technically, you could say that I was on hiatus when the series started. Oh, this takes me back. As "luck" would have it, just a few months before the Pokemon craze hit America, my family moved away from a region that had both WB and local networks that would end up happening to air the first 40-something episodes, to an area that had neither. Aside from having to watch stuff on an antennae in between living in a condo and finding a permanent home, when we finally did get cable, they didn't have it. Being interested in Pokemon through the video games, I wanted to watch the show, and finally got to when my brother got the first volume of the VHS for his birthday. Afterwards, I would continue trying to collect the following volumes, until one day, my cable provider suddenly got WB for reasons unknown. This was in the middle of the Orange Islands arc... my collection of VHSes managed to extend up to the 8th gym. I filled in the rest of the gap with reruns (though I'd already read spoilers on the internet).
I would create another large gap a few years later, when I'd start downloading Japanese episodes around the time of Adan's Gym, when the dub was barely around the point that Grovyle was evolving. I got off the dub almost completely here (probably a good thing given how god-awful Grovyle's voice was, to say nothing of the worsening changes in background music), and started rewatching AG in Japanese from the first episode.
It seems like just about everyone originally gave up on the show at some point in Johto.
Here's a question:
Did anyone here actually watch all the Johto episodes in their original run? I'm quite curious if anyone made it through all of Johto when it was "brand new" and airing for the first time.
I tried to, but I think on a few occasions, Kids WB would make some unannounced schedule change. There was also a matter of Digimon being on at the same time, but I might've resolved that on some weeks either by watching one of the shows air an encore later that week (did they have encores? Digimon might've), or taping one of them and watching the other on a different TV. Meh, my memory's foggy, but I do remember managing to watch almost all of Jouto's Engish dub as it was airing, with just a few select episodes missing (I think some of the key ones missing were around when the dub title changed from Johto Journeys to Johto League Champions).
I never really did stop watching entirely.
Like most people, I almost originally gave up on the show back at the mid-point of Johto. Both Charizard and Squirtle had left Ash's roster (which at the time, we didn't know if they would come back), the GS ball was dropped with no closure, and all those tedious Johto fillers were coming in at full force.
I decided to stick with Johto in hopes it'd get better, (to be fair, the tail-end of Johto was an improvement), and went from there.
So I can't say I ever did stop watching, and I have actually seen every episode of the show at least once. But Johto was truly the only time where I was *really* tempted to give up for good. I'm glad I stuck with it though.
although I did stick out all of Jouto, the ridiculous string of fillers in Johto League Champions was really turning me off (not only that, but I think there was a summer of reruns occuring sometime after Bayleaf's evolution and Kecleon makings its premier). One day, I felt that I didn't check up on Japanese spoilers in a while, but when I finally did, I was kinda looking forward to what lay ahead. They'd finally get to the next Gym... which would actually lead to the Whirl Islands, featuring a Lugia mini-arc. Sometime after that was done, Fushigidane would finally leave, Satoshi would get an egg with a Gomazou, and some other things as the arc finally approached its end (though I don't think I spoiled the league, yet). I was even more excited when I found downloads of the Japanese openings for the first time, including the spoilering Ready, Go! It was pretty awesome, making it seem like Satoshi would get a Yogiras, practically all of his reserve roster being there, etc. Little did I know, at least some of that would be a disappointment. Hell, I'll never forget how when the dub actually did get to Ash getting Phanpy, the episode in question was very crappy (Ash runs around trying to get a Pokemon he just hatched into a ball -_-). Maybe it was the spoilers, but as much as I wanted things of relevance happening through all of Jouto, I then realized that important episodes don't always equate to good episodes (and let this be a lesson to anyone else reading this).