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What are your unpopular opinions about the anime?

mehmeh1

Not thinking twice!
Let's be Real, only Ash and TRio looks weird in that artstyle, and that is because it is a sudden change in artstyle. The rest of the cast looks mostly fine.
maybe, but when it's the main character who looks like that it's hard to look past
 

Sham

The Guardian of Ruin and Birth
It does, but this sudden change in artstyle allowed a much more fluid animation (especially for character interactivos), so depending of what you prefer you can say that the artstyle isn't really bad.
I've always considered based. If Jessie, Jame and Ash are "Japanese" then they're bound to look different then "Americans". Kappa Mikey did something (more extreme) like this where he was drawn in a different art style while living in Japan.
 

mehmeh1

Not thinking twice!
It does, but this sudden change in artstyle allowed a much more fluid animation (especially for character interactions), so depending of what you prefer you can say that the artstyle isn't really bad.
if it gets annoying to just look at the guy who's there at the forefront in most scenes, it doesn't really work visually. JN Ash does have a better design, but the animation took a huge hit due to the overall circumstances so....yeah not exactly ideal either. It's a shame when episodes 2 and 132 showed it had the potential to look stunning.
 

ZarudeSandstorm

Well-Known Member
Serena was written amazingly.
SM artstyle is good.
SM's animation is smooth and pretty good.
BW series is good.
SM Ash feels more natural than XY Ash.
Goh is good character with good primarily goal : catching Mew( but his secondary goal is bad aka catching all Pokemon)
Lillie got better development than Dawn and May.
Serena's performances are good breath of fresh air.
Alola league with Kukui battle is second or third best league. ( better than Hoenn, Kalos leagues and maybe even Johto league)
Ash vs Alain had good outcome.
Hau was not robbed.
Ash vs Tobias had good outcome.
Iris was not annoying in BW.
Cilan was fun companion.
Bonnie was better than Sophocles.
Stoutland dying. Mallow seeing her dead mother are sadder than Greninja, Serena and Goodra leaving.
Without 4kids OS wouldn't be that good series that it was.
DP fillers were fun.
AG was only that high on the scale thanks to BF.
Ash's SM team had better development than this XY team.
Wobbuffet is meh.
Goh is better developed than any other character excluding Ash.
 
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mehmeh1

Not thinking twice!
Also, on the topic of visuals, storyboarding/direction is probably the most important part. Even limited animation can be salvaged with a good storyboard, like with say, OG Dragon Ball. Pokemon's tends to be fine outside of battle, but in-battle the last 2 series have been struggling a lot with that, especially with showing the impact of hits, which is something even OS felt it managed to do better despite the animation often being just still frames
 
Absolutely, everyone else looks really cute. Makes you wonder why they had Ash as that, he's too jarring lol. Even TR are fine after a while but Ash takes major time getting used to
I really never got used to SM and JN Ash. There’s portions and frames of SM where Ash looks tolerable but that’s few and far between
 

Bulu likes pepsi

Well-Known Member
This is before Journeys, but: except for Brock, the girls are significantly closer to Ash than the other guys he's traveled with. Even Iris has a much stronger bond with Ash than Cilan does. The three Alolan girls (especially Lillie) are closer to him than Kiawe and Sophocles. And of course, Misty and the three coordinators need no introduction. In my opinion the four of them are Ash's closest friends after Brock.

Goh should stay for the next series.

Ash should have not obtained a Lucario. Urshifu would have been better.

Ash should have caught a proper fairy-type. I personally would have replaced Lucario with Urshifu, and use something like Clefable or Grimmsnarl to replace Sirfetch'd.
 

VoltTacklingPika

Well-Known Member
Is it unpopular to say it's about time people got over the XY/SM art style change and accepted their respective strengths? They're both good looking shows and I'm grateful Pokemon has made such huge strides in its visuals because holy crap old Pokemon does not hold up.

In my opinion the four of them are Ash's closest friends after Brock.

I'd throw Gary's name in there.

Might be a strange call because we don't see Gary all that often, but Ash has known him longer than anyone else on the cast. That childhood connection is worth a lot.

