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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
I enjoy BW in an ironic way, especially when Bianca is on screen.
Bianca was annoying as heck. There are only so many times one can say "I'm sorry" before those words become worthless.
I'm surprised, I always thought of Jhoto as the fan favorite.
For the games, definitely. For the anime, not so much.
 
Bianca was annoying as heck. There are only so many times one can say "I'm sorry" before those words become worthless.

I loved Bianca, but she was extremely inconsiderate towards not only Ash, but to everyone else around her. I didn’t blame Ash for getting angry with her sometimes for getting him pushed in conveniently placed bodies of water (it was only two times that it wasn’t Bianca’s fault).

I enjoy BW in an ironic way, especially when Bianca is on screen. I can't say the same for XY. It's just a series that's boring. It's only nuanced on a technical level. There is no interesting plots, no interesting characters. If I can't be bothered to care about what's happening, then it's a bad story.

I loved Bianca even though she could be annoying. I was always bored with XY and only skipped to the gym leader battles. I’m glad I’m not the only one who finds most of the characters in XY boring (except for Clemont, Diantha, Olympia, Team Flare, Mairin, and Alain).
 
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I'm surprised to be the first person here who picked Kanto because, speaking as someone with no nostalgia towards it (the only way in which you should review anything: With no sort of positive bias), this series really isn't as good as the majority would say. Ash was an annoying brat, Misty was even more so, Team Rocket lost all overarching purpose after the failed St. Anne stunt, most of the gym battles weren't great, and the league was poorly handled and borderline unfair when it came to their rules (sleeping = knocked out is complete rubbish).
Charmeleon/Charizard's disobedience is one of the few plus points for me as it's such a very realistic thing to happen to an at-the-time boastful and inexperienced Ash and a good way to make him shape up and gitgud. Oak was right, Ash could have avoided his embarrassing league loss if he were more proactive at winning Charizard's respect instead of, y'know, let those negative sentiments fester for about twenty episodes.

In comparison, Unova was actually more disappointing rather than frustrating now that I look back, which is why I didn't make it my pick. It's the sort of trainwreck where I think "This could have been decent. I want to fix it in a fanfic." instead of "Let's just forget this happened." Unova makes me want to get my hands dirty and actively salvage something, whereas Kanto doesn't inspire that same motivation. I'd take a disappointing mess over an annoying one myself.
 
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I'm surprised to be the first person here who picked Kanto because, speaking as someone with no nostalgia towards it (the only way in which you should review anything: With no sort of positive bias), this series really isn't as good as the majority would say. Ash was an annoying brat, Misty was even more so, Team Rocket lost all overarching purpose after the failed St. Anne stunt, most of the gym battles weren't great, and the league was poorly handled and borderline unfair when it came to their rules (sleeping = knocked out is complete rubbish).

I actually agree with you about Kanto. I didn't pick it because it's the first Pokemon series so I gave it a pass. By the time we get to Unova and Alola, however, the production of the PokeAni should be pretty flawless and working like a machine. But no, in my view those two sagas are as terrible as Kanto. The only + that comes out of SM is Ash finally winning something (I'm guessing we aren't going to mention he did win Orange League..).

There are some things that come out of SM that I will decide to remember as I choose to forget everything else. I wish I could mention what memorable moments I recall from Unova.. but I cannot think of anything. I don't hate that saga, I just don't think it was well thought out or developed.
 
My vote goes to Sun and Moon. I disliked Best Wishes the most before, but looking back it had its fair share of enjoyment. Cilan was my favorite character, and we got an entire Episode N arc.

Mind, I haven't seen a lot of Sun and Moon, but the ones that I have seen weren't exactly drawing me in to be interested. Part of the reason is mostly because I loved Ash as the veteran trainer in XY and I really can't warm up to Sun/Moon Ash when the seriousness is taken away.
 
I would say Kanto. SM is alright besides some of the pacing, and the lackluster approach to battles and trials, and I didn't actually see much of BW personally, so it feels more fair to focus on something I did see.

I think a major issue with Kanto was characters needing to grow/ be more accountable for their flaws in a more timely and consistent manner, especially when it feels like they mainly just don't because that wouldn't be as "funny".

Like it makes sense that Ash was screwed over by being so immature, but what's so frustrating is that he's just a little kid who needed more guidance and intervention than he actually got, and yet the general attitude of the world takes such a hands-off approach... and the narrative doesn't bring about any situations to truly push him to change his attitude until it's too late. He just gets out of most things scot-free and gets a swollen head. If something is a problem, the story and characters just let him stick his head in the sand while more jokes happen. When the narrative did punish him, half the time it was excessive or misplaced, and didn't really feel like it made lasting impressions anyway. (The Samurai episode being falsely framed as pretty much only his fault, the perfume thing in Celadon, the AJ episode having him be even more immature than usual while acting like AJ was just above all criticism.)

