How do you expect the writers to go about writing the 8th gen?

[DatsRight]

Well I felt that X and Y wasn't as fluid in nature compared to Sun and Moon especially with the hilarious exaggerated character animations that were more appealing to the eye. The main thing about X and Y that I liked was the Zygarde sub-plot that unfolded at the end of its series and how oblivious Ash and his friends were to Team Flare's actual intentions. But there is definitely a possibility the new series will be as hilarious as Sun and Moon to still appeal to the younger audience.

The problem was that the Flare plot didn't stop everything outputting in the same formulaic way throughout XYZ. While we were waiting for Flare, we just got some of the most generic COTD/TR fillers ever made, the league ended up exactly as predicted just with more hype bait, and even the Flare plot itself ended the usual way villain plots do with a legendary hijacking over the twerps being the ones to come out on top. Nothing changed, nothing took the twerps out of their comfort zone, and the build up to it was often boring and at the cost of diluting a lot of the characters. XYZ to me took the opposite approach from SM, trying to make a more dynamic and standout arc but at the cost of making a lot of other main factors unentertaining.

Even in BW's final points we got more twerp-exclusive plots or times TR still put up creative even handed fights against them, while SM seems to be keeping up some slice of life plots or cases of Ash doing something drastically different from the norm. I don't want another series that throws any improvements down the toilet and gives us an even blander rehash of the old formula, be it for a slightly more high scale arc or not.

 

[Power Up]

Unlikely to happen. It's extremely popular with the staff and viewers. Serious episodes will still happen, but in the meantime they're going to make what they want.

I’ll keep my hopes up until the next season is announced

 

[LilligantLewis]

half finished plots

the MALAMAR TRIO

 

[U.N. Owen]

The problem with villain plots is that the bravado feels unearned because the main characters don't bother interact with the villains in the slightest. In fact, that's why I believe Marin would have been so much better than Ash in the Flare plot because the grand tone at least makes sense.

 

[mehmeh1]

the MALAMAR TRIO

c'mon writers, if you can bring back jigglypuff you can bring these guys too (I'd lol if they come back and their plot somehow revolved around the GS ball and jigglypuff just to make the unfinished arcs come full circle)

 

[DatsRight]

The problem with villain plots is that the bravado feels unearned because the main characters don't bother interact with the villains in the slightest. In fact, that's why I believe Marin would have been so much better than Ash in the Flare plot because the grand tone at least makes sense.

Even just adapting some of the greyer moments from the games would have been a small improvement, like when they're surprised Lysandre feels remorse or actually try sympathetically to reach him, instead of just the usual generic 'evil bad guy, you're going down' formula. It's odd how the anime just doesn't want to touch that road, even when the games leave them an ample amount of resource material to copy from.

Along with the fact most of the time they favour a flashy but superficial way to defeat them, which often means a curb stomp battle in some way. Either Ash's team beat them down easily with basic attacks, or they're losing to them and some new Pokemon/COTD comes in and curb stomps the bad guy instead. They don't feel remotely relevant to the twerps because they provide neither a physical or emotional challenge. The twerps are just there, almost like some plot armoured spanner stuck in the works of the far more methodical villains' plans. It's maybe a reason the twerps felt so vanilla from having TR or some other antagonist butt into nearly every story pre-SM, since it was seldom relevant to their development at all (besides the odd time it was a plot device to spark a DEM move learn or evolution).

Molly in the third movie and the occasional TR episodes in OS and BW (where they were often more challenging or had some sort of chemistry with the twerps, eg. the Meowth turns good arc) are among the few exceptions. SM has made the occasional try with more personally tied antagonists or dilemmas (eg. Marowak and then Bourgain through Kiawe's episodes, Celesteela with Sophocles), but you can tell it's still struggling, especially looking at how they fizzled down an ideal opportunity from the games for the normal formula, maybe a reason they've dumbed down the action and bad guy battles altogether in favour of just looking at the twerps themselves.

the MALAMAR TRIO

The biggest setback might be that they're unlikely to bring back either the Kalos Jenny or James' Inkay, who were far more personal rivals for the Evil Malamar than the twerps (expectedly). There's a reason their second face off was more memorable.

 

[Leonhart]

The problem with villain plots is that the bravado feels unearned because the main characters don't bother interact with the villains in the slightest. In fact, that's why I believe Marin would have been so much better than Ash in the Flare plot because the grand tone at least makes sense.

My main issue with villains in the anime is how incompetent they're portrayed as being. Even the Flare-dan (which was handled well as far as their plans were concerned) still fell apart due to the meddling of a few kids. It's difficult to take villainous teams seriously when they flounder so easily.

