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Controversial opinions

I like Sophocles.
I think SM and JN take place in a different universe than OS-XY (they aren’t canon to me)
I hate that Ash won the Alola League.
SM should have been about Ash and Serena’s kid
 
I've been seeing a LOT of hate towards Gou for getting all 3 Starters when personally speaking I think the main problem lies within the show's writing and it wanting to have it's cake and eat it too with all the hollow pandering.

Ash doesn't get a Galar Starter this Gen because the Writers want to fill Ash's Team with a bunch of Shillmon you'd only see in Fanfic for the sake of Fan-service.

However it falls flat when you realize that beyond giving Ash some popular Pokémon, the Writer's didn't actually have any plans laid out for them.(The only one on Ash's Team who can actually be described as having any real Development is Farfetch'd)

They didn't give Ash Shillmon because they actually care about developing Ash's Team.

They gave Ash a Team of Shillmon as a form of clickbait to boost their ratings.

However, none of this is Gou's fault.

And I don't think Goh getting all the Galarian Starters is his fault either.

Gou just got the leftover stuff the writers didn't want to see Ash with.

Gou got all 3 Galar Starters because the Writers didn't think they'd be Marketable enough to have a place on Ash's Team.

(Notice how hard they were pushing Cinderace as a counterpart to freaking Lucario? Because apparently can't Cinderace cant stand on it's own for some reason? :rolleyes: Notice how Sobble is just Background fodder and it took 59 Episodes for Grookey to debut? Notice how TPC didn't even give Cinderace, Inteleon and Rillaboom the minimum of so much as a proper Introduction and the Fanbase only found out about them because of Leaks?)

People are angry at Gou for having all 3 Starters are ignoring that the marketing department didn't have any faith in them to begin with
 
I've been seeing a LOT of hate towards Gou for getting all 3 Starters when personally speaking I think the main problem lies within the show's writing and it wanting to have it's cake and eat it too with all the hollow pandering.

Ash doesn't get a Galar Starter this Gen because the Writers want to fill Ash's Team with a bunch of Shillmon you'd only see in Fanfic for the sake of Fan-service.

However it falls flat when you realize that beyond giving Ash some popular Pokémon, the Writer's didn't actually have any plans laid out for them.(The only one on Ash's Team who can actually be described as having any real Development is Farfetch'd)

They didn't give Ash Shillmon because they actually care about developing Ash's Team.

They gave Ash a Team of Shillmon as a form of clickbait to boost their ratings.

However, none of this is Gou's fault.

And I don't think Goh getting all the Galarian Starters is his fault either.

Gou just got the leftover stuff the writers didn't want to see Ash with.

Gou got all 3 Galar Starters because the Writers didn't think they'd be Marketable enough to have a place on Ash's Team.

(Notice how hard they were pushing Cinderace as a counterpart to freaking Lucario? Because apparently can't Cinderace cant stand on it's own for some reason? :rolleyes: Notice how Sobble is just Background fodder and it took 59 Episodes for Grookey to debut? Notice how TPC didn't even give Cinderace, Inteleon and Rillaboom the minimum of so much as a proper Introduction and the Fanbase only found out about them because of Leaks?)

People are angry at Gou for having all 3 Starters are ignoring that the marketing department didn't have any faith in them to begin with

I'm not really sure if the marketing department didn't have faith in the Galar starters or that they gave them to Goh because they're leftover that they didn't want to give to Ash. I think that's too much of a pessimistic assumption on how they feel about the starters, especially when they do feature Cinderace and I think Sobble pretty frequently in promotional artwork. They were clearly going to handle the new starters differently than they normally do given how fast Scorbunny evolved and how long it took even Sobble to appear. They took their sweet time to showcase Grookey, but they weren't really downplaying its debut given it was featured in promo trailers and in the current version of the opening. As much as people complain about Sobble being background fodder, a good chuck of Ash's team doesn't get much attention as it is, so I'm not sure if there would be that much of a difference if Ash had caught it instead. It feels less like they didn't want to saddle Ash with the Galar starters because they didn't have faith in them and more like they just wanted to do something different with them.

