Controversial opinions

[Jewel the Quaxly]

Actually, speaking of the Orange Islands, OS-OI really strikes me as the most underrated era of the anime. I don't think the only thing OS has to go for it is nostalgia, and OI is more than just "filler islands" to me. Even the movies are better done than the likes of, say, every movie after Lucario and the Mystery of Mew and before The Power of Us.

This, to me, is largely because of the stories told. Ash is a normal ten year old kid in OS-OI, where there isn't anything special about him other than the fact that he's the protagonist and has a love of pokemon. He's very relatable here and actually grows as a character. Misty has different sides to her, that are shown as the series goes on, as she shows a more motherly side to her when Togepi shows up and forms close bonds with Brock and Tracey, and becomes closer friends with Ash. Hell, she even gains the mutual respect of Jessie and takes the initiative to work together with Team Rocket during the St. Anne arc. Brock is a very sympathetic character with his backstory and has a positive effect on Ash, and the dynamic he brings to the OG trio makes it really well rounded: you have the hot headed protagonist, the unpredictable and fiery girl, and the cool big bro. Pikachu grows as a character as well, Charizard has a really nice story, Bulbasaur and Squirtle's backstories are incredibly unique, Pidgeot's story helps close up the question of whatever happened to that Spearow from Episode 1 and helped assist with the world-building, and Butterfree's story was short but sweet. Jessie, James, and Meowth are sympathetic villains who have a unique dynamic with the main characters, and adds on to the nuance of the cast.

Had OS-OI had a better sense of direction and writing, I think the stories presented here would've really been much more impactful. It already is, in my opinion, but the amount of sheer potential in these stories compared to stories afterward is overwhelming to me.

 

[DankOverlord]

Actually, speaking of the Orange Islands, OS-OI really strikes me as the most underrated era of the anime. I don't think the only thing OS has to go for it is nostalgia, and OI is more than just "filler islands" to me. Even the movies are better done than the likes of, say, every movie after Lucario and the Mystery of Mew and before The Power of Us.

This, to me, is largely because of the stories told. Ash is a normal ten year old kid in OS-OI, where there isn't anything special about him other than the fact that he's the protagonist and has a love of pokemon. He's very relatable here and actually grows as a character. Misty has different sides to her, that are shown as the series goes on, as she shows a more motherly side to her when Togepi shows up and forms close bonds with Brock and Tracey, and becomes closer friends with Ash. Hell, she even gains the mutual respect of Jessie and takes the initiative to work together with Team Rocket during the St. Anne arc. Brock is a very sympathetic character with his backstory and has a positive effect on Ash, and the dynamic he brings to the OG trio makes it really well rounded: you have the hot headed protagonist, the unpredictable and fiery girl, and the cool big bro. Pikachu grows as a character as well, Charizard has a really nice story, Bulbasaur and Squirtle's backstories are incredibly unique, Pidgeot's story helps close up the question of whatever happened to that Spearow from Episode 1 and helped assist with the world-building, and Butterfree's story was short but sweet. Jessie, James, and Meowth are sympathetic villains who have a unique dynamic with the main characters, and adds on to the nuance of the cast.

Had OS-OI had a better sense of direction and writing, I think the stories presented here would've really been much more impactful. It already is, in my opinion, but the amount of sheer potential in these stories compared to stories afterward is overwhelming to me.

Yeah, OS-OI had its flaws and I can't frankly come to like it over DP/SM but it was a pretty good series during its runtime and it's a shame that creative differences caused a lot of hiccups in the development of it

 

[Rainbow-Rain]

When are people going to ever learn that Power levels are a Meme in the Anime?

Been that way since Unova

Ash's Main Pokemon lost to a Snivy, a Panpour, and a newly evolved Lucario

And this AFTER the Sinnoh League where it tied against a freaking Latios

An untrained Cinderace can tanks hits from Mewtwo better than Pikachu can apparently


Who's to say none of the Alola Trainers are on Alain's level? Lmao

 

[FluffleFi]

As an adult, I think I liked it more when Ash was just a ten-year-old with a passion for Pokemon and training. He had some common protagonists tropes on him, but he was also snarky and immature like a lot of kids. Nowadays he's been the chosen one, he has aura(which they've done jack-squat with), he got a kiss from the girl after saving the world in Kalos, and with Greninja he's got this special form unique to him. OS Ash isn't anything super special(which I believe was kind of the point)but he was a lot more charming than his current self, in my opinion.

