Do you think Ash will get a Galar starter in PM2019?

[Kurolegacy]

It can put away its drum though.

That drum really harks towards a shortsightedness for when the Pokémon is animated. While it might “work” for a stationary model, it doesn’t really translate well animated where it’d be in near constant motion. Like, what’s supposed to happen, it pick up its drum every time that it needs to move around and set it down when it attacks? Or perhaps, it leaves it behind to move around, which in turn causes it to lose its main tool for attacking? I’m not against Pokémon using tools but Rillaboom just feels like they didn’t quite think it through.

 

[MarshiyanMisutaa]

Now I want Rillaboom to end up as a gag pokémon, who's unable to fight because it broke its back everytime it tries to move its drums. Simply hilarious.

 

[Daren]

Now I want Rillaboom to end up as a gag pokémon, who's unable to fight because it broke its back everytime it tries to move its drums. Simply hilarious.

Sounds like a TRio Pokémon.
*
You know at this point why not give the the TRio a starter? Break those barriers, Pokéani! Fly free like a bird!

 

[RileyXY1]

Really, how can you be so sure of that?

It’s not like Glalie, Gliscor and Torkoal were fan favorites. Ash isn’t entirely restricted to polls.

My point is, a lot of things can happen. Let’s keep an open mind.

Since SM, Ash has only caught either massive fan favorites or Pokemon that the writers want to promote.

 

[PkmnTrainerV]

Rillaboom is less popular than Grookey itself so it doesn't make sense for Ash to have one.

People said the same thing about Ash’s Litten and it fully evolved.

Now I want Rillaboom to end up as a gag pokémon, who's unable to fight because it broke its back everytime it tries to move its drums. Simply hilarious.

Real life gorillas are strong enough to life multiple drum sets without breaking their backs so I don’t know about that... and those drums are hollow.

 

[Lightning Flame Blast]

Since SM, Ash has only caught either massive fan favorites or Pokemon that the writers want to promote.

Yes...

Such as a starter.

It’s a moot point. We can’t state yes or no.

 

[PkmnTrainerV]

Since SM, Ash has only caught either massive fan favorites or Pokemon that the writers want to promote.

You’re changing goalposts.

 

[RileyXY1]

People said the same thing about Ash’s Litten and it fully evolved.

Real life gorillas are strong enough to life multiple drum sets without breaking their backs so I don’t know about that... and those drums are hollow.

Incineroar is quite popular. It even got into Smash Bros.

 

[Hidden Mew]

Since SM, Ash has only caught either massive fan favorites or Pokemon that the writers want to promote.

Then Grookey would count for at least the latter. They still want to promote Galar Pokemon at least to some degree in this series and Grookey is still one of the new starter Pokemon, so they'd want to promote it. The concerns about Rillaboom are a bit moot since they may not want Grookey to evolve. I'd love to see Ash with a Rillaboom and I think it would be cool if all three Galar starters were fully evolved by the end of the series, if only because that has never happened before with other sets of starters, but they could just keep it as a Grookey. Maybe it would be weirder in this case due to how many fully evolved Pokemon he has and Riolu is practically guaranteed to evolve by some point due to Lucario's popularity, but people were arguing that Ash couldn't get any unevolved Pokemon in this series until Riolu came along too.

 

[RileyXY1]

Then Grookey would count for at least the latter. They still want to promote Galar Pokemon at least to some degree in this series and Grookey is still one of the new starter Pokemon, so they'd want to promote it. The concerns about Rillaboom are a bit moot since they may not want Grookey to evolve. I'd love to see Ash with a Rillaboom and I think it would be cool if all three Galar starters were fully evolved by the end of the series, if only because that has never happened before with other sets of starters, but they could just keep it as a Grookey. Maybe it would be weirder in this case due to how many fully evolved Pokemon he has and Riolu is practically guaranteed to evolve by some point due to Lucario's popularity, but people were arguing that Ash couldn't get any unevolved Pokemon in this series until Riolu came along too.

All unevolved Pokemon he has caught in this saga so far have two stage lines. I don't know if they would have him just catch a fully evolved Rillaboom.

 

[MarshiyanMisutaa]

People said the same thing about Ash’s Litten and it fully evolved.

It's still only evolved at the very end of the series, prove their disinterest in it.

Incineroar is quite popular. It even got into Smash Bros.

Not really. It's added because Sakurai wanted a pro-wrestler character.

Sakurai on Smash Bros. Ultimate - why Incineroar was chosen and more

Following some of the excerpts that made it online yesterday, we now have the full column from Super Smash Bros. Ultimate director Masahiro Sakurai that was published in this week’s issue of Famitsu. We did cover quite a bit of this last night, but there are a few extra statements with Sakurai...

nintendoeverything.com

 

[Hidden Mew]

All unevolved Pokemon he has caught in this saga so far have two stage lines. I don't know if they would have him just catch a fully evolved Rillaboom.