I do agree about Ash's team though. As much as I love how Ash caught Riolu and he finally has a Lucario, his team doesn't really feel well thought out, at least at the moment. The capture episodes themselves are great, although I haven't seen the Dracovish debut yet, and I can understand to a degree why people like that his team is more unexpected than we're used to, but I still think it wasn't a good choice to give him fully evolved Pokemon right off the bat. It does limit how much development his Pokemon can go through, at least compared to unevolved Pokemon like Riolu and Farfetch'd. Dragonite and Gengar aren't perfect, but considering the fast pace of the series and how training is pretty minimal at best, I'm not sure what they could do with them or if they would be interested in giving them a training arc. It is still relatively early in the series' run, so they could improve upon his team and ideally he'll still get a few more captures too, but the treatment of Ash's team does give off the impression that they mainly were focused on giving him some of the most popular Pokemon more so than anything else.
 
Swellow: 13 wins, 1 tie, 8 losses, won battles against Frontier Brains, elite trainers you need an invitation to fight.
Staraptor: 11 wins, 9 losses, only won against generic gym leaders who numerous of people beat every year and a rival who got flattened when he tried to fight a Frontier Brain

Swellow has a better record against more powerful opponents.

Talonflame - First bird to defeat a gym leaders Pokemon in base form, first bird to defeat its fully evolved form (Evolving in the process), first bird to fight 2 legendaries and going toe-to-toe with one for a while (Moltres), first bird to hit a Mega, while not needing a power-up and not fully evolved (And Pikachu couldn't even hit said inexperienced Mega, which is another point in favor of Talonflame), first bird to having fought every single gym except for one (Clemont) and not going down in a gym or the league without at least taking another mon with it (Except for the battle against Grant).

Ergo - Best bird is Talonflame.

Problem is that Talonflames feats get downplayed because of Greninja (Base Greninja has really shitty feats compared to Talonflame and Hawlucha however). In every other region, Talonflame would have been considered the ace (Which it is, since it contributed more before the league than Greninja did).
 
Because it has narcolepsy?

It's nocturnal, not a narcoleptic.

Also, it's mainly because he woke up early to do last-minute training for the match with Hau. Rowlet made the mistake of getting less sleep than usual.

Rowlet needing the Everstone to use Seed Bomb was weird, but it was basically a way to tell the audience that Rowlet wasn't going to evolve, which I was fine with to be honest.

If you're questioning why Rowlet needs a rock to use Seed Bomb, it's actually pretty clever. It's based on something called a gastrolith, which is a thing real birds do (though ironically, not owls apparently).

The writers clearly based Seed Bomb and Feather Dance after real bird things, which is a nice touch.
 
I've said this before, but I bears repeating: besides the aforementioned reasons, one reason why Ash vs. Hau wasn't a good battle was because Rowlet honestly had no good reason to have such a passionate rivalry with Decidueye when it already won their previous battle. Had Rowlet lost their previous match, I'd understand much better, but nooo. Arceus forbid the round marketable bird god actually lose a match against its evolved form more than once.
 
I've said this before, but I bears repeating: besides the aforementioned reasons, one reason why Ash vs. Hau wasn't a good battle was because Rowlet honestly had no good reason to have such a passionate rivalry with Decidueye when it already won their previous battle. Had Rowlet lost their previous match, I'd understand much better, but nooo. Arceus forbid the round marketable bird god actually lose a match against its evolved form more than once.
Even Raichu got to beat Pikachu more than once. Granted, it was as a species rather than an individual, but still.
 
It's nocturnal, not a narcoleptic.

Also, it's mainly because he woke up early to do last-minute training for the match with Hau. Rowlet made the mistake of getting less sleep than usual.



If you're questioning why Rowlet needs a rock to use Seed Bomb, it's actually pretty clever. It's based on something called a gastrolith, which is a thing real birds do (though ironically, not owls apparently).

The writers clearly based Seed Bomb and Feather Dance after real bird things, which is a nice touch.
I mean, Pokémon don’t equal real animals, and it just feels like a way for some writer to show off their a plus in biology. Which congrats man, but this is a franchise with possessed clay golems and sentient sludge. Kind of an over qualification if you ask me. It also kinda feels like an unnecessary hinderance, like if Oshawott never learned to open his eyes underwater. Also rocks are not seeds. Seeds are not rocks.
 
