Controversial opinions

[Enzo]

Nope, they’ve never really given any kind of in depth explanation on the points system. Back when Ash first entered, there was some explanation of how the performance in the battle factored in making it seem that it wasn’t only about winning the battle but they’ve never gone anywhere with that since especially with every battle just being done as normal.

Okay, then who is watching these battles? Is there an committee or any thing of the sort that decides the points? God this is so poorly planned holy s***...

 

[A Wild Luxray]

The way they've handled the PWC poorly just makes me wish Ash ended up traveling Galar for its the Galarian Gym Challenge.

 

[Hidden Mew]

Okay, this is not really a opinion per say, but we touched this and I don't really know where else to put it lol

Did them ever explained how exactly the PWC points are counted? Like, there's very simple rules: You win, you gain points and your oppenent loses points and vice versa. If it's a draw nothing happens. But like,,, how are those points accounted for?

Like, how do they know how much points the participants earn or lose? The number almost seems,,, random. Like, in ep 25, he was in 921. In ep 30, he was in ep 901. So considering no off-screen battles happenned in this 5 ep period, at least as far as we know, he went up 20 points with one battle. But how exactly we know that value is ''correct''?

Are there any variables, such as how many Pokemon were used as how many are still able to battle? Like, in a 2 VS 2, does the math changes when it ends n a 2-0, 2-1, 1-1, or 1-0? And how much? If you knock your opponent's Pokemon with one hit or in a close battle, does your ranking gets affected by that? How is the math done in this sittuation???

At least with the Gym Badges, we knew that you just had to have 8, no matter which or the order they were obtained.

No, they've never explained the PWC points. That's a big reason why the scores feel so arbitrary to me. They don't feel like an indication of a trainer's skill or strength. They're just random numbers and how the scores go up is even more confusing, especially when winning one-on-one battles shouldn't provide any noteworthy increase in a trainer's score. Even though there are different classes Ash needs to reach to get to Leon, there really should have been a clearer means of showing his progression. That's a big reason why Gyms and Contests worked because the characters needed to actively keep working to get the next step towards their goal. Ash just increasing his rank through various battles doesn't create the same sense of progression, especially when the score system doesn't really make much sense to begin with.

 

[Ghost Diplocaulus]

At this point is that even controversial?

The way they've handled the PWC poorly just makes me wish Ash ended up traveling Galar for its the Galarian Gym Challenge.

I feel like the only reason this didn't happen was because the writers felt that Ash doing another Gym Challenge right after winning an actual regional League, making him go back to Gyms would be a step backwards for him. However, due to how the games portray Galar as hyper-competitive in-universe compared to past regions, this feels like an extremely easy issue to fix: the Galar Gym challenge could have very easily been framed as something that only trainers who've won at least one League challenge (be it from Galar's own minor League, which would be functionally identical to the Leagues of other regions, or the Leagues of any other place) can enter, and since Ash just became Alola's first even League Champion, he'd definitely qualify. Heck, we could have even had one of his companions be a minor League challenger who looks up to Ash as a sort of mentor figure, and differentiate Galar's Major League challenge from a "regular" League by adapting the Gym Trials.

 

[Johtoo]

I think the problem with the PWC or whatever you want to call it is that it wasn't organically put into the anime. It never existed until it suddenly did in Journeys. Why were all these trainers competiting like this before and Ash had never heard of it? What they should have done was have Ash travel through Galar, win the 8 badges and use the PWT or PWC as a battle frontier like goal. Once Ash won the Galar league, he would be able to face all the champions from the past regions. Then again, I don't think the anime staff is good enough to write something like this. Maybe back in Sinnoh they could have, but this only serves to remind us that all the good people behind the anime has long since departed.

 

[cjd1207]

I think the problem with the PWC or whatever you want to call it is that it wasn't organically put into the anime. It never existed until it suddenly did in Journeys. Why were all these trainers competiting like this before and Ash had never heard of it? What they should have done was have Ash travel through Galar, win the 8 badges and use the PWT or PWC as a battle frontier like goal. Once Ash won the Galar league, he would be able to face all the champions from the past regions. Then again, I don't think the anime staff is good enough to write something like this. Maybe back in Sinnoh they could have, but this only serves to remind us that all the good people behind the anime has long since departed.