That really doesn't make any sense. Just because the two unevolved Pokemon Ash has caught so far only have two stages doesn't mean that they won't want to give an unevolved three stage Pokemon. That's just reading in way too much with his current team. It's pretty similar to the whole notion that Ash won't get unevolved Pokemon after he caught Dragonite and Gengar, which was already debunked the moment he got a Pokemon egg. They definitely won't give him a fully evolved Rillaboom. They'd want to promote the base form of every starter before getting to their evolved forms, so they'd want to do something with Grookey before introducing any of its evolved forms.

It's still only evolved at the very end of the series, prove their disinterest in it.

To be fair, I don't think that necessarily means that they weren't interested in Incineroar. Torracat evolving after defeating its rival was really the most fitting time for that to happen and they probably didn't want to have that happen before the Alola League. It was still a shame to not have it battle as an Incineroar at least once, but I think that was more of a timing issue than anything else. Plus, Professor Kukui's Incineroar was featured pretty frequently throughout the series and was pretty much his signature Pokemon, so I don't think that they were uninterested in Incineroar at least.

 

[MarshiyanMisutaa]

Torracat evolving after defeating its rival was really the most fitting time for that to happen and they probably didn't want to have that happen before the Alola League.

Charizard and Infernape didn't have a problem with that.

 

[Hidden Mew]

Charizard and Infernape didn't have a problem with that.

They didn't have a specific rival like Torracat did though. Maybe you could argue that Paul's Electrive was Infernape's personal rival among Paul's Pokemon, but there wasn't really a major focus on Infernape trying to beat a specific Pokemon whenever Paul showed up. Ash and Infernape wanted to prove themselves to Paul. Torracat's rival was specifically Professor Kukui's Incineroar, so there wouldn't have been a more fitting place for it to evolve prior to their match.

 

[MarshiyanMisutaa]

They didn't have a specific rival like Torracat did though.

Ursaring was its personal rival, yet they dropped it for some reason. Still, I don't see any relationship between evolution and rivalry. Infernape doesn't need to evolve to prove himself to his old master. Torracat too doesn't have to evolve.

 

[MarshiyanMisutaa]

It didn't evolve to prove anything to anyone though

Exactly.

 

[Kurolegacy]

It didn't evolve to prove anything to anyone though. It already proved itself by beating Incineroar while being in the 2nd stage of the evolutionary line, said Incineroar as having been "undefeated" in the Alolan region... it 'grew up' after proving itself.

That subsequent fainting will always be comical though.

From some reading that I’ve seen with Ash’s Torracat evolving after defeating Kukui’s Incineroar lies in the wrestling theme of the line. It was essentially taking the belt from the champ, thus becoming the champ itself. So its evolution was basically symbolic.

 

[Hidden Mew]

Ursaring was its personal rival, yet they dropped it for some reason. Still, I don't see any relationship between evolution and rivalry. Infernape doesn't need to evolve to prove himself to his old master. Torracat too doesn't have to evolve.

I honestly don't remember Ursaring being a personal rival for Infernape, but part of that could be due to how frequently Ursaring lost over the course of DP. Infernape's evolutions weren't really out of a need to prove itself to Paul, or at least I didn't take it that way. I saw it more as just how much more effective Ash was in drawing Infernape's true power. Paul had it longer as a Chimchar and put it under abusive training to draw out its power, but he couldn't make it control Blaze, let alone evolve it, like Ash was ultimately able to do so. Torracat's evolution wasn't to prove itself against Incineroar either. It had already won by the time it evolved. Torracat already proved itself against its rival and evolved from winning the battle as opposed to evolving in order to win like we've seen in other series.

 

[Silktree]

I don't see why they'd give Go two starters before giving Ash even one... unless all of them are meant for Go. It will be a while before the next Galar visit, so why give Ash all these other Pokemon before an obvious choice that is supposedly more important? "They need to promote Grookey regardless" doesn't count as a reason because if Go can get two starters, he can get three. The seed has been planted.

 

[PkmnTrainerV]

Charizard and Infernape didn't have a problem with that.

Ursaring was its personal rival, yet they dropped it for some reason. Still, I don't see any relationship between evolution and rivalry. Infernape doesn't need to evolve to prove himself to his old master. Torracat too doesn't have to evolve.

There’s a difference since Incineroar was of the same evolutionary line as Litten. Two Incineroar brawling around was probably too similar for the animator’s so they left it for the end as a symbolic evolution. Charizard and Infernape didn’t have rivals the same species as themselves (Charicific valley doesn’t count since it’s a training place and Flint's Infernape isn’t a rival).

They featured an Incineroar at all times in the series. And, again there’s the wrestling angle with Incineroar which other users have pointed out.