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Controversial opinions

They really shouldn't have made Pikachu lose to Snivy if it meant every loss Ash suffers in other regions being ridiculed to that level. This is hindsight, but still a bad writing choice nonetheless.

There were plenty of ways to spark the rivalry with Trip - like having him lose and getting all salty and mad at Ash because he reminds him of Alder or something. Idk.
 
Precisely. If Ash beat Leon now...where could the show go with him? Ash is the best in the world? What could they do at that point, reveal that he's actually an alien from a planet of super powerful Pokémon trainers--so powerful he'd be considered weak by their standards--as told to him by his long lost brother?

NEXT TIME ON POKEBALL Z
 
Wouldn't it be bad writing for Ash to defeat Leon in their first battle anyway? Some people might have liked that, but it wouldn't have made any sense.

It seems that people who wanted Ash to win and then cried foul when Ash lost are less about story and more about being part of a character's cult of personality.
 
It seems in the anime Leon is officially the most powerful trainer in the world--if anything he's even more hyped up than in the games.

That does make me wonder if they'll actually have Ash defeat Leon in that case. It would fit with how the player character defeats Leon in the game, but I think it would also run the risk of the writers not really knowing what to do with Ash afterwards. It's probably too early to worry about that, but the thought still came to mind.

Daren said:
Precisely. If Ash beat Leon now...where could the show go with him? Ash is the best in the world? What could they do at that point, reveal that he's actually an alien from a planet of super powerful Pokémon trainers--so powerful he'd be considered weak by their standards--as told to him by his long lost brother?

It took me way too long to realize the DBZ reference. I'd almost love to see them go that route just because of how completely ridiculous it would be.

It seems that people who wanted Ash to win and then cried foul when Ash lost are less about story and more about being part of a character's cult of personality.

It's strange because I really don't see a lot of hype and praise for Ash generally. I could almost see why people would want him to keep winning after his Alola League victory, but if Ash was never allowed to lose again, his battles would probably be really boring. Honestly, sometimes the battles where he loses are better than his rematches where he wins.

As far as the Snivy battle goes, I think it still sticks out to people because it gave off a really bad first impression for BW Ash and BW as a whole. While it was bad choice from the start, I was willing to see where they were going with their rivalry. But they were going with the typical jerk rival with Ash as the underdog and that was a bad choice for multiple reasons. Making Trip so unbelievably strong for a rookie trainer was a terrible idea. It made the setup for their rivalry completely forced and it didn't make Ash look good to keep losing to a much more inexperienced trainer. Even with Paul, they kept his amount of experience vague for awhile until they mentioned that he did travel through the same regions as Ash did in the past. Since they made Trip so unbelievably strong for a new trainer, they should have just done something similar. That might have made it easier to believe that he could keep defeating Ash. If the battle had a different setup and there was more of a point to the rivalry between Ash and Trip, I don't think that losing to Snivy would have become so infamous.
 
Precisely. If Ash beat Leon now...where could the show go with him? Ash is the best in the world? What could they do at that point, reveal that he's actually an alien from a planet of super powerful Pokémon trainers--so powerful he'd be considered weak by their standards--as told to him by his long lost brother?
NEXT TIME ON POKEBALL Z
It took me way too long to realize the DBZ reference. I'd almost love to see them go that route just because of how completely ridiculous it would be.
It wouldn't even be that farfetched tbh. We already have literal aliens in the games (like the Ultra Recon squad) and then there's Ash's enigmatic father whom he obviously gets his aura and Pokemon telepathy/hearing/sensing powers (that this series is implying a lot) from. Not to mention a lot of weird shit has happened over the years and in some of the movies with regards to Ash. It's only a matter of not contradicting established facts as well as keeping the suspension of disbelief to a minimum.

I'll leave this open for interpretation. It all comes down to whether they're going to stretch the World Championships till Gen 9, 10 etc. and show every one of 1000 ranked trainer battles, or if they'll rush it within the next 3 years.
 
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It seems in the anime Leon is officially the most powerful trainer in the world--if anything he's even more hyped up than in the games.

Precisely. If Ash beat Leon now...where could the show go with him? Ash is the best in the world? What could they do at that point, reveal that he's actually an alien from a planet of super powerful Pokémon trainers--so powerful he'd be considered weak by their standards--as told to him by his long lost brother?

That explains why Ash’s dad is missing. He must be a Pokémon trainer traveling in his home planet.
 
It wouldn't even be that farfetched tbh. We already have literal aliens in the games (like the Ultra Recon squad) and then there's Ash's enigmatic father whom he obviously gets his aura and Pokemon telepathy/hearing/sensing powers (that this series is implying a lot) from. Not to mention a lot of weird shit has happened over the years and in some of the movies with regards to Ash. It's only a matter of not contradicting established facts as well as keeping the suspension of disbelief to a minimum.

I'll leave this open for interpretation. It all comes down to whether they're going to stretch the World Championships till Gen 9, 10 etc. and show every one of 1000 ranked trainer battles, or if they'll rush it within the next 3 years.

....this is why Ash beat Kukui with a Pikamehameha isn't it?
 
I too really hate people still not getting over that Snivy loss, but you know what grinds my Klinks just as much? People saying that Ash releases all of his good Pokémon.

