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Anime & Manga General Discussion

Come back for trainers is the nostalgic road and for me they can't do then something false.
New trainers: Nope, devinitly not whe have enough characters and i am more worried that they put some game characters in that are not so creative like hop.
 
To be honest I'm not sure we're supposed to care about most of the Master Eight entrants; we were told the original plan was to pretty much skip over non-Ash battles but it was changed due to being "boring".
I know that sounds a bit strange considering the entrants, but really tournaments usually have people just there to pad out time with battles that need to be done but aren't important to the story. It's not too strange that happened in this one, too. At least we're going to see every battle as a bone thrown to the champions having fans from the games.
When did they say that the original plan was to skip over the non-Ash battles and they changed it because it was boring? I can totally believe it, especially when skipping over non-Ash battles is pretty typical anyway, but I just don't recall hearing that statement before. I'm not sure if giving fans of different Champions a chance to see them battle really means that much if most of them aren't fleshed out within the anime either.
 
When did they say that the original plan was to skip over the non-Ash battles and they changed it because it was boring? I can totally believe it, especially when skipping over non-Ash battles is pretty typical anyway, but I just don't recall hearing that statement before. I'm not sure if giving fans of different Champions a chance to see them battle really means that much if most of them aren't fleshed out within the anime either.
An interview with Atsuhiro Tomioka. There was a link here earlier but it seems to have vanished. I found it on reddit, though:
Important part:
The truth is, originally the plan was to depict all battles except Ash's as still sketches. But, when I finished the story composition of the Masters Tournament and submitted it, the producers said "It'll be a waste if these battles are all just still sketches!". They asked to properly depict the battles one person at a time. I was quickly convinced. The Champions are characters from the source material, and each have their fans. They must want to see more battles.
I think the other translation I saw was a bit different, as I as sure they said the original idea was "boring."

There are other interesting things in there as well.
Edit:
There is an anecdote about how he decided to make sure there was always a Pokémon nearby after being bothered by a scene in AG without any, for instance.
 
An interview with Atsuhiro Tomioka. There was a link here earlier but it seems to have vanished. I found it on reddit, though:
Important part:

I think the other translation I saw was a bit different, as I as sure they said the original idea was "boring."

There are other interesting things in there as well.
Edit:
There is an anecdote about how he decided to make sure there was always a Pokémon nearby after being bothered by a scene in AG without any, for instance.
That was an interesting read. I'm still not too surprised that their initial plan was to skip the non-Ash battles, but not only would that be boring, it would probably make the Master Class tournament go by within a month or so. At least showing every battle gives them a chance to hype up the Master Class more, even though I'm not sure how well that is going to work out either. I also find it ironic that he thinks that the charm of the anime is the new Pokemon that keep showing up. I agree that is a big appeal of the anime, but it feels weird to make that statement when so many of the newest Pokemon from this generation have been largely ignored in Journeys.
 
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So...the PokeToon short Yume no Tsubomi just got dubbed into English, and it's titled Blossom's Dream. Yes, they actually named the main character Blossom. Has anyone seen the dub for it? What do you think of it? The original thread is in the archive, so I wasn't sure about restarting discussion for it there.
 
I like it but i am sad that we didn't see the Pokemon of the mother. The story is also interessting because we see Arbok tries to EAT an Pokemon. Its nice to see the Pokemart. Also nice animation (As she tries to catch Victreebel) but why is Charizard sooo small??
 
An interview with Atsuhiro Tomioka. There was a link here earlier but it seems to have vanished. I found it on reddit, though:
Important part:

I think the other translation I saw was a bit different, as I as sure they said the original idea was "boring."

There are other interesting things in there as well.
Edit:
There is an anecdote about how he decided to make sure there was always a Pokémon nearby after being bothered by a scene in AG without any, for instance.
Tomioka said he was surprised the scene of May and Drew saying goodbye had no pokemon out with them and he wouldn't do that nowadays. But I think it worked better back then since they focused on the human characters and May/Drew in that sunset scene talking about going to Johto worked better without any random pokemon being in the way.

May not having a usual out of the ball mascot pokemon also helped.
 
I imagine each battle gimmick is getting used once, so Mega Lucario would only face one of those two.
Yes but to be fair, he could do some giga aura stuff without the mega ring. So.. could do the same impact of surpassing Pikachu, only if Mega Lucario will win the final for Ash.

For me it is more likely Mega Lucario will beat Cynthia, and be extra 'motivated' with its aura in the final. BUT, a Pika Z move will do for the final against Leon, and the statement above wont be right.
 
I imagine each battle gimmick is getting used once, so Mega Lucario would only face one of those two.
Yes but to be fair, he could do some giga aura stuff without the mega ring. So.. could do the same impact and surpassing Pikachu, only if Mega Lucario will win the final for Ash.

In my opinion, it is more likely Mega Lucario will get thw focus against Cynthia, and be extra 'motivated' with its aura in the final. BUT, a Pika Z move will do for the final blow against Leon.

One of them will prob get the glory. Its 50-50 I would say. We'll see.
 
So I just finished Ash vs. Bea round three today and I'm a bit mixed on it. The battle itself was still pretty good and giving a three-on-three a two parter worked out better than I was expecting pacing wise. Unsurprisingly, I think that Sirfecht'd went down way too fast without doing enough to at least stand out and Lucario defeating Grappaloct was a lot more unsatisfying than I thought it would be. I can understand why when they wanted the showdown to be Mega Lucario vs. Gigantamax Machamp, but considering that Grappaloct gave Ash such a hard time before and the most they could do before was a draw, the victory felt a bit anticlimactic to me.

They clearly wanted to go for more dramatic climax, but it does feel like a bit of a step down after Ash vs. Volkner. There still was strategy on both sides and going for a more head to head approach does fit with Bea as a Fighting type Gym Leader, but it made the battle a bit less impressive strategy wise. Pikachu using Quick Attack with its tail in the ground to shield itself against Sky Attack looked a lot sillier than it should have been.

Mega Lucario looks cool and all, but it does feel a bit hollow. They kept talking about Ash having a strong bond with Lucario before and during the match, but because of its limited screentime, that felt a lot more forced than it should. That's a big problem with keeping the focus on Pokemon so limited in Journeys. It makes it harder to believe that the connection between Ash and his team is noteworthy when for most of his previous teams, that was easy to pull off. Not everyone of his older Pokemon have a strong connection to Ash, but generally speaking, that's usually easy for the writers to actually show, not just tell the audience a few times. It felt especially weird for me when Lucario is my favorite Pokemon, so the idea of Ash's bond with his own Lucario growing strong enough to Mega Evolve sounds like it should really great. It wasn't bad, but I kind of wish that I liked it more than actually did. I did kind of like that Ash getting too emotional at the first sign of trouble almost made him Mega Evolve Lucario too soon. I thought that was a good way to show that they weren't on the same wavelength and it reminded me of how Ash was during his brief losing streak.

I would still say it was a good way for Ash to finally defeat Bea. Although, her lack of presence also makes the victory a bit less meaningful in a way. If she wasn't included in the opening intro post Darkest Day arc, it would have been extremely easy for casual fans to forget about Bea.
 
You made me think about his connection with Dracovish. One of the worst if we think about his prev teams in the leagues.
 


The three Pokemon movies that will be showing in cinemas this year are:

M5 - Pokémon Heroes: Latios & Latias
M6 - Jirachi: Wish Maker
M10 - The Rise of Darkrai
 
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