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What flaws did AG have?

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Yeul

Green Eyed Girl
I was thinking that Wally was supposed to be a imitation of Drew back then. The writers could have still gave Ash a rival rather if it was Morrison earlier or not. I however, thought that brock being brought back was going to be involved in something too since he had a water starter Pokemon. But I think that was another flaw too. Not learning from their mistakes with Brock the first couple of times.

Wally was based off of Drew, and not the other way around? This is just like Trip and Paul, because of their similar hairstyles people dismiss Trip as a ripoff, and you imply that people could say the same for Drew. After all, why Drew and not Wally?
 

Caseydia

Ace Trainer
The flaw of how slow Ash was catching Pokemon was deal for me abit. I'm not saying he had to catch alot like now, but he could have atleast have had caught Snorunt earlier and not so late. That way it could have give the little guy some more development time.
 
While Johto had flaws, that's not to say this saga didn't had its highlights being gross exaggeration to label it in such way.
Yes it had many fillers, but many were actually very enjoyable to watch,chemistry within main group was still great feeling like close group of friends, battles were vastly improved in this region ,there were several cool arcs like Red Gyarados,Whirl Cup etc with Misty and Brock getting some good focus and growth and it had excellent league concluding longtime rivalry between Ash and Gary.

If anything i say quality in Master Quest was much better than rest of Johto being more fresh and closer to AG writing.

As for Misty while i respect your opinion, i cant agree with it. She was great character having various enjoyable quirks, unique goal and potential to be done much more . Its obvious writers didnt did as much as they could deserving better, and i know i would enjoy more in Hoenn if we had additional female around.
Fact that many wished that she stayed for AG series finding character left before its time with demand for return still being big only further shows how this move wasnt welcomed at all.



Im not sue how can AG be called a reboot in any shape or form? In Hoenn only big change was that Misty was replaced with Ash starting out only with Pikachu. Majority of older cast was kept, there were ton of reverences to past with previous main characters making appearances , older pokemon being brought back with anime actually being treated as continuity.

It seems people still dont know what reboot means, now one character departure is apparently "reboot". Going by such criteria we could say how Orange Islands was "reboot"too since Brock was replaced.

Now its rather obvious that Hoenn improved in several aspects since Johto, but that was because writers leaned on past mistakes realizing how to properly handle some things after testing phase was over. You could say how Hoenn was testing ground in a way as well, to determine if contests will become popular among people with writers not knowing what will be reactions. Granted May contest arc wasnt so detailed and fleshed out like Dawn, but for first time i must applaud writers for doing rather solid and good job.



BW is in a way reflection of what would series be if original trio was ever reunited now that writing improved since Johto days. Granted anime would be probably more imbue with continuity and Ash probably wouldnt be dumb down in that case.

This is an AG thread. Let's stop with how Johto was good or not. Unbelievable Ursula stated her opinion. She didn't like Johto. It felt dead to her. She feels that way. So I don't think we need to hear about the OS in a thread about AG.
 

Sayho1234

Well-Known Member
I personally think that AG had the best opening themes out of all of the series'. IMHO, nothing tops the epicness of Pokémon Symphonic Medley & Spurt!. And unlike most people on the internet I don't use the word epic unless something truly is that.
 

Grei

not the color
You can say the same for any saga.

Oh, CyberCubed, you never cease to be observant. Luckily, we're speaking about AG right now.

By the way, nowhere in my post did I say that the flaws were exclusive to AG. I was simply responding to the thread title (which is a stupid question, to be perfectly honest).
 

Faker500

Trolls aren't funny!
You can say the same for any saga.

Yeah but I guess it depends on the saga and how much flaws it had. To me Hoenn didn't have as much. So it doesn't bother me. But again, it all depends on what you consider as a flaw. I really didn't mind Ash not having a rival in Hoenn. He was doing fine without one. It would have been nice, but I could tell that the writers were more focused on May's at the time.
I didn't really have a problem with Max as some people say, and I enjoyed Brock but up to a point. But yeah I did wished that Brendan was a factor back then. And I did wish that the Hoenn Elite Four would show up like they did with the Elites in DP. And lastly, Steven could have been more detailed in the series but it seemed that he was not even an issue to the writers. And Wallace showing up in DP when there was time to even mention him in both AG and BF was abit silly.

But all in all, it wasn't that bad.
 

UnbelievableUrsula

Cute and Creepy!
I personally think that AG had the best opening themes out of all of the series'. IMHO, nothing tops the epicness of Pokémon Symphonic Medley & Spurt!. And unlike most people on the internet I don't use the word epic unless something truly is that.

