Controversial opinions

[LuxrayOfTheWild]

So after tonight's biggest spoiler can we ALL NOW AGREE that Goh is just being handed things to him without doing ANYTHING to earn them?

Wait, what spoiler did I miss? Is Drizzile evolving?

Edit: YEP...It looks like they are rushing through YET AGAIN with Drizzile. Dear Arceus they have handled this Pokemon so poorly, and I am extremely disappointed because I liked the idea of Drizzile being upset he didn't evolve into an Inteleon right away, though they never did anything to show him coping with those feelings and regain the motivation to start training. It all happened off screen it seems, judging by the summary. Then again also, this is pretty much the standard for Journeys: Rushing through any development, so I'm not that surprised.

 

[Rainbow-Rain]

Wait, what spoiler did I miss? Is Drizzile evolving?

Goh is the biggest writer's pet I've ever seen in my life

Spoiler

https://twitter.com/karubiimunohito/status/1425639714904629249?s=19

 

[Unireon]

Jimereon is also one.
Given how sulking until the Cosmos grants your wish is its approach.

What kind of message is that.....?

 

[Eitarou]

And even more so with the sibling dynamic, it’s super forced. Not only is it never actually developed but really anything of this ‘sibling dynamic’ is basically a background event that has no baring on anything. At that point, it’s another case of ‘tell don’t show’ as the writers call it as such without them ever really feeling like they possess that. We’ve had numerous dynamics with Pokémon in the past whether it be best of friends like Bulbasaur and Squirtle, crush in the case of Buneary and Pikachu, team mom such as the case with Snivy towards the other Unova Pokémon or sibling such as with Axew and Scraggy and Hawlucha and Noivern but they were well established and could be seen within the Pokémon’s character, interactions together and story around them. With the Galar starters, calling their dynamic a sibling dynamic just rings hollow and unearned by comparison.

So we're going to ignore the many scenes where Cinderace acted like a big bro to Goh's Pokemon, including the two episodes explicitly dedicated to it.

 

[Kurolegacy]

So we're going to ignore the many scenes where Cinderace acted like a big bro to Goh's Pokemon, including the two episodes explicitly dedicated to it.

As I had said, these ‘big bro’ scenes were literally background elements that if you blink you miss. These weren’t things that were presented with any kind of beginning to the narrative in which the characters actually establish said relationship, it just happened and suddenly we’re supposed to just buy that they hold this relationship. Also, what 2 episodes were dedicated to this relationship exactly?

 

[Rainbow-Rain]

Jimereon is also one.
Given how sulking until the Cosmos grants your wish is its approach.

What kind of message is that.....?

No it isn't.

If it was they would've actually given it screentime. If anything Drizzile is the opposite of a writers pet. They shoved him off to the side because they didn't want to deal with him.

They made it evolve for GOH'S benefit
(As you can see in that Manga panel Inteleon seems to be protecting Goh from something)

They didn't care about Drizzile. They cared about giving Goh 3 fully evolved starters

 

[Hidden Mew]

No it isn't.

If it was they would've actually given it screentime. If anything Drizzile is the opposite of a writers pet. They shoved him off to the side because they didn't want to deal with him.

They made it evolve for GOH'S benefit
(As you can see in that Manga panel Inteleon seems to be protecting Goh from something)

They didn't care about Drizzile. They cared about giving Goh 3 fully evolved starters

I can understand being upset over Drizzle evolving so soon, but it might be a bit early to claim that they made it evolve for Goh's benefit. One manga panel isn't really enough to confirm what exactly caused Drizzle to evolve.

 

[Eitarou]

Please stop blaming improper treatment on the writers "hating" someone. Everyone's suffered in some fashion in that regard.

 

[CyberMonsterTrainer]

So after tonight's biggest spoiler bomb can we ALL NOW AGREE that Goh is just being handed things to him without doing ANYTHING to earn them?

Absolutely. I've been saying that since the Suicune episode. I had my suspicions when Scorebunny quickly evolved into Raboot, but I thought I was just being paranoid.

 

[Rockapheller]

Goh's Pokémon evolving doesn't really "benefit" Goh in ways that some of y'all make it out to be, in my opinion. Evolution doesn't mean much to Goh since he is not even a battler. The writers just make plots revolving around Pokémon evolutions these days rather than going for longer arcs for the sake of the recent series being handled that way, similar to how Ash was mostly given fully evolved Pokémon since start of this series.

 

[Eitarou]

All an evolution does is add a single new entry to his Dex, which means little in a franchise with over 900 of them. What percent is Goh at by now?

 

[Ghost Diplocaulus]

I can understand being upset over Drizzle evolving so soon, but it might be a bit early to claim that they made it evolve for Goh's benefit. One manga panel isn't really enough to confirm what exactly caused Drizzle to evolve.