Even Iris has a much stronger bond with Ash than Cilan does.

I'll take this a little further and say Ash/Iris is a criminally underrated relationship due to people taking her teasing far too seriously. That one episode in Nimbasa City when they ditched Cilan to goof off couldn't be more blatant in showing how well they got along, on top of Journeys doing a nice job of emphasising their friendship even further.
 
What about ep132? How did you find JN Ash there?
He looked great in that episode but I still think JN Ash is ugly and it would’ve looked so much better if he was in the XY art style
 

Sham

The Guardian of Ruin and Birth
It was right for Satoshi to not hug Iris when she was crying after being defeated by Cynthia.

Not saying it because of a cultural issue. Even in this side of the world, people who want not to be hugged while crying exist.
Agreed. I’ve always asked for permission to hug when somebody is going through something.

People acting like Japan doesn’t know what physical intimacy is or that it was “cultural” was weird. Especially when she wanted to cry by herself in private so Ash hugging her would’ve been even more awkward.
 

Sham

The Guardian of Ruin and Birth
  • Power scaling is the worst but it gets grievous when people start assuming that a specific trainer defeating another Pokémon which was previously defeated by who there’re fighting automatically means they’re on their level as well.
Let me simplify and use an example. May defeated Zoey’s Glameow but Dawn ended up being May. The anime clearly shows that Zoey’s Glameow gave a good fight against Piplup despite it being the winner of the Wallace Cup against May where Zoey participated and lost.


  • In terms of people arguing and debating fights constantly, gimmicks in some way has done bad for the anime and give people even more fodder to psycho analyze. This is more on the fans than the gimmicks but it’s definitely made debates on fights tiresome. I also feel like some fights remains too much on gimmicks but yeah.
  • You guys need to stop pretending that Alder was strong because if going by the games he didn’t even fight anybody to become Champion.
  • I still stand by my statement that the Champions should’ve been involved in this or they could’ve left this off screen like originally. Quality and quantity. I’d hope they would’ve found another way to display the Champion’s personalities
  • The Steven battle in the first round was lackluster as heck. His Ace went down so quickly and got no defeats. Cradily carried that battle. It has no rewatch value.
  • Greninja should’ve never gotten as far as he did with Diantha
  • I don’t care about Grenija possibly being retconned
  • The people complaining about Serena not wearing a blue ribbon on a grey shirt, plaid dress with brown boots as an implication she “no longer loves him” assfghjkl is so weird
 
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Bulu likes pepsi

Well-Known Member
Is it unpopular to say it's about time people got over the XY/SM art style change and accepted their respective strengths? They're both good looking shows and I'm grateful Pokemon has made such huge strides in its visuals because holy crap old Pokemon does not hold up.



I'd throw Gary's name in there.

Might be a strange call because we don't see Gary all that often, but Ash has known him longer than anyone else on the cast. That childhood connection is worth a lot.



I'll take this a little further and say Ash/Iris is a criminally underrated relationship due to people taking her teasing far too seriously. That one episode in Nimbasa City when they ditched Cilan to goof off couldn't be more blatant in showing how well they got along, on top of Journeys doing a nice job of emphasising their friendship even further.
Tbh I would not put Iris higher than Lana and Mallow, simply because she left in the middle of the tournament while Cynthia and Diantha remained... but compared to Cilan, apparently Iris does keep in touch with Ash from time to time.
 

Bulu likes pepsi

Well-Known Member
The actual reason is because Iris's VA is high profile and super expensive, and Cilan's VA is even higher profile than her. It's no surprise Cilan didn't even get a voiced cameo. Using these screentime reasons to explain who is better or worse friends with Ash is kinda silly.

If you're going to follow that logic, you can also easily claim Ash's only true friends are Dawn and Chloe because they're the only ones who actually supported Ash in person while his other friends didn't come to watch and just stayed at home. See? It's a very silly train of thought.
But that's ultimately an excuse that comes up from a bigger problem, japanese conservatism, this japanese thing to keep VAs until they're 85 if possible. If this was an american or european show Iris and Cilan would have just been recasted.

Even Goh could say he was called up and it was urgent, Iris did not have this excuse
 
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