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"They Wasted A Perfectly Good Pokemon" Thread

DatsRight

Well-Known Member
Okay, this'll hopefully be a good one. Let's talk about some Pokemon throughout the show you personally wanted more attention and development towards.

The number one rule here is that these aren't just about species, this is about specific individual Pokemon that were characters in the show, either captured or at least potentially COULD HAVE BEEN captured by the recurring cast (hence being wasted).
 
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Leonhart

Imagineer
I wanted Satoshi's Waninoko to get more screen-time and development during Jouto, yet he was overshadowed by Bayleef and Hinoarashi. And speaking of Hinoarashi, I thought he should've evolved during Jouto instead of that happening in Shinou.
 

DatsRight

Well-Known Member
I'll try a few examples:

*Mallow's Shaymin: It feels weird they did so little with this guy, given its implied ties to Mallow and her mother and, you know, it was a fricking MYTHICAL POKEMON given to one of the main cast. It got one filler episode for limelight, annoyingly just enough to give it a personality and bond with Mallow to get us attached to it, and then remained a fairly inactive baby mon, even its one battle in the league being mostly offscreen. A shame since Mallow needed to boost as trainer (one with healing moves fit her perfectly) and come on, when's the next time we'll likely have a Gen 4 mythical in the main cast?

* Lana's Eevee/"Sandy": Another girl that really needed to team upgrade and when she got it, didn't do anything with it. Despite a lot of fanfare with the mini-sodes, Sandy was left as stagnant comic relief. Weird since it was the one main character Eevee given to a type specialist, so we could have seen them playing more with the customisation utilised on the species, evolving it into Vaporeon or at least learning it Bouncy Bubble.

* Nearly all of Brock's OS team: Geodude in particular was barely seen in spite of seemingly being designed to be Brock's mascot, and its replacement Vulpix didn't do much either.

* Sun and Moon's COTD Pokemon: I love SM but it was particularly bad with teasing captures, often for the girls who needed them the most. Fomantis, Dewpider and Sandshrew (who I'd have LOVED as a main cast Pokemon at last) all got episodes midway into the series which seemed ideal for captures, but did not happen. Dewpider in particular had potential since it already had a personality to contrast Lana's Popplio. I liked the sibling dynamic with all the secondaries against the signatures, and Dewpider could have been a different one, a more clingy 'baby' that hogged attention away from Popplio, which could have made for a decent 'jealous older sibling' arc to keep Lana busy until the latter evolved in Ultra Legends.
 

Leonhart

Imagineer
DatsRight said:
* Nearly all of Brock's OS team: Geodude in particular was barely seen in spite of seemingly being designed to be Brock's mascot, and its replacement Vulpix didn't do much either.

Is it wrong if I don't feel bad for his Isitsubute? I don't think I've ever met anyone who genuinely cared about it, and even Takeshi's Zubat seemed to get more respect from the fandom than Isitsubute did. Iwark wasn't much better when it came to memorable screen-time either, but at least it evolved off-screen.
 

Spider-Phoenix

#ChespinGang
Chespin. All the way.

As soon as I found out it wasn't going to neither Ash nor Serena - thanks to the the opening being revealed one week before the premiere - I knew it'd end up being just another Mudkip. And in the end, it just end being worse. It's like they mixed the worse aspects of Mudkip and Ash's Oshawott (I like Oshawott though).

Mudkip is one wasted as well.

Other than that, not much to say besides most of Ash's regional birds and the already mentioned Porygon line, though the reason for the later's absence is kind of understandable.
 
D

Deleted member 384931

Guest
Chespin. All the way.

As soon as I found out it wasn't going to neither Ash nor Serena - thanks to the the opening being revealed one week before the premiere - I knew it'd end up being just another Mudkip. And in the end, it just end being worse. It's like they mixed the worse aspects of Mudkip and Ash's Oshawott (I like Oshawott though).

Mudkip is one wasted as well.

Other than that, not much to say besides most of Ash's regional birds and the already mentioned Porygon line, though the reason for the later's absence is kind of understandable.
Why was mudkip wasted?
 

