Hello everyone.
People who have been reading the anime section during the last few weeks probably must have come across one of my ramblings about Ash leaving the anime. Many arguments are being thrown around both in favour and against the change of protagonists, as well as if the anime is popular with new viewers (children, who are the intended target audience), but much of it is just speculation without much support in either side.
Having this in mind, I did a little survey. Long story short, this weekend I was invited to my cousin´s birthday party. I don´t know how it´s called in English, but the party was held at a type of indoors playground that can be rented for an entire day to hold this kind of parties. It was very popular in my country a few years back. As for why I was invited to a children´s birthday party? Basically, I am considered the cool cousin who´s unbeatable in video games, and who gave him Pokemon Violet along with his Christmas present (people who have read my other posts know that I couldn’t bring myself to play the game and gave it to my cousin). Add to this the fact that I usually help him when he gets stuck in video games and you understand why I was invited: to basically help him move along Violet which, by the way, he isn´t liking very much because he finds it very confusing, but that is a matter for another time.
As I was progressing through the game, we arrived at the battle with Iono and, upon seeing Wattler, one of the kids exclaims «So cool! I hope Ash gets one!». After this, I explained to him that Ash won´t get one, because he´s leaving the anime. They bombarded me with questions and I explained the situation and showed them the poster with the new characters.
This brings me to the core of this post. I will now share the kids’ reactions to the new series, as well as some other questions I asked about characters and past series. This information is obtained from 29 kids. I know the number is laughable, but I still found it interesting and thought to share the results, as someone else may also find them interesting.
Before I start, I want to make some things clear:
- Of the 29 kids, 23 are boys and 6 are girls. They all have between 6 and 10 years old. From those 29, only 22 are into Pokemon. None of the girls like Pokemon and, as such, don´t watch the anime. Of the 22 that are into Pokemon, 1 doesn´t watch the anime, so the survey was conducted on the remaining 21;
- They watch the anime dubbed in the local language on Netflix;
- None of the opinions below were influenced by my own preferences. I talk with my cousin a lot about Pokemon, but exclusively about the games. I knew he watched the anime, but I never talked about it with him before, so none of them knew my preferences. This is to say none gave me the answers I wanted to hear, but wat they genuinely feel;
- People who work with children know they are brutally honest. I´m just writing this here because I will indicate some of the stuff they said about the new series and some of it, especially pertaining to Riko, may sound harsh and misogynistic, but I will still include them because I think they are important to understand what people their age think;
- People who work with children also know that the echo chambers are very common, meaning that an opinion who is branded as cool will become the majority. This is especially true with negative opinions. As such, something perceived as bad by the cool kid will be perceived as bad by a lot of the others. Keep this in mind;
- Some of the results are surprising, especially the ones pertaining to their favourite and least favourite characters;
- For private reasons, I don´t want to say in which country I live specifically, but know it´s in Europe.
With that out of the way, let´s get started.
Reactions about Ash/Pikachu/Team Rocket leaving:
Opinions on Riko and Roy:
Before I continue, some additional context:
Favourite series:
Least favourite series:
Now about the characters, I was very surprised.
Favourite character:
Favourite companion:
Least favourite companion:
Favourite rival:
I was shocked with Clermont’s popularity. I always liked him, but never thought he was this popular with kids. I watched some XY episodes dubbed in my mother tongue, because perhaps the VA did something very fun with his lines, but it was just mediocre and the lines were basically the ones from the English dub translated. A very unexpected result. As for Lillie not being very liked, they explained that they found her annoying and how Gladion was much cooler and should have taken her place as classmate.
Favourite Ash Pokemon (excluding Pikachu):
Least favourite Ash Pokemon:
Favourite gag (I think some of them don´t understand what a gag is, as I don´t consider some of the below as gags, but these were their answers):
Favourite battle (They haven’t watched the Master´s Eight yet):
Favourite type of episode:
Favourite type of series:
This is it for this little, on the fly survey. I don´t know if many people will care about this, but I thought that some of you might enjoy this type of post.
