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Controversial opinions

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ii kanji said:
Perhaps the difference is to do with SM's references being... just throwaway references. (Yes that magical girl henshin scene in that TV serial episode was a bit much, but that's the only one I can think of that even got more than one scene!) I also haven't seen anyone (except the usual kawaii club suspects on platforms like Twitter) gush over the cuteness of these.
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If I remember correctly, the Steenee evolution was also praised for being portrayed like a magical girl transformation sequence, but that's a secondary thing. Also, the threads on Bulbagarden forms has been quieter regarding anything girly during Gen7, while in Gen6 there had been threads dedicated to discussing anything Serena (and of course, the Showcases). Has anyone complained about Mallow, Lana, or Lillie about girliness? I haven't seen any. If anything, people seem to love Lillie for her girliness, while Serena received a lot of backlash for being girly.

More importantly, were the complaints about showcases due to them being too 'girly'? I don't think so. After all contests could be quite girly and no one was bothered about that. As I recall, people complained more about the fact that boys weren't allowed to compete because the writers had deemed it too girly.
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It's not just the Showcases, but complaints about girliness overall in Gen6. It wasn't just Serena as well - the ORAS animation trailer also had complaints about May dancing on a contest stage being "too girly", which isn't far off from the teen idol references that were in the TVA. I feel that the pokemon Gen6 animation overall had faced a lot of criticism about girliness in general when nobody is complaining about girliness in Gen7. There had been so many posts criticizing Serena's girliness during Gen6 when talking about Serena's character and her overall story arc.
 
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FluffleFi said:
You know, with Lana's goal being that she wants to discover new undersea Pokemon, I think she should be the one to get a new Gen 8 Pokemon, like how Misty got Togepi, May with Munchlax, Brock with Bonsly or Jame's with Mime. Jr. Course it'd be some water-type, though I highly doubt it'd be Sobble.
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I don't see what the point of that would be given that it's mid-May, and SuMo will end sometime in autumn. There's no benefit to getting a sneak peek of Gen 8 when we're already so close to the new saga imo; that's something that should've happened ages ago, unless Meltan already counts as a Gen 8 mon(?).
 
Boruto said:
I don't see what the point of that would be given that it's mid-May, and SuMo will end sometime in autumn. There's no benefit to getting a sneak peek of Gen 8 when we're already so close to the new saga imo; that's something that should've happened ages ago, unless Meltan already counts as a Gen 8 mon(?).
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Meltan is Gen VII if we go by internal data.
 
I figured that Meltan is a seventh generation Pokemon. Since it was introduced to help provide more of a connection between Go and the Let's Go games, I didn't think it was an eighth generation Pokemon. It seems to fit more of the Mystical Legendary Pokemon role for the generation.

As neat as it would be to see some eighth generation Pokemon featured in SM, I think it might be a tad too late for that, especially for someone in the cast to catch a new Pokemon. I suppose it wouldn't be impossible for them to bring in a new character with new Pokemon to hype up the next series/games like they did in BW, but we also need to have some actual news about the games before they reveal them in the anime.
 
Kyriaki said:
Also, the threads on Bulbagarden forms has been quieter regarding anything girly during Gen7, while in Gen6 there had been threads dedicated to discussing anything Serena (and of course, the Showcases). Has anyone complained about Mallow, Lana, or Lillie about girliness? I haven't seen any. If anything, people seem to love Lillie for her girliness, while Serena received a lot of backlash for being girly.
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I think you've lost the nuance here. Female does not equal girly, and in any case I don't think anyone (sensible) gave Serena backlash purely for being 'girly'. Serena received backlash because she was completely lacking in agency for the first half of her saga and because the way Tomioka chose to end her story rendered the development she had received pointless (performances vs Contests, 'she is more than her crush' vs 'You are my goal!')

