Least Favorite Saga

[P0KEM0N]

Which saga from the anime is your least favorite?

 

[Adil]

I never understood the purpose of going to Orange Islands and the whole Orange League concept. No offence to anyone, but it looked pretty pointless to me. So, yes, "Pokémon: The Adventures in the Orange Islands" would be my least favourite saga.

 

[Cybersai]

Johto is where I almost abandoned the anime for good back when I was a kid. I just couldn't get through all those filler episodes.

On top of that, what good came out of it? Ash essentially had his worst Pokemon team of the series, the original trio loses all its chemistry, Misty fades away into the background, and the saga just goes on for 3 years with nothing of substance.

By the time Johto was ending it felt like the whole thing was pointless. The tediousness of the Johto saga is largely the reason why the original trio was completely abandoned and why Misty was dropped from the show.

Johto was a terrible way to finish the "original series" and ended the classic era of the show on a sour note. The fact that it felt like the writers acknowledged how poor it was and largely tried to make up for it by sweeping the whole thing under a rug and revamping the show says a lot. What a waste.

 

[Ashs Battle Coach]

Johto. Too long , Not enough development for the johto pokes, way too many fillers, johto team took a back seat in the last gym and the league. They could have done so much more with them. I love Totodile, and would have loved to see it shine a bit more. It has such an awesome personality. Yea the whole thing just felt so unfulfilling. Orange Islands would be my second least favourite.

 

[Hidden Mew]

Johto is where I almost abandoned the anime for good back when I was a kid. I just couldn't get through all those filler episodes.

On top of that, what good came out of it? Ash essentially had his worst Pokemon team of the series, the original trio loses all its chemistry, Misty fades away into the background, and the saga just goes on for 3 years with nothing of substance.

By the time Johto was ending it felt like the whole thing was pointless. The tediousness of the Johto saga is largely the reason why the original trio was completely abandoned and why Misty was dropped from the show.

Johto was a terrible way to finish the "original series" and ended the classic era of the show on a sour note. The fact that it felt like the writers acknowledged how poor it was and largely tried to make up for it by sweeping the whole thing under a rug and revamping the show says a lot. What a waste.

I can understand that you don't like Johto, although I don't think it was nearly that bad, but I would say that it's far from pointless. Johto had much better Gym battles than both Kanto and the Orange Islands combined. While Ash's Johto Pokemon could have been handled better, especially Totodile and Noctowl, he actually earned his badges through winning badges. The only questionable one was against Pryce, which is a vast improvement over how he earned badges in Kanto. Despite the problems with his Johto team, Ash's Pokemon had more personality there than they did in Kanto. Aside from Pikachu, Charizard and maybe Bulbasaur, Ash's Kanto team weren't really beaming with personality and Johto at least gave more personality traits to his Johto Pokemon. The Johto League also beats out the Kanto Pokemon League eight ways to Sunday in my opinion. Even though he used his Kanto Pokemon for a lot of his matches and that does genuinely bother me, there were actual battles in the Johto League and Ash became a much stronger trainer as a result of his Gym battles and his placement in the Johto League. That alone should make it clear that Johto was not pointless and that it didn't have anything of substance.

As for the original trio losing all of its chemistry, I'm not so sure about that. The only major differences between the group chemistry in Johto and Kanto, that I can remember at least, were that Misty didn't have as much of a temper problem and didn't argue with Ash as much and she started the pulling Brock by the ear gag when he was in a love daze. I didn't mind Misty not arguing with Ash that much since it was kind of getting old during Kanto anyway. I could have lived without the ear pulling bit since that was never really funny for me and always felt forced. Not to mention it set up for Max to do that in AG, which was when it became far worse. To be fair, Misty and Brock were fading into the background during Kanto too. I've rewatched the Kanto saga quite a few times on my DVDs and neither Misty or Brock got much attention there. The original series in general didn't seem like it was interested on focusing on characters that weren't Ash or Team Rocket. Misty got a bit more screentime near the end of Johto with the whole Whirl Cup, but that was probably the writers deciding to doing something with her before she was replaced.

