Power Up
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SM Ash quirks have been defined and are becoming overly repetitive. He isn’t going anywhere.
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Cons of your favorite series and pros of your least favorite
- Thread starter Ignition
- Start date
SM Ash quirks have been defined and are becoming overly repetitive. He isn’t going anywhere.
Zhydra
Master of Chaos!
That can also be blamed on the writers giving a large main cast that TBH should have been cut down a bit. I can live with this con... but others might have more reasons to be upset.
On the other side SM did wonders in recurring characters. Since Ash is stuck in one place most of the time in this series... they can use this to give Alola a sense of community, which it has. One example being Viren... what I thought was a villain of the week became a recurring villain when he is needed or the old lady that Torracat knew as a Litten that recognizes him I can go on about this.
Genaller
Silver Soul
Okay this has been annoying me for a while now; please define exactly what you mean by “character agency” (what you’ve said in this post still leaves the definition quite ambiguous), why by the standards of your definition some series have it and others don’t, and finally why by the standards of your definition having “character agency” is superior to not having it.
Oh here we go again with the “Ash is the ultimate passive character” stance that you and VTP love to advocate.
Here’s my stance: BW and SM Ash are incompatible with OS -> AG -> DP -> XY Ash (as in BW Ash isn’t compatible as either a successor to DP Ash or a predecessor to XY Ash (who on the other hand works perfectly as a successor to DP Ash) and SM Ash isn’t compatible as a successor to XY Ash). Could BW and SM Ash have value as characters in their own right? Sure though when it comes to the primary overarching narrative of the show which is Ash’s character and trainer skill progression BW Ash is a complete failure and SM Ash while not as horrendous as BW Ash is still doing pretty bad (compared to the standards set by DP and XY Ash at least).
AznKei
Dawn & Chloe by ddangbi
Yeah, well I don't care if people loves/hates her because of the shipping with Ash. But the writers shove these into us so it's bound to cause a mixed reaction from the audience.
As for her character development I like when she confronted her mother and that she's determined to work hard for the showcases so I would like to see more of that seriously. I won't deny that Ash did contribute her growth, but I favor more to see her progressing on her own.
And lastly, I'm pretty much against the show's status quo, to the point I even made a headcanon project to defy it, even though I understood the reason they did it. To me, it's not about X series is better than Y series or that Pokegirl is better than the other one. If you like Ash than that's fine to me, but don't forget there people like me who wanted to see more of the companions because I've seen enough of Ash after 20 years. If they could balance the cast more, it would have benefited every fans, but no they shoved more & more of Ash, in a way to force anyone to care about him.
So long as you tell me what you mean by "the ultimate passive character".
Character agency is basically the character's ability to drive the story forward. The ability to not only be active and motivated, but do such in a distinctive way that takes effect on how the story progresses (and in way you don't think any other character would have done identically).
This has been a problem with a lot of the anime, since the obsession with using a very restrictive formula that makes the protagonists all do the same thing all the time limits the ability to gain character agency. You can't really make a unique difference to the plot if it's more about a COTD, let alone if Team Rocket keep interrupting it, and you certainly can't keep having loads of unique and personality centric ways to beat them up with two attacks for a billion episodes. It's why so often the tournament formula is needed to make a character stand out, and even that is sometimes botched and repetitive or reliant on cheap outside circumstances like plot armour Pokemon boosts or just having a lousy opponent anyone could upstage.
Some could say Dawn better achieved character agency in her performance arc than May or Serena for example, since while all three maybe achieved proper character development and growth, while May and Serena's actual performance involvement is often criticised for being vanilla and dull and winning automatically, Dawn was outright forced to think up a unique performance style and to continue evolving on it, otherwise other opponents would begin to outclass her. Basically the display that she won and changed the outcome because she DID THINGS that defined her character instead of it being decided no matter how bland she was or even if she was replaced with a broom.
For a more simple outside example, let's compare something basic like say Bugs Bunny vs the Road Runner. Both are cartoon heroes, but the way they win is different. Bugs wins by directly using his own distinctive charm and wit to outsmart his enemies, while the Road Runner wins mostly because of Wile E Coyote's own bumbling and bad luck, otherwise he just runs around going meep meep. Whether you enjoy him doing that is irrelevant to how little effect it has on the story. One wins through character agency and one wins through very little at all.
