Daren

Masaaki Iwane (an animator on the Pokémon anime) put up a bunch of sketches on his twitter today. Here is an angry Flygon:

Just a friendly reminder; in a few years we'll reach the phase where people start saying gen 6 was always the best gen.
Feel old yet?

One of those silly gen 1 things; a lot of Pokémon that appeared in the wild overly late (like Koffing) had really screwy level up sets, like Slowpoke learning Watergun at level 33. When G/S/C introduced breeding (and more reasonable capture times for a lot of gen 1 Pokémon, though sadly not so much for some of the new gen 2 ones) these got extensive learn set overhauls.
Many that were previously available early got much more minimal changes, like Pidgey or Rattata.

I'm replaying Heartgold and during my battle with rival in Azalea town my Pokémon hurt themselves while confused seven turns in a row.
Never thought I'd see a Zubat consecutively beat an Onix and a Mareep.

This is the best thing I've seen in weeks.

It's always interesting when you see a positive review that turns you off something, or a negative review that makes you think you'd love it.

That Slowbro is me in every social event.

Would be interesting if there was a new topic that works to identify Ash's (and maybe his friend's) Pokemon as various RPG classes. A little game for everyone.

Nice avatar! That's one of my favorite scenes from the original series.

In retrospect, I'm surprised Mystery Dungeon DX didn't rewrite Team A.C.T to make Charizard the leader.

J.R.R. Tolkien is sometimes accused of writing too dry but he was hilarious when he wanted to be.
“Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible, and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer.”--in the foreword to the second edition of Lord of the Rings. (Courtesy of Goodreads.com)

Just lost a Restricted Sparring run (psychic) because my hand slipped and I didn't Dynmax, leading to my Alola Raichu failing to get a 1 hit KO on a Poliwrath, getting 1 hit KO'd in turn, and the battle spiraling into defeat.

I love your avatar!

I just hatched a Salandit with perfect IVs across the board.

A male Salandit with perfect IVs across the board.
Sorry buddy. You're perfect in every way except one very important one.
Edit: Maybe I should write a fanfic about this, but on the other hand maybe not...

I've been seeing #ThankYouAnipoke in a bunch of twitter profiles recently. Does anyone know what's going on?

As I grow older I realize one of the things that turns me against a work of fiction faster than almost any other flaw is trying to push a message or moral where I can tell the writers don't actually believe it. I'm fine with heavy moralizing if I think it's at least sincere.

So at some time today the Pokémon Kids TV channel uploaded a Pokémon short about Scraggy and Mimikuy in the style old theatrical cartoons from the Golden Age, in the same style that Cuphead emulates.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u909_O6CqYc

It's about four minutes.

Weird thought of the day:
It's sometimes said there are infinite alternate universes.
That means there is one where the Pokémon anime changed protagonists in each series, and the protagonist was always the person who beat Ash in that series' league.
In Kanto we follow Richie, in Johto Harrison, Tyson in Hoenn, and so on. Ash is a recurring antagonist who always shows up near the end and usually has no personal connection to the main character before losing to them.
*In Kanto people note he seems like a worse version of our protagonist.
*People are a bit unsure during Sinnoh since Tobias was a huge Gary Stu in general. People are actually sort of rooting for Ash at this point.
*They wonder why he has some weird special Greninja during XY, but find it interesting that he suddenly takes an active role in the story, helping resolving Alain's Team Flare plot.

Then Gladion is the main character of the Sun and Moon anime, but the events are the same as in this universe so he loses to Ash. We then spend four episodes watching Ash battle with Kukui--it actually goes over quite well because Ash being one of the show's few recurring characters and his "never give up" attitude had won him a decent fanbase.
At this time in that universe, someone is writing a status update on forums.charmandercave.net about the alternate universe where each series followed Ash...

So I just noticed that a surprising number of times episode 131 has sucked for Ash in the anime, either directly or building up to something bad.
AG 131 was the Hoenn league finals
DP 131 was the start of the Lake Acuity battle
XY 131 was the Kalos League finals
I guess it's not perfect since XY130 is when that match started and DP132 is when that one ended, but it's still a bit odd, I think.

For the curious, OS131 was the Falkner battle, BW131 seems to be a filler, and Sun/Moon 131 was the Alola League Jessie Vs James battle.

If the world championship finals starts in journeys 131 I'm going to be concerned.

Sometimes I find myself wishing the show had found a way to make a reference to MissingNo. Nothing insane, but something like a joke where Ash's Pokédex goes on the fritz and when he scans something a glitchy mess looking like one of the MissingNo. forms appeared on the screen instead of a proper picture of the Pokémon.