You do know that people that worked on Sinnoh and the show before still write this show like Atsuhiro Tomioka, Aya Matsui and Shoji Yonemura

 

[Johtoo]

You do know that people that worked on Sinnoh and the show before still write this show like Atsuhiro Tomioka, Aya Matsui and Shoji Yonemura

Yeah, but most of the good staff left after Best Wishes/XY

 

[cjd1207]

Yeah, but most of the good staff left after Best Wishes/XY

Who are the good staff that you keep talking about

 

[Johtoo]

Who are the good staff that you keep talking about

Hidaka is one such example. Yajima, and Sudo are also other examples. I know there are some of the old staff on the show, but the best talents have already left. I don't blame them considering there was obviously a huge falling out during best wishes/XY and they obviously couldn't do what they wanted to do.

 

[cjd1207]

Hidaka is one such example. Yajima, and Sudo are also other examples. I know there are some of the old staff on the show, but the best talents have already left. I don't blame them considering there was obviously a huge falling out during best wishes/XY and they obviously couldn't do what they wanted to do.

Wait didn't Yajima work on The Pokemon movie Koko. Also was it Hidaka the one who said we need to replace the female lead is so that way boys have a new eye candy to look at

 

[Johtoo]

Wait didn't Yajima work on The Pokemon movie Koko. Also was it Hidaka the one who said we need to replace the female lead is so that way boys have a new eye candy to look at

Yaijima doesn't work on the anime though (feel free to correct me)? And Hidaka gave us May and Dawn (2 of the strongest female characters in the show who was Ash's true co-stars). No one has done better than him in regard to female representation.

 

[cjd1207]

Yaijima doesn't work on the anime though (feel free to correct me)? And Hidaka gave us May and Dawn (2 of the strongest female characters in the show who was Ash's true co-stars). No one has done better than him in regard to female representation.

I know Yaijima dosen't work on pokemon tv anime but he still works on the pokemon anime movies also wasn't it Sudo who gave us Dawn while Hidaka didn't trust May alone as character so he gave her Max . Also what falling out did these three directors have because director changing in long running series like pretty cure and super sentai isn't uncommon

 

[Daren]

Well, I guess here I can drop my spiciest of controversies:
Journeys format actually makes a lot of sense for what the Pokémon anime became.

I'll unpack what I mean. Parts of this are things I've posted about in the past.

When the anime started it was just supposed to run a year or two. Kanto moved at a brisk pace; Ash was gradually growing a bit and improving as a trainer (Butterfree's arc was important for the early parts of that), and by episode 32 he had six badges.

The show became a hit.

You can practically feel the exact moment the show got renewed looking back; after Koga the pace drops and we get over twenty episodes before Blaine when the previous record was seven episodes between Surge and Sabrina.
So, if the original length had gone through it would probably follow the game's ending; Ash would win eight badges, defeat the Elite Four (there would be no tournament), then Gary would be ahead of him as champion and Ash defeats him, too. Roll credits. The show would probably be remembered as a fun video game based anime that was more faithful than, say, Monster Rancher from a bit later

Well, they can't do that, now. The show is huge and they don't want to risk that, so they keep Ash. The Pokémon league becomes a tournament and Ash loses after the character flaws he hadn't quite overcome finally strike hard. So far that's actually pretty interesting and all is well. To buy time for the sequel games (when the franchise will probably fizzle out like all fads, right?) they create the Orange League so Ash can win it to build up to him becoming Champion in Johto.

Then Ruby/Sapphire are announced. It was now clear; Pokémon had legs and had become a full on running franchise, like Zelda, Final Fantasy, Call of Duty, and so on.
Also, they now have a main character originally written to have an arc running for two seasons or so who has to keep going forever.
Welp.

AG has him win the Battle Frontier and seems to be setting up a breakthrough, but the following series' don't follow up on that and he never gets a victory on that level again. I actually get a similar vibe at this point to what happened in Kanto right after Koga, though in a much larger scope; look carefully and you can see the brakes get pulled on Ash's advancement. It's odd, because I recall Shudo said he was told in late Johto they wanted to keep running at least a decade so I can't imagine AG--DP had a similar moment to the show suddenly getting lengthened.

Years and years pass and the show's reputation--which was always mixed in the greater Pokémon fandom--sinks lower and lower over time.
I saw a quote on TVTropes about the Kalos bait and switch that I feel does a good job of explaining why show became so regularly criticized on the internet; if the main character in a narrative series is doomed to failure and cannot permanently grow why get invested in them and their story?

Now look at journeys; it's the type of series that feels custom designed to run as long as needed. There are no benchmark goals dragging Ash closer and closer to a league he cannot be allowed to win; he can lose his rankings, or go lengthy periods of time without PWC battles because we have Gou to give episodes to; plus new Pokémon keep coming out so Gou has no end of future captures.

