Ash's future after Journeys

[Hidden Mew]

Now you could make the Galar Gym Leaders the ultimate badass Gym Leaders with Leon being the localized Galar Champion, but this runs the risk of escalation disbelief. Like why would the Galar Gym Leaders more powerful than everyone else combined? What would happen if Ash wins and defeats Leon? Is there another region that is even more powerful than Galar? It's only putting a band-aid wound to the problem of Gyms which is they get repetitive in both games and anime. The solution to this should not make the Gym Leaders more powerful than rest. Rather it should be, what we do to make it interesting and fresh?

This is why Ash's journey in SV should be a far different adventure with new kinds of challenges rather than doing old ones with new paint.

I don't think that it would run the risk of escalation disbelief, especially when future regions aren't going to be involved in the PWC either. Honestly, I never really found the Gym formula a problem for either the games or the anime. It isn't like all of the Gym quests or Gym battles were the same. Having new Pokemon and characters involved tend to make it fresh and interesting to me.

The idea of giving Ash new challenges and different adventures isn't a bad one. I'm not against the games or anime trying something new. For the anime specifically, if the PWC is any indication, this new goal for Ash is not refreshing or interesting. It's boring, poorly handled from the start and really a lot more unimpressive than something like a world tournament should be. To be fair, I don't think any of the anime original goals have been handled well, so it isn't exclusive to just the PWC. It's possible that they could give Ash a more unique goal in the next series that is handled much better than the PWC, but given their track record with anime original goals, I don't think it's particularly likely. Plus, I'd rather see them actually make use of new characters, regions and Pokemon instead of putting them on the sidelines.

And the last time they went "back to the basics" was BW, which was the worst-received Pokémon anime series because nobody liked the fact Ash and Pikachu reset literally. And so negative was the reception that it is the catalyst for Ash to be portrayed as the uber badass since XY.

Going back to basics wouldn't necessarily mean another BW level reset for Ash and Pikachu. They can give Ash a fresh start and new team without negating his skills if SM is any indication. I have my doubts that the negative reception towards Ash in BW was why they started to make him uber powerful since XY, mainly because I don't think that they'd care that much about what random people online say about BW or if Japanese fans felt the same way about the series as western fans did. Plus, I don't think people put SM Ash on a pedestal quite like they do with XY Ash, despite his Alola League victory.

 

[Queen Cynthia]

Regarding Spain, agreed that they can come up with any reason to justify a Badge Quest.

That's a bit OT ,sorry, but where exactly does the idea of Scarlet and Violet being modelled after Spain come from in the first place? (I heard it's because Quaxly wears a beret but to me personally that sounds a bit far-fetched)

 

[Emmy]

That's a bit OT ,sorry, but where exactly does the idea of Scarlet and Violet being modelled after Spain come from in the first place? (I heard it's because Quaxly wears a beret but to me personally that sounds a bit far-fetched)

Regional Map is a rotated Spain, Starters and the Professor's names are in Spanish, etc etc.

 

[Beatsy Ray]

If Ash wins the PWC, we'll essentially be stuck with a character incapable of growth. Sure they could repeat the Gym format till the cows come home, but following Ash's victory in what is essentially a champion's tournament (and specifically his victory against the monoliths that are Leon and Cynthia), we're going to hit an unprecedented brick wall where Ash is just stagnating. The best he could do then is just to try and match his previous accomplishments by winning the league every region, beating the E4 and Champion, just to come close to his former glory and not feel like he's been downgraded. The series will become more predictable than ever before.

One of the biggest hooks of this series for me has been seeing Ash go just a little further every generation. Especially with that great payoff in SM, it has proven to be a very powerful message of hard work and determination. Losing this aspect of the series will honestly be very sad. Sure, Gyms could still be made entertaining if the writing is good, but the series will have transformed from a story about an underdog to a story of a kid who wins everything. Also consider that Ash continuing to beat the Champion every region in a traditional league format would have the added effect of making him Champion of every subsequent region, which seems to go against TPC's desire to keep regional Champions consistent throughout each media format.

I'm not someone who considers the PWC up to this point to be very impressive, in fact considering all we're left with is basically a pool of regional Champions, we can basically ignore everything that came before the Masters Tournament. The tournament itself however can't be discounted. We're going to see, for the first time, Champions battling at their full strength, each one trying to take the glory for themselves. Ash winning this will be end game for him in terms of accomplishment. "Pokemon Master" has always been an undefined term, however it's always been implied that Ash was getting closer to that goal by inching closer and closer to the top. What's the next step to becoming a Pokemon Master after he's finally reached it? Only the writers know, but to me, everything is pointing away from an endless loop of badge quests.

