving upon the weaker parts.

I'm fine with XY being the "sendoff" of the old series formula, that and DP basically took it as far as it could go anyway. You can't really do competent Ash unless you follow through with him winning the league, and they did villain plots and rivals with Paul, etc that would just be stale if they tried again.

Hello. Not to ruin the flow, but I want to wonder why the topic of Ash’s female companions is such a delicate one in the fanbase. I’m not sure, maybe it’s because of how rude fans can be when you say you prefer one over the other.

Well besides the obvious reasons (shippings, or people preferring different personalities, etc) a lot of it just came down to the people who couldn’t handle Misty leaving. You don’t really see that much bickering between fans of the later female companions fanbases, sure not everyone likes every character, but people don’t make a big deal out of it. Maybe a little bit of controversy between Serena’s crush but again that’s shipping.

All the debates in the fandom between 2002-2013 especially were all largely centered around Misty/original trio fans who didn’t like the fact that the anime went on without her for decades. You can look through the archives of serebii, bulbagarden and other Pokémon forums with threads dating back to 2004 when Hoenn was airing.

The only reason this isn’t a big deal anymore is for the obvious reason that now the entire series takes place after Misty left, and there’s now 8+ more female leads in the series. In the early 2000’s Misty hadn’t been gone that long yet and people saw May and later Dawn as her direct replacement since Brock was still there. I still come across posts on social media like twitter where someone who hadn’t followed the anime in 15 years talks about how they hate the show and all the other female companions despite not even watching the show, lol.

But yeah it all boils down to the Misty fanbase pretty much, or at least they’re the most vocal because it’s two decades later now and we’re not in 2003 anymore.

Okay thanks. I actually can’t stand Bulbagarden the most out of all the forums. Serebii and the other one you mentioned is rough around the edges, but they just need new mods.

Anyway, did anyone see the new Galarian Pokémon. It seems to me they are running out of ideas. It doesn’t stop me from getting excited over the new Galar arc, tho.

Obnoxious waifu wars is the same.

Though for the latest anime I wonder if the girl will be travelling with them, since she's Gou's friend

I doubt that the anime will drop all female companions alltogether, since that's one of the main reasons why fans are invested in the show or quit watching the show.

They were added in the first place for the purpose of fanservice. It's overall a decent way to keep people interested. Not the best reason, but it does work. Iris was the only regular one to be an exception overall at best(as Bonnie doesn't count since Serena took that role). Bonnie was the more tagalong kid(and unlike Max, not super annoying overall).

I mean, I didn't mind Max, but he did have an annoying characterization overall.

Uh...there are some people attracted to Iris. There's enough fanart of her to prove that.

I thought that they were added because "[young] girls need role models"

Edited by DonaldthePotholer on Oct 17th 2019 at 11:29:07 AM

I remember someone here mentioning that apparently someone working on the show said that the girls were for fanservice purposes. Could be both though.

More so she wasn't added for that. The others were. She's like the only main female companion that has a different purpose.

BW had a very different style, with Team Rocket being super serious and extremely effective. It didn't go well.

Yeah, one of the original artists for the show. Though it doesn't mean every girl is like that. And clearly not the case for Iris. Misty, May, and Dawn easily have a lot of fanservice bits. It seemed to stop(or at least not be as often) after that, though.

Edited by Irene on Oct 17th 2019 at 10:35:44 AM

Well the word he used was 'eye-candy', which is technicaly different from fanservice. Since fanservice implies the story going out of its way to be suggestive (whatever that means for the target demographic), while any pretty girl could probably qualify as eye-candy on the grounds of being a pretty girl alone.

You mean like every anime ever. I don’t know why people think this is exclusive to Pokémon when practically every anime ever makes it’s female characters attractive for fans.

Team Rocket being more serious was seen as one of the highlights of the BW anime.

Yeah but Black and White have had a lot of bad parts.

Krookodile was a good Pokemon on Ash's team.