I was under the impression that they replaced Misty not because of the tediousness of the Johto saga, but to promote the new games even more with having a playable trainer in the main cast. I know that those blog information from one of the staff members said that the ratings went down during Johto, at least that's what I remember, but I don't know if we could have the quality of the saga being the only reason for those ratings. They probably did want to change things around, but I don't think that they were doing that as an acknowledgement to how bad Johto was and considering Ash and Brock were still around, I don't think that they were revamping the whole show. They were adding more to it, but they add a lot of new things at the start of each new series, for better or for worse. If they were trying sweep the whole thing under a rug, then I don't think that the writers would have made any references to Johto, but they have. I understand how you feel about the saga, especially in regards to basically being wasted potential, but I think that you're exaggerating the flaws of the saga at the same time. I've seen most of Johto on DVD and I don't think it's nearly that bad. It could have been handled much better than it actually was, but considering that this was the first time the writers had tried to keep a saga lasting for three years, I thought it was entertaining, they did a much better job with the battles and Johto in general helped the writers to find out what works and what does not work when writing a long saga.

Anyway, my least favorite saga would at the moment would probably be The Orange Islands. While I don't think that it's bad per say, I think it was just a really boring saga, especially the first half. The Gym battles weren't really that great and the first two felt more like mini-games than Ash challenging a Gym. In retrospect, I think that those first two Gym matches could have been the writers exploring how to do Gyms without straight up battling, but then it didn't work and they just went back to the usual Gym format for the last two. The group dynamics didn't work out too well either. While Tracey was a fairly likable character, he was also really bland and boring. He also didn't really have much memorable interactions with Ash or Misty. They were still friends all, but his blandness probably made it harder for their group interactions to stand out more. The only episodes I liked were Charizard listening to Ash, Tracey catching Scyther, despite how it really didn't do much of anything after its capture episode, the Meowth episode, if only for the sweet moments between him, Jessie and James, and Ash's battle against Drake, which was one of the best battles in the original series. I understand that the Orange Island was made as a bridge between the first and second generations, but it felt pretty dull.

Depending on how BW ends, this become my second least favorite saga, but right now, the Orange Island would be in first.

 

[Hurricane Kishore]

BEST WISH !
This is my less favorite saga , I mean-
-Ash gone back to being a idiot
-He's inferior to a Rocky
-He haven't achieve anything here
-He has only one pokemon that can fly
-He losing as much as possible
-Most gym battle are boring
-Ash image keep getting ruin
-Pokemon starting to look more like ''My Little pony'' & '''Dragon tail''
-Ash is being treated as a punching bag
So tell me , Why shouldn't this saga be less favorite !

 

[Piplup]

BW and Kanto, though Kanto has Misty, Brock, old Poké, better episodes, nostalgia bonus, etc... so Kanto easily beats BW
I'm voting BW, but I'd still vote for Kanto too if we could choose more than one
Thanks Arceus Johto fixed Kanto's mistakes (like Hidden Mew explained pretty good, so I won't repeat what he said and what I said countless times before) but sadly the writers somehow got to the conclusion that it'd do good for the BW series to return to these past mistakes - which totally failed, even worse than the original failure, at least to me...

 

[IcyNinjaX]

BEST WISH !
This is my less favorite saga , I mean-
-Ash gone back to being a idiot
-He's inferior to a Rocky
-He haven't achieve anything here
-He has only one pokemon that can fly
-He losing as much as possible
-Most gym battle are boring
-Ash image keep getting ruin
-Pokemon starting to look more like ''My Little pony'' & '''Dragon tail''
-Ash is being treated as a punching bag
So tell me , Why shouldn't this saga be less favorite !

Its basically a re-run of what he did in the Original Series, that's what I didn't like about BW.
Hell, he was already a bit mature in the Advanced and DP series and BW, he's become a immature idiot back in the Original.

Let's hope the writers don't make the same mistake in the Sixth Generation.

 

[alypkm]

Battle frontier is soooooooooo baad !!!
this is the only saga I haven't finish yet because I just can't !!!
the stories are soo cheesy and bad,the episode:
Time wrap that heals "something"
just killed THE SHIT OUT OF ME!!!!

unbelievable ridicules episodes,the animation is bad too.

 

[Lord Clowncrete]

I don't like b/w much. Johto was terrible as well.

Why I don't like b/w:
1) Boring rivals, they are especially terrible after the cracker called Paul.
2) Ash's "reset".
3) Iris is annoying.
4) Gym battles are predictable.