 

[FlygontheRavager]

My main issue with villains in the anime is how incompetent they're portrayed as being. Even the Flare-dan (which was handled well as far as their plans were concerned) still fell apart due to the meddling of a few kids. It's difficult to take villainous teams seriously when they flounder so easily.

Actually, they fell apart due to the meddling of a few kids, the Gym Leaders, two Champions, the regional Professor, Team Rocket, and a Legendary Pokemon. If anything, Team Flare took a lot more manpower to defeat than any of the other evil teams.

 

[DatsRight]

My main issue with villains in the anime is how incompetent they're portrayed as being. Even the Flare-dan (which was handled well as far as their plans were concerned) still fell apart due to the meddling of a few kids. It's difficult to take villainous teams seriously when they flounder so easily.

Technically they floundered more due to Zygarde, just Zygarde similarly beat them without even trying. Animes like power fests and curb stomps, the heroes just spamming raw power until it overwhelms the villain, and when that doesn't work, getting new power just from intense emotions, or another even more OP character coming in and doing it instead. The more one sided and unscratched the hero is by the end of the carnage, the cooler it looks.

There's only been so many times the villain can match them, and nothing sabotages it so the twerps can still just thrash them again. Times a villain forces the hero to win by being the clever underdog are FAR more rare in anime.

I think the writers also have a bit of a limit in how many complex even-handed battles they can do at once, good strategies are usually saved for the main arcs like the gym battles, where they can't break the rules. Notice BW had more even handed TR battles where both sides did good moves and Ash won more challenging instances just by pulling through, but many say the gym and league battles sucked relatively. They couldn't maintain quality for both. I also have my suspicions they don't like having some of the cuter Pokemon get brutalised too often, so always having them in battles they're dishing out attacks and not taking any excuses that perfectly.

Again probably why SM just got the point to just tone down the number of battles altogether instead of sticking in loads of token bad ones.

 

[AznKei]

My main issue with villains in the anime is how incompetent they're portrayed as being. Even the Flare-dan (which was handled well as far as their plans were concerned) still fell apart due to the meddling of a few kids. It's difficult to take villainous teams seriously when they flounder so easily.

I've seen enough action animes/cartoons/shows where the "grunts" are cannon fooder to the main characters, like the Foot soldiers from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, those Chitauri Aliens from Marvel's Avengers movie, etc., so this is not new.

 

[DatsRight]

I've seen enough action animes/cartoons/shows where the "grunts" are cannon fooder to the main characters, like the Foot soldiers from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, those Chitauri Aliens from Marvel's Avengers movie, etc., so this is not new.

I think the difference is that those are just the grunts, not the main villains of each story that do actually offer a good often not-plot armoured fight. Even some filler antagonists, you might see something different, maybe not challenging, but at least paced differently.

Hell I could argue even for some cartoon rivalries like Looney Tunes that are regularly and deliberately one sided, the appeal is seeing HOW the villain will fail epically. Bugs Bunny at least uses an enormous array of tricks against Elmer Fudd, and even the ways he is plot armoured are played for as much humour as possible (eg. Elmer sawing a tree branch Bugs is sitting on, and the rest of the tree Elmer is on falling down). It also helps that they bothered to give Bugs a chemistry with his opponents. Unlike the twerps, Bugs is entertaining against a bad guy.

Hell shows like Inspector Gadget, Kim Possible, Shaolin Showdown, Codename KND, they follow the same 'little kids foiling dumb villains' plot, but again the way they do it is different per episode and played on it's silliness.

With Pokemon it never feels like you are supposed to think it was a zero effort, if anything it looks like you were supposed to think the twerps handled things super competently, just all the curb stomps and plot armour climaxes are more the result of formula and lazy writing. Nearly every freaking Team Rocket battle is interchangeable, and even when it LOOKS like they might up their game, some twist will occur to make it pace exactly the same again. This was done to the point that having a series where Team Rocket regularly offered creative challenges for the twerps with entertainment value was treated like something extremely special, and even that was botched in places.

Hell most of the time Team Rocket themselves are just a twist in some plot whenever things risk branching out of the twerps' comfort zone. It all feels like the villains are just a tumour fighting against developing the protagonists properly, an excuse to keep them inactive and boring and not have to gain any sort of character agency because any four year old could beat the obstacles they fight.

 

[U.N. Owen]

I've seen enough action animes/cartoons/shows where the "grunts" are cannon fooder to the main characters, like the Foot soldiers from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, those Chitauri Aliens from Marvel's Avengers movie, etc., so this is not new.

