What Specific Filler Episodes Would've Eliminated From The Johto Saga...

[Sayho1234]

...in order to make it a saga of the show that the fanbase would actually love & respect, and also be on the same league in terms of quality as the Hoenn & Sinnoh sagas?

Personally after looking from the episode list myself on the main page I would've honestly eliminated very little filler episodes from the saga (prepares to be flamed).

I know that sounds strange, and I DO agree with the majority that the Johto saga was an extremely long, dull, dragged out saga of the series, but honestly after looking through the list some filler episodes seemed absolutely necessary in order to either advance the plot or introduce a 2nd generation pokemon.

 

[The Shiny Feraligator]

I want to say ''Hasle in the castle'' but because of Brock's zubat evolving it was a filler :/ so I'd have to say I would like to have gotten rid of ''Ariados Amigos''

 

[An00bis]

There were many things wrong with Johto that made it poorer in quality then the other series. Eliminating a bunch of the episodes would have made it shorter but wouldn't have completely fixed this. Rather then make the series shorter they should have utilized the allotment of episodes they did have to better cover the characters and Pokemon involved.

I guess I'll do a little, though:

- Flower Power. Bellosom was also featured in Whichever Way the Wind Blows so keeping them both isn't necessary.

- I think we could have done without the Snubbull subplot, so anything after Snubull Snobbery. Tunnel Vision is one of the episodes that would've been cut completely under that. Trouble with Snubbull, its sendoff episode, would also get the axe.

- Air Time. I remember this episode beside it had an interesting structure. Beyond that nothing important happened. It's one of those episodes that could've happened at any given time in the series.

- Fossil Fools. It's the third or fourth episode about the Kanto Fossil Pokemon at this point and ends about the same way. We know that there's wild Fossil Pokemon. We don't really need to be reminded of it every couple of hundred episodes.

- A Hot Water Battle. Another Separation Episode. We get a better one overall in early Hoenn and had a better one a few episodes before this one (Forest Grumps).

- Carrying On. Pidgey who is not a Johto Pokemon and shouldn't even be featured gets a better episode later in the season (Fly Me to The Moon) so this one gets cut.

- The Light Fantastic. An example of an episode in which Ash and Company walk in on a potentially interesting situation only to become spectators to The Character of the Day solving the problem without their help. According to the on-site summary the CoTD told Ash to standby because the caught Remoraid could take care of the problem themselves. Alrighty then.

- Spring Fever. We get an episode exactly like this one in Sinnoh. Here it seems to only be here to give Todd more face time. I'm all in the business of reducing the amount of face time this character gets by one so I cut the thinly veiled filler episode in his arch.

- The Big Balloon Blow-Up. There's a ton of Pokemon competitions in Johto which is part of the reason why I liked it so much. If I had to cut one of them it'd be this one.

- I was originally going to cut at least one episode from the Whirl Cup Arch but decided it was fine. Even the episode that blatantly stuck out as Filler (Plant it Now ... Diglett Later) was a good one.

- A lot of people pin Xatu of the Future as a worthless episode. I actually don't remember it well enough to judge for or against it and don't feel like reading the summary right now. Same with " Wings and Things ". There was one more that's constantly pinned. I think it was " Mountain Time ".

- A Crowning Achievement. One of my picks for the worst episode in the series. Similar to " The Light Fantastic " this is an episode where Ash and Company simply watch the Character of the Day solve the problem herself with minimal interaction.

 

[CyberCubed]

Carrying on
Whichever way the Wind Blows
Foul Weather Friends
The Art of Pokemon


The worst Johto fillers were in the middle, more or less. The eps between Whitney and Jasmine was the weakest stretch of Johto, with only a couple of gems in the middle.

 

[ZgonDuck]

The one with Sunflora, the Pidgey that wants to go to space, Whichever Way the Wind Blows, Xatu of the The Future, The Light Fantastic, Hot Water Battle, and a few others which are just a chore to sit through unless you absolutely love every single aspect of the 4Kids dub.

 

[Rex Kamex]

...in order to make it a saga of the show that the fanbase would actually love & respect, and also be on the same league in terms of quality as the Hoenn & Sinnoh sagas?

For me the massive amount of fillers isn't the only problem I've had with Johto, and many of the canon episodes weren't that special to me. (Then there's the whole GS ball thing.) Also, just because episodes introduced a Pokemon doesn't mean the plot for the episode couldn't be more interesting.

 

[Vernikova]

There were some fillers that I would've like to take out. I can't remember the title of the episode but the episode consisted of a mail service that primarily used Pidgey. It was an interesting concept to include but it came out really dull to watch.

 

[WynautQueen]

Actually, I watched Johto recently and some of the filler episodes were among the more memorable in that season. Many of the gym battles were lackluster.

 

[Freedom]

I've been re-watching Johto Journies and I find that I wouldn't eliminate many episodes at all. I enjoyed all of the eps, every ep had something to contribute even if it was to showcase a new Pokemon or just a plain comedy ep. I enjoyed just about every ep of Johto. I think the only filler that needs to be removed are ones which occur in the overall anime and those are the 500 fillers having to do with Slowpoke or Donphan.

 

[Morcombe]

almost every epsiode of season 4 was completely useless, remove all the episodes from there except:

the 2 episodes vs Whitney
Zubat's Evolution
Golbat's Evolution
Chikorita's Evolution
the 2 episodes featuring Morty
The episode vs Chuck
the episode introducing jasmine
the 3 parter featuring Todd and articuno

can't remember if season3 or 4 was the oen where we find out gary has Umbreon.

so there you have it 12/13 outta 52 episodes, thats 39/40 random COTD episodes -_-, way too many.

