December 24th: PM2019 092 - Gangar Does Its Best! The Road to Kyodaimax!!

[AuraChannelerChris]

If you all want those interactions back, that'd mean mutilating Ash's face again.

 

[Ignition]

I really miss S&M’s approach of giving Pokémon every episode appearances outside their balls, whether that be a comedy scene, personality scene or just a quick little training skit. I think it was a writing choice due to the drastic change in formula for S&M and the organic almost family like connection Alola had to Pokemon and people.

I was rewatching the episode where Kaki got Garagara and it was nice to just have Nyabby appear to participate in the crown ceremony even if it didn’t do anything pertaining to the main plot with Garagara’s capture or Mukuroh’s family randomly joining it to tutor it Feather Dance to deal with Juni’per.

That was SM’s biggest strength imo. The Pokémon felt like actual parts of the cast even if they weren’t doing anything besides relaxing or playing together. That’s what makes the handling of his Journeys team so disappointing as it’s coming after one of his most expressive and involved teams.

 

[Blue Saturday]

That was SM’s biggest strength imo. The Pokémon felt like actual parts of the cast even if they weren’t doing anything besides relaxing or playing together. That’s what makes the handling of his Journeys team so disappointing as it’s coming after one of his most expressive and involved teams.

You just can’t beat SOUUUUUUULLLLLL like Satoshi/Nyaheat having a timeless encounter with Kid!Kukui and Gaogaen (as a Nyabby) where he received a Fire-Z from an Ohrot that was revealed to be dead in the present or Mooland tutoring Fire Blast in an episode about Mao’s deceased mother from the afterlife via a chance encounter in Kapu-Rehire’s mist where we get side development with Hapu’u trying to save her new friends from getting stuck there forever.

 

[cricketlaxwolvesbandy]

Gengar getting G-Max sounds cool on paper, but I'm worried about it being Galar-only.

All of Ash's PWC matches have to be in Galar from now on if we want even a chance of seeing it again over Mega Lucario and 10 Mil Thunderbolt.

I guess we're guaranteed it showing up in the Masters 8 (provided it's like the Alola League where everyone gets to shine and not the Kalos League where only a single Pokemon matters)

Man, I wish the DD arc ended with Etrnatus making it possible to use Dynamax in every region.

Greninja didn’t matter since the final battle Pikachu works his ass off and it’s all up to Greninja to win and Greninja doesn’t win and faints and Ash lises

 

[Ignition]

You just can’t beat SOUUUUUUULLLLLL like Satoshi/Nyaheat having a timeless encounter with Kid!Kukui and Gaogaen (as a Nyabby) where he received a Fire-Z from an Ohrot that was revealed to be dead in the present or Mooland tutoring Fire Blast in an episode about Mao’s deceased mother from the afterlife via a chance encounter in Kapu-Rehire’s mist where we get side development with Hapu’u trying to save her new friends from getting stuck there forever.

The Tapu Fini episode is in my top 10 of the entire anime and Incineroar’s entire arc is only second to Infernape’s for me. Really enjoyed how much they used the region’s culture and theme of family to flesh out both Ash and his Pokémon. SM has only grown on me and can’t deny how much it impacted my love for Alola in general.

 

[Pokegirl Fan~]

If you all want those interactions back, that'd mean mutilating Ash's face again.

His face has been mutilated since BW

 

[Dephender]

I really miss S&M’s approach of giving Pokémon every episode appearances outside their balls, whether that be a comedy scene, personality scene or just a quick little training skit. I think it was a writing choice due to the drastic change in formula for S&M and the organic almost family like connection Alola had to Pokemon and people.

All the earlier series did that too though? SM didn't "make the writing choice" to do this, it was PM2019 that made the choice to STOP doing it.

 

[Morax]

You just can’t beat SOUUUUUUULLLLLL like Satoshi/Nyaheat having a timeless encounter with Kid!Kukui and Gaogaen (as a Nyabby) where he received a Fire-Z from an Ohrot that was revealed to be dead in the present or Mooland tutoring Fire Blast in an episode about Mao’s deceased mother from the afterlife via a chance encounter in Kapu-Rehire’s mist where we get side development with Hapu’u trying to save her new friends from getting stuck there forever.

Uh…yes i can.

