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Rank the Pokemon Leagues

Almighty Zard

He has returned.
Jouto and Sinnoh are at the top for me, since those are the two leagues where Ash truly went full power by using both his regional teams and his reserves, and Ash had decisive victories over established rivals like Gary and Paul, the former edges out the latter mostly due to Tobias, a guy with no backstory suddenly appears with legendary pokemon just to keep Ash from winning? Really writers?

Hoenn would be next due to having Ash test the waters with only a regional team for the first time since Kanto, and did have some full battles, granted Ash's fight with Morrison was pretty stupid, due to his reluctance to fight Ash at first costing him half his team, and then Ash got dumb too by sending Pikachu against a Steelix, but other than that it was still pretty good.

next is a tie between Alola and Kanto, Alola being the first league Ash ever won, but the lack of qualifications and full six battles during the league did undercut the intensity factor in my opinion, where as Kanto was Ash's first league under similar pretexts as it was his first one(it had full 6 v 6 battles, but Ash did not get that far), not to mention both leagues had some controversial call moments like Rowlet vs Decidueye, and Ash vs Ritchie in kanto, though more so for Squirtle being unable to battle by being put to sleep than Charizard refusing to fight, I can understand why a judge would make a call like that because if it's not going to even try and battle then why let the match continue? Regardless this is where they will stay ranked.

Kalos is next, i'm sorry but they rushed the heck out of this one, considering how poor Goodra did, it really did not need to return, and Ash-Greninja's pay off not helping Ash in the end really sealed the deal(granted at the same time i would've considered it cheap if that Fanfic style transformation did win Ash the league since I've never liked it to begin with), still it's better than the last one

Unova is dead last, we may have had more onscreen matches than the above one, but the only real good one was Ash vs Stephen, taking Trip out in the prelims was a joke (even if Pikachu deserved the karma factor given what went down when Ash arrived in unnova), especially with how it was handled, and then there is the Cameron fight, thing is though i'm not at his throat for bringing 5 pokemon to full 6 battle (especially since once we found out what his sixth was, a Watchog, Ash probably would've beaten it) but rather the stupidy between both of them in the battle was even higher than with Trip's Serperior losing to Pikachu, since at times they would send or leave out pokemon who clearly had no chance against the enemy(like Oshawott vs Hydreigon and ferrothorn vs Pignite), thus leading to some really stupid situations in that battle, and of course building up Virgil as a rival, and not having Ash getting to face him was also a poor decision.

so there's my two cents on the matter.
 

JustAStatistic

Super Casual Trainer
Ash vs Kukui was amazing, and just barely beat out Ash vs Paul as the best battle in the anime.

So my new ranking would be Sinnoh > Alola > Kalos > Hoenn > Johto > Unova > Kanto.
 
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Leonhart

Imagineer
I'm sort of indifferent about the Jouto League and Houen League, so I won't bother ranking them. I thought that the Kanto, Isshu, and Alola Leagues were dreadful for a variety of reasons, the Kalos League was a mixed bag, and the Shinou League was the best League in terms of structure and battle coordination.
 

Applecorp

Well-Known Member
Sinnoh > Kalos > Johto > Hoenn > Unova > Alola > Kanto. I won't rank the Orange league but recently I keep thinking about how messed up the Kanto league was and how the director and writing team back then really screwed it up.
 

RafaSceptile

Well-Known Member
Unova League: 5 Episodes, 1 Filler, Ash VS Trip/Stephan/Cameron
Alola League: 17 Episodes, Ash VS Kukui is better than the 3 Unova League Battles merged
 

Flashyspark

Well-Known Member
Kanto>Hoenn=Alola=BW>Jotho>DP>Kalos

-Kanto was always a mess.
-Hoenn, Alola and BW had pace issues.
-Jotho is a good league, just not the best.
-DP is good, but some battle were too long
-Kalos had good animation, were equals in terms of gimmicks.