 

[Shadao]

The fact that Ash is even in the Master 8 to begin with is already it making difficult to simply fall back on Gym Badge quests. Like, that's incredibly impressive to be among the biggest Champions we've seen so far. Higher than winning the Orange League, higher than beating the Battle Frontier, higher than becoming the Alola Champion, higher than beating an Elite Four member.

In previous Gym Quests, there has always been a ceiling wall to ensure that Ash doesn't get too powerful. Even when Ash defeated the Battle Frontier Brains, there was still the Elite Four of Kanto in the background to remind Ash he still has a long way to go, namely with Agatha and Lance. Even when Ash defeated Paul and took down legendaries, there was always Cynthia in the distant, a champion that Ash dreams of facing one day but clearly nowhere in her leagues. In BW, there was Alder. In XY, there was Diantha. And in JN, there was Leon.

Except Leon is described as the unbeatable Champion of the world. He isn't the regional Champion, he's the champion that beats all the champions. And he showcases this by defeating Lance, Champion of the Kanto/Johto Elite Four. And Ash decides to make Leon his goal. And as he reaches the Master 8, suddenly all those distant and unbeatable Champions that in the past would be considered untouchable for Ash? They're his opponents, and we know that Ash will reach to Leon in the finals. The glass ceiling has been broken. And if Ash beats Leon, he would be considered by the world as the greatest Champion that ever lived (until someone dethrones him).

Oh sure, Ash could fight other Gym Leaders afterwards. But at best, it would be a fun sparring match no different from fighting Wallace and then getting a Gym Badge. Like yeah that's nice, but is it really something to get excited about? He is a Master 8 Champion, this is just another Tuesday for him. Even with a new team, there's still not enough time for people, including kids, to forget that Ash defeated Champions from various regions. It's the same as Ash defeating legendaries in Sinnoh, only to lose to a newbie trainer like Trip. Like yeah, there's an explanation, but it was too recent for the transitioning audience to not know about his previous feat in Sinnoh. So you're left with a Catch-22 with Gym Quests. Either Ash effortlessly crush the Gyms so easily that it's no longer fun anymore. Or Ash faces genuine Gym challenges at the risk of making favorite Champions like Cynthia and Leon look weak in hindsight.

The solution to this, should Ash stay in the series, is for the "Gyms" to be more akin to the Alola Trials or Hisui guardians where it's not simply just battling the Gym Leader in a straight-forward battle. At least there, it'll be more interesting and entertaining to see how Ash deals with trial situations that isn't a simple battle.

 

[RetroPokeFan]

For the anime specifically, if the PWC is any indication, this new goal for Ash is not refreshing or interesting. It's boring, poorly handled from the start and really a lot more unimpressive than something like a world tournament should be.

It's sad how something that should have been pushing Ash to his limits is instead (aside from one or two battles) a massive cavalcade of poor writing and wins that either feel undeserved or massively hollow. Even most of the earlier gym battles felt more thrilling to watch than most of these matches.

Except Unova of course, what a painful start that was.

 

[Unireon]

The only way out was if they used the Round Robin format for the Masters Tournament.

That way they can make Satoshi lose, varying between trounced and tight, to everyone and show how out of his league he is.

Given the little growth he and his team showed due to lack of focus, it wouldn't be that farfetched.

I wouldn't feel anything if he wins the PWC, the story has never bothered to make me care about his goal.

 

[Hidden Mew]

Honestly, I still have my doubts about Ash winning the PWC for a few reasons. It isn't impossible, but I don't know if they'd be willing to do that even after Ash won the Alola League. If the PWC was handled more effectively, maybe I'd see Ash getting to the Master Class as a big game changer, but as it is, I kind of feel nothing about it. To be fair, at least part of that is due to how I felt the PWC was overhyped from day one, so that doesn't help matters here.

 

[Shadao]

Honestly, I still have my doubts about Ash winning the PWC for a few reasons. It isn't impossible, but I don't know if they'd be willing to do that even after Ash won the Alola League. If the PWC was handled more effectively, maybe I'd see Ash getting to the Master Class as a big game changer, but as it is, I kind of feel nothing about it. To be fair, at least part of that is due to how I felt the PWC was overhyped from day one, so that doesn't help matters here.

Did you have doubts that Ash would win the Alola League? I mean, I heard similar complaints regarding battles and build ups, but those are audience expectations.

To know if Ash is going to win the PWC, think of what the opening promised... A fight between him and Leon.