Though b/w does have a positive point and that is it is faster so far.

 

[Hellion]

Moved to the Grand Festival. Please give some thought to your answers when posting as per the Grand Festival rules.

 

[jda95]

I really can't say anything but Johto. Over three years of seemingly endless filler caused the show to stagnate very quickly. No other saga has had such a blatant problem with its pacing, and this makes Johto almost unbearable to watch. I'm not gonna lie and say that some of the Johto filler episodes aren't very enjoyable. The problem is that they are few and far between, with the majority consisting of the same basic formula repeated over and over, episode after episode. Three years of no development was very damaging for the show so it made sense that AG onward tried to avoid the issues that plagued Johto.

 

[The Power of Pika]

I had to vote Johto even though I really enjoy every series.

I was voting without including Hoenn and BW in my list personally. That's because I've been watching BW DVD only thus meaning I've only seen 24 episodes which is barely anything to judge by.^-^;;;;;;
Hoenn I barely even remember it so I'll be waiting till I rewatch it again.

I put Johto as my least favourite because team rocket get annoying attacking every episode this series and I seem to have this habit of taking breaks during the series. Still a fun series though.

 

[Shinneth]

Really would've liked the option to pick more than one series, because I hated Johto as much as anyone else who hated it, but if there's one good thing Johto did (besides do Gym Battles better), it's that it was so terrible that it actually prompted the show's staff to make major improvements in subsequent series. Otherwise, if Johto was as crazy and nostalgia-tastic as Kanto, the writers might've not been prompted to make AG or DP as good as they were. That's crazy speculation, of course, but that's my reasoning for why I voted BW over Johto.

Well, that and Johto got so mundane that it was easy for me to ignore. BW, on the other hand, I can't stop looking at it because it's like overwhelming badness with a small nougat of goodness deep within the center of it, and it's torture to pick out those good points. Plus it rattles my mind because there's no excuse for BW to be as bad as it is. With Johto there's an excuse because the writers initially didn't plan past Kanto and had no fucking clue how to write the series without Kanto standards, so they dilly-dallyed around until they finally got their shit together near the end of Johto. Actually, that is one other point for Johto. Even though he barely appeared, Ash finally facing off against Gary in the League was something to really look forward to. That was incentive, weakened as it was because of the writer's incompetence, to at least see how it all turned out in Johto and witness the first major step of progression from Ash since his Kanto journey.

I see barely any incentive to look forward to the Unova League, mainly because Trip is a pathetic successor to Gary and Paul (to the point that STEPHAN is looking more like a real main rival at this point), and the rivals that are actually interesting aren't shown to be all that competent and therefore it's almost meaningless to even root for them to win in their respective goals (except I'm still holding out for Bianca winning the League out of nowhere). And because of Ash's regressed characterization, for the first time in this series I actually want to see Ash FAIL this League. Because he hardly does anything in BW that shows his own competence or growth, especially compared to how he was before BW, and at this stage there's just no excuse whatsoever for how bad the writing is this series. In Johto, the bad writing at least has the justification of lacking experience. In BW, they just aren't trying. At all. And for all the flak I gave Misty in the past, even though I still dislike her, I borderline APPRECIATE her now all because of Iris. It sure is hard to get behind a series where you actively dislike most of the main characters. In Johto, it was mostly a lack of my caring for the main cast. In BW, I'm actually inclined to go out of my way to wish damnation in their future.

In the end, it all comes down to how the series affected me personally. While Johto was easy to give up on, BW's a nagging troll by comparison. But given the option I would have voted for both because I believe overall they're about equally terrible in their own right. But since I can only vote one, I gotta apply my psychology to this to justify the single choice.

 

[Cybersai]

Battle Frontier was also really only worth watching for the Frontier Brain battles and May's Contests, the normal episodes there were pretty bad. Granted I have to say I like it because Ash's old Pokemon returned, we got Sceptile and Donphan, and some of May's last few Contests are awesome as well as the end of Drew/Harley's climatic rivalries.

 

[pokemon fan 132]

Definitely Battle Frontier for me. It was one giant mix of wasted potential and missed opportunities. Aside from title return to Kanto felt nothing like first region was. There was hardly any revisit of older towns and places, older characters were nonexistent(no one aside from prof,Oak appeared there), gym leaders never showed up and areas through Ash traveled through were portrayed as taking place in entirely new region. May and cast in general started to be stale at times for me losing their initial charm too, and her contest battles won with fluke(confrontation against Brock comes to mind) decreased overall enjoyment to them too.