I got to agree with you. I did like the opening themes better. That's the only thing I think they didn't screw up. DP's were just plain aweful.
 
I got to agree with you. I did like the opening themes better. That's the only thing I think they didn't screw up. DP's were just plain aweful.

I actually liked the DP theme songs. Maybe season 10 and 13 fell a little short for me but I really liked Season 11 and 12's opening. When it comes to AG, the only 2 standout theme songs for me were Advanced and Advanced Battle. Advanced Challenge and even Battle Frontier didn't have great theme songs in my opinion.
 

Mr. Reloaded

Cause a pirate is free
Even though Hoenn is my favorite region out of the 5 we have, Even I know it had flaws. Like for example, Ash not Having a rival until the league, Brock become more and more useless, The fact that Max was in the anime and didn't get development until the Ralts thing.
 

Caseydia

Ace Trainer
I saw the falw with Mudkip in this saga. I don't see why they couldn't have gave Mudkip to Ash anyway. It would have been like in DP where Ash got Chimchar and Turtwig both. That way Mudkip's talent wouldn't have been waisted. That is my favorite water Pokemon starter. Never give a starter who is supposed to be a marketing tool to a character who won't be using it for anything. Corphish is cool. Since May didn't get a water Pokemon until way late, she could have got Corphish. I don't know. It really didn't matter. I just felt the little guy was not given enough attention despite it being an important water Pokemon.
 

Seiryu

Resident dragon
Honestly, I think that just about every aspect of AG was fundamentally flawed in some fashion. And just because I feel like making a nice big list of a post, and because my typin' fingers are feelin' cold and itchy, y'all'd best strap yourselves in for a long one. (Or, far more likely, ignore it entirely. Whatever.) (I mean it though. It's long.) So:

--The Aqua/Magma subplot
Okay, nothing more really needs to be said here; I think we can all agree that it was a gigantic glob of wasted potential. Although, I remember at one point reading a post on GameFAQs on the subject. It joked that none of the show's writers ever managed to defeat Liza and Tate, so they never actually saw the in-game conclusion(s) to the subplot. And so they decided to just BS the whole thing no matter the cost so they could then exact their revenge on the psychic twins by giving Ash the absolute biggest actual Deus ex Machina victory the show's ever seen.

I mean of course that's not actually what went down over there in Moonland, but would it really surprise anyone?

--Max and Brock
Okay, let me first get it out that I never liked Max. He's...probably the only main cast member that I've actually kinda disliked. Now, I'm sure that one of the main reasons Max was brought in was to kinda experiment with a new dynamic. Y'know, little pre-trainer kid, kid brother to the lead girl, getting the opportunity to experience a bit of the outside world and study for his own eventual solo journey. Cool. That's what was supposed to happen, in theory, and hey, credit where it's due: we did see a bit of that brother-sister dynamic in action. In practice, however...

Well, being a pre-trainer meant that he couldn't actually have any pokemon of his own; no participation in the actual plots of most episodes for you, kiddo! Which in turn meant that episodes typically had to be tailor-made for him, to the near-exclusion of his fellow cast-mates getting any development at the same time (especially Brock). So, y'know, he felt like this big load, sort of an anchor dragging the other characters down by virtue of rarely ever being able to help himself out of dire situations and being thoroughly incapable of doing anything meaningful.

Speaking of which, it also meant that he had to share his potential screentime with Brock. Not just in terms of potential development episodes, either (which, let's face it, both of them could have easily gotten more of these--too bad the writers wanted to reach that magical 33% filler mark); Max being there pretty much meant that Brock's already meager role as combination Mr. Exposition/Battle Commentator was also split. Less character focus for everyone, hooray! And of course the whole series was pretty much a continuation of Brock's steady downward spiral into obscurity and out-of-focus-ness, but that can be said of pretty much every saga he's been a part of, so.

Point is, I think I would've liked the series a tad better if it had been just Max or just Brock (or, preferably, just someone other than Brock) filling the "third wheel" role. Both characters being the third wheel simultaneously simply left both of them criminally underdeveloped. (I mean, come on now. With how often we saw anyone on Brock's team, can anyone really say there'd be a noticeable difference?)

