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Least Favorite Saga

Least Favorite Saga?

  • Kanto

    Votes: 1 0.8%
  • Orange Islands

    Votes: 2 1.7%
  • Johto

    Votes: 13 11.0%
  • Hoenn

    Votes: 2 1.7%
  • Battle Frontier

    Votes: 1 0.8%
  • Diamond and Pearl

    Votes: 3 2.5%
  • Best Wishes

    Votes: 54 45.8%
  • Kalos

    Votes: 8 6.8%
  • Sun and Moon

    Votes: 30 25.4%
  • Journeys

    Votes: 4 3.4%

  • Total voters
    118
I know people use the "He's 10" excuse for how he is in SM but the way I see it once you reach 10 it is like hitting 16 and getting a car. Yes you are a kid but at the same time you have responsibilities. Which is why I never agreed with the statement of him being 10. Not to mention 10 year olds look so much older than other kids in the show. It is like prior to SM they were making it so once you hit 10 you are seen as a teen which is why when Ash acted like a teen I never had an issue. SM treats him and the others like goofy little kids and as someone who has been watching since season 1 it is hard to watch. BW kinda did it but at the same time it was not nearly as bad so it was ok. At least BW Ash had more meotions than just happy 24/7.

I agree with your post, but in my opinion the real reason why the "He's a 10 year old boy" argument should be dismissed is because, in fiction, character background and progression mean more than the characters' age. We all know what Ash has been through so far and it's confirmed that it's the same incarnation of him, so while he must keep the same age for marketing reasons he should at least avoid doing stuff that will make him childish in our eyes because of the things we've seen he learned. SM is maybe consistent with how 10-year old boys should act, but not with how 10 year old boy Ash should act.

It would be the equivalent of someone saying "He's a 16 year old boy" every time Spiderman suffers character regression. I don't even remember people using that argument in BW that often.
 
Best Wishes takes the cake.

I was reading a thread the other day and people were saying how BW wasn't that bad and how they were able to enjoy several of its episodes upon rewatching, but I just can't bring myself to like it. It is definitely my least favorite series.

Not long ago I was rewatching Goodbye, Junior Cup - Hello Adventure! as it contains the final appearance of my favorite character, Dawn, but she wasn't the only character whose appearance turned out to be their last because Georgia and Burgundy were never seen again after that. In case you're wondering "so what?" I must inform you that I'm talking about the 93rd episode of BW, which has 142 episodes total. Two rival characters were unceremoniously dropped a full year before the series ended, and this is bad, very bad.

Every time I think "oh maybe I was being too harsh when commenting on BW" I remember things like these and realize that it deserves all of the unfavorable reviews it gets from fans. It is truly a bad series. It made shit into an art form. Dumb Ash, annoying Iris, lobotomized Team Rocket, and the terrible, terrible writing are just too much to handle. So much so in fact the writers had to drop characters, like the two I just mentioned, and don't forget about Pierce.
 
I agree with your post, but in my opinion the real reason why the "He's a 10 year old boy" argument should be dismissed is because, in fiction, character background and progression mean more than the characters' age. We all know what Ash has been through so far and it's confirmed that it's the same incarnation of him, so while he must keep the same age for marketing reasons he should at least avoid doing stuff that will make him childish in our eyes because of the things we've seen he learned. SM is maybe consistent with how 10-year old boys should act, but not with how 10 year old boy Ash should act.

It would be the equivalent of someone saying "He's a 16 year old boy" every time Spiderman suffers character regression. I don't even remember people using that argument in BW that often.

TBH I don't even see why he has to be ten. Kids love older characters like in Naruto and DBZ or even Digimon and Yugioh. At this point I feel it is almost the writers being scared to touch it.
 
TBH I don't even see why he has to be ten. Kids love older characters like in Naruto and DBZ or even Digimon and Yugioh. At this point I feel it is almost the writers being scared to touch it.

I think writers are just scared about development and change...ironic given that even when you don't age them up characters change. I mean I like Ash old and new, but there is a difference between OG Ash and XY Ash, or any Ash and OG Ash.

It's like how Spiderman, despite what writers try to show, didn't spend his early days swinging and being a power fantasy. He came off as someone who could easily go on a school shooting and a potential future villain.

...I am not kidding.

They were probably better when they were not leaving any concrete age statements around: the moment BW01 declared it they opened an unnecessary can of worms. Even if I must admit I have had a lot of fun using age oddities for humor in my fanfic.

(Or am I the only one who thinks Ash himself not knowing how old he is funny?)

