CrystaI
The Pokemon Observer
- Joined
- Feb 20, 2011
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I'd add to this that, in the first place, the source material they were adapting them was very bare bones. Red/Blue/Green didn't have a story or in-depth characters, so adapting it required a lot of expansion. The games would improve their storytelling and characters over time but still didn't provide enough content to fully adapt into three year seasons. So for every new season there's always that question of: how can this be expanded? And not all the answers turn out well.
I always have a question regarding on this "adaption" thing. Pokemon Anime is indeed based on Pokemon main series game. But, how much it was adapted? Or may be more specifically speaking, what specifically was adapted?
Someone in another thread had mentioned, Pokemon main series is very casual which can basically summarized into: A child chosen by the professor to go around the world to complete the Pokedex, as the player go around looking for pokemons and battling trainers along the road, they encounter the villain team, and become involved in their business. <-- That's the most important part. Badge and League? Well they are not part of the story, they are only part of the gameplay and background geography. Gameplay =/= Story.
But yet, despite being barebone, one cannot deny that events still happened within the game.
For example in the first RGB game. Yeah despite I would also agree that player character is characterless (simply because it is not a character, but the player's avatar), but none can deny that these events still existed in the game: When player reaches the Mt.Moon, there is an incident of first encounter with TR member. When going to Cerulean City, there is a house left with aftermaths of TR member breaking in. In Lavender Town there is the Pokemon Tower incident. In Saffron City there is the Silph Company hijacking incident by TR. Maybe these events also requires massive expansion in order to adapt to become dramatic story narratable on-screen, but none can deny that, at least they existed in the game.
Other than these events, the Pewter City has Museum, north of Cerulean there is the Nugget Bridge, Vermilion is a harbor city heart to the Pokemon Fan Club, Celadon has a big department store, Cinnabar Island has pokemon laboratory and the abandoned house. Well these places does not have any specific story nor important events, but none can deny that they indeed existed in there.
But, how many of these do we saw in OS Anime? How much of these already-existed materials are utilized for further expansion? How much of the game story and overworld are "adapted" into the anime in any format? One should know the answer if one had watch the Pokemon Anime.
Although I do not ask for faithful adaption as much as Origin (IMO, not even Origin is good enough, due to length problem), but I do not understand why the Pokemon Anime adapt so little key events and important geography from the original source, rather go all the way to take originality interpretation and original story plot, to the point that is no more "expansion", but alternative universe different from the GameVerse.
Well at the beginning it may not bother the new audience. But as time goes on it provides an inevitable doubt when the official anime canon continuously align themselves with the newest game title, and the more game elements they put in (yet IMO, poor execution).
And I really doubt that filler episodes will still be that much, when they adapt a bit more of the already-existed game story, because then we need more story build-up episodes that will contributes to future episodes and the Big Decisive Battle that one expected to come eventually.
And also, due to their alignment with the game, that also becomes the source of discussion argument and debate material regarding on the story plot of Pokemon Anime throughout the fandom.
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