I won´t take any conclusions from this survey; because people will rightfully argue that the sample is insignificant. However, I have good news! My cousin and his friends had so much fun answering it that they decided to make it their statistics project. In my country, around third grade (7/8 years old) children get some basics of statistics in their math class. They are learning about it this period and the teacher usually asks them to make a school wide survey about a theme of their choosing to use as an example of the subject in class. This means, that in a few weeks, I will have information about this subject collected form 400+ kids with ages between 6-10 years old, which I think is a very good sample size for something like this. If people are interested I can then share those results here.
People who have been reading the anime section during the last few weeks probably must have come across one of my ramblings about Ash leaving the anime. Many arguments are being thrown around both in favour and against the change of protagonists, as well as if the anime is popular with new viewers (children, who are the intended target audience), but much of it is just speculation without much support in either side.
Having this in mind, I did a little survey. Long story short, this weekend I was invited to my cousin´s birthday party. I don´t know how it´s called in English, but the party was held at a type of indoors playground that can be rented for an entire day to hold this kind of parties. It was very popular in my country a few years back. As for why I was invited to a children´s birthday party? Basically, I am considered the cool cousin who´s unbeatable in video games, and who gave him Pokemon Violet along with his Christmas present (people who have read my other posts know that I couldn’t bring myself to play the game and gave it to my cousin). Add to this the fact that I usually help him when he gets stuck in video games and you understand why I was invited: to basically help him move along Violet which, by the way, he isn´t liking very much because he finds it very confusing, but that is a matter for another time.
As I was progressing through the game, we arrived at the battle with Iono and, upon seeing Wattler, one of the kids exclaims «So cool! I hope Ash gets one!». After this, I explained to him that Ash won´t get one, because he´s leaving the anime. They bombarded me with questions and I explained the situation and showed them the poster with the new characters.
This brings me to the core of this post. I will now share the kids’ reactions to the new series, as well as some other questions I asked about characters and past series. This information is obtained from 29 kids. I know the number is laughable, but I still found it interesting and thought to share the results, as someone else may also find them interesting.
Before I start, I want to make some things clear:
- Of the 29 kids, 23 are boys and 6 are girls. They all have between 6 and 10 years old. From those 29, only 22 are into Pokemon. None of the girls like Pokemon and, as such, don´t watch the anime. Of the 22 that are into Pokemon, 1 doesn´t watch the anime, so the survey was conducted on the remaining 21;
- They watch the anime dubbed in the local language on Netflix;
- None of the opinions below were influenced by my own preferences. I talk with my cousin a lot about Pokemon, but exclusively about the games. I knew he watched the anime, but I never talked about it with him before, so none of them knew my preferences. This is to say none gave me the answers I wanted to hear, but wat they genuinely feel;
- People who work with children know they are brutally honest. I´m just writing this here because I will indicate some of the stuff they said about the new series and some of it, especially pertaining to Riko, may sound harsh and misogynistic, but I will still include them because I think they are important to understand what people their age think;
- People who work with children also know that the echo chambers are very common, meaning that an opinion who is branded as cool will become the majority. This is especially true with negative opinions. As such, something perceived as bad by the cool kid will be perceived as bad by a lot of the others. Keep this in mind;
- Some of the results are surprising, especially the ones pertaining to their favourite and least favourite characters;
- For private reasons, I don´t want to say in which country I live specifically, but know it´s in Europe.
With that out of the way, let´s get started.
Reactions about Ash/Pikachu/Team Rocket leaving:
- 15 said they hated the idea and won´t watch the new series;
- 4 said that they hated the idea, but will give the new series a chance;
- 2 said they don´t care and will watch anyway;
- 12 asked why didn´t they get rid of Go instead (I only told them Ash and TR were leaving, so they assumed Go was staying);
- 5 (I´m not kidding) cried.
