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Pokémon the Series XY | Pokémon the Series XY&Z

345ash-greninja

Auto-Memories Doll
You're acting like it's a fact that they weren't.

It was bland because the characters' lack of vibrancy and foibles meant it was mostly acted out stiffly or through exposition. I got things were happening but the whole 'Ash focusing on power' was underwhelming because his character was still ace-ish and carefree most of the time (oh, wow he handed Serena his coat a little rudely, such a new found bad attitude :p) and Greninja still acted like an expressionless piece of cardboard. Like a lot of things in XY, lifeless execution ruined it.

It's quite clear that you ignored the points I gave above. I guess then you want to desperately believe that the Ash-Greninja arc was bland. They went through through a lot of trials and errors, through a lot of emotional turmoil to master the form, it's not that they instantly mastered it.

And you dislike the fact that XY Ash was competent? OK, fine that's your opinion. You like protagonists that have more flaws. But I don't think there is anything wrong with a protagonist being competent and badass- they seem more inspirational to me. But it's not that XY Ash didn't have flaws, he had his flaws which he sorted out through his own. But in my opinion, his competence and maturity made him look more inspirational. Think about his inspirational speech in the Team Flare arc which brought back Alain to his senses.
 

snorlax512

Well-Known Member
One decent moment of characterisation doesn't make up for 40+ episodes of utter blandness setting up to it. That's like saying Serena' last limelight episode totally made up for her completely underwhelming character arc throughout the other 139 episodes. It was nice but did everything else have to lack entertainment value?

Greninja got him to the finals (though no more so than Pikachu did), but otherwise I'd say it was superficial how much stronger he was and how much he bonded above the previous ones. The series' better animation and more grandiose nature just made it flashier.

While the personality loss is indeed a recurring problem (eg. Sylveon and Noivern had similar problems this series) it's more glaring due to how silly Greninja is in concept. Froakie at least played on the whole 'frog ninja power' thing tongue in cheek (unintended pun) so was given some personality. Despite the even sillier looks, they actually tried to play Greninja utterly seriously.

I just don't see how you think Greninja is a dull ace. Greninja had as much character as the rest of his aces most of the time, and I explained why his arc showed more character than any of his previous Pokemon.

The animation made it more impressive, but it is quite clear that he is Ash's strongest Pokemon by a mile.

And I must say you are in the minority if you don't like his design. He has pretty much become the second mascot after Pikachu, and how could you not love how cool he looks when he transformed, crossed his arms and looked at Zard X like "come at me bro"? xD
 

345ash-greninja

Auto-Memories Doll
I just don't see how you think Greninja is a dull ace. Greninja had as much character as the rest of his aces most of the time, and I explained why his arc showed more character than any of his previous Pokemon.

The animation made it more impressive, but it is quite clear that he is Ash's strongest Pokemon by a mile.

And I must say you are in the minority if you don't like his design. He has pretty much become the second mascot after Pikachu, and how could you not love how cool he looks when he transformed, crossed his arms and looked at Zard X like "come at me bro"? xD

I guess you're just speaking to a wall. DatsRight is always going to believe that Greninja was a dull ace and the Ash-Greninja arc lacked depth. Anyway, it's his opinion, we can't change that. I personally loved Greninja as an ace and the whole Ash-Greninja arc.
 
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Daniel31

HopingGaryReturns
I guess you're just speaking to a wall. DatsRight is always going to believe that Greninja was a dull ace and the Ash-Greninja arc lacked depth. Anyway, it's his opinion, we can't change that. I personally loved Greninja as an ace and the whole Ash-Greninja arc.
Lol! :rolleyes:

Anyway, I thought Greninja was a cool Pokemon and didn't lack depth. It's not my favorite, but it suited XY(Z) Ash well in this series. The backstory with Froakie at Sycamore's, picking Ash as his trainer and also the moments as a Greninja where we had the depression arc, combined with rolling the Pokeball back to Ash at the end was good. It just showed that it wanted to be stronger and best it can be. The prophecy at the Ninja Village was also a nice touch.

Outside of battling, it had it's moments as a Froakie, like in the ninja training episodes (still wish Sanpei was featured more btw) or in XY13 (kindergarten episode). As a Frogadier, there were moments like in the XY71 , where the group gets separated and he's tries to keep Serena protected from the Pangoro or when they were working on Eevee's shyness in XY89, Frogadier was one of the Pokemon chosen for Eevee to get to know or be comfortable around. I'm sure there's more, but these are a few moments I remembered right away.

