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Least Favorite Saga

Least Favorite Saga?

  • Kanto

    Votes: 1 0.8%
  • Orange Islands

    Votes: 2 1.7%
  • Johto

    Votes: 13 11.0%
  • Hoenn

    Votes: 2 1.7%
  • Battle Frontier

    Votes: 1 0.8%
  • Diamond and Pearl

    Votes: 3 2.5%
  • Best Wishes

    Votes: 54 45.8%
  • Kalos

    Votes: 8 6.8%
  • Sun and Moon

    Votes: 30 25.4%
  • Journeys

    Votes: 4 3.4%

  • Total voters
    118

Officer Snake

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What is your least favorite saga from the anime?

For me, it has to be Sun and Moon, I hate the animation style, and slice of life direction, in my opinion, isn't suited to Pokemon and Ash twerking is now a thing.

I don't mind best wishes actually I enjoy it (although not as much as the other sagas), and feel that people where too harsh on it sure there was flaws such as Ash being reset, but I think there was many positives that people don't give much credit to.
 
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Personally I LOVE Sun and Moon. That series has more personality than most anime currently running and I love the fluidity of the animation. Pokemon doesn't always need to take itself so seriously so it's nice to see the staff having so much fun with the material while still being faithful to games. With that said though given the amount of humor it only makes the more heartbreaking scenes that much more powerful.

As for my least favorite, Johto. It was way too repetitive. The only highlights for me were the Gligarman episode (obviously), the Entei movie, and Johto League.
 
BW, the more boring parts of Johto, and early SM.

To be fair though all sagas have good episodes. I even enjoyed a lot of BW eps despite it being my least favorite saga.
 
Johto, maybe? Out of all the other series Johto is the single one where I don't remember a SINGLE thing (aside from the first intro), and I'm pretty sure I watched at least 95%+ of its episodes.

Compared to Kanto and the Orange Islands, there are many things I remember vividly from both, even if I haven't rewatched them in ~20 years. And even though I bash on XY quite a lot, it's probably my third or fourth favorite series. Aside from that, AG and DP had a lot of things I didn't like or care about, but they still had a lot of memorable moments, and although Dento made BW unwatchable for me, I appreciate what it tried to do. Finally, SM is still my all time favorite so there's no contest there.

With that being said, I've heard good things of Johto lately, but until I revisit it, it shall stay as my least favorite.
 
Alola the vibe the series puts off,the art and the changes are just ugh to me.
SM's managed to be quite impressive in that it makes Kanto and Unova look spectacular and well-written
I mean your not wrong.


I've noticed SM fans are a bit crazy at times. Like you say one bad thing and you get attacked. I love DP but if people dislike it or something I'm cool.
 
I had an insane rant every plot important episode of Best Wishes, actively hated one of the main characters (Iris), thought the way the battles were animated with a 5 second stock footage close up on each Pokemon launching their attack every command killed the battles, and to this day I'm still baffled how they mishandled Ash's character so...

So it's probably my personal least favorite.
 
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I will say that BW was a steaming pile of rubbish, but at least the story had a general direction. I voted for SM as my least favorite saga because there is no clear purpose or direction of the anime. I think the writing is sloppy and unorganized and apart from a few standout episodes, there hasn't been any significant for me in that series. I know someone will reply and justify why SM is so great, but remember that you are entitled to your opinion, and I am entitled to mine.
 
Sun and Moon. Not only does it basically strip the series of basically everything that makes Pokémon Pokémon but it basically shifts the genre in its entirety. About 70% of the series just feels like the cast is just dicking around with nothing actually happening and focuses too much on forced comedy rather than actual storytelling. On top of that, the cast is criminally underdeveloped. The final nail in the coffin for it was with the revelation that anyone who wants to can enter the Alola League with no prerequisite rendering the Island Trials to be completely pointless.
 
BW is still my least favorite series and saga. It was more fun to rewatch it than I thought it would be, there are some good elements in the series and I definitely think that there were some aspects fans were pretty harsh on during its run, mainly Ash, but there's still so much that I dislike about it. Iris is still the absolute worst traveling companion thus far, the pacing was all around bad, all of the rivals were varying degrees of bad, there were some truly awful Gym battles and the Unova League was just awful. I think it is more enjoyable to binge watch the series now compared to watching it as it aired for a few reasons, but I still dislike too much about BW for it to not be my least favorite saga.

I'm not too surprised with the votes for SM. I do agree with some of the complaints about the series. It definitely suffers from a lack of a clear focus, the slice of life format doesn't really fit with Pokemon, or at least not with Ash as the main character, keeping Ash in the same area for most of the series definitely wasn't a smart idea and the Island Challenge being such an afterthought is really disappointing. Even so, I like watching the series every week. Despite my issues with the series, I still tend to enjoy most SM. As underdeveloped as most of the SM cast is, none of them really frustrate me on the same level as someone like Iris. The worst thing I can say about them is that some are boring or that they fade into the background unless they're getting a focus episode. The most frustrating aspects about SM thus far for me are the lack of a clear goal for Ash, the poorly handled Island Challenge and possibly the upcoming Alola League since the setup for it already sounds quite bad. I still might not rank the series that high on my list once it wraps up, but I'm pretty sure that I'll enjoy it more than BW as a whole at least.
 
Despite Best Wishes having some of my favorite arcs, like the arc where Meowth was with the twerps even though the payoff to that arc is bad & the Arc with N which was pretty good, Best Wishes is dragged down by a the stuff in between, even the most boring parts of Johto don't reach the slog of some of Best Wishes.
 
