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Controversial opinions

Fans should never have to create their own canon to justify an asspull. At that point, you’re just justifying bad writing and the writers insulting your intelligence as a viewer by thinking that they can just pull anything and it’ll just be eaten up even when it runs counter to the narrative of the overall series. This whole thing could have easily been resolved without any problems if they had just listed it among Pokémon that were temporarily used by Ash, which would make more sense seeing as his mother told Mimey to look after Ash for her, rather then belonging to him especially since beyond that single use, it hasn’t been used by Ash again nor has it been listed as a member of his team in anything that’s covered his growing team this series.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think there being a possible explanation makes it less sloppy, but I like to have some sort of in-universe answer for questions like that.
I used to spend a lot of time in the Star Trek fandom, it's a habit. ;)
 
Hoping that Ash uses Mimey against Raihan in the future.
Given that it’s never listed as a member of Ash’s team every time they bring up his current team, I’m pretty sure the use in that tournament was meant to be a one-off thing because Ash only had Pikachu with him at the time and they didn’t want to bring in any reserves. So I really wouldn’t hold my breath.
 
Given that it’s never listed as a member of Ash’s team every time they bring up his current team, I’m pretty sure the use in that tournament was meant to be a one-off thing because Ash only had Pikachu with him at the time and they didn’t want to bring in any reserves. So I really wouldn’t hold my breath.
That makes sense.
 
Given that it’s never listed as a member of Ash’s team every time they bring up his current team, I’m pretty sure the use in that tournament was meant to be a one-off thing because Ash only had Pikachu with him at the time and they didn’t want to bring in any reserves. So I really wouldn’t hold my breath.
For now. We'll see if Ash ever uses Mimey again for battle
 
I think that the main reasons why his goal doesn't bother me as much right now boils down to how Goh himself is still pretty likable, he still clearly cares about his Pokemon and it does remind me of how I catch Pokemon by a certain point in the main series. Goh catching everything left and right with Pokeballs reminded me of how I was doing basically the same thing when I first got to the Isle of Armor. Going on a capture spree to find even older Pokemon is quite fun. Like I said before, this is a video game element that doesn't quite work within the anime, but I think it's harder for me to get that upset about it when I think of how I capture Pokemon too.
Our opinions are probably different here since I grew up watching the anime, and when I finally recently got to play my first ever main series game (Platinum), I ended up not going on a catching spree. I had the core 6 Pokemon, the gifts like Eevee/Togepi/Riolu, special captures like Rotom and just one/two Pokémon that I wasn’t sure I could use like Budew and Swinub. I didn’t care about completing the Pokedex element of those games at all.

The way people play the games could influence their opinion on Go. Since I never went through those catching sprees (except in Pokémon Go itself, but it’s a necessity there and like you said, it still takes effort to actually make a Pokémon useful there, and I’m still not a fan of dumping an individual Pokémon aspect of the game) I found Go's effortless catching pretty uncanny.

I think you should wait till the Raboot episodes, and the Dragonite and Gengar episodes since they provide a clearer picture of why people don’t like Go or think his flaws didn’t matter much.
 
Our opinions are probably different here since I grew up watching the anime, and when I finally recently got to play my first ever main series game (Platinum), I ended up not going on a catching spree. I had the core 6 Pokemon, the gifts like Eevee/Togepi/Riolu, special captures like Rotom and just one/two Pokémon that I wasn’t sure I could use like Budew and Swinub. I didn’t care about completing the Pokedex element of those games at all.

The way people play the games could influence their opinion on Go. Since I never went through those catching sprees (except in Pokémon Go itself, but it’s a necessity there and like you said, it still takes effort to actually make a Pokémon useful there, and I’m still not a fan of dumping an individual Pokémon aspect of the game) I found Go's effortless catching pretty uncanny.

Admittedly, I'm not that huge on completing the Pokedex myself. I've never really done it before, although I'm tempted to do so in this generation just so I can get the Shiny Charm for once. When I first got Silver, I relied entirely on my Typhlosion and the Legendary Pokemon like Lugia. I still have a core team with each game, but I also like exploring each route to capture whatever Pokemon are available. It's a fun way to immerse myself into the game some more, find more potential team members and battle alongside my Pokemon. It isn't necessarily the highlight of my journeys. Battling, story moments and character interactions usually stand out a lot more to me. The Isle of Armor just reminded me of how much fun it is to capture Pokemon after spending the past few months doing almost nothing but Max Raid Battle. I love Max Raid Battles. I've found more Shiny Pokemon in this generation than the other generations combined entirely because of Max Raid Battles, but exploring new areas to find Pokemon, even just older ones, was a lot more fun than I initially expected when I started the DLC.