Not to mention battles were utterly unrealistic with Ash wins not being done in credible and believable manner. Like whole Pikachu vs Regice win, Charizard taking up "billion"of Articuno hits somehow turning over match in its favor. Though ill give them how making Ash possessed by evil spirit becoming evil for a change threw different life on character being interesting to see, and i liked how Brock got little more focus having some great moments there. Such as entering contest, battling with Ash against TR to save Pewter gym etc.

Its not like BF didn't had good moments, its just that flaws overshadow them largely killing my enjoyment for this saga in general.

On top of that, what good came out of it?

Good:
Better battles compared to Kanto days being filled with more strategy
-Misty and Brock receiving more screen time and development. For example Johto did a LOT more for Misty goal of water master and complex of feeling less worthy in comparison to sisters, than Kanto ever did.
-Ash not getting pity badges winning most of gym battles fairly
-gym leaders being better portrayed and gaining more focus(Claire, Pryce or Jasmine instantly comes to mind)
-Ash and group pokemon in general being portrayed more as actual characters with personalities, rather than just battling machines
-Ash, Misty and Brock still having fun dynamic and character interaction
-several great mini arcs like Whirl Cup, Red Gyarados, Lugia, Larvitar, raged Dragonite and dragon temple.
-one of best leagues in pokemon history wrapping up Ash and Gary rivalry
-humorous pokemon like Wobuffet etc.

I can understand disappointment with wasted potential, but to act like Johto didnt had anything good is way too exaggerating.

Besides anyone can notice how many Johto mistakes were fixed on good part in master Quest anyway which was great season.

Ash essentially had his worst Pokemon team of the series, the original trio loses all its chemistry, Misty fades away into the background, and the saga just goes on for 3 years with nothing of substance.

Not true at all. Im not even sure what your talking about because original trio definitely had chemistry in Johto. I remember several moments where you could feel how they were friends having fun together. It can be noticed how close group they were during whole course of Johto with Misty sarcastic inputs and adventurous attitude,Ash bratty and impulsive side and Brock calm and rational personality providing humor and good chemistry.Heck even Brock and Misty had memorable moments talking about girls and love while keeping each other in check when becoming too obsessive("Heartbreak of Brock","Corsola Caper","hassle in the Castle"etc) with his sickness showing best how much they were dependent on his help when he got sick(twice counting banned episode) having to overcome their differences.

Only reason why we didnt had their dynamic appearing on daily basis is because many episodes were following repetitive formula of fillers concentrating on COTD and problems with their pokemon with main cast taking backseat not being much active than.

It can be noticed how close group was when they had to separate in "Gotta Catch Ya Later".

As for Misty, last time i checked it was Brock who fade out in background in Johto the most. Misty at least had Whirl Cup arc, battled more, had several memorable interactions with characters like Sakura, Dorian, Andreas etc , battled more and received some notable growth starting to mature.

By the time Johto was ending it felt like the whole thing was pointless. The tediousness of the Johto saga is largely the reason why the original trio was completely abandoned and why Misty was dropped from the show.

Do you really believe this? Johto wasn't disliked because of original cast, but too many fillers and lack of development for characters. If original trio was viewed by writers as failure they wouldn't go back to OS formula with BW generation and if they were hated among fans there wouldn't be such big demand existing for return. First cast was never reunited simply because after finding how anime can go on without original cast, writers opted to rather introduce new companions with each new generation to better go in correlation with games and their promotion, as well rather wanting to try out new designs Ken Sugimori comes up with giving new "eye candies"(referring to interview with es director and storyboard artist mr. Hidaka).

Original trio is still probably most groundbreaking and recognized cast we had having appeal which guarantees success .

Only reason why they probably wont return them is for same reason why AG and DP cast wont return either. Due to writers rather wanting to use new characters for marketing purposes. For same reason Misty didn't returned to cast either and unless things drastically change she wont.

Misty got a bit more screentime near the end of Johto with the whole Whirl Cup, but that was probably the writers deciding to doing something with her before she was replaced.

