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Best Pokemon series? Least favourite?

Which series of Pokemon anime is to best overall


  • Total voters
    34
I've only watched, in full, up to the end of the Battle Frontier saga, but I've seen snippets from all the other seasons.

Based on what I've watched completely, I feel like the Orange Islands saga is really underappreciated. I think it was arguably the most original saga since it was a made-up region, and thus all the stories were made-up. In particular, the new way to beat gyms was nice and fresh. It actually made sense as a sequel to the Original Series, since it felt like an entirely new journey rather than simply the same thing just in a new region like the rest of the series are. And while I did miss Brock, I liked Tracey quite a bit.

Also, Ash actually won a league. It's the only time he's ever won, and people seem to forget quite a bit.

So ya, Orange Islands is probably my personal favourite season. And as it's part of the Original Series, I guess the OS is my favourite series.
 
Best: The Original Series.
I'm not saying this because of pure nostalgia, because I grew up with Hoenn and Sinnoh on TV, so yeah. I just really like the humour in the first seasons. I feel like the episodes were a lot more lighthearted.

Least favourite: X and Y
Not a fan of the characters. The series also felt too serious to me, and I got bored of it very quickly.

I don't really watch much of the anime in general though, I mostly watch when episodes that seem interesting get announced.
 
DP is definitely at the top for me. It has a really well-structured plot, a believable character development for both Ash and Dawn with challenging rivals who gave them a run for their money, spectacular battles and Contests, a nice non-TR villain arc, and plenty of continuity nods. There are many flaws in this saga, though, like Brock’s almost complete lack of development and rare interactions with Dawn, but its positives greatly outweigh its negatives.

On the flip side, BW is the absolutely worst saga for me. Horrid handling of Ash’s character aside, there are way too many things that were good in theory, but ended up bad in practice: rotation team which ended up being an underdeveloped “Pikachu + starters + two fillers” for most of the series, Iris’s and her team’s development being all over the place, Team Plasma being reduced to generic villain team and kicked toward the end of the series, lackluster rivals compared to past series (even if Burgundy and Georgia were genuinely funny), Cilan gradually being reduced to pure comic relief throughout the saga, and many more things. Sure, there are a few positives, like Team Rocket getting a promotion and having a really intriguing subplot, but said positives aren’t enough to compensate for the more glaring issues of the saga.
 
What do you think about BW and Alola?
Black and White was kind of dissapointing to me. I do like Iris a lot, and the rest of the characters were fine to be honest. In the end I just feel like there was something lacking, though. I'd say it's my second-to-last favourite.

Sun and Moon I actually like a lot. The art style is really cute, and the characters are very likeable to me. It's also really funny, and I like how lighthearted and humorous it is. I was honestly considering putting it in first place, but the Original Series still beats it.
 
Black and White was kind of dissapointing to me. I do like Iris a lot, and the rest of the characters were fine to be honest. In the end I just feel like there was something lacking, though.
Perhaps the lack of a certain two-parter special never to happen?
 
Haven't seen SM but I'd rank the rest as following:
DP
Kanto
XY
AG, Johto
BW

DP had by far the best and most thought through story arc. Kanto is high on the list mostly because of the comedy.
 
I think I posted here before, but I'll rank them again:

DP - the most well thought out storyline in the anime with great character development
OS/Kanto - I can honestly say in my opinion the anime was the saving grace for the original games for me. I love the original games, but man were they hard
XY - I'm still bitter we never got "z" as a game, I guess I ranked it lower due to my annoyance with Ash's team of flying types and a rather short series (140 episodes). I would have liked to see, even if brief, a post-league/post-Lysandre arc to see where everyone went
AG/Battle Frontier - never understood the popularity of the game component, but I enjoyed the anime arc. To be honest, aside from the Pokemon World Tournament, I've never been a fan of any battle facility in the games.
OS/Orange Islands - enjoyable filler, and my happiness that Charizard finally decided it wanted to obey Ash
AG/Hoenn - for some reason, I'm still bothered to this day Ash only got one of the starters in this series. Which ironically in XY it didn't bother me.
OS/Johnto - I enjoy the games way more than I ever enjoyed the anime component. The anime during this series just felt tired.
BW - my issue is the storyline just felt awkward, the producers attempted to balance elements of BW with B2W2 and I think they would have been better off sticking to the storyline of the original games.
 
I actually would have agreed with you until the follow up series which was far worst than bw which a least had a lot of potential even if they butchered it. sinnoheevee
 
The best is the original series for me.
1, yes, is nostalgia. Bite me. But the general feel of the series and the lack of "routine" in it made it more charming and enjoyable. The humour was better back then too. Genuine laugh out loud moments.

Worst? I don't really have one, but the series I watch the least is B/W. A lot of it is just kinda meh to me, despite it having a strong set of recurring characters, such as Bianca. X/Y isn't brilliant either, but XYZ was a strong return to form with the Zygarde plot, and there's some beautiful animation work there.
Shoutout to the DP saga for some strong characterization. As much as I tend to rag on Sinnoh for being a bit of a long series, it's still enjoyable and Dawn & Brock were good support.

So far I've really enjoyed the Sun & Moon series as well. The change in animation was a bit odd at first but I like it, and the level of humour in the series is so much better now, which is bolstered by appropriate animation. Genuine laughs. I recommend checking it out of you haven't, it could suprise you.
 
It's hard for me to pick what I think is the "best" overall series because there are so many factors to consider and no one series has done everything right without doing something noticeably wrong.

