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What parts of DP didn't work?

danh19

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team rocket trio they started of in the series quite well of me but they started to get worse and worse with the rhyming to the stage where I wished they weren't in the show anymore outside of the odd focus episodes

Kenny I found he vary in his appearances from irritating to dull

Nando the idea of the character was somewhat interesting but they ruined it if his brief appearances

brock I still liked his character and their was some pretty good episodes on about much ash and dawn depend on him but he was neglected as character

torrterra I feel like they could have done more to show of it's strengths
 
  • Takeshi is out of focus.
  • Animation is subpar on many episodes.
  • Takuto is little bit overpowered.
  • Nozomi should be defeated by Hikari.
  • Hikari's goodbye could be handled better.
  • Mimirol's crush is forgotten.
 
Ash losing quite a bit of his skills. Though not as much as BW did but I feel part of the reason his BW incarnation was so bad was because it was a continuation of his DP self. His six on six with Paul is a severe downgrade compared to his performance in other regions as Ash makes some very boneheaded decisions during the battle.

Brock seems to be around for the sake if it. They did very little with his character. Hell he only had 3 pokemon at most for the entire season which made his battles dull imo.

Ash's Torterra sucked a lot. Paul has every right to be mad at Ash for raising it so poorly.

Speaking of Paul I liked what they were trying to do with their rivalry by making it very intense with such opposing views but the execution was off. The rivalry was incredibly one-sided in battle as Paul pretty much humiliates Ash until the end where even then Ash barely won. Ash also comes off as a bit of a hypocrite during some scenes without it being addressed.

The ending with Tobias was incredibly stupid. It really shows they are just spiteful to Ash and will create a last minute marty stu just to maintain their status quo. At least this joker probably got his ass kicked by the Cynthia since she's still the champ in BW.

Nando and Kenny were pretty much useless. Kenny is especially wasteful since him being Dawn's childhood friend could have gone somewhere.
 
Horribly paced, very little filler, sparse character development. Team Rocket actually got to win some stuff with contests but were still bland. They had all this buildup for the champion league only to vomit in our faces with Tobias. Pokémon development all went to Infernape as it progressed and sucked it away from everyone else because: "BOO HOO! HE GOT ABUSED!" Paul is a Karma Houdini to the likes of Pinocchio's coachman, he abuses all of his Pokémon and never gets punished. I understand he was meant to emulate those trainers that EV train Pokémon but that doesn't work here, it's clear cut animal abuse. Dawen comes off as an annoying May replacement whose Piplup was a major Scrappy.
=>>> A bad season
 
Brock was at his worst and most flanderized.

Team Rocket started getting more and more appearances on screen only to be reduced to a goldfish poop gang.

The dub of the DP Saga was very bad, and prior to XY & SM, was the most poorly dubbed saga of the Anime, expanding on issues in the source material (with the Rockets in particular) making them even more unlikable with all the unfunny slang, puns, alliterations, and rhymes to come out of their mouths, "Dig it, jack" being the biggest offender from Meowth.

The coordinator shtick was a rehash from AG with May again with Dawn.

That's about it: the rest of DP worked out pretty well.
 
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ash being a hypocrite was brought up by Paul a few times allow I feel ash wasn't being a hypocrite he the same things for different reasons
 
For me:

- Brock still being around. I felt like DP could have been the jump to get rid of him rather than waiting till BW.
- Dawn's rivals as a whole suck and going from Contest loser to winner of the Wallace Cup was too big of a jump - some minor wins in between would have been more believable.
- Infernape is everywhere and actually dominates the rivalry with Paul. As said earlier, there are parts of the rivalry that are forgotten about and are never really resolved or explored because the end is 100% Infernape.
- The pacing is inconsistent with some huge variances between gym challenges.
 
For me, Takeshi still being around is what I can think of at the moment. Watching the series, it felt like Shigeru would have made for a better traveling companion during DP, and that would have been interesting for a multitude of reasons.
 
Dawn's rivals were pretty lackluster, especially Kenny. Nando was an interesting concept, but rarely showed up. Zoey worked as a mentor figure, but their rivalry wasn't too compelling. It would have been better for Ursula to show up earlier and beat Dawn instead of Kenny. Ursula was way too skilled to never have any on-screen victory.

