• Hi all. We have had reports of member's signatures being edited to include malicious content. You can rest assured this wasn't done by staff and we can find no indication that the forums themselves have been compromised.

    However, remember to keep your passwords secure. If you use similar logins on multiple sites, people and even bots may be able to access your account.

    We always recommend using unique passwords and enable two-factor authentication if possible. Make sure you are secure.
  • Be sure to join the discussion on our discord at: Discord.gg/serebii
  • If you're still waiting for the e-mail, be sure to check your junk/spam e-mail folders

Pokemon Adventures Rate & Review - Sun, Moon, Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon (Gen 7)

How would you rate the Gen 7 series?

  • 5/5

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 4/5

    Votes: 3 33.3%
  • 3/5

    Votes: 3 33.3%
  • 2/5

    Votes: 2 22.2%
  • 1/5

    Votes: 1 11.1%

  • Total voters
    9

shoz999

Back when Tigers used to smoke.
Pokemon Adventures Rate & Review - SM (Gen 7)
Discuss the many awesome, fun, hilarious and questionable moments of the Gen 7 story arcs.

UZij8l1.jpg

Pokemon Adventures Quick Summary - Sun, Moon, Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon Chapter
Follow the adventures of Sun, a courier who aims to earn a 100 million yen and Moon, a pharmacist who aims to deliver a special berry to Alola's guardians as the two unravel and explore the mysteries behind the Alola region... and elsewhere...

Guidelines/Notes
  • All the Rate & Review Threads are excluded from the 60 days limit rule.
  • There is a 5/5 poll. Other than that, there is no recommend system. Discuss and rate the story arcs as freely as you want.
  • You can rate, review and express your thoughts on the whole chapter or certain moments.
  • BE AWARE OF SPOILERS. Please alert others with a "Spoiler Warning!" if your review or thoughts does indeed have potential spoilers.
  • Have fun discussing the many amazing, funny or even questionable moments you've seen in the seventh generation of Pokemon Adventures!
  • The Gen 7 Discussion thread will be updated if a Let's Go chapter is in the works.
Links to other current Rate & Review discussion threads
 
Last edited:

BenLee really not taken

Hey everyone, Bhrjr here.
This arc seems to be the one where few to quite of people aren’t fond with, since it is short, the plot moves too quickly, or also maybe that it doesn’t change up much things from the games. For me however, I do adore multiple different twists present in a subtle manner.
For example, when Gladion asks Hau, that “You don’t want to be recognized as the Grandson..” that was great. Another, would be where Sun meets Lillie and has a crush on her, ending the tradition since Black and White where shipping between main male and female protagonists are implied in many ways.
Lastly, I just realized now, but this gen has the FEWEST Pokespe chapters ever. With only Sun and Moon chapters that is merged with USUM, currently at 28 chapters. Even for Gen 6, it had ORAS arc, combined to more than 60 chapters. The other Gen to have only 1 arc was Gen 2, and that had GSC which ran for 90 chapters.
Another thing, that many seems to view in positive manner, is that this arc combines both aspects of SM and USUM. Necrozma is one of the villians, but Lusamine is like her SM version.
 
Last edited:

shoz999

Back when Tigers used to smoke.
270px-Sun_Moon_Adventures.png


I'll keep this one short. Some SPOILERS OF COURSE. So overall these are my thoughts on the SMUSUM chapter before the volume releases. For those not aware, the SMUSUM chapter storyline is complete but the actual complete version with the extra scenes, a sort of director's cut in some ways, that I and others have often been told by the mod here won't come until Pokemon Adventures resumes its volume releases so these thoughts are based on the OG version. For the expanded version, I want to tell my thoughts on that in a separate post in the future. So my thoughts, oh boy.

I like the main characters Sun & Moon. Sun takes on a variety of different "Pokejobs" to make 100 million yen for a dream he's after while Moon is a pharmacist who has this hilarious love for poison-types and I love the adventures they go on, headstrong boy and nerd girl have a lot of strong chemistry together. Then there's Gladion and Lillie, great characters in my opinion and certainly a lot of love for Gladion but some Lillie fans might be disappointed to know that Lillie is not at the forefront of the story as SMUSUM fuses a lot of elements from the USUM storyline. Trial Captains, freaking love them and they each have amazing and quirky personalities with my favorite being the airhead Mina. My favorite character however isn't a human but a Pokemon, Dollar who is just freaking awesome. Not only that but you also get to see the return of older characters like Anabel, Looker, Sina, Dexio, Colress etc. and I am in love how the manga adapts the many MANY mysteries of Alola that you just don't know what's going to happen next. Some of my favorite scenes in the chapter however are just the calmer scenic moments featuring the vast islands of Alola surrounded by gorgeous sea of blue during the morning or night, one of my favorites being just how daunting Mount Lanakila looks. Also the battles, the Pokemon battles here are perhaps some of Pokemon Adventures most fun and craziest battles. I think my biggest problem with this chapter is that the SMUSUM chapter is definitely one that leaves you wanting more not just because of how good it is but also how rushed it is.