Opinions on Riko and Roy:
- 19 said things along the lines of «Why is Ash getting substituted by a girl?», «Girls can´t battle», «Pokemon is for boys»;
- 1 (of the 19) said «I hope the protagonist is the guy on the back (Roy)»;
- 2 said that Riko and Roy «Look okay, I guess».
Before I continue, some additional context:
- Almost all of them started watching the anime with Journeys or late Sun and Moon;
- 19 of them watched previous seasons after starting with the current anime. All of the previous seasons. Not all the episodes, but enough to form an opinion about each series. They were also very knowledgeable about the different characters and storylines.
- The next questions were asked only to this 19.
Favourite series:
- 14 said XY;
- 3 said Diamond and Pearl;
- 1 said Journeys;
- 1 said Sun and Moon.
Least favourite series:
- 11 said Sun and Moon;
- 5 said Journeys;
- 3 said Original.
Now about the characters, I was very surprised.
Favourite character:
- 6 said Ash;
- 5 said Pikachu;
- 4 said Meowth;
- 2 said James;
- 2 said Clemont.
Favourite companion:
- 13 said Clemont;
- 4 said Brock;
- 1 said Kiawe;
- 1 said Dawn.
Least favourite companion:
- 11 said Go;
- 5 said Lillie;
- 2 said Sophocles;
- 1 said Iris.
Favourite rival:
- 7 said Gladion;
- 6 said Alain;
- 5 said Leon;
- 1 said Gary.
I was shocked with Clermont’s popularity. I always liked him, but never thought he was this popular with kids. I watched some XY episodes dubbed in my mother tongue, because perhaps the VA did something very fun with his lines, but it was just mediocre and the lines were basically the ones from the English dub translated. A very unexpected result. As for Lillie not being very liked, they explained that they found her annoying and how Gladion was much cooler and should have taken her place as classmate.
Favourite Ash Pokemon (excluding Pikachu):
- 6 said Greninja;
- 4 said Oshawott;
- 4 said Lucario;
- 3 said Infernape;
- 2 said Lycanroc.
Least favourite Ash Pokemon:
- 5 said Meltan;
- 4 said Rowlet;
- 4 said Dracovish;
- 3 said Scraggy;
- 2 said Dragonite;
- 1 said Donphan.
Favourite gag (I think some of them don´t understand what a gag is, as I don´t consider some of the below as gags, but these were their answers):
- 6 Team Rocket motto;
- 5 Team Rocket blasting off;
- 3 Clermont’s inventions;
- 3 Bonnie trying to find a girlfriend for Clemont;
- 1 Bewear catching Team Rocket;
- 1 Serena wanting to be Ash´s girlfriend and him being oblivious.
Favourite battle (They haven’t watched the Master´s Eight yet):
- 6 said Ash VS Team Rocket in Ula Ula;
- 6 said Ash VS Alain;
- 4 said Ash VS Paul;
- 3 said Ash VS Gladion.
Favourite type of episode:
- 8 said Filler;
- 7 said Battle;
- 4 said Companion episode.
Favourite type of series:
- 16 said Traveling a single region;
- 2 said World Tour;
- 1 said School setting
This is it for this little, on the fly survey. I don´t know if many people will care about this, but I thought that some of you might enjoy this type of post.
I won´t take any conclusions from this survey; because people will rightfully argue that the sample is insignificant. However, I have good news! My cousin and his friends had so much fun answering it that they decided to make it their statistics project. In my country, around third grade (7/8 years old) children get some basics of statistics in their math class. They are learning about it this period and the teacher usually asks them to make a school wide survey about a theme of their choosing to use as an example of the subject in class. This means, that in a few weeks, I will have information about this subject collected form 400+ kids with ages between 6-10 years old, which I think is a very good sample size for something like this. If people are interested I can then share those results here.