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PokeAni Missed Opportunities

“Made sense” =/= feeling good, well-earned or needed.

There was no special thing which prompted Meltan to send signals to its fellow Meltan. The writers just felt it was convenient in the middle of the league.

Ash’s capture and evolution of Meltan will always feel unneeded and meh to me.
And what's wrong with evolving in the middle of the league? We've had plenty of league evolutions in the past before
 
Well I can't remember exactly but wasn't Ash the one that performed Solgaleo's Z-Move? Well in any case, my initial comment was left intentionally broad. I said handed not captured. :)

Gladion performed Lunala's Z-Move, but I don't think anyone would consider Lunala to be one of his Pokemon either.
 
And what's wrong with evolving in the middle of the league? We've had plenty of league evolutions in the past before
It’s the combined factor of Ash randomly getting a mythical, said mythical rarely battling, not really having that much of a meaningful bond with Ash himself and then conveniently evolving in the middle of the league.

Gladion performed Lunala's Z-Move, but I don't think anyone would consider Lunala to be one of his Pokemon either.
And Kukui flat out used Naganadel’s Z-Move, who was a Pokemon owned by Ash and had its own Pokeball- caught for all intents and purposes.
 
It’s the combined factor of Ash randomly getting a mythical, said mythical rarely battling, not really having that much of a meaningful bond with Ash himself and then conveniently evolving in the middle of the league.


And Kukui flat out used Naganadel’s Z-Move, who was a Pokemon owned by Ash and had its own Pokeball- caught for all intents and purposes.
How was Meltan treated any differently than any other Pokemon under Ash despite being a mythical? Any other final capture could have had the same problems(lack of battles and not many bonding moments with Ash). And still don't see how evolving before a match is a strike against it
 
It lost against a UB destroyer legendary with super effective attack.

It matched him pretty well, considering Incineroar's battle records and type effectiveness,
It didn't match Incineroar at all. If it was a so called Powerhouse it wouldn't have gone down as quickly as it did, type advantage or not. At least Lycanroc got in a hit

Again Melmetal wasnt treated any differently than any mid tier Ash Pokemon, lol
 
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@Black&White I'd have said the same about any other Pokémon other than Meltan, it’s just bad that the treatment happened with a freaking mythical of all things. And did you forget that it made short work of Kukui's Empoleon while using only 4x resistant moves?

And Melmetal wasn’t supposed to win against Silvally and Incineroar. It went against the narrative. Incineroar and (arguably) Silvally were the aces of their respective trainers and had predetermined rivalries with Torracat and Pikachu, respectively. Its even surprising it was allowed to have a go against them at all. And it made KOing Silvally easier for Pikachu.

Gible was a late capture and got some bonding and a Draco meteor mastering arc, Unova was a mess due to Pokémon rotation, and Kalos basically ignored any Pokémon not named Greninja during XYZ.
I was expecting Ash to not get a mythical just because, and then the way it was handled was totally abysmal.

In short, I was not expecting the writers to throw an undeserved mythical at Ash, and then having it being handled worse than a "mid tier Ash Pokemon". I'd rather Meltan was restricted to filler or something.
 
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I think it's a real shame that the anime didn't do anything with Elesa's redesign from Black 2 and White 2. Sure they happily displayed all the new Gym Leaders from those games, and yet, they didn't do anything with the one old Gym Leader who got a major change in design in them.
 
I thought Rotom leaving Ash was a huge missed opportunity in light of SM098. Overall, it felt like SM098 had very little awareness of Pokemon as an anime series since Ash never really stopped any of his Pokemon from leaving when they had to making it strange how he was suddenly not ok with Rotom wanting to pursue its dream. The message of that episode seems to suggest a shift towards having more continuity in the series overall but the fact that it left still, at the end of the episode and also the way the current series is playing out makes it seem unlikely still and that is sad.
 
Ash not challenging the Battle Frontier in Sinnoh or Johto.
If ash did challenge it at Johto then i bet Dawn whold have compete in the contests in there too.

There wasn't any time for them to do that though, so I don't think it was a missed opportunity. They would have had to cram in Ash's Frontier Battles and Dawn's Contests in one arc, which just wouldn't have worked. The Battle Frontier arc was incredibly rushed in large part because they had to handle both Ash and May's different battles within a shorter time frame and the qualities of the battle suffered as a result. There were still some good battles for both Ash and May, but there were a lot of rushed battles and cheap victories too. I'm glad that they just stuck to Sinnoh to give Ash and Dawn good battles instead of trying to cram another journey within the last year of DP. AG would have been a much stronger series if they had been able to stretch out the Hoenn journey for another year, especially for May's Contest arc.
 
There wasn't any time for them to do that though, so I don't think it was a missed opportunity. They would have had to cram in Ash's Frontier Battles and Dawn's Contests in one arc, which just wouldn't have worked. The Battle Frontier arc was incredibly rushed in large part because they had to handle both Ash and May's different battles within a shorter time frame and the qualities of the battle suffered as a result. There were still some good battles for both Ash and May, but there were a lot of rushed battles and cheap victories too. I'm glad that they just stuck to Sinnoh to give Ash and Dawn good battles instead of trying to cram another journey within the last year of DP. AG would have been a much stronger series if they had been able to stretch out the Hoenn journey for another year, especially for May's Contest arc.
I think the Hoenn league itself was where the pacing felt really off. We had two six on six battles that both lasted about one episode each, and they failed to really establish a decent rival (I actually like Morrison but he came way too late). I will give it credit that I think Tyson was the best league roadblock.

At the time I really liked the Frontier despite some flawed battles for giving Ash another victory like the Orange League and seeing old Pokémon again, but it ended up not really amounting to much in the end.
 
I think the Hoenn league itself was where the pacing felt really off. We had two six on six battles that both lasted about one episode each, and they failed to really establish a decent rival (I actually like Morrison but he came way too late). I will give it credit that I think Tyson was the best league roadblock.

Yeah, the last stretch of the Hoenn journey really felt rushed in spots like that. I didn't really mind the lack of a rivalry in AG. I thought that was refreshing all things considered. I liked Morrison too and his friendship with Ash felt pretty genuine, but he was added in way too late for that rivalry to really stand out. Most of Ash's Hoenn Gym battles were pretty good, but if they had been able to stretch things out a bit more with May's Contests, they might have been able to handle another year in Hoenn instead. It might have been an improvement in a way since the Kanto Battle Frontier felt more like an extension of Hoenn anyway.

Daren said:
At the time I really liked the Frontier despite some flawed battles for giving Ash another victory like the Orange League and seeing old Pokémon again, but it ended up not really amounting to much in the end.

I like the Frontier victory more than the arc itself. It's a bit better upon rewatching it, or at least I'm just more aware of the pacing issues this time around, and there are still some good battles, but the rushed pacing and flawed battles definitely brought it down for me quite a bit. I still say that winning the Battle Frontier is Ash's highest accomplishment thus far.
 
I think Harrison is second best. I put Tyson a bit higher because he won his league and his Meowth had a bit of interesting backstory and his little relation with TR's Meowth.
I personally hate how Ash's Pikachu lost to a Meowth of all Pokémon, and I find satisfaction in the fact that with Harrison, Ash was kinda able to strike him from beyond defeat and cause him to lose his next battle by completely exhausting his crucial ace Pokémon, while Tyson just had to be ultra super perfect and win the whole tournament. So yeah. To me, Harrison was easily a better roadblock for Ash than Tyson.
 
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