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Preview JN022: Goodbye, Rabbifoot!

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Its a shame Meowth is absent as he could have helped translate to Go why Raboot is acting this way

Not that it isn't obvious already, Go just doesn't understand
Yeah, once Go understands, he's definitely going to act much differently. I hope this episode helps highlight that Go does care about his Pokemon, just doesn't always realize how his words or actions affect others due to his lack of social skills. Not caring and not understanding are two completely different things.
 
Seeing that cast list I now have a horrible feeling that this will suffer the same way "So Long, Sophocles!" did; the idea is genuinely heartwarming and the script well-written but the character you're supposed to sympathize with is so unlikable that it kills the episode. Hopefully that doesn't happen and the episode ends up being the push Gou needs to stop being so contemptible, but we'll see.
 
O
Seeing that cast list I now have a horrible feeling that this will suffer the same way "So Long, Sophocles!" did; the idea is genuinely heartwarming and the script well-written but the character you're supposed to sympathize with is so unlikable that it kills the episode. Hopefully that doesn't happen and the episode ends up being the push Gou needs to stop being so contemptible, but we'll see.

What made Sophocles unlikeable?

He was a little too generic for me to really connect with but I never would have thought people actually hated him.
 
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What made Sophocles unlikeable?

He was a little too generic for me to really connect with but I never would have thought people actually hated him.
I'm not sure if people disliked him to the extent they do Gou so much as they just didn't care about him, but either way So Long, Sophocles was much too early in the series for people to have connected with him and the episode portrayed how upset his friends were that he was leaving too well so the audience empathized with them instead of him, making him look like a jerk because we're seeing his friends suffering from his actions. The moment where he told the truth and his friends instantly forgave him was supposed to be heartwarming, but because of its placement in the series it came across more as a frustrating moment of karma Houndinism rather than the heartwarming affirmation of friendship it might have been if he'd had more likeable focus before it.
 
I'm not sure if people disliked him to the extent they do Gou so much as they just didn't care about him, but either way So Long, Sophocles was much too early in the series for people to have connected with him and the episode portrayed how upset his friends were that he was leaving too well so the audience empathized with them instead of him, making him look like a jerk because we're seeing his friends suffering from his actions. The moment where he told the truth and his friends instantly forgave him was supposed to be heartwarming, but because of its placement in the series it came across more as a frustrating moment of karma Houndinism rather than the heartwarming affirmation of friendship it might have been if he'd had more likeable focus before it.

It didn't help either that it was his first focus episode.
 

Is this the episode Gou finally realizes that he's pulling Pokemon out of their habitat without their consent and start leaving them alone if they don't show an interest? Then I just might be interested. I guess they're diving into Raboot's nature of helping other Pokemon, especially hungry ones, and how that selfless nature clashes with Gou's unwitting self-serving one.
 
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Ugh. This has "Clemont abandoning Chespin over a misunderstanding/disagreement" all over again. I like how we have this trope with several of Ash's friends where they initially jump to the extreme of choosing to release a Pokemon over a dilemma without making a substantial effort to solve it.
 
Title is a Bye Bye Pikachu ploy all over again. Means huge emotional bull crap but, doesn't actually release the Pokemon in question. Let's just hope he learns an actual lesson this episode and gains some real character development.
 
It didn't help either that it was his first focus episode.

Nah, Sophocles' first focus episode was SM006. Remember? The one where he and Ash were stuck in a mall, and then he proceeded to make Ash run into walls like the good little butt monkey he was in early SM.
 
The way Gou catches Pokémon is just the standard way of catching Pokémon, every other trainer does it, not just him, even Ash has done it.

We must have been watching different shows then, if that's your takeaway from all this. 'Cause, outside of a few moments in the OS, Pokémon catching was never shown to be this easy. Ash, as well as many other trainers, had to battle and weaken the Pokémon they wanted to catch or, if they didn't want to battle, at least bond with them and earn their trust.

In the past, it took an entire episode to catch one, single Pokémon and the trainer had to put in a lot of effort to get that one Pokémon. In the past, most trainers didn't go on mindless catching sprees and it was enough to just catch the bare necessity of six Pokémon. In the past, most trainers had to bond with their Pokémon and take the time to get to know them to see if they're compatible and, if they weren't, then they would try to get closer to them and to understand them better so as to become more compatible. Now, however, trainers like Go can just go and effortlessly catch dozens of Pokémon, who instantly love their new trainers despite having just met them, in a matter of seconds, by just throwing a ball, without having to even think or come up with a strategy, and the only roadblock they encounter is the possibility the the first ball won't automatically catch the Pokémon once in a blue moon, which is immediately solved by them chucking more balls at the Pokémon until it gets captured.
 