Mooks are not personally my problem (can't say much for the person you quoted). My personal problem is that the main antagonists carry no weight. We don't care about a faceless mook, but we should have some investment in the antagonist-protagonist relationship. Maybe the protagonist could see a truth to the madness (Black Panther's Kilmonger), have sympathy for (Avatar's Zuko), or utter disgust that and want to see the villain taken down (X-Men's Mr. Sinister). For Pokemon, don't have have that because characters don't interact.

 

[Pokegirl Fan~]

I really don't think the villains will ever have any kind of deep backstory or whatever; anyone wanting to see anything like that will most likely end up being disappointed. Besides it's a kids show where the target audience is from like 7-10 years old.

 

[AznKei]

Mooks are not personally my problem (can't say much for the person you quoted). My personal problem is that the main antagonists carry no weight. We don't care about a faceless mook, but we should have some investment in the antagonist-protagonist relationship. Maybe the protagonist could see a truth to the madness (Black Panther's Kilmonger), have sympathy for (Avatar's Zuko), or utter disgust that and want to see the villain taken down (X-Men's Mr. Sinister). For Pokemon, don't have have that because characters don't interact.

I understand what you meant, but I wasn't really invested to the main antagonists of this show compared to the companions because we rarely see them as they mostly appear much later to the series/seasons. I'm more into the deeper companions rivalry stuffs, so they can keep themselves busy away from Ash.

 

[AshxSatoshi]

Mooks are not personally my problem (can't say much for the person you quoted). My personal problem is that the main antagonists carry no weight. We don't care about a faceless mook, but we should have some investment in the antagonist-protagonist relationship. Maybe the protagonist could see a truth to the madness (Black Panther's Kilmonger), have sympathy for (Avatar's Zuko), or utter disgust that and want to see the villain taken down (X-Men's Mr. Sinister). For Pokemon, don't have have that because characters don't interact.

I blame the anime honestly for butchering that. I don’t know about others but I find Lusamine to be one of the most interesting antagonist of Pokémon. Her obsession with beauty, treatment of her children and back story just made her so interesting to me. Sun and Moon weren’t my favorite games but they differently get points for writing a good villian. And to top it all she was related to your best friend which made it even more personal stopping her. Granted we don’t exactly see how the PC feels about Lusamine we do get a voice within Lillie who by the end of the game voices her frustration with her mother.

 

[DatsRight]

I blame the anime honestly for butchering that. I don’t know about others but I find Lusamine to be one of the most interesting antagonist of Pokémon. Her obsession with beauty, treatment of her children and back story just made her so interesting to me. Sun and Moon weren’t my favorite games but they differently get points for writing a good villian. And to top it all she was related to your best friend which made it even more personal stopping her. Granted we don’t exactly see how the PC feels about Lusamine we do get a voice within Lillie who by the end of the game voices her frustration with her mother.

It is a shame because the anime did try to fill holes in the games story (giving Ash a proactive bond with Lillie) but then added tons of new ones by dumbing down Lusamine. I get them wanting to tone down the abusive angle for a kids cartoon, but they still could have played a lot more with her being flawed character drawn into the Ultra Space angle by her own vices and Lillie having to put up with that, especially since USUM gave them some leeway into making her more sympathetic.

It's like they can't handle an antagonist being seen as a character by their protagonists, they have to be one dimensionally evil enough for the twerps not to care about them, or brainwashed or otherwise unsapient. Any character that risks on being too grey or sympathetic that the twerps have to take notice usually ends up a pawn or immediately turning to good (eg. Florges, Alain, Lusamine). SM has toyed with antagonist Pokemon that the twerps try to solve peacefully, but they're more mundane dilemmas than proper villains.

 

[CMButch]

Well, Gen 8 will likely be like its past season - getting a gym badges, meeting CotDs, beating evil team due some messed up or opposite goal from kids/society.Alas, I wouldn't mind that, but hopefulyl they change the formula in that already established formula - like some CoTD reappear at least and supportive roles have much bigger part in those seasons.

 

[Willow's Tara]

I feel like Sun & Moon in the anime was basically the Orange Islands and Battle Frontier, more like an filler then an actual season. So I reckon in Gen 8 we will get back to gyms and all. Maybe the animation will return slightly to the past, but who knows if it will, might change again. I am curious to see if Ash "graduates" and if the other students actually stay in school or graduate as well.

 

[p96822]

I want everything to go back to normal in gen 8

 

[Pokegirl Fan~]

I want everything to go back to normal in gen 8

You mean where Ash continues his endless cycle of challenging the pointless gym quest while losing the league for the millionth time as well as countless boring cotd/potd fillers with Team Rocket appearing in every single episode while the group is traveling in some kind of generic forest setting? No thanks I think I'll pass on that.