XYZ effect on fans and writers. How do you feel?

[cricketlaxwolvesbandy]

I don't dislike XY but I can see why the production people and some fans might not like it
The new director of XY has said that XY had pushed certain boundaries for the anime mostly because the target audience is kids

And for many they like the boundaries they pushed ex: the Serena romantic subplot (amourshipping)
I can't find the source but many have repeated that the XY director wanted to appeal to older audiences unlike the previous series
Many have said that XY felt that the characters were more teens, etc which supports that
Things I think XY pushed boundaries on were the “maturity”, tone, and romance, among other things
But I think others didn't like those pushed boundaries
If someone wanted or was expecting a kid show than those aspects being changed would not like XY as much

Or just not like the more mature aspects

And some of those people can also be writers and whoever influences the series

Plus from a marketing and broadcasting viewpoint Pokemon (as a whole) is a kid brand they aren't trying to appeal to critics, teens/adults, etc it's not their target demographic

So there could have been a big enough internal reason to make the show kid friendly again

This may also mean to tone/scale back the “extreme” decisions XY did (romance, ash-greninja, etc)



Simply
XY made Pokémon a more teen/young adult show and there are people out there that want/prefer for Pokemon to be a kid series and dislike anything that can shift it away from that

And the behind-the-scenes people like some writers had “got their way” and got Pokemon back to more kid series in SM which carries on in JN


As for the XY characters and stuff in JN and probably the future

Due to them leaning away from the things that pushed boundaries in XY



They will more than likely never bring up the Serena kiss, and her crush on him may get reduced to being more ambiguous kinda like other crushes that were handled like a Drew or Kenny



Ash-Greninja is complicated but I think (imo) they might regret the actual form not necessarily the power up/bond as the anime did stretch things a bit too far from the games that I wouldn't be surprised if the Pokemon company would want to retcon it



Clemont Bonnie and Korinna were good in their episodes

That sucks because I love the more mature take XY had and how they were willing to push the boundaries.
Imo Serena’s romantic subplot was the best thing to happen to the anime

 

[sutellakiara]

In hindsight, XY was a "awkward middle-phase" for lack of a better term.
You can tell they want to go even further beyond but the suits didn't let them. Which ended on the Kalos Disaster and the subsequent meltdown.
It's only after all that happened that they finally let the anime break the mold and start pushing boundaries and change and do things that otherwise wouldn't have been allowed to happen and weren't allowed to happen for like two decades.
XY died so that SM and PM could walk.
That is perhaps is one of the most regrettable things, and ironic, too. XY was the one season people wanted to be THE one and was not allowed to and when the subsequent ones finally did so they did it so differently it just made the people who wanted it to happen during XY bitter.

 

[cricketlaxwolvesbandy]

In hindsight, XY was a "awkward middle-phase" for lack of a better term.
You can tell they want to go even further beyond but the suits didn't let them. Which ended on the Kalos Disaster and the subsequent meltdown.
It's only after all that happened that they finally let the anime break the mold and start pushing boundaries and change and do things that otherwise wouldn't have been allowed to happen and weren't allowed to happen for like two decades.
XY died so that SM and PM could walk.
That is perhaps is one of the most regrettable things, and ironic, too. XY was the one season people wanted to be THE one and was not allowed to and when the subsequent ones finally did so they did it so differently it just made the people who wanted it to happen during XY bitter.

Exactly why I hate SM and JN. XY was one-of-a-kind. I love OS-DP but XY should have been what the anime was like all along, with XY Ash in OS
The discontinued Road to be a Pokemon Master by FanaticLAGuy06 does this well as it has Serena travel with OS Ash and has more mature themes, but OS Ash is still OS Ash but acts more like XY Ash

 

[janejane6178]

Fo

In hindsight, XY was a "awkward middle-phase" for lack of a better term.
You can tell they want to go even further beyond but the suits didn't let them. Which ended on the Kalos Disaster and the subsequent meltdown.
It's only after all that happened that they finally let the anime break the mold and start pushing boundaries and change and do things that otherwise wouldn't have been allowed to happen and weren't allowed to happen for like two decades.
XY died so that SM and PM could walk.
That is perhaps is one of the most regrettable things, and ironic, too. XY was the one season people wanted to be THE one and was not allowed to and when the subsequent ones finally did so they did it so differently it just made the people who wanted it to happen during XY bitter.

For me XY didn’t feel like any awkward phase
It felt epic and interesting and amazing

 

[sutellakiara]

Fo

For me XY didn’t feel like any awkward phase
It felt epic and interesting and amazing

I put on "quotes" for a reason.
I'm not talking about the quality of the series in itself but about what it attempted to do, what it was not allowed to do and what came after its tenure which can be argued to have happened because of how things went down with XY.