You can tell that the chapter has a rushed pace but for the most part it's balanced enough that it still feels like a strong cohesive story until the final chapter. Everything else before the final chapter feels pretty balanced and reasonable, building up to awesomeness step-by-step. Then there's the final chapter where it feels like it took a huge leap, skipping over some major story elements. Some story elements that felt missing in the final chapter are most notably the mystery of Mohn, Sun's relationship with Dollar, the Island Challenge, Colress's involvement with the Aether Foundation and the cure for the sick piplup. We do see the end-result of some of these conflicts in the final chapter but how they reach to the end-result feels missing. One thing I do have to mention is that they also do address Sun's relationship with Dollar at the end but it feels like a cliffhanger conclusion to Sun & Dollar's relationship in some ways but I nevertheless love Dollar's vengeful attitude lol. Even though it felt like a cliffhanger ending for me, what a character for a Pokemon!

Still the final chapter has gotten me a little worried about the actual final product, the final version with extra scenes released for the volumes after BW2 is done because although @lolipiece often states that a lot of the missing details can be filled in with extra scenes later on that I can definitely see working effectively for actually almost the entire storyline, especially Lillie and Gladion's relationship with their mother Lusamine, there is the question of how much of this could actually address the conclusion where it felt like it took a giant leap because here's the thing. The entire conclusion spans only one chapter, so I wonder just how lengthy one chapter would have to be to answer many of those missing story details which is what has me somewhat worried. I still have hopes though and you guys should too because I still remember how the writer surprised a lot of worried fans of how much of the story he can get done in such a tight schedule like Lusamine's character arc. It could've been better to be honest if given more time but I remember most fans around here being very surprised at how the writer was able to make Lusamine's character work into such a tightly paced story without breaking the immersion. Outside of some missing details, I actually like the ending to an extant as it states just how much life has changed over the years for many characters that Sun & Moon have met. It's honestly a beautiful ending despite how incomplete it feels.

So overall what is my score for this story arc? To be honest, I really REALLY want to give it a 4/5 but the incompleteness of this chapter just holds it back from that score. I have to give this a 3/5, in the tens it would be a 7/10 but if the complete version arrives in the volumes as expected, addressing a lot of the missing story elements that fans were expecting through extra scenes here and there, this could easily be a 4/5 or even a 5/5 for me.
 
Last edited:

SerGoldenhandtheJust

Deluded Dreamer
I love the characters Sun and Moon sm. Kusaka is really good at giving characters personality and that too rich and different ones. I can't believe i actually liked that expressionless guy from the games. Moon is just so good especially when she gets angry. I love their shipping hints specifically Sun being like you would fix me later right and moon being like yeah i guess :p
However when it comes to plot, I'll have to say I'm mixed. Till po town i really liked it but imo that guzma phase of him releasing UBs through cosmog, eh not a big fan, tho i do like his ending. The plumeria dressing up as moon part, eh okay, faba was kinda over the place for me, gladion had good plot but in the end felt lackluster, i didn't like how lillie confronted her mother, and how they chose the unresolved SM ending for Lillie lusamine and mohn. It was rushed in the end especially with team development and the dollar arc.
That said i did enjoy it while it lasted. I especially love the ultra necrozma vs Zygarde thing. Solgaleo (Sun) Lunala (Moon) and Zygarde (earth) taking down ultra necrozma with their ultimate moves was satisfying and WHAT SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED in the games considering XY didn't get a return to kalos game. Both the anime and manga did zygarde justice.
So overall it's a 3/5 for me, with a potential for it to be 4/5 if the extra content manages to slow down the rushed pace and give proper team development. Let's see :)
 

Lucky3

Well-Known Member
If I'm being honest this arc is, quite frankly, a mess.

As far as characters goes, I like them all. Sun is alright, Moon became one of my favorites DH pretty quickly, and I like how all the games characters are adapted, specially Lusamine, whose spe version has to be my favorite incarnation of her. Making her even feel even more insane and creepy while at the same time doing away with most of her cartoon villain traits was a great call. However I feel like almost all of those characters are pretty underused, even Moon and Sun in a sense.