Yeah, I think anyone can agree that Drizzile's evolution into Inteleon is being poorly handled (in no small part because we literally didn't get to see the poor thing do anything in the Drizzile stage before it evolved again), but I doubt it has much of anything to do with wanting to give Goh a freebie or anything.

Honestly, I maintain what I said a while ago back when Sobble evolved: TPCi was clearly expecting Cinderace to be the fan-favorite and ended up missing the mark completely (at least in Japan, which is their primary market/target audience), so now they're speedrunning through Sobble's evolutions so there's an Inteleon in the main cast as soon as possible. All I can hope for now is that the basilisk-chameleon-spy will actually get some real screentime from now on, because the poor thing was not treated well at all...

 

[Hidden Mew]

Some of these reactions towards Drizzle's evolution already feel a bit overblown to me. Like I mentioned before, I can understand being upset over Drizzle evolving when it barely had any screentime from evolving the first time. But at the same time, it feels like a bit much to say that this confirms that Goh is a writer's pet, in large part because we don't know how it evolves yet. Admittedly, I can understand having doubts about the execution given how Journeys has handled most of the Pokemon and Drizzle in particular, but we still don't know how it will play out until the episode airs.

It comes off as an excuse to complain about Goh some more and treat him as the problem when this is really more of a problem of Journeys itself. If Pokemon get a focused episode, it's usually for their capture and/or evolution. While it's still not good for Drizzle to evolve without being featured more beforehand, it sadly isn't unusual for how Pokemon have been handled, such as with Ash's Farfetch'd barely getting much attention before they were building up to its evolution. Putting the blame on Goh here feels like kind of missing the forest for the trees here.

 

[Eitarou]

As I had said, these ‘big bro’ scenes were literally background elements that if you blink you miss.

Not everything needs to be shoved into the foreground, especially when they're just cute stuff that mainly exists to show personality traits.

And I specifically remember some scenes getting some focus, such as Raboot feeding Sobble.

Also, what 2 episodes were dedicated to this relationship exactly?

Four and twenty-two.

Scorbunny's entire relationship with the Nickit trio.

Raboot helping Lombre and his friends with the dance competition.

 

[Enzo]

All an evolution does is add a single new entry to his Dex, which means little in a franchise with over 900 of them. What percent is Goh at by now?

The way that Goh's goal works is that, whenever he gets a new entry, it's a victory, no matter how small. And no, this is not me talking, that's facts. It's literally what the canon says to us. Just take a look at that ''Kanto Bug Party'' ep and nearly every episode afterwards.

New Pokémon (be it by capture, evolution, trading, etc.) = New Dex Entry = One more name/species ticked off the list = Goal progression.

So yes, Goh benefits from any evolution his Pokémon achieves even if he doesn't raises a finger to help them achieve it. Goh is the type of character that wins at the end of the episode without even trying.

Honestly, I maintain what I said a while ago back when Sobble evolved: TPCi was clearly expecting Cinderace to be the fan-favorite and ended up missing the mark completely (at least in Japan, which is their primary market/target audience), so now they're speedrunning through Sobble's evolutions so there's an Inteleon in the main cast as soon as possible. All I can hope for now is that the basilisk-chameleon-spy will actually get some real screentime from now on, because the poor thing was not treated well at all...

I have been saying the same thing for months now. They clearly expected Cinderace to be the shillmon of the gen.

 

[Lightning Flame Blast]

I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and realised that I really miss how OS handled Pikachu’s battles.

Early on it was made clear that Pikachu was different from your average starter. The battle with Surge directly addressed that due to him being a small not fully evolved pokemon, he wasn’t very tough, couldn’t take hits and needed to battle more strategically than, say, Charizard with its brute force style. And while this trait had its hiccups, they were actually fairly consistent about it: Pikachu’s attacks were very powerful and dealt big damage, but most opponents he couldn’t outmaneuver or who did manage to get their hands on him beat him without much trouble, as shown with Blaine’s Magmar, Whitney’s Miltank, Harrison’s Sneasel, that Poliwrath that almost killed Charizard, etc.

Even his biggest performance in OS, the battle against Drake, highlighted these traits. He just barely managed to scrape by a battle of attrition against Ditto thanks to better conditioning and it was clear that he wouldn’t have stood a chance against Dragonite if not for the others wearing it down and for his quick thinking to avoid Hyper Beam.