Dawn shouldn't have gotten rid of Ambipom or at the very least not get Togekiss how she did. If they wanted to give her a new Pokemon, then she should have gotten a Togepi to raise it into a Togekiss. It was just so terrible to give her a fully raised Pokemon on a silver plate.

Give the Grand Festival another episode or two so that it didn't feel rushed. Dawn getting to the finals should have had more buildup instead of happening after just one full battle and a clip show. This might have also given Jessie a better end as a Coordinator if we actually saw her full battle against Dawn.

I didn't hate Gliscor, but I was never much of a fan of it. It didn't help that it couldn't battle before evolving and we didn't see it training too much before suddenly being able to win a Gym battle. Ideally, I would have loved to give Ash a Riolu to raise, but I would have been fine if he got Gible earlier instead. I thought that Gible was more fun compared to Gliscor. While I think that Gible got a good amount of screentime for a late series capture, more screentime would have been neat.

Torterra losing all the time was pretty sad. I'd prefer for it to get at least a couple of victories.

As much as I liked Infernape and its role in the rivalry with Paul, it did take up too much attention from Ash's other Pokemon, which does factor int with Torterra's losing streak.

As a side note, I feel like I'm one of the few people who didn't mind Brock staying around for the whole series. I can see where people are coming from in that regard, but I thought that he was a fine choice. I don't think that they had many other options when it came to fourth generation characters. Plus, I thought that the group chemistry was pretty nice. He did fade into the background a bit too much given how most of the attention was on Ash and Dawn's connection, but they all felt like friends to me.
 
I'm gonna get rid of the big one first and foremost... Infernape (sigh) I'm not gonna defend the decision to have Infernape sweep half of Paul's oddly constructed Sinnoh League team (I loved the battle though), it wasn't how I would have wrote it myself. But this isn't the first time it's happened, Charizard had nothing in common with Gary unlike Infernape, at it took out Gary's remaining 2 Pokemon and his at the time, unbeatable Blastoise. I don't see too many people get down an out about that in the Johto league, but whatever. Infernape probably should have been saved as the Ace in the hole while Torterra got a win or two prove it's worth.

Once again...sigh, Torterra. Turtwig started off so good too. It was aloof at times, but had a strong will and a big heart, even after it evolved. But man they could not make Ash work with a Defense type Pokemon no matter how hard they tried, even after having an entire episode devoting towards Grotle learning to compensate his diminished speed for top notch defense. Instead we get the useless Rock Climb attack and just make Grotle/Torterra fight Pokemon it cannot feasibly win against because of it's opponents established title or general power. My only defense for it's lost against Paul was the fact Paul knows exactly how Torterra works since he owns one himself, even still I don't like relying on that because Ash's Torterra still should have had something to prove.

Gible's lack of training is all I've got to say about him, I otherwise thought he was a great late capture that added a bit of humor to Ash's otherwise serious team. I'd have better believed his mastery of Draco Meteor if we saw him use it perfectly one time before the league (not counting the episode he "debuted" in).

Team Rocket was awful... what else needs to be said about that? I did however like their focus episodes for some reason... strange

Dawn's rival's were weird, I can understand Zoey, but that's literally it. I don't get why Kenny needed to be a thing other then maybe to have a male rival, but I thought Nando would have fit that quota, given he schooled Dawn in a Pokemon battle in his debut episode. Ursala was pretty cool, but man did she get the short end of the stick. I have to think had it not been for drawing out Sinnoh as long as they did, I believe she would have won with Pulsle and Minun even if that was a battle for Dawn's development. It would have at least been neat for her to grow up from that while also still taking the L to seek better results in the future.

Those are pretty much the main flaws of the region, everything else is pretty much subjective to the watcher.
 
The dub of the DP Saga was very bad, and prior to XY, was the most poorly dubbed saga of the Anime, expanding on issues in the source material (with the Rockets in particular) making them even more unlikable with all the unfunny slang, puns, alliterations, and rhymes to come out of their mouths, "Dig it, jack" being the biggest offender from Meowth.
No, the biggest offence was altering every line to make each member of the TRio sound like they hate each other.
Team Rocket was awful... what else needs to be said about that? I did however like their focus episodes for some reason... strange
(On the assumption that you watched the dub) the reason is because there is only so much that the original dialogue can be bastardised - it's difficult to alter the fundamental plot of an episode and you can't (easily) have them insult each other whilst crying & giving up their pokemon/having a heartfelt pre-death moment .etc.
 