As to least favorite sagas...honestly I don't quite have it in me to call any the worst. Now there are segments that are in fact the worst: Pre-Masterquest Johto and later Unova for one, but an entire saga as worst I don't quite have a claim for.

I have a lot more concrete issues with Kanto, but that is probably from overhype.

Though if there is one Arc I feel is a lot more flawed and least liked, yet overhyped, it is DP. I'll be voting that.
 
I think writers are just scared about development and change...ironic given that even when you don't age them up characters change. I mean I like Ash old and new, but there is a difference between OG Ash and XY Ash, or any Ash and OG Ash.

It's like how Spiderman, despite what writers try to show, didn't spend his early days swinging and being a power fantasy. He came off as someone who could easily go on a school shooting and a potential future villain.

...I am not kidding.

They were probably better when they were not leaving any concrete age statements around: the moment BW01 declared it they opened an unnecessary can of worms. Even if I must admit I have had a lot of fun using age oddities for humor in my fanfic.

(Or am I the only one who thinks Ash himself not knowing how old he is funny?)

As to least favorite sagas...honestly I don't quite have it in me to call any the worst. Now there are segments that are in fact the worst: Pre-Masterquest Johto and later Unova for one, but an entire saga as worst I don't quite have a claim for.

I have a lot more concrete issues with Kanto, but that is probably from overhype.

Though if there is one Arc I feel is a lot more flawed and least liked, yet overhyped, it is DP. I'll be voting that.

Yeah prior to BW it was nice having Ash's age up to you. Since he did feel he was getting older from OS to AG to DP. The flow existed but now it is a mess. You have Ash being a noob in BW only to feel as if XY should be right after DP and SM I'm not sure what to say about that. It feels more out of lace than BW. Really hope they fix things with SwSH and return to a nice flow
 
Best Wishes. No doubt. Pretty much all that I hate about it has been said by somebody else here already, but I'll go through the things myself nevertheless. Prepare for some lengthy rants, folks...

Ash Ketchum
The DP Ash was Ash at his best (before XY), and in the Sinnoh League, not only had he managed to defeat his extremely strategic and talented rival, but he also defeated not one, but two Legendary/Mythical Pokémon in one battle. Say what you will about Tobias, but it's an undeniable fact that defeating two Olympus Mons in one fight is nothing to sneeze at. ...And the next thing we know, Ash is having his behind handed to him on a black and white platter by a completely inexperienced Snivy, whom he should have been able to defeat even without Pikachu's Electric moves, and soon after, a friggin' Panpour at the first Gym! A Panpour! You know, I know that Generation V was all about soft-rebooting the franchise, and Best Wishes tried to follow that trend by having Ash act like he did in season 1... but I think someone must've missed the memo that doing such a drastic change to a character who had been fighting against Olympic Mons at the Pokémon League semifinals just a handful of episodes earlier was a bit too drastic. Where did all that experience disappear to all of a sudden?! It just doesn't make any sense whatsoever!

Ash's Pokémon
Again, another aspect the show tried to emulate the season 1 Ash was by having him catch a bunch of Pokémon and rotate them around. But this ultimately resulted in many of Ash's Unova Pokémon getting less development than the others. For example, his Palpitoad got to only appear in less than ten episodes throughout the series, which is just criminal, while his Krookodile made multiple appearances throughout the Best Wishes series before it was caught, giving it plenty of time to develop. Snivy was also another well-developed Pokémon with a ton of lovable sass, although that didn't save it from another attempt to emulate season 1. Out of all of Ash's Unova starters, Tepig was the only one to evolve, like with Ash's Kanto starters. Which is just wrong, since Snivy would've definitely deserved to evolve. Oshawott was a joke character (a joke character whom I didn't particularly enjoy, but that's up to taste), so I can understand why it didn't evolve, but Snivy? Just no. It would've deserved to evolve. Like Scraggy as well. I seriously hope we'll get to see more of Ash's Unova Pokémon in the future so that they can receive more character development and possibly some evolutions too.

Ash's Charizard deserves its own segment here. I admit, I too was hyped up to see Charizard returning and Ash going over his past with it, but as that Charizard vs. Reshiram battle in the opening never actually ended up happening in the show, I eventually came to realize that Charizard had only been brought back as a publicity stunt. Nothing more. It didn't participate in anything important, learned some of the most basic moves a Charizard can have (Slash and Wing Attack), as opposed to all the high-power moves we've seen it use, and forgot Seismic Toss. Seismic Toss. Charizard's signature finisher. All forgotten. Tossed aside like nothing. Why? Just... why?

