Can the anime handle deep storylines?

[Mikuri]

How can anyone unironically describe the Team Plasma plot as "too deep"?

Ghetsis adopted a little boy who just happens to have the same hair color as him and proceeded to brainwash said boy into a lunatic who believes Pokémon and humans should live separate lives. His endgame: have N act as a poster boy for his "organization" while he—like 97% of the villains in the Pokémon world—steals Pokémon. WOW SO DEEP!11!

And then you have six other old Caucasian cisgender straight men who do nothing. Plus two woman (also adopted by Ghetsis) who do nothing. And don't forget the three ninjas who guess what? Do nothing.

And people like to talk about how Team Plasma is a great villainous team. HAHA.

B2W2 is a little better in that department because Ghetsis's master plan is news to no one and so we don't have to sit through that and Colress is sorta kinda interesting. And Zinzolin (one of the old men) gets to do something this time.

This could be easily adapted into the anime. But maybe the writers saw right through the bullshit and decided to go with a different shade of shit? Best Wishes was a mess. They weren't really trying. The writers were probably "screw the games' plot" rather than "this won't sit well with our audience".

 

[Wishy-Washy]

Yeah, any attempt BW had at being deep was thrown out the window when Ghetsis showed his true colours and how unabashedly evil he was completely destroy any sort of argument his side had with the releasing of Pokemon.

 

[Silktree]

Regarding Dawn, I see where you're coming from now. She did lose a fair amount of times and rose above it. But the way she overcome those difficulties wasn't deep in my opinion. To describe it in one word: Daijoubu.

I don't find that relatable because real life is often more complicated than that.

 

[Daenerys]

Typically no, but we've seen a few attempts at deep storytelling (or about as deep as we can get in this series), like when Stoutland died.

 

[CrystaI]

To answer this question, firstly I need to ask: What does it this word "deep" means?

According to the conversation in here and the same thread in Serebii, I kind of guess this shall be the best answer: To have a theme or some meaningful messages behind its story plot. It doesn't mean it must be serious nor edgy nor dark, nor necessarily being wholy emotional and tear-inducing. But, it should be mind-boggling and enlightening, may be a bit philosophically sophisticated, but it shouldn't be too complicated and difficult to understand.

So the best example that fit this meaning shall be: The Aesop's Fables. Yes, this old collection of children stories we often told about at least once during our childhood. They contain some educational meaningful messages, yet they are nothing difficult to understand, even preteen children can understands it.

So, if I have to compare Pokemon Anime to Aesop's Fable, then...... to tell the truth, other than a few selected episodes from OS era especially the ones scripted by Shudo Takeshi, I can't find any.

 

[Silktree]

Yep. Shudo's spin on the franchise was fairly unconventional and thought-provoking. His planned ending was to have the whole thing be an embellishment of Ash's real childhood, where Pokemon were just a game or a figment of his imagination... That would have been deep, telling viewers something about themselves.

And the Aesop's Fables are fairly great.

 

[Jaye]

For me, a deep story is one that has a profound emotional core and has profound themes. There's nothing in Pokemon - games and anime - that I'd consider to be deep, except for the main question in B/W about how right it is to use Pokemon for human needs (even then, it didn't explore that to its fullest potential).

The world that Shudo created and wanted to implement would have set-up a potentially very deep story. The idea of becoming a Pokemon trainer being an enormous risk due to the high failure rate and an inability to reintegrate yourself back into society was intriguing and had high potential for drama.