--Ash's quest
Okay, there were some things that were marked improvements over the previous series. In functioning as sort of a mentor to May, we did see an overall slightly more mature character, giving him the illusion of personal growth. We saw his team actually do things like evolve (hey remember back in Johto when both Misty and Brock got more evolutions than Ash did?), which made it seem like they were in a frequent state of development as well; this was helped by the fact that they were no longer shackled by the issue of keeping everything completely marketable, so they didn't need to all be generically cute anymore (more on that in May's section). And hell, I don't think anyone can dispute that the average battle was far better than the fare we'd grown accustomed to. Which is why I don't think the issues with Ash's quests are anything really to do with Ash himself.

First, rivals. This's probably the biggest black mark against the series: the fact that Ash simply did not have any. I mean, everyone knows that some manner of persistent conflict is preferable to no persistent conflict. Without it, Ash's character feels stagnant; even his pseudo-mentor role wasn't enough to carry his entire journey, and it felt as though his team was developing with no real set goal in mind for the writers.

On the subject of Morrison in particular, well, I wanted to like him. Really, I did. He could've been a really cool character who would leave his own perfectly unique mark on the series. I mean, look at him: rookie trainer, exceptional strength for being a rookie, highly competitive and makes friends easily...and has a tendency to choke when he has to face those friends in a serious setting. It could've made for some neat interactions and development, especially seeing Ash mentoring an actual trainer. So then why, why did we not see him until just before the last badge? As it was, it was like the writers were all "holy @%#$ we forgot to give our lead guy an actual rival so let's make this random one-off kid return" and shoehorned him in at the last second, which made his dramatic BAAAWW I CAN'T FIGHT MY FRIEND moment feel incredibly forced, sudden, and cheap. It was very disappointing because that sudden development meant not only that the battle was pretty much the weakest of that tournament--doubly so because Morrison was supposed to be Ash's "man to beat" a la Gary and Paul--but that all of the best battles in the arc were against one-shot characters. Talk about skewed priorities.

And then came the Battle Frontier. Like so many things, it sounds awesome in theory: a bunch of locations with unique and highly specialized challenges and obstacles that challenge the player and their pokemon in a manner other than straight-up single or double battles! Awesome, right? I mean, that's how it was done in the games, right? It'll be kind of like the Orange Islands saga! And, being fair, I'm fairly certain that the writers were kinda going for something like an extended take on the Orange Islands. Like how there were still no rivals for Ash, and how it was almost a completely new region they were exploring (I mean, how many Kanto locales did they actually visit, besides Pallet Town? Like, five?). Which would've been fine--if they'd kept the spirit of the Battle Frontier intact (and thus what made the Orange Islands saga memorable).

And I know I'm not the only person who was highly disappointed with how they handled the Battle Frontier facilities. I mean, yeah, it was utter foolishness to expect the writers to replicate those challenges in full; I didn't. I was kind of expecting at least a semblance of those challenges to remain, though, and for the facilities, Brains, and Symbols not to be turned into glorified Gyms, Gym Leaders, and Badges. As it was, only the Battle Factory even remotely resembled its in-game counterpart, and only then because the Gym Leader's Frontier Brain's Gym Leader's team wasn't set in stone. It was honestly very underwhelming, to say the least. (And it kind of was right around this time that I had to stop watching the show on account of college and not having a TV in my dorm, which may or may not affect my opinion in some way, I really don't know.)

--And finally, May's Contest arc
Actually, this was arguably the best-handled part of the series. It was something new and fresh (holy @#%$ the main girl's actually doing something), if nothing else. As rivals go, Harley's my all-time favorite by far, and as main rivals go, Drew is arguably the best, on account of both receiving actual meaningful character development more than three episodes before his departure and having regular on-screen battles, and against May, even.

But even then... well, I dunno, my memory may be a bit foggy, but I kinda feel that May's personal development was...kind of lacking. Like, she improved as a coordinator, and all that. But she didn't really seem to change all that much as a character in the long run; at least, I can't remember anything being done about her tendency to emulate Ash's battle style, rather than developing her own, until the tail end of the series.

And remember what I said about Ash's team no longer being completely shackled by generic cuteness and marketability? Well, it seems all of that just got shifted over to May. Aside from Beautifly and Blaziken, none of her seven team members evolved during her run, and they all fit the bill of "marketable" if not "cute"; it really is telling that, following her departure, she was suddenly allowed access to the not-as-cute Wartortle and the decidedly not-cute Venusaur (to say nothing of how Blaziken itself was basically a parting gift). Basically, where Ash's team felt like it was developing at a frequent rate, May's team felt like it was in a near-constant stasis. I mean, hell, even Dawn got Mamoswine!

