Rocketshipper
SOOOOONANSU!!
- Joined
- Jan 1, 2003
- Messages
- 1,010
- Reaction score
- 2
I'm back! I exist! Dang, its been forever since I posted anything. After the somewhat..."controversial" turn the Isshu league arc took and the IMO rather mediocre Episode N, I was about ready to give up on Pokemon altogether, and stopped watching after the 2nd Da! episode. But seeing as XY has turned out *amazing* so far (on episode 12 and working my way forward) I ended up going back and finishing all the BW episodes too. And I thought I might update my old filler percentages list for the recently finished 5th gen seasons! If everyone might recall, I previously posted a thread (seen here: http://bmgf.bulbagarden.net/f228/filler-percentages-saga-saga-71342/) that calculated the filler percentages of the first 4 generations of the Pokemon anime, and I recently did the same for gen 5, Best Wishes. Since the original thread is so old, and has 13 pages of comments, I thought I should just create a new thread. As before, my criteria for considering an episode "plot" was if it contained one or more of the following 6 things.
-Pokemon captures/releases/evolutions/trades
-events relating to gyms and gym leaders
-scenes where a character trains their pokemon to learn a new move or to significantly improve themselves in battle, such that the Pokemon's progress is visible in later episodes.
-events involving significant character development or background information that gets referenced later
-events the develop the rivalries between the main characters and their respective rivals
-episodes involving events, characters, or locations taken out of the games
episodes without these elements would be considered "filler". And again the number of fillers vs plot episodes I came up with is *approximate* because not everyone is going to fully agree on what should or shouldn't be plot and filler, and I could have over-looked something too. BW also ended up with the unique situation of several episodes being written as foreshadowing to the Plasma vs TR special which then ended up being ret-conned out of existence. So are those episodes still plot or should they be considered filler now? discuss, have fun! So here we go.
Best Wishes season 1: Badge Quest: 84 episodes, Approx. 11 filler, Approx. 13% filler
List:
“Scare at the Litwick Mansion!”
“Cottonee in Love!”
“A UFO for Elgyem!”
“Archeops In The Modern World!”
“Beheeyem, Duosion, and the Dream Thief!”
“The Beartic Mountain Feud!”
“The Four Seasons of Sawsbuck!”
“Scraggy and the Demanding Gothita!”
“Baffling the Bouffalant!”
“A Restoration Confrontation! Part 1”
“A Restoration Confrontation! Part 2”
Notes: "Saving Darmanitan From the Bell!" is definitely mostly filler, but it also advances the TR meteor plot, and even though the Plasma vs Rocket special got wiped out, that plot still advances in several other episodes that are definitely NOT filler, so I think it would be a little weird to cut a chunk out of it. Same with the Nacrene museum episode, which also introduced the gym leader. "The Lost World of Gothitelle!" established Satoshi actively switching his party, and had him switch Pidove back into his party, but could be considered filler depending on how important you think that would really be. I struggled with whether or not to include the Archeops and Tirtouga episodes as filler. The Archeops episode set up the later Tirtouga episodes, which were also a more involved two part story, but in the end I thought that those episodes still didn;t really change or advance anything, so I ended up counting them as filler. I originally had the Maractus episode on the filler list, but after thinking about it I decided that it fit with the 6th criteria; its pretty much the only episode in the series that dealt with the game mechanic of Pokemon musicals.
Best Wishes Season 2: Junior Cup and the Isshu League: 24 episodes, Approx. 2 filler, Approx. 8% filler
list:
“The Mystery of the Missing Cubchoo!”
“A Surface to Air Tag Battle Team!”
Episode N: 14 episodes: approx. 2 filler, approx. 14% filler
list:
“The Light of Floccesy Ranch!”
“The Pokémon Harbor Patrol!”
Decolora Adventures: 20 episodes Approx. 8 fillers approx. 40% filler
list:
“Crowning the Scalchop King!”
“The Island of Illusions!”
“The Pirates of Decolore!”
“Butterfree and Me!”
“Searching for a Wish!”
“Capacia Island UFO!”
“Mystery on a Deserted Island!”
“Go, Go Gogoat!”
Notes: "Celebrating the Hero's Comet!" would definitely be filler too, but it is also the episode where Alexa reveals she has a Noivern for the first time. Was kind of unsure whether or not to include "Cilan and the Case of the Purrloin Witness!" as filler or not. Ash and Iris finally heard why Cilan hates Purloin but the audience didn't hear, which kind of makes it pointless, but then the episode got flashed back to in "Survival of the Striaton Gym!" which was plot, so I'm not sure. "Danger, Sweet as Honey!" would also be filler, if not for the fact that it is the episode that establishes there are multiple Porters, just like Joy and Jenny. But that might be such a minor tidbit of info that it could still be considered filler.