 

[Alloute]

-Hassle in the castle
-The Articuno fillers
-The Art of Pokemon

And some other season 4 stuff I cannot name.

 

[S.Suikun]

It's not so much that I would have eliminated said fillers as I would have rewritten them. After all, at least half of these fillers in question were introductions to previously-unseen Johto Pokemon. But cool Pokemon like Xatu and Ledian and Quagsire deserved far better than the episodes they got (and those Pokemon and many more haven't really haven't gotten better treatment since).

Heck, even many of the important episodes of Johto could have used some re-scripting. Olivine was awful, for example.

(Okay fine, even rewriting the carrier Pidgey episode couldn't save it from being my least favorite episode ever.)

 

[Ash-kid]

A lot of episodes in Sinnoh are also a filler, but just because a 20 seconds in the episode- they are turning to be not a filler.

 

[HoennMaster]

Flower Power
Snubbull Snobbery
The Whistle Stop
For Crying Out Loud (especially this episode!)
Carrying On!
Mountain Time
The Light Fantastic
Ring Masters
The Art Of Pokémon
The Screen Actor's Guilt
Plant It Now... Diglett Later
A Tyrogue Full of Trouble
Some Like it Hot
Enlighten Up! (another horrid episode)

 

[Freedom]

Flower Power
Snubbull Snobbery
The Whistle Stop
For Crying Out Loud (especially this episode!)
Carrying On!
Mountain Time
The Light Fantastic
Ring Masters
The Art Of Pokémon
The Screen Actor's Guilt
Plant It Now... Diglett Later
A Tyrogue Full of Trouble
Some Like it Hot
Enlighten Up! (another horrid episode)

I thought For Crying Out Loud had a lot of character development for Misty and it was a humorous episode as well. Although they could have replaced Marrill with another Johto Pokemon that we hadn't already seen before in an entire arc.

 

[Sayho1234]

Flower Power
Snubbull Snobbery
The Whistle Stop
For Crying Out Loud (especially this episode!)
Carrying On!
Mountain Time
The Light Fantastic
Ring Masters
The Art Of Pokémon
The Screen Actor's Guilt
Plant It Now... Diglett Later
A Tyrogue Full of Trouble
Some Like it Hot
Enlighten Up! (another horrid episode)

Flower Power - Was necessary in order to debut Bellossom
Snubbull Snobbery - Was necessary in order to debut Snubbull
The Whistle Stop - Was necessary in order to debut Ledyba
For Crying Out Loud - Misty character development episode
Carrying On! - Agreed! Unnecessary episode
Mountain Time - Was necessary in order to debut Ledian
The Light Fantastic - Was necessary in order to debut Remoraid
Ring Masters - Was necessary for the Misty's Poliwag evolution subplot in the Johto saga since Ash had won the King's Rock in this episode
The Art Of Pokémon - Was necessary in order to debut Smeargle
The Screen Actor's Guilt - Was necessary in order to debut Smoochum
Plant It Now... Diglett Later - Agreed! Unnecessary episode (even if it was a really good filler episode & was made during the time in Johto where the writers were really getting their writing back on track)
A Tyrogue Full of Trouble - Was necessary in order to debut Tyrogue
Some Like it Hot - Misty character development episode
Enlighten Up! - Agreed! Unnecessary episode

You see what I mean though. Even though we all constantly bash the Johto saga because it's known for it's never-ending, "useless", mundane fillers when you get right down to it some (if not all) of them really were necessary.

 

[Yamato-san]

oh god, was that Buddhist temple with the Yadon really necessary? How many times could they even showcase the thing in one saga? I'll give them the well that was from the games and Yadoking's proper series debut, but that was just unneeded.

Carrying on
Whichever way the Wind Blows
Foul Weather Friends
The Art of Pokemon


The worst Johto fillers were in the middle, more or less. The eps between Whitney and Jasmine was the weakest stretch of Johto, with only a couple of gems in the middle.

bah... about 500 episodes later, we still have yet to even see how Sketch would work in a more realistic setting (and this, in turn, makes Doble out to be a completely worthless Pokemon in terms of battle potential; if all it does is paint, it's no better off than Metamon in the Mystery Dungeon games, and in a medium where we've seen Caterpie kicking ass, that's pretty sad). I agree with S. Suikun's logic of rewriting the episodes, and this one in particular really could've stood to feature the would-be interesting showcase Pokemon in a battle.

 

[CyberCubed]

Ring Masters

You would eliminate "Ring Masters?" Are you serious?

The episode was not only Snorlax's first use in an official battle, but the wrestling competition with Snorlax Vs. Feraligatr was excellent.

Ash also wins the Kings Rock in this episode which later Misty's Poliwhirl uses to evolve.

"Ring Masters" was a great episode. They should do another sumo tournament like that again.

 

[Chris]

All of it.

Johto had the absolute worst fillers due to the most poor writing I've ever seen for characters of the week, along with their no-personality Pokemon.

 

[HoennMaster]

Why is everyone only picking apart my list?

You see what I mean though. Even though we all constantly bash the Johto saga because it's known for it's never-ending, "useless", mundane fillers when you get right down to it some (if not all) of them really were necessary.

No, fillers are not necessary. 2 pokémon can be introduced in one episode, they don't all need their own.

"Ring Masters" was a great episode. They should do another sumo tournament like that again.

Too me it was a half hour snooze fest.