Who's to say none of the Alola Trainers are on Alain's level? Lmao

I dunno about anyone else, but I could see Kukui being on the same level or above Alain. Incineroar was taking out opponents left and right, even effortlessly took on a Mega-Aggron if I remember correctly.

 

[DankOverlord]

I dunno about anyone else, but I could see Kukui being on the same level or above Alain. Incineroar was taking out opponents left and right, even effortlessly took on a Mega-Aggron if I remember correctly.

Also was able to clown Melmetal who was a pretty impressive mon on its own right even against that Double Iron Bash. That Incineroar was real strong

 

[Daren]

Actually, speaking of the Orange Islands, OS-OI really strikes me as the most underrated era of the anime. I don't think the only thing OS has to go for it is nostalgia, and OI is more than just "filler islands" to me.

The dismissal of the Orange Islands as filler is just strange.
Back in that era the term seemed to originate to describe anime scenes that weren't from the manga they were adapted from (it got hugely popular in the Dragon Ball fandom, partly because a lot of the "filler" scenes in DBZ either had plot holes or caused them eventually).

That's not true here, though, because important story developments happen in the Orange Islands; Charizard grows to respect Ash again, Snorlax is caught, Ash manages to recover from his failure against Richie and defeat Drake.

Honestly it feels now like people were just copying something from another fandom (not in the original source=doesn't count/bad) without really understanding it and it ended up sticking.

 

[J Bouken]

As an adult, I think I liked it more when Ash was just a ten-year-old with a passion for Pokemon and training. He had some common protagonists tropes on him, but he was also snarky and immature like a lot of kids. Nowadays he's been the chosen one, he has aura(which they've done jack-squat with), he got a kiss from the girl after saving the world in Kalos, and with Greninja he's got this special form unique to him. OS Ash isn't anything super special(which I believe was kind of the point)but he was a lot more charming than his current self, in my opinion.

I feel this. I'm old enough now to be Ash's father so I'm well beyond the point of living vicariously through his heroics. Nowadays I just want to root for him in battles and enjoy him living his best life.

But I respect the fact they want to tell different stories these days. Ash-Greninja and whoever his girlfriend ends up being aren't my thing but people like them.

 

[cricketlaxwolvesbandy]

So Ash’s Incineroar>Ash Greninja confirmed. I knew Ash’s Greninja was overrated.

Also what OS suffered from was the gym battles or lack of development from most of Ash’s Pokemon. The development from Pikachu, Butterfree, and Charizard was superb in my opinion and can only be surpassed by Infernape and Lycanroc.

 

[Jewel the Quaxly]

the gym battles

I'd say that the gym badges were an issue to the audience, but I don't see much of a problem with them writing wise. They added on to the unique world being built and each badge was won through different means. Not to mention the nuance it added to Ash's character arc-if the gym badges were actually earned, it would imply that Ash already knew what he was doing. Truth be told, he didn't. Hence why he had "help" from Misty and Brock during the league and another reason why he lost Kanto. It's not perfect, but I don't consider the gym battles to be what OS suffered from. Rather, I think they suffered more from a lack of proper direction in a lot of areas, hence the existence of Early Installment Weirdness.

 

[Unireon]

I also don't get why to label that entire Arc as filler.

Since we didn't have a manga to compare, I personally prefer faithfully adaptations, the term changed its meaning.

Nowadays, I consider Journeys to be the Full-filler series. Either that or a bad written fic.

 

[Jewel the Quaxly]

I also don't get why to label an entire Arc as filler.

I don't get why you label an entire series as filler either...

 

[Hidden Mew]

I do remember when the Kalos league was going on people were already acting bitter if Ash won that league. People were saying, “Ash shouldn’t win a league without using old Pokémon” or “AshGreninja is a cheap way to win a league” or “XY has no continuity with past seasons this is a terrible time to win a league” etc.

So yeah. Even if Ash had won the Kalos league, you would have seen the usual condescending and pessimistic posts with people hating Ash’s win there for the reasons I listed above just like you see people do with the Alola league.

Some people can just never be happy, I guess.

I remember those reasons came up to explain why people were happy that he didn't win, especially with not using his older Pokemon or XY having such little continuity with previous series, so that definitely would have happened if he did win the Kalos League. Truth be told, I don't think Ash winning would have improved the Kalos League as a whole for me. It was far too rushed. They skipped too many of Ash's battles to make him winning it more satisfying. This is also one reason why I didn't mind that Dawn didn't win the Sinnoh Grand Festival either. I just wanted Alain to lose more than I wanted Ash to win.