So in total...Best Wishes series: 142 episodes, Approx. 23 fillers, approx. 16% filler
Got to admit I was kind of surprised when I went through it all. I thought the series had a lot more filler originally than it actually ended up with. Best Wishes now has the honor of being the gen with the least amount of filler total. And yet...definitely my least favorite ^^.
-Pokemon captures/releases/evolutions/trades
-events relating to gyms and gym leaders
-scenes where a character trains their pokemon to learn a new move or to significantly improve themselves in battle, such that the Pokemon's progress is visible in later episodes.
-events involving significant character development or background information that gets referenced later
-events the develop the rivalries between the main characters and their respective rivals
-episodes involving events, characters, or locations taken out of the games
episodes without these elements would be considered "filler". And again the number of fillers vs plot episodes I came up with is *approximate* because not everyone is going to fully agree on what should or shouldn't be plot and filler, and I could have over-looked something too. BW also ended up with the unique situation of several episodes being written as foreshadowing to the Plasma vs TR special which then ended up being ret-conned out of existence. So are those episodes still plot or should they be considered filler now? discuss, have fun! So here we go.
Best Wishes season 1: Badge Quest: 84 episodes, Approx. 11 filler, Approx. 13% filler
List:
“Scare at the Litwick Mansion!”
“Cottonee in Love!”
“A UFO for Elgyem!”
“Archeops In The Modern World!”
“Beheeyem, Duosion, and the Dream Thief!”
“The Beartic Mountain Feud!”
“The Four Seasons of Sawsbuck!”
“Scraggy and the Demanding Gothita!”
“Baffling the Bouffalant!”
“A Restoration Confrontation! Part 1”
“A Restoration Confrontation! Part 2”
Notes: "Saving Darmanitan From the Bell!" is definitely mostly filler, but it also advances the TR meteor plot, and even though the Plasma vs Rocket special got wiped out, that plot still advances in several other episodes that are definitely NOT filler, so I think it would be a little weird to cut a chunk out of it. Same with the Nacrene museum episode, which also introduced the gym leader. "The Lost World of Gothitelle!" established Satoshi actively switching his party, and had him switch Pidove back into his party, but could be considered filler depending on how important you think that would really be. I struggled with whether or not to include the Archeops and Tirtouga episodes as filler. The Archeops episode set up the later Tirtouga episodes, which were also a more involved two part story, but in the end I thought that those episodes still didn;t really change or advance anything, so I ended up counting them as filler. I originally had the Maractus episode on the filler list, but after thinking about it I decided that it fit with the 6th criteria; its pretty much the only episode in the series that dealt with the game mechanic of Pokemon musicals.
Best Wishes Season 2: Junior Cup and the Isshu League: 24 episodes, Approx. 2 filler, Approx. 8% filler
list:
“The Mystery of the Missing Cubchoo!”
“A Surface to Air Tag Battle Team!”
Episode N: 14 episodes: approx. 2 filler, approx. 14% filler
list:
“The Light of Floccesy Ranch!”
“The Pokémon Harbor Patrol!”
Decolora Adventures: 20 episodes Approx. 8 fillers approx. 40% filler
list:
“Crowning the Scalchop King!”
“The Island of Illusions!”
“The Pirates of Decolore!”
“Butterfree and Me!”
“Searching for a Wish!”
“Capacia Island UFO!”
“Mystery on a Deserted Island!”
“Go, Go Gogoat!”
Notes: "Celebrating the Hero's Comet!" would definitely be filler too, but it is also the episode where Alexa reveals she has a Noivern for the first time. Was kind of unsure whether or not to include "Cilan and the Case of the Purrloin Witness!" as filler or not. Ash and Iris finally heard why Cilan hates Purloin but the audience didn't hear, which kind of makes it pointless, but then the episode got flashed back to in "Survival of the Striaton Gym!" which was plot, so I'm not sure. "Danger, Sweet as Honey!" would also be filler, if not for the fact that it is the episode that establishes there are multiple Porters, just like Joy and Jenny. But that might be such a minor tidbit of info that it could still be considered filler.
So in total...Best Wishes series: 142 episodes, Approx. 23 fillers, approx. 16% filler
Got to admit I was kind of surprised when I went through it all. I thought the series had a lot more filler originally than it actually ended up with. Best Wishes now has the honor of being the gen with the least amount of filler total. And yet...definitely my least favorite ^^.