I personally would've like to see Ash get a mega, but the synchro with Greninja made me feel like that Ash was another step closer to his dream (Pokemon Master) at the time because it's obviously a special bond that we've never seen before. Even Olympia commented on their bond when it was a Frogadier.
 

Everything12

Well-Known Member
What I am writing he is my opinion and is in no way, shape, or form fact and should not be taken as such. So first this generation did a lot of things right and is probably going to be remembered as one of the best generations of Pokemon and I will explain why I think that is, the first thing is we had the most serious Ash who was much better at battling then his other incarnations who wasn't constantly treated as the butt of a joke. Ash's Pokemon themselves were probably the strongest he had with Noivern and Talonflame facing the legendary Pokemon Zapdos and Moltres, Ash-Greninja who could stand against the Champions ace, and Goodra who is his first Pseudo-Legendary. The battle animation was epic fully showing off the full skills of Ash and his Pokemon accentuating how much better they were then previous generations. Serena herself was the best girl for shipping with Ash no one should be able to deny that, though they still will. Alain in the Mega Evolution specials was probably one of the most epic rivals we have had including Paul and Gary Oak. The team flare arc was amazing and was a great way to finish the series.

Of course nothing is without its flaws and as far as I'm concerned XY had some big ones, first up Ash seemingly traded in his personality for his battle skills because as far as I can tell he is now basically rarely sad, annoyed, angry, hot-headed, or confused and seems to be mostly determined, or happy with the exception being in the Greninja arc after Wulfric, which in my opinion was taken a bit too far and seemed exaggerated, I can understand why this epic Ash who wins nearly all of his battles and is not treated as a joke is great, but its not the Ash I like so I dislike the lack of personalty despite his skill. The Pokemon themselves like Ash while awesome seem to lack a lot of personalty of the earlier ones such, which again I can understand for those who like epic battles with the hero wining but its not the personality filled Pokemon I like. Serena herself has a lot of problems such as her goal Pokemon Showcases, while I understand that its is relatable how she took her time looking for her goal what with people in real life taking their time to find their goals it is not entertaining to watch, I don't expect it to be instant but if they had her find her goal quicker they could probably have spent more time fixing other problems, such as her rivals being boring and not offering any actual challenge by developing and showing them winning against Serena more, and they could have also spent time show her slowly changing her strategy when losing and such not making it look like the writers were keeping her from losing and another problem is most of her time not spent of Showcases was spent of her crush show off little of her own personalty, Clement has a problem in that after the gym battle he was pushed off to the side and left to stagnate, and Bonnie was just their for the marriage joke and Squishy. Alains problem was that most of his character was in the specials as in the series his rivalry with Ash was pretty sudden while normally we have a whole generation to see them interact so we can get heated about he rivalry, and with the rest of the rivals they weren't rivals but people they meet on their journey that they had to face against to reach theirs goal.

My final opinion on XY was that it was mainly for the older audience because they will enjoy the amazing actions scene, the lack of humour, and the shipping, so for those who like those things its probably the best generation, while for those like me how liked the humour and character interactions it was great but could have being better, and member this is my opinion not fact.
 

Xenon Blue

No Hard Feelings
Greninja wasn't too dull, but rather it was extremely predictable. It is far from the likes of Charizard or Infernape in terms of development. It all comes back to the underlying weak pillar; it feels like the writers didn't plan ahead of time and started inserting stuff as the story progressed. I understand plans change to accommodate the demand, but the core of the direction was basically non-existent.
 

k6666

Pikachu Fan
except for team flare arc XY saga as whole is just a hype bait for me which writer fail to deliver like
the girl who take long enough to find a goal rather she try anything new that could help her character more we got 40 episode of nothingness except shipping bait and the goal her finally found is contest rip off and now she finally gonna do the real thing but off screen and another bad thing about her writing , she never win an official battle with another trainer hardly even finish it
the male sidekick who given hype to be ash obstacle (need 4 badge to face him) feel like the other way around cause the lack battle and training he do and all his focus after his gym battle all filler even his hype battle episode (clemont vs xerocic) is total disappointment for male sidekick even he have more character development than previous one
the group which they call best group ever ( clemont gym episode , the mamsowine episode) lack of chemistry and feel stranger toward each other
the team that ash call his strongest , didnt live it what ash call them ( goodra for the hype sixth member and the mr big and reliable ) LOL
and the league that was mess all skipable battle just didnt help , if only they show the battle that could help goodra and mr big and reliable performance and living it what it call to be ash strongest team ever

but it have sick animation and great battle but sadly that it nothing else
 

Mrs. Oreo

Banned
I didn't enjoy X&Y as much compared to past sagas. X&Y was an improvement in terms of animation thankfully and the pacing was decent, but Ash's friends didn't develop as much as I had hoped and Ash's pokemon were kind of dull to me, with the exception of Hawlucha. I also didn't like how pointless Tierno and Trevor were as rivals. :[
 