 

[pickapika]

I don't dislike XY but I can see why the production people and some fans might not like it
The new director of XY has said that XY had pushed certain boundaries for the anime mostly because the target audience is kids

Yes, "SCIENCE IS SO COOOL" was obviously the mature hard-hitting shonen that turned off the kiddie fans. S and M outright kills a pokemon, and Kanto...is Kanto. But maturity was the turn-off.

Clemont Bonnie and Korinna were good in their episodes

Let's take a look at the Korrina arc shall we

-> Korrina calls out lousy moves and is a **** battler, lucario disobeys her and performs better vs Ash
-> Lucrio goes rage mode disobeying Korrina
-> Korrina's grandfather yells at her telling us she's failing as a trainer(fialing to specify how despite 5 minuites of pure exposition)
-> Korrina and Lucario are attacked
-> Lucario trusts Korrina and listens to her, why? who knows
3 episodes later and nothing has been learned, korrina hasn't changed, and lucario is conveniently shifted back to the status quo for a cheap emotional payoff

The problem with xy is you can do this for virtually every arc/story-beat. You are told something important is happening, but it's poorly set-up, has no meaningful consequences, doesn't make sense with the established context it exists in, and/or is resolved randomly because formula/plot/"we want a dramatic payoff".

Ash has an existential crisis from losing his first gym battle while being completely unaffected by league losses, rival losses, ect.

Serena spends a dozen episodes building to the reveal that ash...was nice to her once. Pre-Kanto Ash is potrayed as the calm emotionally balanced good-doer of DP, even thugh he quite clearly wasn't that at the start of his pokemon journey because serena remembering ash being nice to her is very important for some reason...

We're told Alain's victory is soiled because of his past affiliation with flare....except there are zero negative consequences alain is made to suffer because of his affiliation with team flare

The characters exclaim that sawyer is a genius becuase...he knows type matchups while ash forgets

The "maturity of themes" have no bearing on how good or bad a story is. What matters is whether it's coherent, how well developed it's narrative elements are, how effecient is it with its execution(do more with less), and if the focus/context/development going into set-ups is proportinate to the focus put into the payoffs.

In all these deparments xy fails, over, and over, and over again. It's superfical maturity is more or less the sole source of it's popularity.

The reason people who aren't captivated by base shonen tropes don't like it is because it's a dumpsterfire of incoherent exposition slapped onto poorly written story beats with generic action music(bearing no relation to the characters or the world) peppered in here or there(for the maturity)

 

[pickapika]

What.

Iris doens't want to admit she likes ash so she claims "you're following me" when ash asks her why she's following him and they try to get ahead of each other so the other is "following" them. Surrounding interactions show that Iris likes mommies ash to cover for her own insecurities

XY takes the first part and stretches it into a dozen episodes with the epic reveal that ash(whose potrayal in the flashback is completely ooc) was nice to her once when they were kids and therefore serena inexplicably feels a deeep emotinoal bond with ash that motiavtes her to literally chase him across kalos.

And off course, unlike with Iris, we don't actually have any sort of character motivation here beyond "ash kind, me likey"

 

[Sonic Boom]

I'd rather have a simple story told simply and feel like it enjoys doing so, than a complex and dressed up story get complicated and superficial in an effort to be high brow.

Or, to have Zero Punctuation describe the difference:

 

[pickapika]

I'd rather have a simple story told simply and feel like it enjoys doing so, than a complex and dressed up story get complicated and superficial in an effort to be high brow.

Or, to have Zero Punctuation describe the difference:

"Maturity of tone" does not determine "complexity of narrative"

Think basically all the pro-xy arguments here are people conflating the two. S and M James, Litten, Iris, Sabrina(kanto, and the Haunter ash brefreinds in season 1 all have more complex characterization x than anyone in xy's cast. Most of the characters I listed are "fun".

The problem isn't that xy is too complex. The problem is that xy spends it's run time trying to force "epic" conflict after "epic conflict" with a bunch of characters with as much development as the jigglypuff from johto. spending a shitton screen-time and ascribing a bunch of payoffs to a character with minimal development is just terrible writing.

The reason it comes across as boring to those who aren't inherently endeared by "ooh shonen!" is it puts alot of screen-time and focus on storybeats/elements where very little happens

When you add things in a manner that gels with what's already going on, complexity can make things more fun(in "less mature" things "aimed for kids" this is often done via world-building/building a strong sonic meta). But when you add things with little substance(set-up/development) that don't fit what's already there for the aim of "maturity", you're not building a more complex story, you're making a simple story overstay it's welcome.