Even a very mundane story can have it's effect to how well defined a character can be to a story. Sophocles' 'moving away fake plot' for example is pretty cliche and simple, but it goes through all the 'actions - consequences - rectification' act structure, allowing Sophocles to be defined well enough as a character, especially since he has his own unique introspective and pacing about doing so, establishing him as an insecure character who sometimes jumps to conclusions and dithers admitting such but ultimately will do the right thing. Lots of characters in the anime can't even do that, because nearly every episode involves a one shot's shortcomings and Team Rocket interrupting midway to make the rectification about stopping them (often in a very bland and easy way). Even then though episodes like the Serena crossdressing episode are clear cases that could have had the same effectiveness but then cut short the plot in the most generic way, robbing the character a chance to demonstrate broader personality foibles and agency.
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Power Up
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That part is objectively false. Writers didn’t shove anything down anyone’s throat
AznKei
Dawn & Chloe by ddangbi
Yet, you complain about SM and the fillers. Do you expect them to have your way?
Power Up
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No, I’m pretty sure the amount of goofiness is greater than the amount of development in fillers. In general really.
On the other hand, short 5 second scenes don’t qualify as writers shoving Amour down your throat
Dragalge
"Orange" Magical Girl
I can excuse the goofiness in SM Ash except for a few times. Namely one of them being the pointless Ilima two-parter for instance. Poor guy didn't have to get tumble just to make Ilima look more perfect than the writers were already trying to make him out to be. =( Now if Ash was being hit with a bunch of random anvils out of the sky every episode than yeah I would have a major problem. Works in Looney Tunes but not in Pokemon!
Besides it could have been way worse. An Ash who forgets how to catch Pokemon, the type chart, Pokedex-ing Pokemon he's seen three times/he owns already + Ash being a victim of slapstick = the writers plan to colonize the Andromeda Galaxy!
Besides it could have been way worse. An Ash who forgets how to catch Pokemon, the type chart, Pokedex-ing Pokemon he's seen three times/he owns already + Ash being a victim of slapstick = the writers plan to colonize the Andromeda Galaxy!
She didn't. She went to the Labs...with some help.
It comes down to the fact she's changed since the Acts. There, she had a battle-ready Pokemon in Chespie, now she doesn't. Likewise, what was she going to do? Run up the Megalith? That kind of action was the exact same reason she got in trouble before, leading to Alain's Charizard getting hurt. If anything, not throwing herself into situations she isn't ready for is more character development than sitting on the sidelines. She still played an important role; she just didn't do the "heavy lifting" so to speak.
I feel like Ash is kinda stuck in the 'Larry Fine' role, when there's a character that isn't able to play ball to the humour/antic plots or is too unremarkable to hold a story on their own, he has to do double time. Notice most of the Mallow's big roles, Ash does heavier slapstick/gets kidnapped or worfed/sucks at whatever Mallow's doing, compared to some of the other students' episodes where there's more developed team work or foil moments going on or even cases Ash just takes a backseat. Because Mallow is too bland to hold a story without someone else making her role look relatively more remarkable.
It's sort of the same as Team Rocket always having to be straw loser in the blander twerp stories, just Ash has enough other characteristics and roles to vindicate himself.
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ash&charizardfan
Humans are tools
If you have problem with ash then stop watching this show or just watch specials, because he is not going anywhere, as for companions there will always be companions who be shoved aside, clemont was anyways uninteresting character who should have been written off after gym battle. Ash is always going to get more focus so either deal with it or just dont watch the show. He is the biggest reason for this show's success and longevity.
I'm not entirely sure you have a grasp on what character agency is...
To use your TRio obsession, compare past series to SM. Inside past series they give the protagonists quite a bit of agency: if they don't drive off TRio, they lose their Pokemon. Only they, 8/10 times can stop it, outside of the occasional difference. In SM, Bewear shows up to cart them off. This'll likely happen regardless of if the protags do anything. In this case, said protags lose their character agency.