I think this whole debacle started when Ash released Goodra. Or at least when he released Greninja. People suddenly started saying that Ash is a terrible Trainer because he releases all of his good Pokémon, and this pisses me off to no end for several reasons:

1) Ash didn't release any Pokémon in between the Orange Islands and Kalos. Johto, Hoenn, Battle Frontier, Sinnoh, and Unova all went by without a single release. And then Kalos comes around and Ash releases his regional aces (for reasons I'll be getting into), which makes people extremely salty (especially in the wake of his Kalos League loss) and make things like "This is why Ash never wins! He keeps releasing his best Pokémon!" Charizard, Sceptile, Infernape, Krookodile, and several others would say otherwise...

2) Even at the times when Ash does release his Pokémon, he does so for a good reason. He always puts the wellbeing of his Pokémon before his own. If he sees that a Pokémon would be better off staying behind, he'll release it. Think about it:

* Butterfree: Released to stay (and breed) with its beloved.
* Pidgeot: Released to protect its kind from potential threats.
* Lapras: Released to rejoin its lost family.
* Goodra: Released to be able to live at its home and with its beloved friends.
* Greninja: Released to erase the remains of an evil threat.
* Poipole/Naganadel: Released to let it live with its kind in its own home world.

Even Pikachu kinda falls into this same category, but they couldn't let him go because of obvious reasons.

So yeah. Ash is not being stupid for doing these releases. He's being considerate and unselfish. The sensibility of these reasons may vary, but it's never done out of stupidity or something alike.

3) Some people also claim that his Alola team is as good as released just because they're not at Oak's lab. That is not true in the slightest, because they're still under a Professor's care. Just one call, and he can have any of them sent over to him. Same thing also applied to Charizard before it was Oak'd at the end of Best Wishes.

These are the big reasons why I absolutely hate people saying that Ash has released "all of his strong Pokémon" and even making jokes about how he's going to eventually release his current strong team members. Because it's not true. He has not released that many Pokémon compared to his overall amount, and even most of his aces are still within his easy reach. And he's only ever released Pokémon because he cares about them, not because he's being stupid or a bad Trainer.
 
As I recall the releasing complaints started after Charizard was sent to the valley and continued after it had stopped happening (because a lot of complaints are from people who only watched the original series and don't realize the show changed over time--when Ash winning the Alola league broke there were still people saying he didn't deserve to win because of "aim for the horn").

To be honest I always found Primeape the most bizarre release. He was barely there, the release did nothing for Ash's characterization that Butterfree didn't, and I find the idea that the guy who did worse than Ash in the tournament could train Primeape better to be dubious at best.
Pidgeot was also really weird, though in that case from an out of universe standpoint. It's like they needed to make room for Lapras and Snorlax but didn't want Ash to just box something.
 
As I recall the releasing complaints started after Charizard was sent to the valley and continued after it had stopped happening (because a lot of complaints are from people who only watched the original series and don't realize the show changed over time--when Ash winning the Alola league broke there were still people saying he didn't deserve to win because of "aim for the horn").
Do people know what early-installment weirdness is? That would be like people holding it against Special for saying once that Electric-Types were weak to Water (this happened during the Yellow manga).
 
As I recall the releasing complaints started after Charizard was sent to the valley and continued after it had stopped happening (because a lot of complaints are from people who only watched the original series and don't realize the show changed over time--when Ash winning the Alola league broke there were still people saying he didn't deserve to win because of "aim for the horn").

I mean, even in the original series, Ash brought back Charizard for Clair and the League, so...
 
Banning The Mandarin Island Miss-Match and Stage Fight due to Jynx appearing in them honestly feels incredibly lazy to me. In both of these episodes, Jynx only plays a minor role with limited screentime, so it should be completely unharmful to the episodes and very easy to just cut or recolor the shots she's in. Just banning the episodes without even attempting to do either of these very simple edits is really lazy in my eyes.
 
This is why I never purchased the Orange Islands arc DVD set. Once I found out that two episodes had been cut (one of which was in my Top 5 favorite Orange Islands episodes list), I was done with it. I refuse to buy boxsets that don't include every episode that's available especially when the editors only needed to remove a few seconds of footage from the Stage Fight episode to avoid showing Jynx in the first place.
 
I don't want Ash to catch:
-A Pokémon in the next 5 episodes (except a Galarian Starter), because Dragonite and Mr. Mime need screentime and training.
-A fully evolved Pokémon in the next 30 episodes, for the same reason.
-Gengar in the next 3000 episodes. It seems like an screentime-hogger, and I'd rather they brought back Haunter and evolve it.
 
This is why I never purchased the Orange Islands arc DVD set. Once I found out that two episodes had been cut (one of which was in my Top 5 favorite Orange Islands episodes list), I was done with it. I refuse to buy boxsets that don't include every episode that's available especially when the editors only needed to remove a few seconds of footage from the Stage Fight episode to avoid showing Jynx in the first place.
Japanese editors: Go through the effort of making a special version of Holiday Hi-Jynx, where every single shot of Jynx is recolored.

Western editors: See less than a minute's worth of Jynx footage in a couple episodes and go all, "Nah. Too much work. Banning is easier."
 
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