When are people going to ever learn that Power levels are a Meme in the Anime?

Been that way since Unova

Ash's Main Pokemon lost to a Snivy, a Panpour, and a newly evolved Lucario

And this AFTER the Sinnoh League where it tied against a freaking Latios

An untrained Cinderace can tanks hits from Mewtwo better than Pikachu can apparently


Who's to say none of the Alola Trainers are on Alain's level? Lmao

Considering that almost all of the trainers in the Alola League weren't battle active and most only had one or two Pokemon on them, I can't really see how any of them would be on Alain's level. None of them were presented as so ridiculously overpowered and broken with their teams. The closest might be Kukui, but even all the hype with his Incineroar didn't make it feel like Mega Charizard X 2.0 either.

I wouldn't say that the Alola League doesn't count or that it isn't a real League. People have been doing that with the Orange Islands for decades and I don't want to do that with the Alola League. But the lack of an entry requirement, mostly one-on-one battles and few of the trainers being particularly strong really makes winning it less impressive than it should be. Winning a tournament open to everyone isn't really on the same thing as winning a tournament that only select strong trainers can enter. Being the Alola League Champion isn't nothing, but it isn't amazing either.

 

[Unireon]

I don't get why you label an entire series as filler either...

I corrected myself.

It is laden with rushed, wasted or mishandled plots.
I can go further as declaring that Journeys is not canon for me.
The anime entered an hiatus after SM.

 

[J Bouken]

Kanto's gym badges were intended to reward Ash for being a good person, rather than a good trainer. People complain all the time he didn't legitimately earn half his badges, but Kanto didn't actually forget about this fact as his lack of skill as a trainer ultimately ended in his defeat against Ritchie.

Ash's character arc was really interesting because although he had a lot of determination and guts, he was kinda lazy and unwilling to work for his success. He took shortcuts to strength, neglected training his own Pokemon (especially Muk and Krabby), and staunchly believed in his own hype. It gives the impression of someone who's actually very insecure about their ability. Ash was always on the back foot defending himself but didn't have any solid foundation for confidence, so anything he said was hot air. Gary being so far ahead of him only reinforced this behaviour because he couldn't face the fact Gary was a much better trainer.

Yet he wasn't hopeless because we knew he cared a lot about his Pokemon. Orange Islands teaches him the importance of that care, and of the need to understands the personalities and motivations of his Pokemon if he wants to be a good trainer. Charizard was symbolic of this. He disobeyed Ash because Ash didn't understand his fierce need to prove himself (since he was abandoned and all). Once Ash finally understood Charizard's behaviour, and they both wanted the same thing, Charizard started listening to him.

So yeah, it makes me sad when Kanto Ash is readily dismissed because he wasn't a good trainer and that a sizeable hatedom apparently grew out of that.

 

[Ghost Diplocaulus]

It partly has to do with people not seeing the series after the OS (hence why there's still the ridiculous stigma that Ash "releases" his strongest Pokemon and barely earns any badges when neither statement has been true ever besides the first league and only if you stretch Butterfree/Pidgeot/Lapras to be his strongest mons). And the utter toxic fandom of Red that loved to make the same shitty meme over and over with the first part furthening the idiotic comparisons that only got worse once Origins came out and people shilled the hell out of that short and praised Red even though his strategizing was godawful and the special was Charizard shilling

What makes this even worse is that Origins is guilty of a lot of the same faults that people spent ages berating the anime for doing, namely the disregard for the type chart: the rematch against Giovanni is probably the clearest example of this, what with his Rhyhorn effortlessly taking out Pokemon of Red's that it either has massive weaknesses against (Victreebel, Kabutops, Hitmonlee), or with attacks they should be resistant against (the Thunderbolt OHKO on Jolteon), and Giovanni swept through 5 of Red's Pokemon using only his Rhyhorn and the vast majority of them never even managed to land a single hit on it. Keep in mind that not only has Ash never performed anywhere near this badly in a battle (the closest example is maybe the Gym Battle against Roxie, and even then none of Ash's Pokemon were oneshotted and they all dealt at least some damage against Roxie's, meaning that in the end all of them pulled their weight and made some actual contribution to Ash's win, unlike Red's team against Giovanni's where Hitmonlee was the only one besides Charizard to not be death fodder solely by virtue of it managing to draw against Rhyhorn. Yes, draw, not win despite it being a fully evolved Pokemon going up against an unevolved one with a type disadvantage. Arceus forbid anyone besides the flying lizard gets any real glory, I guess :/), but every time Ash and his Pokemon fail at the slightest thing the kid gets mocked, laughed at, scorned, and ridiculed for it sometimes for months or even years on end.