But to better illustrate, while May has slightly less agency, and Dawn has more, you give far less credit to Serena than is due. It was her action of cutting the ribbon too long that led to her loss. It was her action of not making sure Eevee was ready that led to her loss. And that last one simply only takes into effect the performances themselves, and not the theme section. Serena still made conscious decisions that she acted on that drove her own development, that drove her own plot. She wasn't passive. Things didn't just come to her. Heck, her first two victories had her needing to overcome an obstacle that she chose to overcome (fixing her dress after it ripped, looking for Eevee). While the latter had less effect on the outcome, it showed why Palermo took such an interest in her.
Character agency isn't just about every piece of the plot. If there's something voter-based in a story, then, you can automatically claim there's no character agency because they have no choice over the outcome by your definition. It's also about whether they drive their development. Serena did drive her development in the same way Dawn did, by taking action and making choices that pushed her forward.
That's what character agency is.
Here's the thing though, most of those 8/10 times the way they stop it is blandly easy or generic, involving very few unique ways the protagonists rectify them. How many dilemmas has Ash solved just by calling 'Pikachu Thunderbolt!'? It also adds to my previous factor that be it Team Rocket or losing their Pokemon, these are one or two very repetitive formulas that after being done a handful of times don't really drive for any new depths or relevant development. Even basic premises and bits of introspective like the aforementioned 'Sophocles getting misinformed and having to admit to his mistake' are often overlooked or interrupted by these one or two formulas.
Sure Ash doesn't get to blast off TR anymore, but he does get to do more unique and effortful things like outsmart the Ultra Beasts, neutralise a hungry Morelull and liberate a Passimian tribe incognito, all of which required far more of his unique characteristics and brainwaves from him than a billion TR blast offs ever did. As the others even lampshaded in the Morelull case, this was something only Ash would do.
Sure Serena made a couple flops and consequences, but again rectification is skipped, how does she improve and give life to her performances that no one else can? Even the mistakes feel a tad generic since they don't really develop on a foible of Serena's, they're just basic oversight. The crossdressing one had a similar 'half finished structure', she makes an impulsive decision, and in a more fully fledged structure, they could have had things slowly spiral out of control, her realising it isn't worth it and confess her mistake and fix things. But instead the usual formula occurs, Team Rocket butt in and are defeated very easily, and not even by her, but Ash through bizarre DEM recovery. They robbed all chance of properly spotlighting a foible and how she handles it and it's consequences, even in a basic episodic antics plot.
Outside explanations like the showcases being voter based and Team Rocket being obsessive but weak villains may be an excuse for downplayed character agency in universe, but not for the writers using those explanations all the time to avoid developing such out of universe. May and Serena did make the choices to take action, but to often it felt like the gesture that only mattered and how they went about taking that action or overcoming any legit adversity was done as plainly and basically as possible, which gave them okay internal development but very dull external development. They were two characters that were usually only interesting when they were pondering to themselves.
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Genaller
Silver Soul
It’s an apt summation of this stance that you and VTP love advocating where Ash being seemingly inconsistent from a given series to the next (most notably post-DP) is entirely explainable by the environment (e.g. people, places, circumstances etc...) around him bringing out vastly different sides of him.
Okay I’ll keep this in mind (with respect to your perception) though the part in brackets is again quite ambiguous.
So here you would be referring to character agency on the micro lvl whereby in many episodic plots the characters are mostly reactionary with TRio and/or COTDs driving the story forward rather than them actively deciding to go to so and so place or do so and so activity without an “outsider” telling them to. I can understand the criticism though considering that I place an extremely minor weight on episodic plots in comparison to major plot lines not to mention that I can simply choose to skip most episodic plot lines as they often don’t contribute anything of substance to the major storylines (though I can also choose to watch them if they’re actually good), I don’t particularly care about whether they do or don’t have character agency in such scenarios. I’ll give you that character agency has the potential to result in more interesting episodic stories; however, if what results from said character agency is boring then the value of said character agency becomes far lower (a.k.a character agency by itself has no inherent value) which is what I’ve found to be the case during SM fillers (though I can accept that it’s mainly down to subjective taste in this case).
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Yeah usually tournaments >>> SoL episodes. There’s a reason why tournaments have always and will always be a staple in shonen
(Here’s a video that explains the appeal of tournaments quite well: Regarding May yup she didn’t really have character agency until it was made clear to her that emulating Ash’s battle style would screw her over in comtests though after that she had plenty of character agency which seemed to pay off based on how much she had improved by Sinnoh.