Like I mentioned earlier, I don't think that the Pokemon Go style of capturing works within the context of the anime and Goh definitely gets these captures way too easily, so I do understand and agree with most of the complaints surrounding Goh's goal. It also doesn't help that catching more Pokemon to get to Mew doesn't really make sense, although that might not be that big of a problem if there was more of a reason as to why Goh wants Mew specifically. I'm just not that upset about in partly because it does remind me of how I play the video game and I think that they are generally trying to make captures more akin to the video games in this series for some reason, at least as far as Goh is concerned.

PkmnTrainerV said:
I think you should wait till the Raboot episodes, and the Dragonite and Gengar episodes since they provide a clearer picture of why people don’t like Go or think his flaws didn’t matter much.

I binged watched the rest of the episodes on Netflix, so out of that list I've seen the Dragonite episode. I'm not too surprised that Goh got some backlash for that episode in particular, but at the same time, I don't think it was warranted. Goh not showing more visible concern over Dewong wasn't really because he didn't care about it, especially when there were examples before and afterwards showing that he does care about his Pokemon, but more like a justification for why Ash and Goh were stuck on the island until Team Rocket showed up. Even using up all of his Pokeballs in frustration to capture Dewong was most likely so that Ash would be the only one to catch one of the Dragon Pokemon from Dragonite Island. Although, that needs to happen more often if they really do want to mimic the Pokemon Go capture style.

To be clear, I'm not too surprised that Goh isn't that well received for a few reasons. While the goal itself and how it has been handled are big factors, it also doesn't help that he is the only other character aside from Ash who has any noteworthy screentime and Ash didn't get a goal until about three months into the series' run either. Having more characters in the main cast wouldn't necessarily make him better received, but there would be more characters for the audience to find engaging. If you don't like Ash or Goh, then you're just kind of out of luck. Based on what I what little I have seen, Goh is still likable. This could still change since I'm still relatively early into Journeys, but Goh has made a good first impression and despite my issues with his goal, he's still basically fine. He's not perfect by any means, but I don't have a major problem with him at the moment either.
 
binged watched the rest of the episodes on Netflix, so out of that list I've seen the Dragonite episode. I'm not too surprised that Goh got some backlash for that episode in particular, but at the same time, I don't think it was warranted. Goh not showing more visible concern over Dewong wasn't really because he didn't care about it, especially when there were examples before and afterwards showing that he does care about his Pokemon, but more like a justification for why Ash and Goh were stuck on the island until Team Rocket showed up. Even using up all of his Pokeballs in frustration to capture Dewong was most likely so that Ash would be the only one to catch one of the Dragon Pokemon from Dragonite Island. Although, that needs to happen more often if they really do want to mimic the Pokemon Go capture style.
Personally Dewgong was not the only issue. It was partially played off for laughs so it won’t make a complete point on its own anyway, I was more baffled by the fact that Go should've learnt that randomly throwing balls on a Pokémon does not guarantee a capture, but right in the next few episodes he does the exact same thing he did with Dewgong. In restrospect it’s even a bit baffling since in one of the recent Japanese episodes Go is talking about using his "precious" Pokeball (I’m not sure since I haven’t been able to bring myself to watch the Sobble episode yet but I read it in the episode review).

It’s just that his mistakes aren’t affecting him long term in any way till the more recent episodes and the Raboot arc was a mess, and that mess hasn’t paid off since Raboot is just a background character these days.

The issue with Go is that we see inkling of development but that development usually Gous away as soon as the next episode so he doesn’t face any problems for longer than an episode.
 
Personally Dewgong was not the only issue. It was partially played off for laughs so it won’t make a complete point on its own anyway, I was more baffled by the fact that Go should've learnt that randomly throwing balls on a Pokémon does not guarantee a capture, but right in the next few episodes he does the exact same thing he did with Dewgong. In restrospect it’s even a bit baffling since in one of the recent Japanese episodes Go is talking about using his "precious" Pokeball (I’m not sure since I haven’t been able to bring myself to watch the Sobble episode yet but I read it in the episode review).

It’s just that his mistakes aren’t affecting him long term in any way till the more recent episodes and the Raboot arc was a mess, and that mess hasn’t paid off since Raboot is just a background character these days.

The issue with Go is that we see inkling of development but that development usually Gous away as soon as the next episode so he doesn’t face any problems for longer than an episode.

It's hard for me to take the whole Goh throwing all of his Pokeballs as a sign that his mistakes aren't affecting him long term. Doing that with Dewgong also came off as being a bit more comical given Goh's facial expressions. Since he doesn't seem to carry a lot of Pokemon on him besides Raboot frequently, he also most likely didn't have a Pokemon on him that could have battled Dewgong. Besides that, it still felt more like they wanted to make sure Goh wouldn't be able to capture more Pokemon while they were on the island so that Ash bonding and then catching his own Dragonite could standout more than if Goh was also able to capture the whole Dratini evolution line in the same episode. Not to mention Goh having other Pokemon on hand might have prevented from Dragonite saving Ash near the end as well.