Origins Red on the other hand gets a tremendous amount of leeway from fans with mountains of excuses like: "Giovanni is just SUPER strong and skilled and OP!" nevermind that there isn't any real proof of Giovanni's strength beyond him nearly wiping the floor with Red, and since Red barely seems to show any real improvement throughout Origins besides getting a better grasp of the type chart (something that never works out for him anyway because Charizard will be the one to take every win regardless of if it has the type advantage or not), it could just as easily be argued that Red is just weak; or "This isn't the games, it's an animated adaptation, so the type chart doesn't apply!" nevermind that not only is Origins's main selling point supposed to be its greater faithfulness to the games (highlighted by the higher abundance of OHKOs compared to the main anime and the fact that the battle screens show freaking HP bars of all things), but this very same excuse is nearly always dismissed for the main anime itself despite the fact that not only is it a deliberately looser adaptation, but the fact that OHKOs are rarer ironically arguably makes it easier to buy it when a Pokemon is taken out by a resisted hit, since one could very easily justify it by that Pokemon already having taken enough damage for the resisted hit to just barely finish it off; or even "It's Red's Pokemon's fault for being weak, not Red himself!" which is easily my least favorite excuse because, well... whose job is it to train those Pokemon in the first place, again?

Honestly, the monumental double standards that the fandom is willing to apply between how Ash is percieved vs how Red is percieved just so we can pretend that the latter is always the "better and more badass" one is beyond irritating.

 

[Daren]

It's funny. When Origins launched I read glowing reviews that were 70% about how Red is a more intelligent trainer than Ash.

Then I see a clip of him sending a Jolteon to fight a Rhyhorn. -1.
The Jolteon gets OHKO by an electric attack. From a Rhyhorn. -2. -3 because I love Jolteon.
He loses four more Pokémon to this Rhyhorn. -4.

Look, if the Gym Leader's first Pokémon destroys most of your party you are not a god-tier trainer.

Honestly, the monumental double standards that the fandom is willing to apply between how Ash is percieved vs how Red just so we can pretend that the latter is always the "better and more badass" one is beyond irritating.

Honestly, the Red worship is weird because he's not that impressive. Every other Pokémon protagonist exceeds his accomplishments, and that's me being as nice as possible because if you open it up to protagonists of other RPGs he falls even farther behind the various world-savers.

I dunno, I think Pokémon R/B was a lot of people's first RPG (or at least first game where the main character is something of a player insert) so maybe Red stood out more? I'd already played games like that beforehand so it wouldn't have the same effect.

 

[FluffleFi]

Like I said once before I can't stand Red. GameFrak made me dislike him cause they keep trying to hype him up, but the fandom treats him like a godly figure and it gave me an intense dislike for the guy. As for Team Rocket, they'd be a terrifying force in real life, but in terms of the pokemon world? Not really; Ghetsis, through years of planning, managed to raise a boy who could awaken one of the legendary beasts, then the man himself managed to obtain Kyurem in the squeal game. Cyrus nearly had both Dialga and Palkia before Giratina stepped in, Maxie and Archie managed to awaken their beasts as well. So what did TR accomplish? Not much, they took over Silph Co and were beaten, then in Johto they had this mysterious signal that forced Pokemon to evolve and finally they took over the radio tower..and that's about it. Unless you wanna put Rainbow Rocket with regular TR, then TR didn't really do too much.

 

[Jewel the Quaxly]

I read glowing reviews that were 70% about how Red is a more intelligent trainer than Ash.

Even worse are the reviews that Red is more developed than Ash. It being a four episode special is not an excuse: I've never seen such crappy writing before and I've even seen CotD's better developed than Red.

 

[Enzo]

Here's a spicy one, brace yourselves

Ash is infinitely better than Red in nearly every aspect and I have a feeling most people that say the opposite only do so not because they like Red but actually because they feel justified in shitting on Ash's head.

Red wasn't/isn't ever held to the same standarts people hold Ash on to and if he did what Red did people would obliterate him. Ghost put that in words in a way I could never.

 

[LuxrayOfTheWild]

Red to me is overrated. He's always hyped up as this badass trainer who's greater than everyone else. People especially compare him to Ash and honestly, I like Ash a lot more. At least Ash has a personality. To me, Red's personality is very bland and he's portrayed as the silent protagonist, so it doesn't help at all.