I strongly disagree with Serena’s performances being “vinilla and dull” though that’s besides the point when it pertains to whether she did or didn’t have character agency. 1 major aspect in Serena’s development would actually be how she gets more and more character agency from having practically none at all in the beginning to having it in spades by the end of the series (e.g. the showcase she organized entirely of her own volition in order to cheer up the Lumiose citizens after the TF attack). Matter of fact I’d claim that Serena easily has the greatest delta character agency of any Pokégirl period! In terms of her actual performances if you actually bothered to pay attention you’d notice that they’re consistently being improved and refined (here’s a video explaining her performances in detail:
For Dawn it’s specifically that she changed focus from prioritizing the appeal of her Pokémon’s moves to prioritizing the appeal of the Pokémon themselves. Frankly I think the arc where she figures this out is the single greatest Pokegirl character arc in series history though in terms of overall development as a character Dawn bascially caps out at the Wallace Cup with the rest of the series having more to do with illustrating how Dawn’s new characterization contrasts her initial characterization (which was interesting in its own way). Amusingly enough Serena also understood that the main objective of a performance is to convey the joy felt by her and her Pokémon to the audience rather than the technical proficiency of her Pokémon’s moves which is why Serena beat Amelia in XYZ 16 (or rather “surpassed perfection” as Palermo claimed when criticizing Amelia). Serena probably understood this from her interaction with Aria which is fine since Zoey played a major role in getting Dawn to understand this.
You're conflating "agency" with "interesting", though. So what if Ash is just using Thunderbolt? That doesn't mean there's no agency. There still is.
And Serena's foible was expanded on. Her foible, her driving character flaw, was the inability to stick with something. Both of those situations expressed that. She lost and could have quit, but soldiered on. She failed her Pokemon and could have just ended her performance, but kept a smile and soldiered on. It's a direct through line of choices; ones she never would have made in the first episodes. And if you can't see the improvement in the showcases (seriously, watch the one she performed while practicing, the one in XY 80 and the ones at the Master Class and tell me that it hasn't become more elaborate), then what you're doing is ignoring an aspect to argue she didn't improve.
Mostly your argument boils down to "If I like the character, they have agency; if I didn't, they don't". And that's just not the case at all.
Okay DISTINCTIVE character agency. I assumed we meant good quality character agency just like we can have good and bad character development.
Because telling Pikachu to use Thunderbolt was the pinnacle of Ash's involvement in way too many episodes. ANYONE can say 'Pikachu, use Thunderbolt!' I COULD SAY IT and I know I'm not a competent Pokemon trainer. This maybe says Ash has basic agency but hardly an entertaining and distinctive enough amount to justify him being the main protagonist, compared to the SM examples I listed above. Even the SOL episodes I could argue count because it's still him bringing life and flow to a story in a way only he could.
This is the problem I had with Serena, she wasn't given many challenges besides her gaining more confidence (and the underconfidence arc has been spammed to high heaven in the anime and many others). Sure she learned to put on a brave face but it's undermined by the fact she got few challenging rivals or unnegated situations to really place this as making her exceptionally resilient compared to any other character (or at least was rarely forced to deal with them in a unique way, replace 'Pikachu use Thunderbolt!' with 'Braixen use Flamethrower!')). And I'm sorry but I just thought Serena's showcases all merged into one another. If I'm ignoring subtleties then fair enough, it's subjective.
There was just something so automated about XY and it's use of the twerps. I never felt they stood a chance of failing at anything outside the token moments they mandated they had to (which were usually obvious).
Which is pretty much the same way people rate characters who have development here.
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I mean, how important is that in a CotD driven episode anyway? When they have focus episodes, they often have their agency; when they arrive to help a CotD it makes sense that that character will have it. To ask for them to have agency over a course of 140+ episodes all the time...that's just unfeasible.
It wasn't strictly about confidence, though; in large part it was about her becoming less indecisive and more committed. Her rivalries pushed that internal development as a whole, helping to make her someone entirely different from day 1 to the end of the series. And it's not even close to subtle in performances. XY 80 has a few simple leaps and then some fancy sparkling. The Master Class has her creating an entire flower. That's a lot fancier and can't get more in your face than that.
