Back again and after hearing a “clean version” of the song, that shoehorned football style chant of “Pokémon!” at the end sounds, well, pretty bad, sounding like its being shouted by some middle aged men which it probably is. The end chant would have been just fine with only Alex and Kathryn and lets bring back the 4Kids style chant of Pokémon at the end of the theme, if you’ve listened to the themes from Seasons 1, 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 then you might know what I’m trying to get at.
Or then again, how about no chant of “Pokémon!” at all for a change, it might work as long as the song can be finished nicely. That said, it can be hard not to do that since every song has to be 30 seconds and you can’t think of how to end a song without the chant of Pokémon.
“This is the worst Pokémon opening ever. A boring rip off of SLV and what not. Why can’t there be finally something full of energy, rhythm, melody? Something like Orange Islands, Johto League Champions?” By TuneTamasha from YouTube.
I sort of agree with this comment. While I believe it’s not the worst theme song ever, I do believe that since well, “Black & White” that Pokémon songs have lost their energy and peppiness that they had in the 4Kid’s days. While I do believe that it’s nice to have a mix of music styles, like I said about “Black & White”, it sounds like a theme for a Soap Opera like “Neighbours”, then again, with how long Pokémon has been airing now, I suppose you could class it as a Soap since how characters come and go and make brief returns added to the fact that Ash’s story is never ending.
Personally, they could go back to using “I Wanna Be the Very Best”, it’s a cult classic. “Neighbours” has been running on Australian and UK television sets for over 25 Years now and that gets away by using the same song and lyrics, just remixed with different vocals and background melodies every five to six years just to keep the show fresh which might have been interesting to see with the Season 1 theme.
Dawn’s Japanese Song “By Your Side” went down that route and that worked pretty well as did “Aim to Be a Pokémon Master” and “The Greatest Everyday”. “I Wanna Be the Very Best” evolved into “Born to Be a Winner” extremely well. Maybe have one distinct theme for each saga and revamp it with different vocals, background music and lyrics at each season change. Then again, I’m glad we didn’t have to put up with the infamous DP Rap for as long as Sinnoh was.
And if TPCi are reading this which I guess they probably aren’t - this “Friends together forever now” and “It’s our destiny” stuff has really got to stop, It’s getting annoying and repetitive, you’ve proved that point in Season 11. Save that for if Pokémon gets a Soap Opera spin off – LOL!
The writing style has to change; you’ve shown how creative you were with Black & White in Movie 14 so let’s see that translate to the TV Series, unless of course this cheesiness is intentional.
I know that I am being biased here but 4Kid’s managed to largely refrain from using this in their Pokémon themes (barring their CD Songs a, few of which being centred on “Pokéshipping” anyway) and this is mainly because their themes centred around Ash and they actually related to his journey, especially when using the First Person, it feels like Ash is singing himself, even if it wasn’t actually him, just the likes of Jason Paige, Russell Valázquez and David Rolfe.
Personally, I feel that Pokémon would have worked better in the “Direct to Subbed / Dubbed DVD and relatively untouched department” and it’s a shame that TPCi failed to capitalize on that market since they took over, the banned episodes are certainly in high demand if that’s anything to go by.
Anyways, I think that’s everything that I want to get off my chest and I’m sorry if you felt that was like a rant or an “I want this and that list” but this is really just how I feel.