We must have been watching different shows then, if that's your takeaway from all this. 'Cause, outside of a few moments in the OS, Pokémon catching was never shown to be this easy. Ash, as well as many other trainers, had to battle and weaken the Pokémon they wanted to catch or, if they didn't want to battle, at least bond with them and earn their trust.

In the past, it took an entire episode to catch one, single Pokémon and the trainer had to put in a lot of effort to get that one Pokémon. In the past, most trainers didn't go on mindless catching sprees and it was enough to just catch the bare necessity of six Pokémon. In the past, most trainers had to bond with their Pokémon and take the time to get to know them to see if they're compatible and, if they weren't, then they would try to get closer to them and to understand them better so as to become more compatible. Now, however, trainers like Go can just go and effortlessly catch dozens of Pokémon, who instantly love their new trainers despite having just met them, in a matter of seconds, by just throwing a ball, without having to even think or come up with a strategy, and the only roadblock they encounter is the possibility the the first ball won't automatically catch the Pokémon once in a blue moon, which is immediately solved by them chucking more balls at the Pokémon until it gets captured.

tbh, Kalos was the last time Ash battled to get a Pokemon, and that was only with 2 out of 5 regionals (Fletchling and Hawlucha). Hawlucha's battle was pointless anyways, since it went with Ash despite it being a draw, so there wasn't even a need for battling.
 
tbh, Kalos was the last time Ash battled to get a Pokemon, and that was only with 2 out of 5 regionals (Fletchling and Hawlucha). Hawlucha's battle was pointless anyways, since it went with Ash despite it being a draw, so there wasn't even a need for battling.
You’re missing the point. Every single one of the captures you are listing had either battling effort or bonding beforehand. None of them were instantaneous.
 
We've had episodes in the past where a Pokemon provided to be a challenge to catch (Ash's Buizel when caught by Dawn), with sheer luck (May's Munchlax) or by accident (Misty's Psyduck). But in thoses cases, the Pokemon in question had already known the protagonists for enough time. Before Gou, the only time I recall a GO-style catch was way back in AG, when Jessie caught her Wurmple. And also, Dawn didn't bond with Pachirisu until after she caught him (twice), but the way Pachirisu was caught was still through traditional battling.

One can't expect the writers to ignore establishing rules to showcase Pokemon GO in the anime without consequences. Gou catches too many Pokemon without bonding with them, and has not yet had a failure (asides all three of his Wurmple evolving into Cascoon). It also somewhat breaks the established rules of catching in GO, where the catch rate is never 100% and you don't get a second chance if they run away. I would know, being a veteran player from Day 1.
 
We've had episodes in the past where a Pokemon provided to be a challenge to catch (Ash's Buizel when caught by Dawn), with sheer luck (May's Munchlax) or by accident (Misty's Psyduck). But in thoses cases, the Pokemon in question had already known the protagonists for enough time. Before Gou, the only time I recall a GO-style catch was way back in AG, when Jessie caught her Wurmple. And also, Dawn didn't bond with Pachirisu until after she caught him (twice), but the way Pachirisu was caught was still through traditional battling.
Actually, I believe the last time someone caught a pokemon without battling it or bonding with it, was in XY with Team Rocket. They both just threw pokeballs at Inkay and Pumpkaboo, most notably Jessie (at least James used the croissonts to lower Inkay's guard down). But even then, both of them actually bonded with their pokemon after their capture, unlike Gou.
 
It also somewhat breaks the established rules of catching in GO, where the catch rate is never 100% and you don't get a second chance if they run away. I would know, being a veteran player from Day 1.
This. Even if the writers are pulling all of this sh*t off just to mimic Pokemon Gou, they still fail miserably even at that.

I never caught a Pokemon with a single throw, not even the weakest ones with sub-200 CP, not even when I used best balls I had available. Neither have my father, who used to be a Go maniac who played the game for two straight years before quitting, not my siblings, litelary no one I know had Gou-like catching sprees. Pokemon Gou simply ommits the battle factor, but it doesn't instantly allow for a 100% catching ratio.

It's only weirder when you realize that the man behind both episode 6 and 20 is Shoji Yonemura, who was writing this show since OS. To his credit he also wrote ep 12 and 13, which introduced the long-awaited goall for Ash this series, one that's very good and interesting at that, but still, you'd think that somebody who was writing for this long would know better than to introduce elements game breaking for both Go and the anime.
 
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