Ash's friends
Cilan was pretty bland and didn't develop too much over the course of the series (a fault in and of itself), so I'm not going to talk about him much. Instead, I'll focus my attention on Iris. Her goal was established early on to be evolving her Axew, so we had every reason to expect it evolving at some point. But nah. The writing team suddenly decided at some point "Nah, that thing's too marketable as it is, so let's not evolve it, despite us clearly having set it up as the driving force of Iris's journey." And what do they do to make up for it? Give her a fully evolved pseudo-legendary out of nowhere and force her to go through the disobedient Pokémon issue for the second time. To be honest, I want to see Iris returning again in the future. The last time we saw her, she had just caught herself a Gible, so I'd be more than interested to see how much it's developed since then.

Also, for an aspiring "Dragon Master", an awful lot of her team isn't even Dragon types...

Oh, and I almost forgot: why couldn't she have been the final Gym Leader?

Team Rocket
The BW Team Rocket was bland as all getout. They obviously tried to also reboot them and make them more like they were in their debut... conveniently forgetting that they were serious for like one or two episodes before they became the comedic goofs that we know and love. The epic Team Rocket vs. Team Plasma two-parter getting banned and eventually retconned out of continuity certainly did not help their cause. The Unova Team Rocket was utterly bland and lacked character. The same also applies to their Pokémon, which lacked almost any characteristics and were there just to fight Team Rocket's battles for them. Heck, Frillish and Amoonguss were even caught off-screen, further emphasizing how they were added to Jessie and James's teams just to be extra muscle, instead of, you know, actual characters. The writers obviously realized that this had been a bad idea too, since the Rocket trio gradually reverted back to their sillier selves over the later parts of the series.

Rivals
The rivals were horrible, each in their own way. And just the fact that every main character had a rival was overkill. What did Burgundy do besides being a joke character who was there only to be repeatedly humiliated? Rivals are supposed to help each other grow, but Burgundy was nothing but a butt monkey, who never improved or gave Cilan any reason to improve himself, since he was a superior Connoisseur from the start. Georgia was similar too. How did she help Iris improve, maybe besides forcing her to solve her issues with Excadrill?

And then there were Ash's rivals. I personally didn't like it how some other recurring characters like Cilan and Bianca defeated Trip before Ash, as it doesn't exactly paint a threatening picture of the rival, unlike, say, with Paul, who was only seen losing to some widely recognized top-tier Trainers before Ash beat him at the Sinnoh League. Bianca's running gag of running into Ash and sending him into a body of water got super old super fast, since honestly, there's a limit to how many times saying sorry actually works, and she passed that limit very early on. Stephan was introduced like a character of the day, and it was honestly jarring for me to see him become a recurring rival. Equally jarring for me was that while Zebstrika was set up to be his main Pokémon, suddenly his Sawk became his main Pokémon out of nowhere. Virgil honestly had potential, he was like the stereotypical image of a rival who'd end up defeating Ash at the League. But nope. Ash doesn't battle him once. Ever. What's the point of introducing a rival for a main character if you're not even going to have them battle a single time?!

And that brings me to... Cameron. Cameron... This guy is one of my pet peeves in the show, and deserves a whole section for himself. This guy mistook a TV remote for his Pokédex, thought the Unova League is held in Johto, wouldn't have known to get his eighth Badge if it wasn't for Ash correcting him, would've missed the Unova League registration if Ash hadn't been there to correct him again, made horrible type matchup choices during his battle with Ash (Ferrothorn against Pignite and Swanna against Pikachu), and only brought five Pokémon to a Full Battle. All in all, he was established to be someone even more foolish and idiotic than the BW Ash, and that's saying a lot. So why, in Arceus's name, was this guy the person who defeated Ash in the Pokémon League?! He won despite having five Pokémon against Ash's six and making horrible type choices, all thanks to his Riolu being broken as all heck (as it had been throughout the tournament) and deciding to also conveniently evolve mid-battle! Sorry, but no! As much as I love Lucario as a Pokémon, this particular specimen is not on my liked Pokémon list. Good riddance, Cameron. And never come back.

Team Plasma
Now, I can understand why the Team Rocket vs. Team Plasma two-parter was banned, but despite that, I think it could've been aired on a later date, and that its retconning, while not maybe impacting the BW series as a whole all that much, still forced some serious rewrites and caused Team Plasma to be introduced way later than intended and left their Black and White incarnation completely unexplored in the anime. And their finale was honestly very underwhelming. Even the Hoenn evil teams climax was better.