I love infernape and his development but I feel their should have been a better balance in terms of focus especially torterra
 
I am still kind of amazed with how people still hate Tobias after all this time. I can understand why given how he came out of nowhere and was clearly put in so he could beat Ash, but after Ash defeated Paul, seeing him go down in a blaze of glory was awesome. It was much better than if he had lost to a regular trainer. Yeah, it is still cheap, he is still an overpowered Gary Stu and people might have been upset when there was a fairly strong belief Ash could win back then as well, but I thought it was a good decision all things considered.

I just wonder if Alain will be held in the same kind of infamous status down the road. He is basically Tobias if he was a supporting character throughout DP that we were suppose to care about.
 
after Ash defeated Paul, seeing him go down in a blaze of glory was awesome. It was much better than if he had lost to a regular trainer.

Exactly. Only satisfactory way to defeat Satoshi was to match him with a Gary Stu.
 
No, the biggest offence was altering every line to make each member of the TRio sound like they hate each other.
True, you'd think TRio hated each other in DP if you were to watch the dub, yet it was very much the opposite in the Original Japanese Version. The bad dubbing really did hurt my impression of the three for a long time until I saw DP in its Original Format.
 
Dawn's up and down with the contests at first was really strange. She had recently been super awful and then she got to beat May, which was really ridiculous in its own right. And that battle in general, May got off more attacks, they looked better, and Piplup should've been knocked out by the mirror coats, I think that letting Dawn win was really ridiculous. Anyway, I'm still clearly pretty bitter about this, because at that point May should've wiped the floor with Dawn as she had a ton more experience and Dawn hadn't been very good, but this is a very biased opinion. I also think it was a bit much to let Dawn get second in her first grand festival, when Ash couldn't get top 2 in his fourth Pokemon league.

I would have said I thought Infernape got too much attention, but after XYZ, I think my perspective changed on what too much attention is, because the Sinnoh group all got more of their due than the Kalos team wound up getting because Greninja stole the spot light. I think Infernape's back story was a little more compelling too. I even think Staraptor easily got the best due of any of Ash's regional birds, and pretty much the whole team got their share of special training. I understand being upset about Torterra not getting any big wins, but it still had a lot of solid moments, especially as Turtwig and when it evolved in Sunnyshore and saved the day.

I agree that in the dub TR rhyming all the time (which still hasn't stopped) was pretty annoying and made it so they didn't have good conversation any more, but i still thought that DP had some good connection to past stories with TR and reasonable development and it was nice to actually see Jessie's ribbons won instead of her magically getting two extra keys in XY.

I do wish Brock would have gotten a bit more attention in the series. I'm still glad it was Brock and not someone else, because they needed a responsible one, but he did become a bit more bland during this series. Still it may have been for the best, because DP probably had the best mix between Ash and Dawn, where it sometimes felt like Dawn was even the main character, and that made it pretty fun, and if Brock was replaced by another new character who needed a ton of attention, it may have been that Dawn got less development and Ash's new team got less screen time. In this way, a stable, established character like Brock allowed them the time to do other stuff with the series.

Dawn shouldn't have gotten rid of Ambipom or at the very least not get Togekiss how she did. If they wanted to give her a new Pokemon, then she should have gotten a Togepi to raise it into a Togekiss. It was just so terrible to give her a fully raised Pokemon on a silver plate.

I totally agree with this, but at least she didn't over rely on it, still not as bad as giving Dragonite to Iris. I did really miss Ambipom, but I think they took away some of its personality after it evolved anyway, which was also disappointing.

No issues personally with Ash not winning the league and Paul not being the final, I mean the world isn't so small that you should just expect if you're better than everyone you know that you should just be the champ. Of course there are trainers Ash hasn't met that are super good, and I personally am glad they showed that, although maybe Tobias was going just a tad bit too far. Would have been nice to see his full team, but leaving it to our imagination is cool too.

Anyway, of course all series have their flaws, but I think DP did a pretty good job in general. I certainly really enjoyed it. I think if we had a post about what was good about it my list would be quite a bit longer than this one.
 
Team Rocket
Brock
Ash-tachii at its dullest
Dawn's rivals
A lot of mediocre animation
Turtwig becoming a big loser (both ways) after evolving
Some stand alone episodes that should've been two-parters
 
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