Whatever issues people have with it the setup works much better for a show you can't count on ever ending or being allowed to advance the main plot. I genuinely think the show would be more fondly regarded in the wider fanbase if it had been set up from the start as an episodic adventure series instead of a narrative that got stuck on replay for so long.

 

[GrookeyFan77]

Okay, this is not really a opinion per say, but we touched this and I don't really know where else to put it lol

Did them ever explained how exactly the PWC points are counted? Like, there's very simple rules: You win, you gain points and your oppenent loses points and vice versa. If it's a draw nothing happens. But like,,, how are those points accounted for?

Like, how do they know how much points the participants earn or lose? The number almost seems,,, random. Like, in ep 25, he was in 921. In ep 30, he was in ep 901. So considering no off-screen battles happenned in this 5 ep period, at least as far as we know, he went up 20 points with one battle. But how exactly we know that value is ''correct''?

Are there any variables, such as how many Pokemon were used as how many are still able to battle? Like, in a 2 VS 2, does the math changes when it ends n a 2-0, 2-1, 1-1, or 1-0? And how much? If you knock your opponent's Pokemon with one hit or in a close battle, does your ranking gets affected by that? How is the math done in this sittuation???

At least with the Gym Badges, we knew that you just had to have 8, no matter which or the order they were obtained.

Elo

 

[Kurolegacy]

I feel like the only reason this didn't happen was because the writers felt that Ash doing another Gym Challenge right after winning an actual regional League, making him go back to Gyms would be a step backwards for him. However, due to how the games portray Galar as hyper-competitive in-universe compared to past regions, this feels like an extremely easy issue to fix: the Galar Gym challenge could have very easily been framed as something that only trainers who've won at least one League challenge (be it from Galar's own minor League, which would be functionally identical to the Leagues of other regions, or the Leagues of any other place) can enter, and since Ash just became Alola's first even League Champion, he'd definitely qualify. Heck, we could have even had one of his companions be a minor League challenger who looks up to Ash as a sort of mentor figure, and differentiate Galar's Major League challenge from a "regular" League by adapting the Gym Trials.

What’s amazing is that they picked literally the worst spot to stop doing the badge quest. While they may have felt that it was redundant with Ash having won the Alola League, the fact that Galar’s league requires you being endorsed to be able to enter in the first place, that would have been the perfect next step for Ash. Plus given that this was Alola’s first league, him winning there could have served to be something of interest given that a Pokémon League would surely have put Alola in the world’s eyesight. Plus, given how strong Bea is shown to be, these gym leaders would’ve been a great challenge for Ash.

 

[GrookeyFan77]

What’s amazing is that they picked literally the worst spot to stop doing the badge quest. While they may have felt that it was redundant with Ash having won the Alola League, the fact that Galar’s league requires you being endorsed to be able to enter in the first place, that would have been the perfect next step for Ash. Plus given that this was Alola’s first league, him winning there could have served to be something of interest given that a Pokémon League would surely have put Alola in the world’s eyesight. Plus, given how strong Bea is shown to be, these gym leaders would’ve been a great challenge for Ash.

It even saddens me more that we didn't get a galar anime.

 

[A Wild Luxray]

What’s amazing is that they picked literally the worst spot to stop doing the badge quest. While they may have felt that it was redundant with Ash having won the Alola League, the fact that Galar’s league requires you being endorsed to be able to enter in the first place, that would have been the perfect next step for Ash. Plus given that this was Alola’s first league, him winning there could have served to be something of interest given that a Pokémon League would surely have put Alola in the world’s eyesight. Plus, given how strong Bea is shown to be, these gym leaders would’ve been a great challenge for Ash.

Yeah they really picked a bad time to end the badge quest. Some of us thought with Gyms returning in Galar, we'd be getting a badge quest again, and some of us were thrilled knowing how Galar has a much bigger emphasis on the challenge than past regions, going as far as having trainers fight in giant stadiums and treating it how sporting events are treated around the world. It even seens far more competitive, so some of us were pumped for Ash fighting much stronger Gym Leaders, which never ended up being the case.

 

[JinksChow]

Well, I guess here I can drop my spiciest of controversies:
Journeys format actually makes a lot of sense for what the Pokémon anime became.

I'll unpack what I mean. Parts of this are things I've posted about in the past.

When the anime started it was just supposed to run a year or two. Kanto moved at a brisk pace; Ash was gradually growing a bit and improving as a trainer (Butterfree's arc was important for the early parts of that), and by episode 32 he had six badges.

The show became a hit.