Leonhart

Imagineer
The Kalos saga was great overall, with a few exceptions like Serena's leisureliness with getting her own long-term goal, and Satoshi's team. The latter was worse since the writers made strange decisions with his team, such as ditching Numelgon and giving Satoshi an Onbat that was virtually neglected until it evolved. Satoshi didn't need to have an empty team slot for so long, either. He could've captured a Bokurei, or a Cleffy, or a Kachikohru, or a Shushupu, or a Meecle, and so on to fill the vacancy instead of him recalling Numelgon on the eve of the Kalos League. Anything would've worked, except perhaps Kuzumo since it's aquatic and not very mobile on land.
 

KungFuMaster

KungFu Zen Mode
I didn't enjoy X&Y as much compared to past sagas. X&Y was an improvement in terms of animation thankfully and the pacing was decent, but Ash's friends didn't develop as much as I had hoped and Ash's pokemon were kind of dull to me, with the exception of Hawlucha. I also didn't like how pointless Tierno and Trevor were as rivals. :[

Thank you very much, what a compliment xD
 

Mrs. Oreo

Banned
Anything would've worked, except perhaps Kuzumo since it's aquatic and not very mobile on land.

Well we've seen floating aquatic pokemon in the past, so if Ash or any cast member had caught a Skrelp or Dragalge in X&Y, they wouldn't have necessarily struggled with mobility. I wish Ash had caught the Skrelp from the Muraille Coast episode. ^^
 

Wednesdayz

Meowth fanatic
I liked XY for being much more consistent than BW at least, but I didn't like that all the rivals minus Alain were inept. Like, even Sawyer wasn't competent until the Kalos League. Also, the fact that Ash was worshiped by all his pals got stale after a while: we needed more conflict in XY's cast.
 

Dephender

Gizakawayusu
Staff member
Moderator
I'll just toss this in here:

Various interesting tidbits from the recent interview with Yajima:
*The kiss scene is indeed meant to be Serena kissing Satoshi, and his reaction to it is surprised awe, any ambiguity the scene has is so they could get it on TV in the first place.
*Likewise, you're meant to hope and assume the two of them are going to become a couple later.
*The idea to have a romance subplot apparently came from producer Shukichi Kanda, who came up with the idea of portraying things through a female lead's admiration for Satoshi, which then led to the suggestion that they'd have a flashback to a childhood meeting with romantic implications.
*Yajima did not know exactly how long the series would last, only that it would have to end when the next games came out.
*Alan was always meant to be part of the main series. The reason the four Mega specials were made was because it would be difficult to set up his backstory and development in the series itself, so he came up with the idea of giving him his own episodes that could establish his character. The idea to give these episodes a mega evolution theme came later, and was also his idea (so they were not made for the purpose of marketing megas, or in order to test the water for a series with another main character or any other such theory).
*Also, Alan is meant to be an "Anakin Skywalker-type character", someone who turns to the dark side to protect those he loves.
*Satoshi's XY design was primarily Yajima's, and the idea for his sideburns were taken from "a character from the video games named Red, which Satoshi is based on".
*Yajima wanted to make the bond between Satoshi and Gekkouga a major part of the story, but felt it would be difficult to do so if it had to remain a Gekkouga, so he went to Game Freak, and they came up with the idea of a synchro transformation. It was put in Sun/Moon afterwards, but was created during this discussion between anime staff and GF.
*The interviewer notes that Okido didn't appear at all outside of episode 3, and that Okido's lecture segment getting replaced with PokeTV when XY&Z started meant that Okido didn't appear at all throughout all of XY&Z (the interview was conducted before XY&Z47 had aired) and asks if there was a reason for this. Yajima confirms this was a complete oversight, not something intentional. Presumably this goes for other callbacks to older series as well.
*When XY&Z started, Yajima knew that the series had to wrap up everything in only a year, and they did a meeting to basically set up how the events of that year would go. He also specifically says that this is the reason there's minimal filler in XY&Z, there was absolutely no room.
*Yajima wanted to drop the use of stock footage completely, but this wasn't possible to do, so they went with creating stock foreground footage that could have different backgrounds added to it instead.
 
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Satomine Night

The Power of Z!
Thanks for sharing those tidbits, Dephender!