Maybe this will be more apparent or a bigger issue in later episodes, but I just couldn't really take this as an indication that Goh doesn't develop or learn from his mistakes, especially when I imagine he still isn't that into battling Pokemon. The context of the Dewgong situation just doesn't make me think it's a big deal that he keeps throwing Pokeballs after it doesn't work the first time. While I can't judge stuff like the Raboot arc or Sobble's capture, the scenes I've seen don't give off a bad impression, but it probably also helps that I wasn't that upset over the notion of Goh capturing Sobble in the first place either.
 
It's hard for me to take the whole Goh throwing all of his Pokeballs as a sign that his mistakes aren't affecting him long term. Doing that with Dewgong also came off as being a bit more comical given Goh's facial expressions. Since he doesn't seem to carry a lot of Pokemon on him besides Raboot frequently, he also most likely didn't have a Pokemon on him that could have battled Dewgong
I’m not saying that it cannot or shouldn’t happen in the Dewgong episode, I’m saying that since these methods resulted in him not being able to capture Dragonite, he should logically be more careful with his Pokeballs in the next episode, which he isn’t. My point is that the Dewgong incident doesn’t result in him gaining knowledge that pointlessly throwing Pokeballs can lead to repercussions. He’s perfectly fine throwing Pokeballs right in the next episode.

Go throwing all his Pokeballs in the Dewgong issue isn’t the sole issue- everyone makes mistakes. The issue is that after that he isn’t any more careful with his captures.
 
I’m not saying that it cannot or shouldn’t happen in the Dewgong episode, I’m saying that since these methods resulted in him not being able to capture Dragonite, he should logically be more careful with his Pokeballs in the next episode, which he isn’t. My point is that the Dewgong incident doesn’t result in him gaining knowledge that pointlessly throwing Pokeballs can lead to repercussions. He’s perfectly fine throwing Pokeballs right in the next episode.

Go throwing all his Pokeballs in the Dewgong issue isn’t the sole issue- everyone makes mistakes. The issue is that after that he isn’t any more careful with his captures.

I get what you're trying to say but we could easily list hundreds of other instances of when a character has made a mistake and was supposed to learn their lesson only for them to go back to making similar mistakes and not actually learning anything from previous experiences. So to me that whole Goh throwing Pokeballs at random thing seems more like a nit pick than a genuine critique.
 
I’m not saying that it cannot or shouldn’t happen in the Dewgong episode, I’m saying that since these methods resulted in him not being able to capture Dragonite, he should logically be more careful with his Pokeballs in the next episode, which he isn’t. My point is that the Dewgong incident doesn’t result in him gaining knowledge that pointlessly throwing Pokeballs can lead to repercussions. He’s perfectly fine throwing Pokeballs right in the next episode.

Go throwing all his Pokeballs in the Dewgong issue isn’t the sole issue- everyone makes mistakes. The issue is that after that he isn’t any more careful with his captures.

While I understand your point, it doesn't really feel like a genuine flaw or mistake. This isn't really exclusive to Goh either since I remember at least a few times where Ash and his friends wasted Beast Balls when trying to capture Ultra Beasts in pretty similar manners. The main cast never has a problem with getting more Pokeballs, so it isn't like they're extremely rare in-universe. Even if he misses a chance to get a Pokemon because he already ran out of them, he can potentially find another one since he's traveling around the world most of the time. The consequences of using up his Pokeballs are pretty minimal all things considered and it is still hard for me to really see it in that light anyway since it wasn't presented as a flaw per say. It was done primarily for plot reasons, as well as potentially to be a bit comical, as opposed to show that Goh was in the wrong for using up his Pokeballs. If it was more difficult for the main cast to get Pokeballs, then I think that would be a different story. As it is, I think that's reading too much into Goh's behavior in order to find more flaws.
 
I liked JN030 more than I thought I would. My favorite parts were:
  • Delia and Ash singing Delia's song to Pikachu in their respective beds; tears started to well up a bit when Ash did it, my goodness.
  • Go actively training and battling with his Pokemon. Also, it looks like Sobble will be onscreen as much as Raboot, which makes me feel a bit better about its capture.
  • Koharu, although offscreen, being the one to call Ash out on his oblivious behavior; yay for continuity and character development.
I had discussed the episode with someone and while we agreed that both Ash & Pikachu were acting out of character to varying degrees, my friend did bring up a point regarding relationships in life. That if your relationship with someone is a long-lasting and fully cemented/unbreakable one, then one may not put as much effort into it than they would with a new relationship; in other words, you may grow complacent with a relationship you don't have to work as hard to keep, so to speak (because of the mutual love or affection that already exists). Riolu is a relatively new Pokemon and partner that Ash has just obtained, while Ash's bond with Pikachu is the most significant in the series given everything they've experienced together; it's clearly developed. So, perhaps Ash felt that confident in his relationship with Pikachu that he'd figure, whether consciously or subconsciously, it wouldn't mind the time he was investing with Riolu (who was explicitly clamoring for it). That isn't to defend his actions as being a Pokemon Trainer means constantly being aware of the needs your Pokemon; however, it does make you wonder if Ash was being more "human" than out-of-character.
 