Also, is Lillie 'girly'? Was Serena 'girly', even? Am I girly, are you girly? What even is that? It's not a personality trait for sure. The characteristics that define Lillie are diffidence, persistence, a bookish awkwardness and being a genuinely kind soul. I take great offence to any of those characteristics being pegged as 'girly' in the same way that I HATE physical power or innate leadership qualities being defined as 'masculine'.

If, however, the 'girliness' argument boils down to whether she is wearing a dress or skirt, then I'm done with this discussion because frankly, who cares.
 
ii kanji said:
Also, is Lillie 'girly'? Was Serena 'girly', even? Am I girly, are you girly? What even is that? It's not a personality trait for sure. The characteristics that define Lillie are diffidence, persistence, a bookish awkwardness and being a genuinely kind soul. I take great offence to any of those characteristics being pegged as 'girly' in the same way that I HATE physical power or innate leadership qualities being defined as 'masculine'.
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I agree. anyone can be a leader, no matter the gender. In real life, there were many female leaders. Can't think of any at the moment.
 
Here's an unpopular opinion: I don't hate the elemental monkies. I used a Simipour and probably also a Simisear before I ever even heard of their unpopularity, and I think that may have kept me from hating them: I didn't have any sort of prejudice against them when I first used them, and I don't have any against them now either. I think they're actually surprisingly good Pokémon, and it hurts me whenever I hear people, even some Pokétubers who I respect, talking bad things about them. Simisear especially has an unfortunate reputation, as it's commonly known as the least popular Pokémon ever, which I feel is unfair.
 
FinnishPokéFan92 said:
Here's an unpopular opinion: I don't hate the elemental monkies. I used a Simipour and probably also a Simisear before I ever even heard of their unpopularity, and I think that may have kept me from hating them: I didn't have any sort of prejudice against them when I first used them, and I don't have any against them now either. I think they're actually surprisingly good Pokémon, and it hurts me whenever I hear people, even some Pokétubers who I respect, talking bad things about them. Simisear especially has an unfortunate reputation, as it's commonly known as the least popular Pokémon ever, which I feel is unfair.
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Honestly, I agree. They're definitely not my favorite Pokemon, but they deserve more respect - especially Simisear. It's actually kind of cool, tbh.
 
ii kanji said:
I think you've lost the nuance here. Female does not equal girly, and in any case I don't think anyone (sensible) gave Serena backlash purely for being 'girly'. Serena received backlash because she was completely lacking in agency for the first half of her saga and because the way Tomioka chose to end her story rendered the development she had received pointless (performances vs Contests, 'she is more than her crush' vs 'You are my goal!')

Also, is Lillie 'girly'? Was Serena 'girly', even? Am I girly, are you girly? What even is that? It's not a personality trait for sure. The characteristics that define Lillie are diffidence, persistence, a bookish awkwardness and being a genuinely kind soul. I take great offence to any of those characteristics being pegged as 'girly' in the same way that I HATE physical power or innate leadership qualities being defined as 'masculine'.

If, however, the 'girliness' argument boils down to whether she is wearing a dress or skirt, then I'm done with this discussion because frankly, who cares.
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First of all, I have never said that girliness=dress or skirt. Second, it wasn't just her agency; Serena's backlash involved people disliking her for her 'girliness', her not being 'strong' and not battling as much, with multiple fans bringing up Dawn as comparison. I did not like that criticism about Serena because she's not supposed to be Dawn (obviously) and the 'girliness' and lack of battles did not make her any less strong than any of the main characters.

As for your argument about what defines 'girliness,' you are right that there's no definition for it. Rather, the term seems to just be a jumble of what is 'not masculine' or 'not physical', or whatever the traditional values of girls were. I don't know where that term originated from or who made it, but the term was brought up often when Serena had been criticized heavily.

My point was to bring up the irony of the fandom that people had been so quick to jump on criticizing girliness in the Gen6 anime but then nobody has ever criticized any of that in the Gen7 anime.
 