But the story is, basically, non-existent. When I reviewed ORAS here, I said it was 'much ado about nothing'. This is the same but even worse, because at least for ORAS everything lead to something, even if it was underwhelming. Seriously, what is this arc even about? The only plot thread that properly develops are the UBs invading Alola, but there's 2 massive issues with that:
1) That's not that interesting of a story. It was the character work that drove the SM/USUM games, not the plot, and there's very little of that in the Pokespe version.
2) There's bunch of a set-up for unrelated stuff that leads absolutely nowhere.

To explain this in more detail. I don't know if you've noticed, but this arc is mostly organized in a way to have mostly self-contained stories in each volume, each corresponding to an island (with the last two being for Ultra Space and the final battle). So let's start from the beginning. It starts introducing the setting and establishes the major characters with that tournament in Mele'Mele. Fair enoug. Then in Akala Moon investigates Ultra Beasts while Sun does the trial. If the dynamic of the entire arc was like that it'd be much better. But then in Ula'Ula weird narrative things start happening.

While Sun goes with Lillie to do another trial Moon ends up in Aether paradise, where...nothing happens. It leads absolutely nowhere. Then the 'mini-arc' culminates in a climatic battle against Guzma and his UBs, with Moon joining up at the last minutes and everything ultimately ends with Guzma getting kidnapped by UBs, which also, ends up going nowhere since all we get from that is set-up for Motherbeast and we don't see anything about Guzma's motivations or his relationship with Lusamine.

If Moon getting removed from the story while Sun does a sidequest, followed by an unnecessarily long battle and Moon showing up at the very end sounds familiar, that's because it happens another two times: In Poni and in the final battle.

But those are far from the only things that go nowhere. Moon's goal of saving her Piplup is forgotten almost immediately, while Sun's money-collecting also gets forgotten shortly after the dramatic reveal about the island, and in the end everything is just solved off-screen?. One could argue that speaks of their characters that they're willing to put their goals aside for the sake of the region, but honestly that's not really focused on at all, and they don't even help all that much. In the end is Lillie that deals with Lusamine and Gladion saves Moon from Faba. And the only reason they are the ones to defeat Necrozma is because the legendaries chose them. So in the end, it seems like the story is still about the aether family, but for some reason Sun and Moon are the main characters we're following, despite being only tangentially related to the whole thing. They end up feeling somewhat like those self-insert OCs fanfic writers sometimes force into the main cast. And even though the relationship between Lusamine and her kids should be one of the main driving forces of the arc, it still doesn't get proper resolution. In fact, almost nothing does. That's not even a bad ending. It's straight-up a non-ending.

Then there's also more things that have no pay-off like Plumeria disguising herself as Moon and Hau's character arc. He was supposed to have one, right? And wasn't Sun supposed to be doing the island challenge?

And then there's the dozen or so battles again Ultra Beasts that often take several chapters. This is not Space Invaders. 'We gotta beat the aliens' isn't gonna cut it as a plot. In fact I'd say this arc's biggest flaw is having too many action scenes and too little character development.

XY was almost as short as SM but way more solid. And that's because its story-telling was much more focused. It had one single storyline that we were always following from beginning to end. For some reason, SMUSUM decided to do the opposite: set-up a bunch of stuff without committing to any of it. And the result is...nothing. I honestly see no story here. Just a bunch of stuff that happened.

I don't really dislike it because the characters are enjoyable and fun to watch, but I can say it's definitely my least favorite arc as of now. The volumes are gonna need to have some major changes to put it on the same level as the rest of 'main' arcs, because it's honestly not even on the same league.
 
Last edited:

SerGoldenhandtheJust

Deluded Dreamer
If I'm being honest this arc is, quite frankly, a mess.

As far as characters goes, I like them all. Sun is alright, Moon became one of my favorites DH pretty quickly, and I like how all the games characters are adapted, specially Lusamine, whose spe version has to be my favorite incarnation of her. Making her even feel even more insane and creepy while at the same time doing away with most of her cartoon villain traits was a great call. However I feel like almost all of those characters are pretty underused, even Moon and Sun in a sense.

But the story is, basically, non-existent. When I reviewed ORAS here, I said it was 'much ado about nothing'. This is the same but even worse, because at least for ORAS everything lead to something, even if it was underwhelming. Seriously, what is this arc even about? The only plot thread that properly develops are the UBs invading Alola, but there's 2 massive issues with that:
1) That's not that interesting of a story. It was the character work that drove the SM/USUM games, not the plot, and there's very little of that in the Pokespe version.
2) There's bunch of a set-up for unrelated stuff that leads absolutely nowhere.