Spoiler

But let’s not go that far. Even this had more soul

Spoiler

 

[Blue Saturday]

All the earlier series did that too though? SM didn't "make the writing choice" to do this, it was PM2019 that made the choice to STOP doing it.

I mean in S&M you pretty much always saw the Pokémon outside of their balls and engaged with the world around them, mainly due to the stationary location of it all. Several times Satoshi would just visit the Battle Royale and Nyabby would take part, you had Mukuroh’s relevance with its family post-capture, Iwanko was Kukui’s before being adopted by Satoshi and still remained apart of the Kukui household after the series.

There really is no S&M equivalent of Mukuroh just hanging out napping in the Kukui porch, even the classmates Pokemon and secondary captures always just seemed to be hanging out in the background. It actually made the Pokémon feel more grounded in their environment in a manner past series didn’t.

 

[mehmeh1]

Uh…yes i can.

Spoiler

But let’s not go that far. Even this had more soul

Spoiler

smh, not using the SOOOOUL KIIIIIIIING

 

[Morax]

smh, not using the SOOOOUL KIIIIIIIING

sasuga pun master, can't beat you :>

 

[Dephender]

I mean in S&M you pretty much always saw the Pokémon outside of their balls and engaged with the world around them, mainly due to the stationary location of it all. Several times Satoshi would just visit the Battle Royale and Nyabby would take part, you had Mukuroh’s relevance with its family post-capture, Iwanko was Kukui’s before being adopted by Satoshi and still remained apart of the Kukui household after the series.

There really is no S&M equivalent of Mukuroh just hanging out napping in the Kukui porch, even the classmates Pokemon and secondary captures always just seemed to be hanging out in the background. It actually made the Pokémon feel more grounded in their environment in a manner past series didn’t.

We saw Pokemon being out of their balls and just hanging around interacting with each other all the time in the pre-SM series too, I'm really not sure what you're trying to say here. It's PM2019 that stands out by NOT having such scenes, not SM that stands out by having them.

 

[Morax]

I mean in S&M you pretty much always saw the Pokémon outside of their balls and engaged with the world around them, mainly due to the stationary location of it all. Several times Satoshi would just visit the Battle Royale and Nyabby would take part, you had Mukuroh’s relevance with its family post-capture, Iwanko was Kukui’s before being adopted by Satoshi and still remained apart of the Kukui household after the series.

There really is no S&M equivalent of Mukuroh just hanging out napping in the Kukui porch, even the classmates Pokemon and secondary captures always just seemed to be hanging out in the background. It actually made the Pokémon feel more grounded in their environment in a manner past series didn’t.

Crazy noisy bizarre town >>> Alola

 

[Power Up]

A lot of PM episodes similarly center on the gimmick or plot conceit of the episode like prior seasons, but most of the time they don't really with it to develop Ash's team and their relationships with one another or even give them meaningful screen time that would help with the mini-arcs that Journeys does attempt. For example, with Noibat and one of my favorite episodes from XY, A Relay in the Sky, not only did it develop Noibat and give him screentime in a really compelling fashion, but it also involved Ash's other Pokemon like Hawlucha and Talonflame in teaching Noibat how to fly in the first place. Tons of really cute and wholesome moments that fleshed out Noibat and his relationship with other members of Ash's team + great character writing.

It's probably the perfect episode for me and these type of episodes don't exist in Journeys at all.

 

[AuraChannelerChris]

I'm pretty sure there was almost no interaction between Ash's XY members outside of Hawlucha and Noivern. Greninja only gave blank stares (so powerful enough to snap Ash out of his funk) and had no emotions (other than just a static shot of it dancing at Serena's little showcase at Lumiose City), Talonflame was just a bird, and Goodra was never seen doing anything meaningful with the others.

Greninja and Talonflame lost their buddyness completely once they screwed Olympia, but even so, they never did anything together save for that early instance when Froakie slapped Fletching on the head.

(Ironically, Serena's trio interacted quite a lot, but only because showcases demanded cooperation so it was impossible not to have them interact with each other.)

BW did have a lot of interactions, at the expense of making Ash's BW team super crappy battle-wise. However, I distinctly remember his Scraggy never saying good bye to Iris's Axew, and we all know how Axew highly valued Scraggy.