Perhaps people do argue subjectively, but I could easily say there are characters I don't like that had agency, like Iris and Sophocles. Likewise, I disliked the Necrozma arc, but as a whole, the cast had agency there. It is possible to separate them.
What may not help my perspective is that Serena was in a very frenetic and action centric series, she did competitions and faced bad guys non stop, stuff with loads of adversity, and within those I never really felt like she stood a chance of losing in them outside when it was mandated, and it was only more glaring because she wasn't exactly competent as a trainer in a distinctive way. She'd get through a very tense villain plot without even suffering a single hit, and she'd stream through a performance contest only losing by her own hand, even in cases her contributions were very bare and boring. It felt too much like blatant plot armour that robbed a shade of fallibility from her. This to me undermined the idea that Serena herself was changing the outcome of things because everything felt so relatively dumbed down for her in place of her having to actually struggle much and get genuinely better. She had internal struggles but when they were solved, nothing was allowed to slow her down.
This I agree is subjective and I know I do obsess over this about Serena to an unhealthy level, it's just her overwhelming winning streak in nearly everything (or at least the avoidance of getting outclassed directly) was something that really bugs me for some reason.
Maybe I obsess over a broader feel of agency, the sense the character wouldn't get remotely as far as they did if they didn't do the unique things connected to their character, while the Pokemon anime is too often known for very generic and dumbed down chances where the twerps practically were the winners automatically. Most heroes are mandated win the large majority of the time, but you can still make it feel like they struggled and stood a chance of losing if they didn't put in some very unique form of effort. I also tend to favour protagonists that are allowed to be 'losers' every once in a while.
It's maybe also why I love SM Ash since not only is he distinctively competent but he is allowed to fail MISERABLY at some things which furthers the idea that his character has bounds and fallibility and it's his characteristics that drive how well he does (most of the time anyway, as there are still a more forgivable amount of plot armour moments).
The strange thing is that putting Serena in a few of SM's SOL/random events plot lines would likely rectify at least some of my frustrations with her because those are the types of stories where anything goes in how things chart depending on the character input (and many say Serena's best quality was her personality which would conveniently play into that genre). Unless she got underplayed as badly as Mallow, she'd HAVE to influence the story uniquely through her own character (and likely get a bit of fallibility from doing the odd bit of slapstick and accepting a more flawed version of her crush as well).
This I agree is subjective and I know I do obsess over this about Serena to an unhealthy level, it's just her overwhelming winning streak in nearly everything (or at least the avoidance of getting outclassed directly) was something that really bugs me for some reason.
Maybe I obsess over a broader feel of agency, the sense the character wouldn't get remotely as far as they did if they didn't do the unique things connected to their character, while the Pokemon anime is too often known for very generic and dumbed down chances where the twerps practically were the winners automatically. Most heroes are mandated win the large majority of the time, but you can still make it feel like they struggled and stood a chance of losing if they didn't put in some very unique form of effort. I also tend to favour protagonists that are allowed to be 'losers' every once in a while.
It's maybe also why I love SM Ash since not only is he distinctively competent but he is allowed to fail MISERABLY at some things which furthers the idea that his character has bounds and fallibility and it's his characteristics that drive how well he does (most of the time anyway, as there are still a more forgivable amount of plot armour moments).
The strange thing is that putting Serena in a few of SM's SOL/random events plot lines would likely rectify at least some of my frustrations with her because those are the types of stories where anything goes in how things chart depending on the character input (and many say Serena's best quality was her personality which would conveniently play into that genre). Unless she got underplayed as badly as Mallow, she'd HAVE to influence the story uniquely through her own character (and likely get a bit of fallibility from doing the odd bit of slapstick and accepting a more flawed version of her crush as well).
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Jeal
Well-Known Member
Why are you so obssessed with it though? Why do the characters have to flow the plot in a unique way as you say? Is not it enough just to flow the plot? The majority of animes, mainly of shonen genre, are like that. Why are you demanding this from Pokémon, an anime based in a game where the MC has no personality and just follows the flow of the story? No options given to player to take.