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A More Mature Pokemon Anime

King Fissamé

My Body Is Ready
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Should there be a Shonen Type Spinoff Anime that includes humans that combine themselves with Pokemon in order to fight their enemies? Something similar to Naruto. The Mega Evolution anime will be great for this. Just an upgrade from TV-Y7 FV to TV-PG LV
 
I'd like to see the humans actually do something than make their Pokemon slaves do all their work. Maybe the theory that humans were once Pokemon and some still have their powers or something and fight alongside Pokemon.

I just want something that is thought provoking and not time wasting. The Pokemon anime is good, for its target audience but I still watch it from time to time. Just something a little more mature running alongside would be fabulous.
 
The problem I have with that concept is that, like a lot of people, you've tied maturity to age rating. I wouldn't watch a pokémon anime that's simply more violent, for example. A pokémon anime with more thoughtful worldbuilding, characterisation and suchlike I might. To illustrate what I mean by commenting on the existing anime, look at Ash. His sole motivation and half his character are built around one goal, but he has no idea why he wants to be a Pokémon Master, much less what he intends to do afterwards. A more mature anime would have to have a more nuanced protagonist than that at least. Same goes for villains. Taking over the world is not a mature villainous goal (Giovanni)

All this being said, I think Pokémon is at it's best when it is childish
 
Depends. Pokemon is at it's core, always and will be, a series for all ages. Despite this, I do agree some change would be recommended. In this post Adventure Time world more sophisticated storylines would be a huge boon, and even the games have done so with characters like the antiheroes N and Colress and the tragic wanderer AZ.

Also they need to drop the knee jerk fears and grow a spine. Currently Porygon, Jynx, and the move Earthquake are permabanned from the series due to bad feedback, and I find that kinda dumb. Yes, the ESP controversy left a bad stain, but they can't let that rule the series forever because it suffers from it ( see: cancelled Rocket vs. Plasma episode.)
 
What to me more mature pokemon series encompass?

For start i wish main pokemon series had more emotion and characterization put into scenes.
That way you can connect with characters or story as whole being able to care about those you follow, feel sorry for them if they suffer or go through bad states while rooting to achieve their aims.

One of reasons why i felt sympoathy for Dawn when going through depression streak being about to give up on being coordinator, or about Misty messy childhood being downplayed by others and struggles she went through and suffering when almost getting killed when saving Gyarados or Ash for example when he put so much effort in training his pokemon and perefecting strategy rooting and being in expectancy when he took on challenge and battled in Sinnoh league until he was curbstomped by Tobias etc.

More emotion, depth and originality into pokemon anime as long it is done in moderate dose not involving blood, heavy violence or too dark based themes would make story feel more realistic, engaging and thrilling to follow. Which in my opinion Origin did pretty well given limited amount of time producers had on their hands to cram whole generation one storyline in 4 episodes.

Decanting message on screen of pokemon world not being all sunny, happy go lucky being also dangerous and rough place to live in requiring that you are resourceful and take best out of situation your put in if don't want to be run over by others.Which teaches valuable lesson about real life and how world functions.

For example why not touch abit more on subjects like death in pokemon series? Not to the point of actually involving scenes of someone dying, but in showing indications of such things happening giving out message how pokemon in battle can only take so much until damage is too big that no healing would help. Or how pokemon do haunt each other in wild viewing other species as prey, like its case with Tyranbtrum, Kabutops, Hydreigon etc. Many of pokemon are carnivors and they do eat each other as much as this is sweeped under the rug. Unless real life animals coexist in pokeworld too serving as supplement, although references to them stopped happening after Johto being very are.

Original sereies did pretty good job on touching more closely on thuis subjects in case of prelude to first pokemon movie with little Amber death, Mewtwo questioning his existence not wanting to accept his destiny of laboratory test subject condemning peple greedy and careless nature killing all scientists.

Or DP too with Hunter J death showing more realistuc message to young pokemon viewers how your not immune to everything and anyone in life and how accidents, dangers and injury can happen. Preparing them better for real world.

Note:im referring to moderate doses not turning pokemon anime in grim, filled with despair and sorrow show in case my words end up interpretated differently.