And then there's the contests themselves. Okay, yeah, they looked really nice for the most part, but many of them were essentially given to her, and as such were plagued by an amount of BS that would make Kanto-era Ash squirm. Like, remember that one time Skitty took about half a dozen Hyper Beams and such without going down, and yet May's points were only disappearing bit by tiny bit despite the fact that she was being outmaneuvered at every turn? And how she then landed one successful Assist, and her opponent's points then dropped by about half? Remember those times May visibly flubbed her appeal performances (like the instance where Harley was conducting sabotage, making her appear to be performing especially poorly), and yet still made it into the battle rounds with no problems? And how, in DP, flubbing appeals like that would be grounds for disqualification? Or hell, remember that time her never-battled-before-in-its-life baby Squirtle learned Ice Beam (just in time to use it to defeat Harley yet again, in fact), and the only problem it had with it was too much recoil? And how, barely twenty episodes prior, Ash's very own actual Ice-type required assistance from a passing coordinator and evolution to even fire one off correctly? And I could probably go on if I felt so inclined.

Although...it's kinda weird. Even despite all of these glaring flaws, I still enjoyed the series. At least, I did back in 2003-6. I can't say how well I'd enjoy it now that several years have passed and everything has had time to settle. Perhaps it has something to do with how Hoenn is my favorite region and Gen 3 is just about my favorite generation; back then, I guess the new stuff and the stuff the writers did well were enough to offset the stuff they did poorly; just as an example, the gym battle with Juan is one of the highest points of the entire franchise for me, and certainly the best gym match we've seen. And in retrospect, even though DP did many things better on a technical level, I still think I prefer AG (at least, DP's the only series where I didn't watch most of it by choice rather than by necessity), which would make it my second favorite series after BW. And hell, with the way I tend to look at the past, even that may change sometime in the future.
 

UnbelievableUrsula

Cute and Creepy!
I saw the falw with Mudkip in this saga. I don't see why they couldn't have gave Mudkip to Ash anyway. It would have been like in DP where Ash got Chimchar and Turtwig both. That way Mudkip's talent wouldn't have been waisted. That is my favorite water Pokemon starter. Never give a starter who is supposed to be a marketing tool to a character who won't be using it for anything. Corphish is cool. Since May didn't get a water Pokemon until way late, she could have got Corphish. I don't know. It really didn't matter. I just felt the little guy was not given enough attention despite it being an important water Pokemon.

I agree that Mudkip's lack of use was a flaw but I personally though Mudkip was better suited for Ash than Treekco. I thought Treecko was going to be Drew's since he was a green Poke user.

However, I don't think the writers will give starter Pokemon away to characters like that again. This is why they made sure to give Chimchar to Paul instead of Brock. Do you know how bad it would have been if that was to have happened?
 

Sayho1234

Well-Known Member
First, rivals. This's probably the biggest black mark against the series: the fact that Ash simply did not have any. I mean, everyone knows that some manner of persistent conflict is preferable to no persistent conflict. Without it, Ash's character feels stagnant; even his pseudo-mentor role wasn't enough to carry his entire journey, and it felt as though his team was developing with no real set goal in mind for the writers.

Uh, there was a set goal for the team developing: the league. That's the whole point of Ash's journey in any of the series'. To be honest, I really didn't care that Ash didn't have a rival in Hoenn, and in my personal opinion it didn't hinder the series at all one bit.
 

Caseydia

Ace Trainer
A flaw was bringing Brock back with no plan for him to do anything. Dammit writers! Didn't you get it the second time?
 

CyberCubed

Yeah, ok!
A flaw was bringing Brock back with no plan for him to do anything. Dammit writers! Didn't you get it the second time?

Arguably Brock coming back for Hoenn was a good idea. They likely didn't want to drop both Misty and Brock at the same time, but if they did GCYL would have much more significance.

Coming back for DP on the other hand was another story. By that point he could have been replaced.
 

Caseydia

Ace Trainer
Arguably Brock coming back for Hoenn was a good idea. They likely didn't want to drop both Misty and Brock at the same time, but if they did GCYL would have much more significance.

Coming back for DP on the other hand was another story. By that point he could have been replaced.

I didn't say bringing him back was a bad idea, I said bringing him back to do nothing was. The writers brought him back in Johto, and still they continued to not give him an effort to futher his goal of being a breeder. Having a water starter should have been a door to open a new plan for Brock in AG but they still did nothing. This is why in DP he was so stale that it didn't matter. I think AG was the best series for him to shine and get the best development. But I didn't see that.
 
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