Kanto's League was a pitiful excuse for a tourney. Yes I get that it was the 1st time that the guys in charge had to work on one but it was awful in almost every way imaginable even if I did like Muk vs Bellsprout.
 

janejane6178

Kaleido Star FOREVER in my heart <3
Ok? Am I supposed to change my mind just because someone doesn't agree? If you can make a good argument for why the Alola league wasn't complete **** then I'll hear you out but otherwise I'm not going to change my ranking.
Dont let others change ur opinions:)
 

Epicocity

Well-Known Member
Sadly that's not an opinion, the Alola League is miles better than the Unova League, which is not even a fair comparison because the first one had an actual good full Battle and it was thrice longer (5 episodes because one was filler vs 17 Episodes)
Longer does not mean better by any stretch, so I doubt that would change their fair opinion. And it also depends on whether they consider Kukui part of the actual League (I personally don't, as it's a reward for winning it). Just because you like it better doesn't make it objectively better. All Leagues have their flaws, some are more fanbase breaking than others, others are more story-breaking or theme-breaking than others. And I'd argue there're only 2 Leagues for their point that are actually neither (Kanto and Sinnoh), but again, it's still an opinion.

So, yes, someone finding Unova better than Alola is an extremely valid opinion.
 

RafaSceptile

Well-Known Member
Longer does not mean better by any stretch, so I doubt that would change their fair opinion. And it also depends on whether they consider Kukui part of the actual League (I personally don't, as it's a reward for winning it). Just because you like it better doesn't make it objectively better. All Leagues have their flaws, some are more fanbase breaking than others, others are more story-breaking or theme-breaking than others. And I'd argue there're only 2 Leagues for their point that are actually neither (Kanto and Sinnoh), but again, it's still an opinion.

So, yes, someone finding Unova better than Alola is an extremely valid opinion.

Even without Ash VS Kukui, the only 6vs6 Battle in the Unova League is worse than Ash VS Guzma or Ash VS Gladion
 

Epicocity

Well-Known Member
Even without Ash VS Kukui, the only 6vs6 Battle in the Unova League is worse than Ash VS Guzma or Ash VS Gladion
Which is entirely derived from opinion. I could come up with a laundry list of reasons why both are bad for their intended purpose. I could also come up with ways that Ash vs. Stephan is better than both of those battles. It's all opinion-derived, and it gets annoying seeing you try to tell someone what kind of opinion they should hold just because you think Alola is somehow better.
 

RafaSceptile

Well-Known Member
Which is entirely derived from opinion. I could come up with a laundry list of reasons why both are bad for their intended purpose. I could also come up with ways that Ash vs. Stephan is better than both of those battles. It's all opinion-derived, and it gets annoying seeing you try to tell someone what kind of opinion they should hold just because you think Alola is somehow better.

Ash VS Stephan is way less relevant than Ash VS Gladion and it had worse animation.
 

Leonhart

Imagineer
Flashyspark said:
Kanto's League was a pitiful excuse for a tourney. Yes I get that it was the 1st time that the guys in charge had to work on one but it was awful in almost every way imaginable even if I did like Muk vs Bellsprout.

I thought that as far as structure was concerned, the Sekiei League tournament was one of the better ones in the sense that the changing battlefields was a clever idea that tested each trainer's ability to adapt. But in terms of the battles themselves, the writers could've done a lot better. My biggest gripe [other than how Satoshi lost] was that many of the Pokemon used in the later rounds were base stage Pokemon, such as Onisuzume and Menokurage in Hiroshi's battle against Sayuri.
 

RafaSceptile

Well-Known Member
I thought that as far as structure was concerned, the Sekiei League tournament was one of the better ones in the sense that the changing battlefields was a clever idea that tested each trainer's ability to adapt. But in terms of the battles themselves, the writers could've done a lot better. My biggest gripe [other than how Satoshi lost] was that many of the Pokemon used in the later rounds were base stage Pokemon, such as Onisuzume and Menokurage in Hiroshi's battle against Sayuri.

If we exclude Ash VS Ritchie, the Kanto League is decently good, at least considering it was the first league. The only problem I had was that TRio had too much screen time, which is noticeable when we had 2 battle halves in the same episode
 
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