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I definitely do recall people being upset that Serena wasn't a battler and didn't capture more Pokemon. I don't think it was the most vocal complaint about her character, but it was something that I'd see every now and then during the course of the series. That being said, the most common complaints about Serena were usually about how it took the first year of XY to get a goal and how said goal was boring as dirt. Calling her girly did happen too, but I don't think too often despite how Showcases were basically Pokemon versions of popularity contests.

I disagree with the notion that the way Serena's story ended made her development pointless. She still became a much more confident person and I don't think that kissing Ash changed that. That being said, most people are going to remember Serena for her departure more than anything else for better or for worse, so that in itself is a bit of a mixed bag.
 
Problem with Serena is that the fans never accepted anything other than her main goal as an actual development for her. Any kind of relationship she had with Satoshi had to not count because it's just shipping, any other thing he show interest like baking and pokevision doesn't count because these are not real goals. Anything has to be about battles. And then in SM we had Mao and Lilie...
 
martianmister said:
Problem with Serena is that the fans never accepted anything other than her main goal as an actual development for her. Any kind of relationship she had with Satoshi had to not count because it's just shipping, any other thing he show interest like baking and pokevision doesn't count because these are not real goals. Anything has to be about battles. And then in SM we had Mao and Lilie...
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I don't see how showing interest in baking or Pokevision could be considered development. That gave her some focus, as well as her first rival technically, but she didn't really grow from those experiences. She was able to develop and become a more confident person through Showcases. Although, considering that Mallow's goal is to make great food for her family's restaurant and rarely battles, I'm somewhat surprised that she doesn't get the kind of complaints that Serena would often get in a way.
 
Boruto said:
As awful as SuMo is, the ratings for the anime in general have been decreasing steadily in each saga iirc, so I wouldn't necessarily say that SuMo's low ratings reflect the main audience's displeasure with the show: as far as I know, most kids probably like SuMo just as much as they liked XY.

But back to the "teen idol" thing, I don't see how Showcases were a bad thing in principle. They were glorified beauty pageants sure, but I was more bothered by the fact that they were mostly just watered-down Pokemon Contests with no battles. But I can forgive that because Serena was good at them, and she needed a goal after those first 40 or so episodes where she did nothing meaningful.
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This isn't a steady decline in ratings; this is a total rejection of the show. During Golden-week, Sun and Moon couldn't register in the top 10. Even Yokai Watch and an early morning TV Tokyo anime (which only received 1.9) made the top 10. That is how bad the show is doing right now. There is something fundamentally wrong with the product if it cannot even register a number above shows that are beneath it. And i'm sure there isn't as much of an importance with ratings anymore, but there is no way this show should be rating "that" low.
 
Hidden Mew said:
I disagree with the notion that the way Serena's story ended made her development pointless. She still became a much more confident person and I don't think that kissing Ash changed that.
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Perhaps I was unfair in saying it in those terms, as you’re right, having a love interest does not automatically render your character development pointless.

I remember watching that last episode live and having as many squees as anyone else. What soured it, and Serena’s entire arc, for me was her telling Satoshi that he was her goal.

It sends such a bad message to kids that a girl who has had good focus on the development of her ‘career’ and is in fact leaving to pursue it (whatever anyone might think about her choosing to do contests next...) can somehow make that all about a boy.
Hidden Mew said:
Although, considering that Mallow's goal is to make great food for her family's restaurant and rarely battles, I'm somewhat surprised that she doesn't get the kind of complaints that Serena would often get in a way.
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The non-battler complaint RE Serena I agree was a thing, and as @Kyriaki said due to wrong conflation between battling and ‘manliness’ I get how for some ignoramuses this translated as problematic because ‘girly’.

I suspect Mao and Lillie garner less complaints about battling:
  1. Because the cast is bigger, and Suiren is pulling her weight as a female battler.
  2. Not much is required for Suiren to pull her weight as even Satoshi has barely battled.
 
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