  • OS had some of the most enjoyable fillers and great cast interactions (Kanto Rockets are still my favorite) plus didn't feel repetitive/formula-driven but ultimately not great story structure and by mid Johto it had gotten pretty stale and all of the positives I listed kind of fizzled out. I also have a big fondness for the cel-coloring art style.
  • AG was a breath of fresh air and also had good cast interactions plus pretty solid story structure and probably the best openings collectively; I would argue it didn't have any glaring downsides but also nothing about it stood out as amazing either.
  • DP had arguably the best story structure and character development plus probably the best villain plot but collectively the worst art, worst openings, not a lot of good standout fillers (evil Togepi and back-to-the-basics Rockets being the exceptions), and pretty dull character interactions.
  • BW tried a lot of new things and is probably the last series as of now to have interesting cast dynamics but had boring Rockets and not great story structure, plus the art was not great (never reached the lows DP did but it also never looked better than "passable").
  • XY improved the animation significantly, tried telling a cohesive story, each of Satoshi's companions were interesting enough by themselves, and had arguably the most satisfying conclusion, but Satoshi was incredibly boring, as was the group dynamic, the tone of the series was kind of shitty too, probably the worst continuity with previous sagas, and it made me sit through the Satoshi-Gekkouga plot for over a year.
  • SM is the series that is arguably the most successful with trying to shake up the formula, it has nice animation, the Rocket trio is probably the best they've been since Kanto, and Satoshi is able to be goofy again without being unbearable, but the art style is kind of hit-or-miss, the group dynamics are by far the most boring out of each series, and it's definitely struggling to hold my attention more than other sagas have.

All in all I would say objectively DP is what I find to be the best and BW the weakest, but taking my personal feelings/bias into consideration OS is my favorite and XY is my least favorite.
 
This seems to be a lot the same as another thread, but I guess I'll rank here since I didn't there:
1. AG/DP (tie)
3. OS
4. XY
5. BW
6. - ∞. Any other show ever
∞ +1. SM

Okay maybe a little exaggeration, but I don't like SM at all. Its crazy for me to even think that, because I didn't like BW in comparison to other series, but I still liked it a lot, it was still my favorite show. But SM, I flat out dislike it, in so many ways (explained here, although there are more reasons than that even). So much so that I really have struggled to even watch it. I had to stop re-watching other old episodes to try to get through it this Spring, which was a huge struggle, even though I typically watch Pokemon daily, I watched maybe 1-3 episodes a week (with the main carrot that kept me going being the disappointing Misty and Brock return). I can't even get myself to go back to it because I let myself start rewatching BW once I caught up, and its so much better that I haven't seen SM since SM052 (and that was supposed to be in the middle of one of the more exciting arcs of the series) because if I get a spare 20 minutes I don't want to waste it on SM.

I feel like a lot of people say they like SM, but I wonder about one thing. I kind of feel like the A&M section here is less lively than it was during XY, potentially because of less interest. Maybe I'm totally wrong, but I sure felt like there was more going on and more excitement for the future back then. I know I was a lot more excited and wanted to talk about the present and future more, but now just about the past. I personally am not confident in the future anymore, but I do hope Gen VIII could be better, at least make it to #6 on the list.
 
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Uhm... If I had to rank them:

1. SM: It's flawed and far from perfect. HOWEVER, it has (1) great animation, especially decent looking character acting which is kinda rare in anime in general let alone the Pokémon anime; (2) character design that has volume and doesn't relay on shading to add depth to characters that would otherwise look like cardboard cutouts, really appealing overall; (3) likable characters that aren't one or two-notes, although development is slow for everyone but Lillie; (4) Team Rocket is more enjoyable now and their appearances don't feel repetitive; (5) manages to explore different tones without feeling out of place and; (6) filler is not the same episode on repeat. It takes risks and it's greatly appreciated, to the point of making me overlook the major pacing issues because it manages to feel fresh, especially when you take into consideration this is a continuation of a 20+ year run series.

2. OS: Kind of dumb, but really fun, loved the character dynamic and Ash having an actual personality.

3. XY: The peak of staleness for the Pokémon anime in my opinion, it's competently executed, the battles' and showcases' animations were out of this world, but it was overall only okay visually on the rest of the scenes. I really enjoyed the characters to some extent, but didn't manage to grab me for too long. Shota was a great rival, but I can't say the same for Alain. Serena was kinda there most of the type and I was actually more excited to see Eureka because she was at least consistently fun to watch. While it did some interesting things, it wasn't enough for me to place it higher. Also kinda hated that they tried to make Pokémon a shonen power fantasy on XY&Z.

4. DP: Didn't watch it nearly as much as the rest, but I really really liked Hikari and the overall character dynamic, plus, Pochama was cute.

5. BW: It took risks, did a lot of interesting things, but was a giant mess overall. Even though I was okay with Iris I could never, for the life of me, not hate Dento. I really liked what they did with Meowth temporarily joining the twerps and whatnot. Didn't watch it thoroughly, but enjoyed some parts of it well enough.

6. AG: First time I dropped the Pokémon anime as a kid. I remember watching the anime religiously, but 10 - 12 year old me kind of gradually lost all interest in the anime at some point in AG before the Battle Frontier. I didn't like May at all. I barely cared about Max. And Brock was kinda there. The pokémon were kinda meh. The plot started to feel repetitive, especially on filler episodes. While this is super personal, and I probably would rank it higher if I had to rewatch it, I still kinda resent this series for making Pokémon boring (to me, as a kid).
 
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