XY is a simple story(by pokemon anime standards) dressed up as a complex one(run-time/gravitas/payoffs without set-up), Either you like the tropes it covers, or you don't, and if you don't, there's very little there to get invested in.

 

[DatsRight]

XY is a simple story(by pokemon anime standards) dressed up as a complex one(run-time/gravitas/payoffs without set-up), Either you like the tropes it covers, or you don't, and if you don't, there's very little there to get invested in.

I think the glaring aspect of XY is that whenever it hints to doing a more complex story, or heck even a simple but non formulaic one, it uses the usual formula beats to completely null it out. Team Rocket or some other plot device bad guy butt in and make it all about stopping them, or a Pokemon is plot armoured a new move or evolution and can magic away the problem easily. Even arc length plot lines end up cheaping out this way, take the Goodra vs Florges one, which hinted to a delicate conflict which Ash could not directly involve himself in, an interesting situation they could be creative in resolving....nope, Team Rocket were apparently responsible for it all. Enemy mine climax and er....Goodra solves the wetlands issue in five seconds apparently. This was the pay off of Goodra's arc.

What sticks out here is that XY did this BY CHOICE. The show had relied on this formula for ages but it was down to legacy before, they were unwilling to break it and did at least SOMETIMES find loopholes to get past it or at least use it properly, while BW broke the mandate and at least made some baby steps to working without it. XY CHOSE to use it all the time, it chose safe writing where the plots wouldn't get too divergent and the protagonists wouldn't require too much agency. It feels almost poetic that Ash didn't win and the status quo was completely reverted in the end, he hadn't been challenged, he'd been completely within his comfort zone the entire series. He won in SM, the more comedic less grandoise series that still actively gave him new experiences due to relatively fuller more diverse storytelling where he was made to be a flexible protagonist.

 

[Sham]

"Maturity of tone" does not determine "complexity of narrative"

Think basically all the pro-xy arguments here are people conflating the two. S and M James, Litten, Iris, Sabrina(kanto, and the Haunter ash brefreinds in season 1 all have more complex characterization x than anyone in xy's cast. Most of the characters I listed are "fun".

The problem isn't that xy is too complex. The problem is that xy spends it's run time trying to force "epic" conflict after "epic conflict" with a bunch of characters with as much development as the jigglypuff from johto and buwear. spending a shitton screen-time and ascribing a bunch of payoffs to a character with minimal development is just terrible writing.

The reason it comes across as boring to those who aren't inherently endeared by "ooh shonen!" is it puts alot of screen-time and focus on storybeats/elements where very little happens

When you add things in a manner that gels with what's already going on, complexity can make things more fun(in "less mature" things "aimed for kids" this is often done via world-building/building a strong sonic meta). But when you add things with little substance(set-up/development) that don't fit what's already there for the aim of "maturity", you're not building a more complex story, you're making a simple story overstay it's welcome.

XY is a simple story(by pokemon anime standards) dressed up as a complex one(run-time/gravitas/payoffs without set-up), Either you like the tropes it covers, or you don't, and if you don't, there's very little there to get invested in.

To add to this:

For the most part OS-BW just existed. XY tried to "break the mold" too much but the entire focus was on Ash. Let’s make Ash have a new form, let’s make Ash attract a female, let’s make Ash seem “older”, let’s make Ash inspire a bunch of people etc. The series is fine if all you care about is Ash but it doesn’t break the mold in any other area in my opinion.

No character exists or functions if Ash isn't around. It just didn't feel like that in any other series prior where characters didn't feel like they existed outside of Ash's influence. Sawyer? Mentor. Serena? Reason she even left her house. Clemont and Bonnie? Abandoned Gym to follow Ash and only got it back after Ash "inspired him" with courage to do so. Alain after the specials? Collected a whole bunch of badges and won a league just to fight Ash and his "different" Pokemon. The XY group saw Ash more as a team leader than just a companion and friend they're traveling with.


Journeys comes off as breaking the mold in a fan service way as well but it benefits (for the most part) other characters as well. There is a reason why every time XY gets brought up and what it did good, Ash’s name is mostly or only mentioned

 

[DatsRight]

To add to this:

For the most part OS-BW just existed. XY tried to "break the mold" too much but the entire focus was on Ash. Let’s make Ash have a new form, let’s make Ash attract a female, let’s make Ash seem “older”, let’s make Ash inspire a bunch of people etc. The series is fine if all you care about is Ash but it doesn’t break the mold in any other area in my opinion.

No character exists or functions if Ash isn't around. It just didn't feel like that in any other series prior where characters didn't feel like they existed outside of Ash's influence. Sawyer? Mentor. Serena? Reason she even left her house. Clemont and Bonnie? Abandoned Gym to follow Ash and only got it back after Ash "inspired him" with courage to do so. Alain after the specials? Collected a whole bunch of badges and won a league just to fight Ash and his "different" Pokemon. The XY group saw Ash more as a team leader than just a companion and friend they're traveling with.