Expand on more mature subjects such as pokemon own feelings and how they feel in being used by humans for training, battling and accomplishing their aims. Which had good potential to be expanded more with N around in BW2 but never on more groundbreaking level. Because clashes between humans and pokemon species did happened in past according both to games and anime resulting in big wars. As mentioned in Johto series for example.

Focus more on subjects such as how not every pokemon is good and redeemable with genuine evil existing in that world. Which was pretty good covered with episode "Keystone Pops" from DP with Spiritomb being by nature malicious wanting to cause harm and attack others. In Kanto through revival of giant Alakazam and Gengar announcing apocalypse this was nicely covered too. Or more recently by Malamar in "Conspiracy to Conquer".

Hoping we get to see more of it later on.

In fact why not make whole mini storyline of evil legendary pokemon threatening to destroy world, towns, villages and those people care about resulting in Ash being joined by his older friends from other regions such as Misty, Brock, May, Cilan etc in aiding him to fight together against big danger which loomed upon world to prevent its plans and defeat him.

Which would be nice way to make enjoyable story and increase continuity and sense of world building in pokemon series. Because honestly no long running anime can be viewed seriously and open doors toward deeper, more multilayered plot if it mucks on its history, past companions which helped build its plot and structure undermining its structure when forgetting about it.
 
You know how there are various different Pokémon manga series? I wish the same was true for the anime. Pokémon has SO much potential for SO MANY different stories... they could do so many cool series to run alongside the current one... more faithful adaptations of the main games, series for the many Mystery Dungeon and Ranger games and Colosseum/XD, adaptations of the various manga series (Adventures, Magical Pokémon Journey, ReBurst, Phantom Thief...) and new original ideas...
But that's not gonna happen... the current anime is ok (although would be so much better if it went back to the DP standards and only got up from there rather than regress as it did + removing the TRio would do good too) but I do wish we'd have more alongside it
 
Most of my points have been mentioned by Pokémon Fan 123, so I won't repeat them.

Have a better mix of child-oriented and more mature-oriented stories, I guess. I don't really need the lethality to rise to the level of Pokémon Special, and we can do without the risqué stuff in both Pocket Monsters and the Electric Tales. The level of destruction/lethality can stay as is. However, some of the more evil-based stories seen in Electric Tales of Pikachu, the anime can do. Better continuity of the main story, and more instances of Ash battling against Legendaries and Pseudoes (and actually having a good shot at winning, or sufficiently holding back) would be great as well. XY001-002 was great in that regard, because Ash maintained his badass.

In contrast, what really should not have been done was BW in general, and BW001 in particular, in which both Ash and Pikachu got resetted big time. It's even worse now, because not only the DP showcased Ash and Pikachu actually winning against at least one legendary in the league's semi-finals, but also now XY showcased Ash and Pikachu not being resetted to the same extent as previous arc overtures, and actually ending up being a better overture! Also it goes without saying that the BW's reset was quite jarring to basically every one of us who saw all the previous arcs. Also, perhaps because of this, there were three major missed oppourtunities:

-Lack of a full-scale PWT with Brock, Misty returning, and a lack of really badass battles between Ash and his competitors - particularly Leaf (Leanne?), Jimmy, Brendan, Lucas, Hilbert, Hilda, and Calem.
- Ash having to go through the gyms again, and perhaps in a worse form than even, say, him in Johto - and that is when the writers could have put in a excuse plot to exempt Ash from going through the gyms all over again, and have Iris do the gym badges. Even if the excuse was somewhat flimsy, this would at least maintain Ash's progress better.
- Not showing more of Team Plasma - even if one episode had to be cancelled, they could have made others that didn't have an earthquake scene. And it could have involved a pseudo-legendary that Ash and Pikachu had to battle for in-universe reasons.

Addendum: Admittedly, the last two points are what should have been implemented from AG. Brock should have been permanently retired as soon as the Johto season ended, and Ash being promoted to mentor, and Brendan introduced as the rookie trainer.