I've said this before, but I bears repeating: besides the aforementioned reasons, one reason why Ash vs. Hau wasn't a good battle was because Rowlet honestly had no good reason to have such a passionate rivalry with Decidueye when it already won their previous battle. Had Rowlet lost their previous match, I'd understand much better, but nooo. Arceus forbid the round marketable bird god actually lose a match against its evolved form more than once.
That plus the fact that in spite of its passionate rivalry, it still fell into the sleeping gag for no other reason than a fakeout.
 
I've said this before, but I bears repeating: besides the aforementioned reasons, one reason why Ash vs. Hau wasn't a good battle was because Rowlet honestly had no good reason to have such a passionate rivalry with Decidueye when it already won their previous battle. Had Rowlet lost their previous match, I'd understand much better, but nooo. Arceus forbid the round marketable bird god actually lose a match against its evolved form more than once.
Rowlet fought Dartrix twice, the first it lost and the second it still didn't do well. It only won because of Bloom Doom. It had zero reason to believe that would work twice and every reason to believe it'd lose.
 
Rowlet fought Dartrix twice, the first it lost and the second it still didn't do well. It only won because of Bloom Doom. It had zero reason to believe that would work twice and every reason to believe it'd lose.
This is honestly really speculative, though, and -sorry if I come off as rude- it really doesn't even have any basis beyond you personally feeling Rowlet didn't do well in the rematch. You'd have a point if we'd gotten even the remotest hint that Rowlet was unsatisfied with his victory and didn't feel like he truly earned it, but I didn't see any evidence of that. Rowlet's obsession with beating Decidueye doesn't seem to be based on wanting to prove he can win fair and square, but rather the standard "I can still be just as strong!" motivation that basically every Pokemon that chose not to evolve has.

The idea of Rowlet feeling like he didn't properly win his rematch certainly would have been interesting, though, and I think I would have found it much more compelling that way. It certainly wouldn't have fixed the actual battle itself, though, because waiting that long to overrule a knockout isn't something that should have happened regardless of the context, but still.
 
It's nocturnal, not a narcoleptic.
I used to think that, until I noticed it also slept through the night.
Not to mention that Dartrix and Decidueye never face that issue. It’d have been mentioned by someone in the anime if the entire issue was that Rowlet is noctournal, specially another trainer who has trained the same species. Based on everyone's behaviour it was treated as a gag and Hau was borderline weirded out if I remember correctly.
 
Talonflame - First bird to defeat a gym leaders Pokemon in base form, first bird to defeat its fully evolved form (Evolving in the process), first bird to fight 2 legendaries and going toe-to-toe with one for a while (Moltres), first bird to hit a Mega, while not needing a power-up and not fully evolved (And Pikachu couldn't even hit said inexperienced Mega, which is another point in favor of Talonflame), first bird to having fought every single gym except for one (Clemont) and not going down in a gym or the league without at least taking another mon with it (Except for the battle against Grant).

Ergo - Best bird is Talonflame.

Problem is that Talonflames feats get downplayed because of Greninja (Base Greninja has really shitty feats compared to Talonflame and Hawlucha however). In every other region, Talonflame would have been considered the ace (Which it is, since it contributed more before the league than Greninja did).
YES TALONFLAME IS BADASS

BEST BIRD
 
I count Zapdos as Gou's first legendary capture. Zapdos was forced to destroy the pokéball to free themselves, just like how Grookey freed themselves from Team Rocket.
 
I don't mind the way Pikachu defeated Trip's Serperior at the Unova League. Oh, don't get me wrong, objectively speaking the battle was terrible, seeing how Pikachu took wave after wave of heavy damage only to defeat his opponent in a single strike, so if this battle had been against literally anyone else I would have hated it. However, Trip's Serperior spent more or less his entire screentime getting BS victory after BS victory starting from his beating Pikachu as a fresh-out-the-lab Snivy, to oneshotting both Pikachu and the otherwise extremely durable Snivy with the extremely-lame-even-by-HM-standards Cut on two separate instances as a Servine, to beating Pignite without ever even taking damage because suddenly Serperior is the freaking Flash or whatever and can just magically dodge literally everything without effort. So to me Trip's Serperior losing in such a lame and humiliating manner just comes off as sweet karma.
 
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