I believe it was more that other writers realized how Misty as character wasn't developed enough trying to redeem at least partially for ex head writer mr. Shudo mistakes. Which was followed up with evolution of Togepi in Hoenn and some more development she got in hosos.

Granted they couldn't have done more because she stopped being main character, but it seems other members of writing staff cared more about character than Shudo really did.

 

[Hurricane Kishore]

BEST WISH !
This is my less favorite saga , I mean-
-Ash gone back to being a idiot
-He's inferior to a Rocky
-He haven't achieve anything here
-He has only one pokemon that can fly
-He losing as much as possible
-Most gym battle are boring
-Ash image keep getting ruin
-Pokemon starting to look more like ''My Little pony'' & '''Dragon tail''
-Ash is being treated as a punching bag
So tell me , Why shouldn't this saga be less favorite !

Its basically a re-run of what he did in the Original Series, that's what I didn't like about BW.
Hell, he was already a bit mature in the Advanced and DP series and BW, he's become a immature idiot back in the Original.

Let's hope the writers don't make the same mistake in the Sixth Generation.

Ya , But he really was a Rocky in original series !
But now Ash is a 5 year experience BF conquer !
So, It not okay for Ash to be treated the way he was in original series !
you watch Naruto shippudan ?
Can you accept Naruto to become the no talent village loser again !
Also,
Best Wish opening SUCK'S !

 

[garrison-san]

Just a reminder that we have this thread for debating the merits of Johto: http://bmgf.bulbagarden.net/f555/what-degree-johto-flawed-117752/

As per the nature of Grand Festival, this is intended as a more light-hearted thread where you can state your least favourite saga and give reasons for it. It is not intended as an in-depth back-and-forth debate about a particular saga, particularly when we already have a thread for precisely that purpose.

 

[Bouffalant Herdier]

It's a close call between Johto and BW, boredom vs aggravation, but the sheer tedium of Johto just barely gives it the edge.

Even though there are a few changes to BW that I do like, (Mainly that the show doesn't feel quite as repetitive as before) I will hate it forever for throwing away the established past of the show, and for changing Ash and the TRio so drastically without proper explanation. Everything feels like such a step down from the excellent AG and DP series; Most of the main groups' Pokemon are severely lacking in personality, the battles feel rushed and lack the depth from before, and some of the new characters are completely unlikeable. (Iris and Trip are quite possibly the most annoying characters I have ever seen on television) For years, I had wanted the show to have more varied storylines, but I didn't know it would come at the cost of everything else I liked about the show.

That said, despite everything I hate about BW, there are still a number of things keeping me from abandoning the show altogether, (Cilan, Snivy, Scraggy, Burgundy, Bianca and Georgia) which is more than I can say for Johto. I watched every episode in the series, but after I was done, I had no hope that I would ever enjoy the anime ever again and quit for years. So much pointless and predictable filler, it was utterly depressing to see what the show had become, and it felt like the writers had given up on the show themselves. About the only thing that held my interest were the much-improved Gym battles and the rare intense episodes. It picked up a little towards the end, but by that point, it was much too little, too late. Now that I've seen AG and DP, Johto seems even weaker in my memories than it did when I was watching it.

 

[Hidden Mew]

BW and Kanto, though Kanto has Misty, Brock, old Poké, better episodes, nostalgia bonus, etc... so Kanto easily beats BW
I'm voting BW, but I'd still vote for Kanto too if we could choose more than one
Thanks Arceus Johto fixed Kanto's mistakes (like Hidden Mew explained pretty good, so I won't repeat what he said and what I said countless times before) but sadly the writers somehow got to the conclusion that it'd do good for the BW series to return to these past mistakes - which totally failed, even worse than the original failure, at least to me...

Thank you, but I'm actually a girl. Just wanted to clarify that. I'm almost wishing that I changed my vote to BW just because it does feel like a huge step-backwards for the anime and the flaws in it bothers me a lot more than the boring aspects of the Orange Islands, but I wasn't sure if I wanted to vote for a saga that I haven't seen all of the episodes for it yet. Though, I wonder how I would feel about the Battle Frontier saga. I haven't seen most of those episodes in years, with even a few episodes that I haven't seen yet, but I think that the main problem I would have with it would be the rushed pacing. I remember liking May's Contests and some of the Frontier Brain matches though.