You can practically feel the exact moment the show got renewed looking back; after Koga the pace drops and we get over twenty episodes before Blaine when the previous record was seven episodes between Surge and Sabrina.
So, if the original length had gone through it would probably follow the game's ending; Ash would win eight badges, defeat the Elite Four (there would be no tournament), then Gary would be ahead of him as champion and Ash defeats him, too. Roll credits. The show would probably be remembered as a fun video game based anime that was more faithful than, say, Monster Rancher from a bit later

Well, they can't do that, now. The show is huge and they don't want to risk that, so they keep Ash. The Pokémon league becomes a tournament and Ash loses after the character flaws he hadn't quite overcome finally strike hard. So far that's actually pretty interesting and all is well. To buy time for the sequel games (when the franchise will probably fizzle out like all fads, right?) they create the Orange League so Ash can win it to build up to him becoming Champion in Johto.

Then Ruby/Sapphire are announced. It was now clear; Pokémon had legs and had become a full on running franchise, like Zelda, Final Fantasy, Call of Duty, and so on.
Also, they now have a main character originally written to have an arc running for two seasons or so who has to keep going forever.
Welp.

AG has him win the Battle Frontier and seems to be setting up a breakthrough, but the following series' don't follow up on that and he never gets a victory on that level again. I actually get a similar vibe at this point to what happened in Kanto right after Koga, though in a much larger scope; look carefully and you can see the brakes get pulled on Ash's advancement. It's odd, because I recall Shudo said he was told in late Johto they wanted to keep running at least a decade so I can't imagine AG--DP had a similar moment to the show suddenly getting lengthened.

Years and years pass and the show's reputation--which was always mixed in the greater Pokémon fandom--sinks lower and lower over time.
I saw a quote on TVTropes about the Kalos bait and switch that I feel does a good job of explaining why show became so regularly criticized on the internet; if the main character in a narrative series is doomed to failure and cannot permanently grow why get invested in them and their story?

Now look at journeys; it's the type of series that feels custom designed to run as long as needed. There are no benchmark goals dragging Ash closer and closer to a league he cannot be allowed to win; he can lose his rankings, or go lengthy periods of time without PWC battles because we have Gou to give episodes to; plus new Pokémon keep coming out so Gou has no end of future captures.

Whatever issues people have with it the setup works much better for a show you can't count on ever ending or being allowed to advance the main plot. I genuinely think the show would be more fondly regarded in the wider fanbase if it had been set up from the start as an episodic adventure series instead of a narrative that got stuck on replay for so long.

I would agree that the Journeys format makes sense... if the writers had chosen to forego any sort of goal for Ash and Go.

While Ash may no longer have a benchmark goal in challenging gyms, he still has the tangible goal of facing Leon in the PWC. The same goes for Go, and his goal has even more visible benchmarks than Ash did given that he makes progress towards his goal of capturing every Pokemon everytime he captures/gets a new Pokemon, in addition to his goal of capturing Mew.

The current Pokemon anime series may have become more episodic, but at its core it is still a plot-driven anime, and that is because Ash and Go have such a clearly-defined goal to work towards.

Looking at long-running episodic anime series (Sazae-San, Chibi-Maruko Chan, Doraemon, Anpanman, etc.), you can see that there is no final goal or plot progression for the main characters. The one episodic anime that probably comes the closest to having a final main goal for its main character would be Detective Conan, and that series has planned out the plot in such a way that the episodic nature of the manga/anime is no detriment to the plot progression.

As it is right now, Go is experiencing too much character growth and progressing too much towards his goal for an episodic anime, and nearly the same goes for Ash (he's stagnating nicely in the character growth department for an episodic anime, but that's more to do with the fact that Shoji Yonemura has no idea what to do with Ash).

For an episodic Pokemon anime to work in the long term (as in, not being allowed to ever end), it's not enough to discard benchmark goals for the main characters. You have to discard goals altogether, along with any sort of character growth for the main characters.

In fact, if there needs to be any sort of goal for a main character in an episodic Pokemon anime, than Ash's ultimate goal of becoming a Pokemon Master is the perfect one. Instead of challenging gyms, just have the main character travel the Pokemon world, meet new people, and understand different Pokemon. The anime has never straight up said being a Pokemon Master means you have to be the best at battling, so this wouldn't even be such a retcon.

 

[FinnishPokéFan92]

Here's my controversial opinion: I'm perfectly fine with how Journeys is going. I like how Journeys dares to do things differently and won't really judge it until it's over.

 

[KenzeyEevee]

Nobody can denie that this series is using Satoshi in a weird way