Miscellaneous
Why was Zekrom so set up as an important Pokémon at the start of the series, only for it to play no kind of important role at any point after that? Why didn't we get to see the Legend Badge at any point in the series? Why didn't we get anything regarding the PWT, instead just showing us a lame mini-tournament bearing its name? Why didn't Ash ever scan a Unovan Legendary Pokémon with his Pokédex, despite scanning multiple non-Legendary Pokémon more than once? Why did they feel the need to give us a huge filler arc that was obviously an attempt to copy Orange Islands, and make the whole arc pretty much completely skippable without missing almost anything important, aside from buildup to XY and (maybe) Oak catching a Rotom?

I honestly don't mind the Sun & Moon series' laid-back atmosphere. It's nice to have some change sometimes. My second-least favorite saga was probably either the Johto or Hoenn saga.
 
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SuMo by far. It has some good ideas and a few very fun filler episodes, but the cast is too big and I don't like the emphasis on wacky comedy, among other things that I won't list because I don't want to spend hours explaining all of SuMo's flaws. XY(Z) is my second least favorite saga due to several factors like Greninja overexposure and Serena's first 40 episodes of doing nothing.
 
I just want to throw out there that I might have picked Kanto if it weren't for SM (just mentioning it because no one picked it). I don't think I need to say why I pick SM, but I just want to mention, we normally package it as OS, in which I prefer Orange Islands, then Johto, and thinking about Kanto on its own, it might be my least favorite, that is considering I like all of the (not current) series quite a lot, so it isn't saying I don't like it or anything. I think some people regard it as this holy thing, and yes I did watch it when it originally aired as a little kid and it did certainly spark my interest in Pokemon in a big way, I still think I like most of what followed it better. Anyway, I'm not commenting on writing style, story quality, or anything like that, just what I enjoy personally.
 
It looks like best wishes has taken a healthy lead over sun and moon in the polls.

Looking back at Best Wishes I can definitely see the flaws but I still find it enjoyable to watch.
 
I dislike Sun/Moon, mainly due to the smaller emphasis on story and more on poorly-executed comedy, but Best Wishes beats it out because S/M is a Meme Treasure Trove.

I dislike Best Wishes due to... Many of the things said by other posters, Ash's Heavy Nerf, His Terrible Pokemon, The Bland Supporting Characters, The Fact that they Wrecked Jessie and James' Personalities and made them more Bland, .etc, .etc.

It's enjoyable, but It's still a step-down.
 
I dislike Sun/Moon, mainly due to the smaller emphasis on story and more on poorly-executed comedy, but Best Wishes beats it out because S/M is a Meme Treasure Trove.

I dislike Best Wishes due to... Many of the things said by other posters, Ash's Heavy Nerf, His Terrible Pokemon, The Bland Supporting Characters, The Fact that they Wrecked Jessie and James' Personalities and made them more Bland, .etc, .etc.

It's enjoyable, but It's still a step-down.
I actually enjoyed how serious they made TR, it was a nice change of pace, and I feel it added more to their characters by showing them in a different light.
 
I actually enjoyed how serious they made TR, it was a nice change of pace, and I feel it added more to their characters by showing them in a different light.

I am pretty sure I can call BW and SM series of questionable executions to things that could possibly work better if done better. I mean if you combined the team sizes of BW and the centralized home base of SM (Kukui's house), for example, I think that would actually work out well.
 
Why would anyone vote for DP or XY? :/

Two things come to mind

1: While Paul was a very well done rival, the handling of his writing is suspect. I also feel, personally, that DP Ash is a bit more tad to being an idiot than AD or XY Ash, despite similar levels of competence.

2: XY is the least continuity tied of the series, and the mon balance is rough. Also some people might not like the idea of Ash getting as much respect as he does.
 
BW is sad. The most serious generation in games (deep history) getting the most dumb anime. How could they do that?
They simply took the soft reboot idea too far. That's how I see it. They ended up copying some qualities of season 1 that should have been left where they belonged.
 
I enjoyed Best Wishes even though it had many flaws (the Unova league, and Ash being a bigger idiot).

Sun & Moon is my least favorite before BW, but at least it got better eventually. So that’s why I picked Johto. Johto was boring and forgettable until the Johto League.
 
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I'm surprised, I always thought of Jhoto as the fan favorite. I agree it's way too bloated with filler and the only real fond memories I have of it are the League, but I'd definitely take it over Black and White. I never hated a character in this series as much as Cilan. The only positive thing I can say is that at least it's been fully subbed.

By the way, who picked Diamond & Pearl? Jeez...
 
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