 

[Power Up]

I'm pretty sure there was almost no interaction between Ash's XY members outside of Hawlucha and Noivern. Greninja only gave blank stares and had no emotions (other than just a static shot of it dancing at Serena's little showcase at Lumiose City), Talonflame was just a bird, and Goodra was never seen doing anything meaningful with the others.

Greninja and Talonflame lost their buddyness completely once they screwed Olympia, but even so, they never did anything together save for that early instance when Froakie slapped Fletching on the head.

Well that's just incorrect, already gave one of the best example above. Others include XY 38 that had great interactions between Froakie and Hawlucha that were also similarly meaningful in training with each other.

Saying Greninja " only gave blank stares and had no emotions " is such a bizarrely wrong claim to make. I'm not sure you could claim that for any of Greninja's evolutions from Froakie to Frogadier to Greninja/AG. See it's actual introductory episodes, XY 13, XY 38 as already mentioned, the Sanpei episodes, etc

Talonflame is somewhat fair individually, but even it had moments with its relationship with Froakie and it's second evolution episode was good as well as the episode with the Olympia episode, but I'd give it to you that they didn't do much with him as a Pokemon but that's still a far cry from saying it had no interactions with other mons from Ash's team lol

Goodra had one of the best arcs of all of Ash's mons imo, but I guess it's fair that it didn't do much with the others as far as what I'm remembering.

Saying something like " there was almost no interactions between Ash's XY members " is directly contradicted with what's in the show. I'm sure we'll quibble over whether or not it was meaningful, but either way it's absolutely a major contrast with Ash's Journeys team.

 

[Blue Saturday]

We saw Pokemon being out of their balls and just hanging around interacting with each other all the time in the pre-SM series too, I'm really not sure what you're trying to say here. It's PM2019 that stands out by NOT having such scenes, not SM that stands out by having them.

I dunno, to each their own but, S&M still sticks out to me in that regard. I’m not saying previous series lacked that I’m saying S&M always just seemed to offer that passive screentime where Pokémon were on-level with Pikachu or just shouldermons like Kibago/Pochama in terms of how they were just grounded in the cast and environment. It felt impressive given the immensity of the cast that saga. There didn’t need to be a reason for them to be out all the time, they just were and if they were absent the show explained it (S&M20 said Pikachu/Satoshi went to the island alone for bonding time.)

Even fully evolved Pokémon were still drawn hanging out and interacting post-evolution regularly. There was no “personality-less” Pokémon on the cast as they all got to show off who they were at some point and retained those traits after evolving. Previous series still had stuff like birds missing out on group scenes, companion Pokémon having no personality or just losing their charisma/character after evolving to be serious or just stoic.

 

[Megapixel]

Scraggy never saying good bye to Iris's Axew, and we all know how Axew highly valued Scraggy.

I know it has nothing to do with it, but it's a pity that Axew (now haxorus) can't see how his friend evolves into Scrafty

 

[AuraChannelerChris]

Saying something like " there was almost no interactions between Ash's XY members " is directly contradicted with what's in the show. I'm sure we'll quibble over whether or not it was meaningful, but either way it's absolutely a major contrast with Ash's Journeys team.

6 or 7 interactions in the span of 140+ episodes aren't exactly enough. Journeys has an even lower bar than that despite the fact all the Pokemon live under the same glass roof.

 

[cricketlaxwolvesbandy]

A lot of PM episodes similarly center on the gimmick or plot conceit of the episode like prior seasons, but most of the time they don't really with it to develop Ash's team and their relationships with one another or even give them meaningful screen time that would help with the mini-arcs that Journeys does attempt. For example, with Noibat and one of my favorite episodes from XY, A Relay in the Sky, not only did it develop Noibat and give him screentime in a really compelling fashion, but it also involved Ash's other Pokemon like Hawlucha and Talonflame in teaching Noibat how to fly in the first place. Tons of really cute and wholesome moments that fleshed out Noibat and his relationship with other members of Ash's team + great character writing.

It's probably the perfect episode for me and these type of episodes don't exist in Journeys at all.

Be Noibat
Have great development
Have friends and parents looking out for you
Learn to fly
Get a lot of focus
Fight a legendary and evolve
Do nothing and get remembered as a jobber
Ash brings you in against a Pokemon your 4x weak to
Can’t help him win the league

My boy Noivern deserved better, the while Kalos team deserved better...