*Yajima wanted to make the bond between Satoshi and Gekkouga a major part of the story, but felt it would be difficult to do so if it had to remain a Gekkouga, so he went to Game Freak, and they came up with the idea of a synchro transformation. It was put in Sun/Moon afterwards, but was created during this discussion between anime staff and GF.
Wow, I wouldn't have expected Ash-Greninja to actually be Game Freak's idea. I'd assumed Ash-Greninja was the creation of the anime writers only and Game Freak had no part in it, and they only included it in the Sun & Moon demo to capitalize on its popularity. So, to learn that Game Freak actually came up with the idea in the first place is actually rather surprising and very interesting.

*Also, Alan is meant to be an "Anakin Skywalker-type character", someone who turns to the dark side to protect those he loves.
So...would that make Mairin Padmé Amidala, Professor Sycamore Obi-wan Kenobi, and Lysandre Chancellor/Emperor Palpatine? :p
 
I'll just toss this in here:
*Yajima wanted to drop the use of stock footage completely, but this wasn't possible to do, so they went with creating stock foreground footage that could have different backgrounds added to it instead.

So they went Gundam Seed Destiny on us instead of making more interesting animation scenes? Seriously, it's 2016, who still uses stock footage in anime? I applaud Yajima for taking the consideration on dropping it though.

*Satoshi's XY design was primarily Yajima's, and the idea for his sideburns were taken from "a character from the video games named Red, which Satoshi is based on".

http://weknowmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/i-dont-know-what-i-expected.png

*Also, Alan is meant to be an "Anakin Skywalker-type character", someone who turns to the dark side to protect those he loves.

They should have went with this path. It would have made the Flare arc worth it. Alain became less and less interesting as the series go by and they totally went downhill with his character at the end.
 

U.N. Owen

In Brightest Day, In Blackest Night ...
I laughed more than I should at the Alan = Anakin Skywalker line. Let's be honest, this part of the character was botched the worst. He didn't really establish himself as someone to be feared at all. Even at his coldest, he didn't really incite fear. He lacked the side effects of spiraling into evil like a spike in brutality.
 

Pokegirl Fan~

Liko>>>>>Ash
I'll just toss this in here:

Various interesting tidbits from the recent interview with Yajima:
*The kiss scene is indeed meant to be Serena kissing Satoshi, and his reaction to it is surprised awe, any ambiguity the scene has is so they could get it on TV in the first place.
*Likewise, you're meant to hope and assume the two of them are going to become a couple later.
*The idea to have a romance subplot apparently came from producer Shukichi Kanda, who came up with the idea of portraying things through a female lead's admiration for Satoshi, which then led to the suggestion that they'd have a flashback to a childhood meeting with romantic implications.
*Yajima did not know exactly how long the series would last, only that it would have to end when the next games came out.
*Alan was always meant to be part of the main series. The reason the four Mega specials were made was because it would be difficult to set up his backstory and development in the series itself, so he came up with the idea of giving him his own episodes that could establish his character. The idea to give these episodes a mega evolution theme came later, and was also his idea (so they were not made or the purpose of marketing megas, or in order to test the water for a series with another main character or any other such theory).
*Also, Alan is meant to be an "Anakin Skywalker-type character", someone who turns to the dark side to protect those he loves.
*Satoshi's XY design was primarily Yajima's, and the idea for his sideburns were taken from "a character from the video games named Red, which Satoshi is based on".
*Yajima wanted to make the bond between Satoshi and Gekkouga a major part of the story, but felt it would be difficult to do so if it had to remain a Gekkouga, so he went to Game Freak, and they came up with the idea of a synchro transformation. It was put in Sun/Moon afterwards, but was created during this discussion between anime staff and GF.
*The interviewer notes that Okido didn't appear at all outside of episode 3, and that Okido's lecture segment getting replaced with PokeTV when XY&Z started meant that Okido didn't appear at all throughout all of XY&Z (the interview was conducted before XY&Z47 had aired) and asks if there was a reason for this. Yajima confirms this was a complete oversight, not something intentional. Presumably this goes for other callbacks to older series as well.
*When XY&Z started, Yajima knew that the series had to wrap up everything in only a year, and they did a meeting to basically set up how the events of that year would go. He also specifically says that this is the reason there's minimal filler in XY&Z, there was absolutely no room.
*Yajima wanted to drop the use of stock footage completely, but this wasn't possible to do, so they went with creating stock foreground footage that could have different backgrounds added to it instead.

I guess that may explain why they used Red's hat in XY Ash's design as well.
 
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