To explain this in more detail. I don't know if you've noticed, but this arc is mostly organized in a way to have mostly self-contained stories in each volume, each corresponding to an island (with the last two being for Ultra Space and the final battle). So let's start from the beginning. It starts introducing the setting and establishes the major characters with that tournament in Mele'Mele. Fair enoug. Then in Akala Moon investigates Ultra Beasts while Sun does the trial. If the dynamic of the entire arc was like that it'd be much better. But then in Ula'Ula weird narrative things start happening.

While Sun goes with Lillie to do another trial Moon ends up in Aether paradise, where...nothing happens. It leads absolutely nowhere. Then the 'mini-arc' culminates in a climatic battle against Guzma and his UBs, with Moon joining up at the last minutes and everything ultimately ends with Guzma getting kidnapped by UBs, which also, ends up going nowhere since all we get from that is set-up for Motherbeast and we don't see anything about Guzma's motivations or his relationship with Lusamine.

If Moon getting removed from the story while Sun does a sidequest, followed by an unnecessarily long battle and Moon showing up at the very end sounds familiar, that's because it happens another two times: In Poni and in the final battle.

But those are far from the only things that go nowhere. Moon's goal of saving her Piplup is forgotten almost immediately, while Sun's money-collecting also gets forgotten shortly after the dramatic reveal about the island, and in the end everything is just solved off-screen?. One could argue that speaks of their characters that they're willing to put their goals aside for the sake of the region, but honestly that's not really focused on at all, and they don't even help all that much. In the end is Lillie that deals with Lusamine and Gladion saves Moon from Faba. And the only reason they are the ones to defeat Necrozma is because the legendaries chose them. So in the end, it seems like the story is still about the aether family, but for some reason Sun and Moon are the main characters we're following, despite being only tangentially related to the whole thing. They end up feeling somewhat like those self-insert OCs fanfic writers sometimes force into the main cast. And even though the relationship between Lusamine and her kids should be one of the main driving forces of the arc, it still doesn't get proper resolution. In fact, almost nothing does. That's not even a bad ending. It's straight-up a non-ending.

Then there's also more things that have no pay-off like Plumeria disguising herself as Moon and Hau's character arc. He was supposed to have one, right? And wasn't Sun supposed to be doing the island challenge?

And then there's the dozen or so battles again Ultra Beasts that often take several chapters. This is not Space Invaders. 'We gotta beat the aliens' isn't gonna cut it as a plot. In fact I'd say this arc's biggest flaw is having too many action scenes and too little character development.

XY was almost as short as SM but way more solid. And that's because its story-telling was much more focused. It had one single storyline that we were always following from beginning to end. For some reason, SMUSUM decided to do the opposite: set-up a bunch of stuff without committing to any of it. And the result is...nothing. I honestly see no story here. Just a bunch of stuff that happened.

I don't really dislike it because the characters are enjoyable and fun to watch, but I can say it's definitely my least favorite arc as of now. The volumes are gonna need to have some major changes to put it on the same level as the rest of 'main' arcs, because it's honestly not even on the same league.

THIS^ i agree with your points. Tbh i didn't like lusamine much coz they just turned her so much crazy and then gave her the SM games ending where she goes to bill with no aftermath or such with the Mohn plot going nowhere. Also now that you mention it moon did come to Alola for specific recipies to heal piplup and in the epilogue she just found them??? Also yeah the island challenge was abandoned and kukuis Pokemon league didn't happen. It was really rushed.
 

shoz999

Back when Tigers used to smoke.
If I'm being honest this arc is, quite frankly, a mess.

As far as characters goes, I like them all. Sun is alright, Moon became one of my favorites DH pretty quickly, and I like how all the games characters are adapted, specially Lusamine, whose spe version has to be my favorite incarnation of her. Making her even feel even more insane and creepy while at the same time doing away with most of her cartoon villain traits was a great call. However I feel like almost all of those characters are pretty underused, even Moon and Sun in a sense.

But the story is, basically, non-existent. When I reviewed ORAS here, I said it was 'much ado about nothing'. This is the same but even worse, because at least for ORAS everything lead to something, even if it was underwhelming. Seriously, what is this arc even about? The only plot thread that properly develops are the UBs invading Alola, but there's 2 massive issues with that:
1) That's not that interesting of a story. It was the character work that drove the SM/USUM games, not the plot, and there's very little of that in the Pokespe version.
2) There's bunch of a set-up for unrelated stuff that leads absolutely nowhere.