I don't really like the two AU movies. Especially The Power of Us was pretty disappointing to me. Which is strange because it has a Ghibli-like/slice of life quality to it, which I usually like. And I actually do appreciate that they did something different instead of the usual Pokémon movie formula. What both movies ended up being just did not satisfy me somehow.
 
I don't really like the two AU movies. Especially The Power of Us was pretty disappointing to me. Which is strange because it has a Ghibli-like/slice of life quality to it, which I usually like. And I actually do appreciate that they did something different instead of the usual Pokémon movie formula. What both movies ended up being just did not satisfy me somehow.

Yes, I even like the concept but when they talked about AU I expected an Ash with Pokémon different from the ones he has in the anime (like Tyranitar cof cof) and that would be much more successful in competitions, I even like the first film but the second is really difficult, it seems like a lost opportunity to change more things being an AU in my opinion.

Speaking about opinion:

.Go is ok, although I recognize that it is annoying that he can capture pokemons easy when the anime in the past has shown that this was not so easy, I do not understand why so much hatred for the character,
.Ash don't need to have any starters of the regions always,
.Misty should have captured Totodile instead of Ash,
.Ash should have left the protagonist position a long time ago, probably in DP,
.The anime characters should be at least 13 years old, I do not feel comfortable when they say that everyone is 10 years old and in some episode they suddenly decide to talk about boyfriends / girlfriends, it is strange for me since I remember that they are 10 years old and it feels a bit...creepy and make me have a bad taste,
.They should have made Serena a childhood friend of Ash after he helped her, it would make more sense for her to fall in love with him if they even spoke in letters from time to time,
.Anyway, in the end I would prefer Ash to marry May or Dawn if they ever show the future of the characters instead of him marrying Misty or Serena,
.If Chloe doesn't want to be a trainer or participate in contests, it's ok for me too, in fact I think an interesting approach is that she might want to do something different from what we saw, like maybe following in her father's footsteps or being an observer, for example.
 
I don't really like the two AU movies. Especially The Power of Us was pretty disappointing to me. Which is strange because it has a Ghibli-like/slice of life quality to it, which I usually like. And I actually do appreciate that they did something different instead of the usual Pokémon movie formula. What both movies ended up being just did not satisfy me somehow.
I've kinda gotten tired of the AU movies and I'm just sitting here wishing they'd go back to movies that take place in the current canon and feature Ash's companions. We're on the 3rd AU movie now, with the 3rd SM era movie being a remake of the first movie. This already gives me the feeling that we're not gonna get a movie with Goh and Chloe.
 
Considering that Chloe doesn't get much screentime as it is, I don't have much faith that she'd get any meaningful role or screentime within a movie. Not to mention Goh being featured within a movie could be too controversial among fans at this point. Personally, I'm fine with the AU movies. I loved I Choose You and I really enjoyed The Power of Us. I haven't watched the Mewtwo remake yet though.
 
I feel like this is somewhat controversial considering the comments I've read, but I'm perfectly fine with starter Pokemon getting a good deal of focus and screen time in the anime. They're some of my favorite Pokemon (the base forms to be more precise) and I'm always happy to see them on screen. Doubly so when they actually do something instead of just being there. I'm still waiting for the writers to do something meaningful with Gou's Sobble. I'm happy that it's been showing up, but I'm waiting to see it do something important.
 
I'm still waiting for the writers to do something meaningful with Gou's Sobble. I'm happy that it's been showing up, but I'm waiting to see it do something important.

I think Sobble was caught at a weird time that made it so meaningful screen time would be an issue. First the episode after he was caught was dedicated to Koharu, then it was the Pikachu jealousy episode so the whole episode was dedicated to that, then it was a CoTD/Koharu (though I don’t get why Sobble didn’t leave with Goh).

I’m guessing that he’ll be with Goh all throughout next episode (the parts that aren’t flashbacks). I think his next “important” thing will probably be in the Flygon episode since he will probably battle it, though how he performs is to be seen.

They showed vague flashbacks of Sobble’s history in his capture episode so they definitely have some sort of backstory that will be fleshed out.
 
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