This means that Ash will certainly reach the finals. And that means he has beaten at least two Champions. And we all know that Leon's greatest desire is to find someone who could defeat him. Someone who could give him his first loss in years. There is no fun being the top when you feel there's no more challenges left. It's not satisfying for Leon to remain at the top still undefeated. Sooner or later, someone has to dethrone him.

And even if Ash doesn't win, the damage is already done. People will remember that Ash took down two Champions and if one of them is Cynthia, then he took down one of the most powerful and iconic Champions in the history of the franchise. That is not something to be dismissed even in a new series.

 

[isrrael120]

Honestly, I still have my doubts about Ash winning the PWC for a few reasons. It isn't impossible, but I don't know if they'd be willing to do that even after Ash won the Alola League. If the PWC was handled more effectively, maybe I'd see Ash getting to the Master Class as a big game changer, but as it is, I kind of feel nothing about it. To be fair, at least part of that is due to how I felt the PWC was overhyped from day one, so that doesn't help matters here.

That's why I have the glass half full with the idea!

 

[Hidden Mew]

Did you have doubts that Ash would win the Alola League? I mean, I heard similar complaints regarding battles and build ups, but those are audience expectations.

I'm not really sure to be honest. I wasn't expecting Ash to win the Alola League, but I also don't really recall people talking that much about it prior to Ash's victory. I've also said multiple times that the Alola League was set on easy mode. It's still an accomplishment and Ash did need a big victory after all these years, but it isn't the best thing Ash has ever achieved either.

To know if Ash is going to win the PWC, think of what the opening promised... A fight between him and Leon.

This means that Ash will certainly reach the finals. And that means he has beaten at least two Champions. And we all know that Leon's greatest desire is to find someone who could defeat him. Someone who could give him his first loss in years. There is no fun being the top when you feel there's more challenges left. It's not satisfying for Leon to remain at the top still undefeated. Sooner or later, someone has to dethrone him.

And even if Ash doesn't win, the damage is already done. People will remember that Ash took down two Champions and if one of them is Cynthia, then he took down one of the most powerful and iconic Champions in the history of the franchise. That is not something to be dismissed even in a new series.

Ash vs. Leon was guaranteed to happen. Even with Leon wanting to find someone who could defeat him, I'm still not certain that will be Ash, if only because I'm not confident that they'd want Ash to become the top ranked trainer in the world. It can still go either way, but I just don't think the outcome is guaranteed right now.

I'm not dismissing the idea of Ash defeating Champions. I am saying that because the journey to get to the Master Class has been poorly handled and largely too easy, it makes the accomplishment feel more hollow to me. The lack of any struggles getting to this point and working more with his Pokemon, who either were fully evolved when he caught them or didn't get much attention after evolving beyond getting power ups, just really weakens what should be a huge deal. I still think it would be more believable for Leon to defeat Cynthia instead of Ash. I wouldn't be surprised if it happens regardless, but I just don't know if they can make Ash defeating Cynthia with his current team believable, especially when Cynthia is put on such a huge pedestal.

 

[Daren]

I think I'm not as bothered by the idea of Ash beating Cynthia with this party for a few reasons:
*The show has always been incredibly silly about strength throughout it's run. From very early on we had stuff like an Eevee who had never battled easily beating the Trio after they thrashed his evolved friends/siblings. Pikachu's fluctuations are memetic.
*I never liked how powerful DP made her and the Sinnoh Elite Four anyways.
*It became clear some time ago that Pokémon are mostly treated by the writing as tools, for lack of a better term, with a few exceptions of one taking centre stage of part of the story. They'll get suddenly released for arbitrary reasons, Ash never uses them even though characterwise he's supposed to love them all, Torterra had zero payoff for fully evolving because Infernape had to do everything.
Teams got farther than others not due to having more development or focus but because they debuted later on in the show and it was there to show how Ash had improved.
So Ash got to the Master Eight because he went through great struggle in the past and the Pokémon themselves are--as I noted above--treated as tools by the writing. It's really about Ash more than them.

Sort of ugly and very thematically awkward? Yes, but that's how the games worked for a long time, where the mechanics encourage replacing them with other members of the same species with unique abilities and better genes while the story talks about them being your friends.
It's a fairly consistent thing about the franchise I've had to accept.

 

[Silktree]

I can't imagine that Ash won't get to face Leon. This particular series didn't put Cynthia on a pedestal, nor did BW for that matter. It's really just the DP fans that still remember the Paul vs. Cynthia episode, which wasn't even well written.

The only interesting thing the next series could do with Ash is have him be someone's partner for tag battles, possibly inspired by the games' co-op features.