I will say that BW was a steaming pile of rubbish, but at least the story had a general direction. I voted for SM as my least favorite saga because there is no clear purpose or direction of the anime. I think the writing is sloppy and unorganized and apart from a few standout episodes, there hasn't been any significant for me in that series. I know someone will reply and justify why SM is so great, but remember that you are entitled to your opinion, and I am entitled to mine.

If they had it where Ash traveled with Lillie had anime only islands like in season two,season 5 and seasons 16 I think reduced the comedy and reduced the SoL while adding different events I think it could have been a lot better
 
If they had it where Ash traveled with Lillie had anime only islands like in season two,season 5 and seasons 16 I think reduced the comedy and reduced the SoL while adding different events I think it could have been a lot better
If there is one positive to take away from SM, it’s that giving time to the areas the gang goes to is a good thing and gives life to the world and people rather than making everything, including important locations feel like a one-off. It’s the hub location aspect of the series that they never need to do again as it’s completely detrimental to the adventure aspect of the series, making it feel like a Saturday morning cartoon that could be viewed in any order due to events mostly having no weight if not a major episode.

While previous sagas had lots of filler, they at least felt like the cast was going somewhere in the adventure. That’s not something that I got from quite a bit of SM.
 
If there is one positive to take away from SM, it’s that giving time to the areas the gang goes to is a good thing and gives life to the world and people rather than making everything, including important locations feel like a one-off. It’s the hub location aspect of the series that they never need to do again as it’s completely detrimental to the adventure aspect of the series, making it feel like a Saturday morning cartoon that could be viewed in any order due to events mostly having no weight if not a major episode.

While previous sagas had lots of filler, they at least felt like the cast was going somewhere in the adventure. That’s not something that I got from quite a bit of SM.
I would honestly blame that more on the games themselves being too small, there's no excuse for traveling for more than one episode to the next location without it feeling extremely repetitive (even more so than anything prior).

If they had it where Ash traveled with Lillie had anime only islands like in season two,season 5 and seasons 16 I think reduced the comedy and reduced the SoL while adding different events I think it could have been a lot better
Honestly I don't think I could enjoy Lillie without the rest of the current cast to contrast, given how obnoxious she was in the games. About the other things you propose, I don't think they solve anything other than making this show go closer back to the stale formula of the past, which I get some people like (I do too to some extent), but that rarely offered any new meaningful thing to the characters or the world.

If anything, SM's biggest problem is pacing, which is heavily tied to what I mentioned before about the games. For example, trials feel more like the puzzle you solve before a gym battle than the gym battle itself, with the grand trial feeling more like the main event (even trial captains feel utterly irrelevant), this makes it so that instead of 8 gym battles that are memorable moments, we get 4 grand trials and a lot of smaller trials that feel more like paperwork and which will reward you with something you won't really use that much if ever (which is why I feel it makes sense most of them were cut), this makes it so events are spread out even further than usual, even though a lot of these events take longer than in previous series. There's also the bigger cast, which I don't mind as long as we get as little CotDs as we get right now, but it also suffers from slowing down development from each other.

Also, probably unpopular opinion, but I much prefer the comedy in SM than any series prior (maybe OS aside). At least they feel like they are trying now, before we would waste a solid minute per episode of characters repeating the EXACT SAME catchphrase, which was somewhat treated as the funniest thing in the world, and even if it happened to be funny the first few times it would always grow old super quick because they were to afraid to subvert the formulas they created and do something inventive for once. And no, I'm not talking about funny faces (although they rarely reuse them as well).
 
If they had it where Ash traveled with Lillie had anime only islands like in season two,season 5 and seasons 16 I think reduced the comedy and reduced the SoL while adding different events I think it could have been a lot better

I agree with you. Sun and Moon for me had a lot of potential, but there just isn't the sense of adventure that drew me to Pokemon to begin with. Even the current amount of cast members I think could be manageable, but the anime really deviated a lot from the games and while I applaud them for attempting something original on their own, I just didn't like it. I'm okay with the slice of life - comedic approach, the anime could have easily had that without sacrificing the sense of adventure. I'm actually thankful that Ash in all other series did not have a father and was traveling away from his mother, this living with Kukui and basically being a foster child who is away at school approach is not my cup of tea. That boy needs to be out traveling and having adventures.

I'll avoid airing all my grievances out about the series, but I'll just point to the island trials in the games versus the anime. While in the games they are pretty easy and simple, there is still some structure. In the anime, I have no idea whats happening with the trials.
 
I agree with you. Sun and Moon for me had a lot of potential, but there just isn't the sense of adventure that drew me to Pokemon to begin with. Even the current amount of cast members I think could be manageable, but the anime really deviated a lot from the games and while I applaud them for attempting something original on their own, I just didn't like it. I'm okay with the slice of life - comedic approach, the anime could have easily had that without sacrificing the sense of adventure. I'm actually thankful that Ash in all other series did not have a father and was traveling away from his mother, this living with Kukui and basically being a foster child who is away at school approach is not my cup of tea. That boy needs to be out traveling and having adventures.

I'll avoid airing all my grievances out about the series, but I'll just point to the island trials in the games versus the anime. While in the games they are pretty easy and simple, there is still some structure. In the anime, I have no idea whats happening with the trials.

I know people use the "He's 10" excuse for how he is in SM but the way I see it once you reach 10 it is like hitting 16 and getting a car. Yes you are a kid but at the same time you have responsibilities. Which is why I never agreed with the statement of him being 10. Not to mention 10 year olds look so much older than other kids in the show. It is like prior to SM they were making it so once you hit 10 you are seen as a teen which is why when Ash acted like a teen I never had an issue. SM treats him and the others like goofy little kids and as someone who has been watching since season 1 it is hard to watch. BW kinda did it but at the same time it was not nearly as bad so it was ok. At least BW Ash had more meotions than just happy 24/7.
 
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