Journeys comes off as breaking the mold in a fan service way as well but it benefits (for the most part) other characters as well. There is a reason why every time XY gets brought up and what it did good, Ash’s name is mostly or only mentioned

I think what sticks out is that SM-JN still use Ash a lot against the other characters, but more as a foil in terms of character dynamics rather than an idol or inspiration. He tends to help them out or bounce off of them for a while and then they end up getting focus standing on their own, which feels like a better way of having Ash involved without it feeling like the world revolves around him. They even bother to show most of the main characters as being a unit with their own ambitions before they even meet Ash.

 

[SerGoldenhandtheJust]

Style over Substance is how I sum it up.

While I do sorta agree with this statement, I also feel it's kinda disingenious because XY didn't try to push Style over Substance necessarily. Like it's not one of those shows that tries to hide surface level shitty storytelling in favour of cool visuals. Yajima did try his hardest to put more substance to the series and try compelling storylines, it's just most of it usually falls flat or the execution isn't really as good/satisfying for people like me, therefore for us XY fails heavily in the substance department while wrapping things up unsatisfactorily to the point it feels it's more cool visuals that makes it rated higher

I also think it's obvious seeing Yajima's interviews and other works that he has the upper suits restricting him for some storylines, probably resulting in the trying to break new ground then resorting to the normal cliche tropes thingie. That's why I feel Yajima is so much better suited for the movies, he has more freedom and more of a sandbox to play with in those movies, and it shows as the AU movies imo have been such top tier self contained storytelling which managed a good mix of visuals, emotions and storytelling while not forgetting the core of what Pokemon is.

 

[sutellakiara]

I also think it's obvious seeing Yajima's interviews and other works that he has the upper suits restricting him for some storylines, probably resulting in the trying to break new ground then resorting to the normal cliche tropes thingie.

This perfectly encapsulates what I was referring to earlier regarding XY being a "awkward middle-phase" for the anime.
You can tell they tried, that they wanted like no tomorrow, but the suits never let them no matter what.

 

[SerGoldenhandtheJust]

This perfectly encapsulates what I was referring to earlier regarding XY being a "awkward middle-phase" for the anime.
You can tell they tried, that they wanted like no tomorrow, but the suits never let them no matter what.

Honestly, if we aren't getting Pokemon movies for a long while now, I'd love a non Ash anime by Yajima. Completely new stuff, new sandbox, do what you will. Would be fun, and the movies give me hope that the core of Pokemon for me that is trainers and their bonds with their mons, would be done well, which I didn't feel really with XY tbh

 

[Septilefan]

The problem isn't that xy is too complex. The problem is that xy spends it's run time trying to force "epic" conflict after "epic conflict" with a bunch of characters with as much development as the jigglypuff from johto. spending a shitton screen-time and ascribing a bunch of payoffs to a character with minimal development is just terrible writing.

XY is a simple story(by pokemon anime standards) dressed up as a complex one(run-time/gravitas/payoffs without set-up), Either you like the tropes it covers, or you don't, and if you don't, there's very little there to get invested in.

So what exactly should the Pokemon anime do in your opinion? Remove a lot of elements and the show just turns into a filler-fest with 8 Gyms like most of Johto was with little to no development for Ash's companions and no rivals/villains.

 

[Shadow_Kxng79]

My Favourite and the best series imo. However I feel like many things in the show was a high risk low reward situation which ultimately did not pay off in the end for the production team.

 

[DatsRight]

So what exactly should the Pokemon anime do in your opinion? Remove a lot of elements and the show just turns into a filler-fest with 8 Gyms like most of Johto was with little to no development for Ash's companions and no rivals/villains.

A lot of XY was boring Johto level formula anyway, again even stuff like the Goodra arc reverted to a Team Rocket faceoff.

SM, JN and even BW had their clear problems too, but they shown the potential if you just drop using the formula as a crutch for every episode and even every arc. If you wanna try new horizons you have to test them, not TEASE them.

 

[Kameinu]

**** the Alola League and WorldAshKetchumDay forever. I hate SM and the Alola League because he shouldn’t of won in a shitty art style and acting like a five year old.
SM took everything away from me

Only problem with SM is Ash’s stupid face.

I’ll take Ash having a stupid personality over him being adored by everyone battle robot.

Best thing about XY, are Bonnie, the battles and the frog.

 

[Septilefan]

I’ll take Ash having a stupid personality over him being adored by everyone battle robot.

XY Ash wasn't a battle robot either