 

[Broseph08]

I hope that the SV follows whatever the games do. If it's gyms, then that. If it's something different like trials in SM, then do that. The PWC didn't really work for me. Just feels like an overall disappointment since we need the Masters 8 matches to redeem it

I think Ash losing matches in the next series is fine though. He won't be taking this uber strong VGC team into the next region so it'd make sense if his new captures lose to trainers. Like people said, if Champion Ash losing to Bea is believable, then this will too

 

[game3524]

Yuyama and Tomioka in an interview both called the PWC the peak for Ash as a battler. I don’t know what they will do with Ash next series. I could see Digimon 2020 reboot style for the anime. I could see another SM like series in which they focus more on Ash’s character and less so him as a battler. Hell, I can even see them continuing with what they have started in PM. However, I can’t see Ash in his current incarnation challenging gym agains. It just seems like his grown beyond that.

 

[Sai]

It's sad how something that should have been pushing Ash to his limits is instead (aside from one or two battles) a massive cavalcade of poor writing and wins that either feel undeserved or massively hollow. Even most of the earlier gym battles felt more thrilling to watch than most of these matches.

Except Unova of course, what a painful start that was.

Which battle aside from Drasna felt undeserved? Ash is basically battling the same way he always did and his opponents are always portrayed as tough.

None of the Gym battles in earlier series aside from some of the best ones of XY or DP felt as impressive, especially since Ash was usually winning with unevolved starters for the majority of Gyms every series till the last one or two.

If you can accept Turtwig spinning around Roark's Rampardos with barely any training only 16 episodes into DP, I don't see how this is an issue.

 

[RetroPokeFan]

Which battle aside from Drasna felt undeserved? Ash is basically battling the same way he always did and his opponents are always portrayed as tough.

None of the Gym battles in earlier series aside from some of the best ones of XY or DP felt as impressive, especially since Ash was usually winning with unevolved starters for the majority of Gyms every series till the last one or two.

If you can accept Turtwig spinning around Roark's Rampardos with barely any training only 16 episodes into DP, I don't see how this is an issue.

Really, from what I've heard about Drasna's battle that seems to be the biggest sorest thumb of them all but I think that aside from Visquez, Volkner and maybe Marnie and Oliver's battle (I also would have said Bea but then the final confrontation let it all down) the rest of them just don't deliver in the slightest whether it be via said writing or the lackluster animation.

I officially zoned out of this whole PWC nonsense (and Journeys as a whole aside from a few episodes) after the Bea battle and after hearing about how the Drasna one fared, it's honestly for the best.

 

[Sai]

I guess this is where people see differently, all the major battles in the PWC have had much better animation than most regular episodes. Iwane was at his best in the Bea and Volkner matches, and Iris and Marnie's looked good too. Raihan's was also well animated too. Bea match did have some writing issues with Lucario withstanding too many attacks though.

I'm honestly hard pressed to say which previous Gym battles were written better either since a lot of them have not aged well at all and if they happened now people would be much more harsh on them than when they originally aired.

 

[RetroPokeFan]

I'm honestly hard pressed to say which previous Gym battles were written better either since a lot of them have not aged well at all and if they happened now people would be much more harsh on them than when they originally aired.

I mean, I do agree there are definitely are some gym battles that certainly have NOT stood the test of time or just stalled instantly the moment they aired.

I already mentioned the first Unova gym battle for being poorly written but who could ever forget how badly treated Elesa was. My poor electric type gym leader did not deserve an episode that bad.

 

[Hidden Mew]

I'm honestly hard pressed to say which previous Gym battles were written better either since a lot of them have not aged well at all and if they happened now people would be much more harsh on them than when they originally aired.

I can't really compare the PWC matches with previous Gym battles. I'm still slowly catching up on the Netflix releases and I've only heard some details on the matches for the Hyper Class. That being said, based on the matches I have seen, I don't think that they're anything to write home about. I really liked the match against Korrina. If that was how the PWC started instead of being just the first good match after multiple previous ones, I might have been more into the goal. The first two battles against Bea were pretty solid too, but my takeaway was why they were wasting time with the PWC instead of doing something more with Galar if one of its Gym Leaders was that powerful. I don't think that the battle writing is necessarily a problem for the PWC, at least based on what I've seen thus far. That could change once I get to some of the Hyper Class battles. Arguably the biggest problem I have with the PWC is its overall structure since that makes it completely fall flat to me.

Not all Gym battles are well written, but I've rewatched most of the previous series. Some of them haven't aged well, particularly with some of the Gyms in AG, and BW is pretty infamous for its Gym battles too, especially Elesa's match, but I'd say that DP and to a degree XY had some pretty consistent quality for their battles. They weren't perfect, but I thought that they were pretty solid, especially the DP Gym battles.