Captain Jigglypuff

Leader of Jigglypuff Army
Ash’s Gibble felt like a bit of a waste. He could have taken Gibble with him to Kalos or even Alola if the writers didn’t want to have it in Unova. I mean Gibble knows Draco Meteor Which is one of the strongest Dragon type attacks ever with only two other moves of the same type being even stronger if you don’t count Z, G, and Dynamax attacks. He has taken Phanpy/Donphan, Cyndaquil/Quilava, And Charizard with him to new locations after leaving them at Oak’s lab.

Iris’ Axew was also a missed opportunity. My issue is that Iris allowed it to play way too often and rarely did any serious training with it to help it become even stronger. Which could have been acceptable if it weren’t for the fact that Misty was shown trying to teach a literal baby Pokémon how to battle and even demonstrated how to use Headbutt using her own head on a dummy which ended up hurting her in the process. That isn’t a good sign at all. Even Scraggy got more training time than Axew. Iris rarely used it in battle and usually sent out Emolga to do the battling. And then she never used Axew once she got Dragonite.
 

Leonhart

Imagineer
Captain Jigglypuff said:
Ash’s Gibble felt like a bit of a waste. He could have taken Gibble with him to Kalos or even Alola if the writers didn’t want to have it in Unova. I mean Gibble knows Draco Meteor Which is one of the strongest Dragon type attacks ever with only two other moves of the same type being even stronger if you don’t count Z, G, and Dynamax attacks. He has taken Phanpy/Donphan, Cyndaquil/Quilava, And Charizard with him to new locations after leaving them at Oak’s lab.

Satoshi's Fukamaru was definitely a missed opportunity in terms of it being captured late in the Shinou region, not evolving, or doing much of anything apart from getting a few battles here and there and it learning Draco Meteor [and even most of that training time was devoted to it messing up and hitting Pochama with the attack].
 

pancakemonster

Alola...home...
Hard agree with most of the Pokemon already listed here. In terms of others, Ash's Heracross shouldn't have been shipped off so early into the Johto saga. It got some cool comeback battles later on, but Heracross is one of my favorites, and it's sad it didn't get to stick around longer and participate in some Johto gyms.

Also, Glalie should have been a core team member in the Battle Frontier. It showed up so late into Hoenn, it feels obvious it should have got a spot in BF to make up for it. The fact it's not even used in the Sinnoh League makes it sting even more.
 

Leonhart

Imagineer
pancakemonster said:
Hard agree with most of the Pokemon already listed here. In terms of others, Ash's Heracross shouldn't have been shipped off so early into the Johto saga. It got some cool comeback battles later on, but Heracross is one of my favorites, and it's sad it didn't get to stick around longer and participate in some Johto gyms.

Heracross was definitely wasted to the point where I had temporarily forgotten that Satoshi even had one. As much as I liked Satoshi's Fushigidane, I wish that he had been sent to Okido-hakase's lab around the time that Satoshi caught Heracross, so as to make room for it as a permanent member on the Jouto team.
 

SerenaRulez

Well-Known Member
Umm there are so many wasted Pokemon that I don't know where to begin. For Ash I think his Totodile, Heracross, Torkoal, Glalie, Snivy and Oshawott had the most wasted potential and for the side characters I think Brock's Geodude and Onix and Misty's Staryu and Goldeen were the most horrible examples. :(
 

Leonhart

Imagineer
Kasumi's Tosakinto was sadly one of those unlucky Water-types that was utterly useless on land since it was a fish, which restricted what it could do in most situations. I felt really bad for it in the second episode where it debuted since it just flailed around and was mocked at by the Rocket-dan if I remember correctly. Kasumi should've left her Tosakinto at the Hanada Gym in the underwater ballet episode and taken her sisters' Jugon with her, instead.
 

Ubermuk

Sticky & Sweet
Umm there are so many wasted Pokemon that I don't know where to begin. For Ash I think his Totodile, Heracross, Torkoal, Glalie, Snivy and Oshawott had the most wasted potential and for the side characters I think Brock's Geodude and Onix and Misty's Staryu and Goldeen were the most horrible examples. :(

I dunno if I would count Staryu as wasted potential because Misty used it a lot in fact out of all her Pokemon the only one that was more reliable than Staryu was Psyduck.
 
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