Lastly, can we actually have the movies be more integrated with the main episodes? As in, the events in the movies actually having an impact on the region, or the characters in the main episodes. Or actually showing movie characters in the main episodes. Like, show a movie character joining forces with Ash for several episodes before/after the movie is released. And have them undergo some character development that was inspired from the events in the movie. The majority of said episodes can be filler, so that we can have a loose interpretation of when the movie's events took place.

For example: Pokémon 4Ever could have Kurt investigating the GS Ball, contact Ash, and have them come over to Ilex Forest. And said forest is where the main events happen.

After Spell of the Unown, we could have Ash and Lyra revisit Molly and her family as an episode for HGSS - and then the real Entei appears. And Ash, Lyra, and Molly chases Entei to Ecruteak City as a mini-arc.
 
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No need for the combining , you could just go with the all popular Aura . Some chosen ones with it , that could take on pokemon would be interesting. ( And no , i'm not talking about the ones , that could wipe a whole gyarados pack with one finger , but about aura users , that would have huge trouble facing even one.) Have the same anime with Ash and any group , have him slowly learn more and more about it , and evolve as a trainer/user the same way his pokemons do .And no , the other members of the group would be ordinary people, or most of them . ( I prefer when most of the group isn't all powerful ) Make Team rocket and the other teams more darker with their actions/greater goal . Make the battles/pokemon portrayed more realistic and it's good to go. :D

But all in all , that's just my wishful thinking.
 
I don't want a mature Pokémon anime, I want a well-written Pokémon anime.

An anime that subverts the stereotypical character roles.
An anime that plays around with villains, where no villain is truly good or evil.
An anime that actually handles the villains well or even makes a creative use of the characters.
An anime where characters go through believable developments, where they continue to grow.
An anime with an intriguing plot that captures your interest and only gets more interesting with time.

This anime doesn't need bloody battles or romance to make it mature. All it needs is good writing. Instead of wasting opportunities, make the best use of those opportunities and surprise your viewers with unique choices and directions. Don't waste a character who has a lot of potential and don't give all focus to a character who's had more than enough focus. Best Wishes, for example, had a lot of great opportunities that it missed out on. Meowth leaving Team Rocket and joining Iris? Why the hell not!? But the very fact the writers had Iris attempt to catch Meowth was a refreshing change of pace and the anime needs more of this.
 
As I was re-watching the Sinnoh League arc, I of course watched the episode where Ash beats Paul. In it, Brock talks about how Ash and Paul are two sides of the same coin and how they have the same goals, etc. Then Cynthia comes in and takes about how something was born from their battle and how they're both growing and etc. To get to the point of what I would like to say, it felt waaay out of place to me when they were talking about these matters.

To me, Pokemon is not something that is, should be, or needs to be mature, because that is not what the anime is about. The anime is about the fun, light-hearted adventures of a boy and his friends pursuing their dreams. It feels very odd to me when the characters talk about things deeper than what you would be expecting. There's of course nothing wrong with that and I know some people probably liked it when they did that, but to me it just doesn't feel like Pokemon when they talk about those kinds of subjects.

But this is just my personal feeling. ^^
 
I honestly wish they would make another anime series. I admit, I was pleased with Pokemon Origins and the Mega Evolution special, but I'd prefer stuff like that to be full-fledged series. The problem is that the Pokemon anime does well with Japanese children. The success in Japan will just encourage the writers to continue with the adventures of Ash Ketchum, the ten-year-old boy who never gets any older.
 
I sometimes wish they could stop being so ridiculously melodramatic about everything. How many times has Team Rocket attempted to steal a Pokemon, everyone goes "OH NOES WHAT ARE WE TO DO?!!", and then the whole conflict is resolved with a Pikachu ex machina? The whole show kind of loses any and all sense of urgency or danger when it's so INCREDIBLY PREDICTABLE. TR will always be foiled again by a Thunderbolt (or maybe, if you're lucky, a COtD Pokemon's uber-powerful Tackle), so why does Ash & Co. always get so worked up about anything that TR does? Like the same thing hasn't happened over 700 times now...

Anyways, I'd pay to see an anime adaptation of the Pokemon Adventures manga or more Pokemon Origins. Heck, I'd really love to see Pokemon Origins do the rest of the generations, it'd be like reliving my childhood without having to hunt down the actual games to experience them again.
 
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