It makes me sad that this very interesting dynamic was scrapped in favor of Pikachu becoming your average anime protagonist that gets thoroughly thrashed and then gets up and wins in one or two hits, a direct inversion of his original style. You can see this very clearly against opponents like Hala’s Hariyama, Roxie’s Garbodor, Alain’s Metagross and Trip’s Serperior, all showing him shrugging off brutal combos from the opponent and then defeating them with a couple powerful attacks. The biggest offender, IMO, is his battle against Hapu’s Mudsdale, where he tanked a bunch of super effective hits from his massive for and somehow shrugged off Tectonic Rage, before fighting back and winning with what was basically a Gigavolt Havoc OHKO.

@AnimeJewel246 has raised very valid arguments on how Pikachu’s character was watered down over the years, but I would argue his battling has suffered just as much. Even if he can still pull off creative strategies every now and then, one of the core aspects that made his fights good is long gone.

 

[Kurolegacy]

Not everything needs to be shoved into the foreground, especially when they're just cute stuff that mainly exists to show personality traits.

And I specifically remember some scenes getting some focus, such as Raboot feeding Sobble.



Four and twenty-two.

Scorbunny's entire relationship with the Nickit trio.

Raboot helping Lombre and his friends with the dance competition.

Considering that Pokémon are supposed to be actual characters in this show and not just cute objects, it kinda does matter especially if the writers are gonna try to make a claim of what a dynamic is. That’s just pure ‘tell don’t show’. Random background events isn’t characterization especially in the same series that has actually developed the relationships of Pokémon in the main cast. It’s even more jarring after a series like SM which showed a familial bond in spades.

As for those episodes, what exactly does either of those, which shows Scorbunny/Raboot’s dynamic with wild Pokémon have to do with the claim of a family bond with the Galar starters?

 

[Greninjaman]

I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and realised that I really miss how OS handled Pikachu’s battles.

Early on it was made clear that Pikachu was different from your average starter. The battle with Surge directly addressed that due to him being a small not fully evolved pokemon, he wasn’t very tough, couldn’t take hits and needed to battle more strategically than, say, Charizard with its brute force style. And while this trait had its hiccups, they were actually fairly consistent about it: Pikachu’s attacks were very powerful and dealt big damage, but most opponents he couldn’t outmaneuver or who did manage to get their hands on him beat him without much trouble, as shown with Blaine’s Magmar, Whitney’s Miltank, Harrison’s Sneasel, that Poliwrath that almost killed Charizard, etc.

Even his biggest performance in OS, the battle against Drake, highlighted these traits. He just barely managed to scrape by a battle of attrition against Ditto thanks to better conditioning and it was clear that he wouldn’t have stood a chance against Dragonite if not for the others wearing it down and for his quick thinking to avoid Hyper Beam.

It makes me sad that this very interesting dynamic was scrapped in favor of Pikachu becoming your average anime protagonist that gets thoroughly thrashed and then gets up and wins in one or two hits, a direct inversion of his original style. You can see this very clearly against opponents like Hala’s Hariyama, Roxie’s Garbodor, Alain’s Metagross and Trip’s Serperior, all showing him shrugging off brutal combos from the opponent and then defeating them with a couple powerful attacks. The biggest offender, IMO, is his battle against Hapu’s Mudsdale, where he tanked a bunch of super effective hits from his massive for and somehow shrugged off Tectonic Rage, before fighting back and winning with what was basically a Gigavolt Havoc OHKO.

@AnimeJewel246 has raised very valid arguments on how Pikachu’s character was watered down over the years, but I would argue his battling has suffered just as much. Even if he can still pull off creative strategies every now and then, one of the core aspects that made his fights good is long gone.

Pikachu has been around for 20 years, so this was bound to happen. If each region had its own protagonist, this would not be an issue.

 

[Hidden Mew]

What is your limit on Goh not being a writer pet like does he have to capture Arceus to make you admit it like what is your threshold . All that Drizzle had before evolution was episode 54 then its next episode it evolved got depressed and did nothing but slept through depression. While as a Sobble it was mainly a shoulder mon doing nothing. Like seriously Journeys should not be having this offscreen development problem 70+ episode into a series

Treating the idea of Goh as a writer's pet as a fact that I have to admit instead of a subjective take on the character doesn't sit well with me. It's one reason why the backlash to this feels overblown to me. I don't really see this as Goh getting another fully evolved starter on a silver plate for him so much as just Journeys continuing the same issue of barely giving most of its Pokemon any noteworthy attention unless they're being captured or evolving them. I've said multiple times that I don't think Drizzle evolving like this is a good thing, but it reflects more of an issue with the series itself instead of Goh himself being the problem.

If anything, rushing through another Galar starter evolution makes me wonder why the series has such a pacing problem or why they would choose to do this if Journeys is supposed to last for four years instead of three like some people have speculated before.

 

[Unireon]

If they wanted an Inteleon, there are other ways to write that instead of pulling this forced/rushed mess.

They are really so desperate that ends up affecting and hurting the series in both the short and long run.

This is gonna suck, or already it is.