To explain this in more detail. I don't know if you've noticed, but this arc is mostly organized in a way to have mostly self-contained stories in each volume, each corresponding to an island (with the last two being for Ultra Space and the final battle). So let's start from the beginning. It starts introducing the setting and establishes the major characters with that tournament in Mele'Mele. Fair enoug. Then in Akala Moon investigates Ultra Beasts while Sun does the trial. If the dynamic of the entire arc was like that it'd be much better. But then in Ula'Ula weird narrative things start happening.

While Sun goes with Lillie to do another trial Moon ends up in Aether paradise, where...nothing happens. It leads absolutely nowhere. Then the 'mini-arc' culminates in a climatic battle against Guzma and his UBs, with Moon joining up at the last minutes and everything ultimately ends with Guzma getting kidnapped by UBs, which also, ends up going nowhere since all we get from that is set-up for Motherbeast and we don't see anything about Guzma's motivations or his relationship with Lusamine.

If Moon getting removed from the story while Sun does a sidequest, followed by an unnecessarily long battle and Moon showing up at the very end sounds familiar, that's because it happens another two times: In Poni and in the final battle.

But those are far from the only things that go nowhere. Moon's goal of saving her Piplup is forgotten almost immediately, while Sun's money-collecting also gets forgotten shortly after the dramatic reveal about the island, and in the end everything is just solved off-screen?. One could argue that speaks of their characters that they're willing to put their goals aside for the sake of the region, but honestly that's not really focused on at all, and they don't even help all that much. In the end is Lillie that deals with Lusamine and Gladion saves Moon from Faba. And the only reason they are the ones to defeat Necrozma is because the legendaries chose them. So in the end, it seems like the story is still about the aether family, but for some reason Sun and Moon are the main characters we're following, despite being only tangentially related to the whole thing. They end up feeling somewhat like those self-insert OCs fanfic writers sometimes force into the main cast. And even though the relationship between Lusamine and her kids should be one of the main driving forces of the arc, it still doesn't get proper resolution. In fact, almost nothing does. That's not even a bad ending. It's straight-up a non-ending.

Then there's also more things that have no pay-off like Plumeria disguising herself as Moon and Hau's character arc. He was supposed to have one, right? And wasn't Sun supposed to be doing the island challenge?

And then there's the dozen or so battles again Ultra Beasts that often take several chapters. This is not Space Invaders. 'We gotta beat the aliens' isn't gonna cut it as a plot. In fact I'd say this arc's biggest flaw is having too many action scenes and too little character development.

XY was almost as short as SM but way more solid. And that's because its story-telling was much more focused. It had one single storyline that we were always following from beginning to end. For some reason, SMUSUM decided to do the opposite: set-up a bunch of stuff without committing to any of it. And the result is...nothing. I honestly see no story here. Just a bunch of stuff that happened.

I don't really dislike it because the characters are enjoyable and fun to watch, but I can say it's definitely my least favorite arc as of now. The volumes are gonna need to have some major changes to put it on the same level as the rest of 'main' arcs, because it's honestly not even on the same league.
Honestly I pretty much agree with your points here. This felt like in some ways the huge scope of the RS chapter, which is a huge and long chapter that also explores a multitude of plots, both big and small, with a huge focus on Hoenn's mysteries where you see multiple parties involved here and just like SM, they were investigating these mysteries long before the main character got involved and all of this climaxes into a huge epic Kaiju battle. It feels like the writer is once again aiming for that huge scope for a story but in very limited time that extra scenes here and there in volume releases are probably not going to fix everything, that your probably going to at least need one or two more extra volumes worth of content to deal with story elements that the manga has barely touched on like the Island Challenge.
 

Gamzee Makara

Flirtin' With Disaster
Honestly I pretty much agree with your points here. This felt like in some ways the huge scope of the RS chapter, which is a huge and long chapter that also explores a multitude of plots, both big and small, with a huge focus on Hoenn's mysteries where you see multiple parties involved here and just like SM, they were investigating these mysteries long before the main character got involved and all of this climaxes into a huge epic Kaiju battle. It feels like the writer is once again aiming for that huge scope for a story but in very limited time that extra scenes here and there in volume releases are probably not going to fix everything, that your probably going to at least need one or two more extra volumes worth of content to deal with story elements that the manga has barely touched on like the Island Challenge.
The author IS a kaiju movie fan, you know...
 
Top