This is on top of how it doesn't really make much sense to let him leave home in that state to start with. It pushes things to where I blame the writers and worldbuilding more than Ash himself. This is why I'm annoyed with the Charizard situation so much too, it basically just feels like an especially annoying example of these issues. Don't get me wrong, Ash is responsible for his actions, but that only goes so far when he's a fictional character and meant to be a little kid anyway. His attitude, and the narrative letting him get away with that attitude until its too late, just makes for a much less satisfying story overall.

Then to make it even weirder, Pikachu vs Raichu is actually a really nice example of growing and learning in a timely and satisfying manner, so it just makes it more jarring that he clearly is capable and willing in this regard, but the narrative just keeps avoiding this kind of storytelling anyway... another reason why I'm blaming it/the writers more than Ash himself.

From what I remember, Misty doesn't really get all that much better, battling or attitude wise, until outside of Kanto either.

And Brock is alright, but he also could've done more... at least having it actually stick in his head that he needs to stop with the aggressive flirting, rather than it just being a gag over and over again.

Like I get the 'style' of the comedy works easier when it plays on flaws, but it's not like there's no other way to be funny, and its not like I'm saying I want this to just steadily erase the characters of all flaws.

Other regions at least generally tend to feel more believable, in that Ash isn't perfect but at least he makes more of a constructive effort when things aren't going his way.... Along with the narrative putting him into more situations where he basically has to do this, and sending characters his way that encourage him to, in one way or another (Sure, I can't stand Paul, but at least he accomplishes the whole 'growth through adversity' thing). And in general, people take less time to actually learn how to improve as people.

Like, imagine if DP's narrative took the same approach to Dawn being an overconfident rookie as Kanto's did for Ash. Imagine how bad that'd suck. That's my issue in a nutshell.
 
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Sun & Moon; I Hate Calarts One Piece Ash!! Go back to an artstyle that's more akin to XY!! I Hate How Mimikyu wants to kill Pikachu; I Hate Ash being a Walking Human Pincushion, I Want Galar to be less S&M, and more XY!!
 
I'm surprised to be the first person here who picked Kanto...Unova makes me want to get my hands dirty and actively salvage something, whereas Kanto doesn't inspire that same motivation. I'd take a disappointing mess over an annoying one myself.
Well, probably because most people would prefer a "meh" show to a "horrible" show.
 
For me it would be Best Wishes. I didn't really like what they did with some characters (example:Iris), The Unova League the fights were pretty bland, the series had pretty bad pacing, the Declora arc was full of filler and pretty boring and the series could have done without, and Trip was a pretty mediocre rival for Ash. I'm not really a huge fan of this series at all and made it pretty hard to watch for me to stick through these episodes.
 
I think my personal least favorite saga is Best Wishes simply because it builds up your expectations in the first few episodes only to shoot you down by throwing everything out of the window after the earthquake.

Imagine how great it could have been if some things were done differently. There are some great concepts: Team Plasma are great and thought-provoking in the games, Team Rocket is finally doing something different after having been static for so long, there is a new Team Rocket member (the guy who never showed up again :confused_emoji:) and a female companion who battles and is really cute and positive in the games! What went wrong?
 
I think my personal least favorite saga is Best Wishes simply because it builds up your expectations in the first few episodes only to shoot you down by throwing everything out of the window after the earthquake.

Imagine how great it could have been if some things were done differently. There are some great concepts: Team Plasma are great and thought-provoking in the games, Team Rocket is finally doing something different after having been static for so long, there is a new Team Rocket member (the guy who never showed up again :confused_emoji:) and a female companion who battles and is really cute and positive in the games! What went wrong?
I feel that a lot of there plans where ruined (Team Rocket vs Team Plasma) aftwr the earthquake so the writers had to find a way to conpensate for that and that's why many of the arcs feel rushed.
 
I don't think there are any series that are inherently bad. All of them have some good qualities for sure, but if I had to choose a least favorite it would be BW. While I had not been interested in Ash's character and development since Johto (SM definitely changed this), I do usually like the other character's goals and development. Cilan was okay, heh ad some good character moments, but I really couldn't care about his goal. Iris was just plain annoying, and I have never cared for her character at all.

But since BW is the usual choice, I thought I would go into my second least favorite series, XY. XY has some more episodes in it that I like than I do in BW, and I do care more about the characters. Ash was still pretty boring to me in this series, but I loved Clemont and Bonnie. I though Serena was pretty plain at first and while she certainly isn't anywhere near my favorite now, after she found her path and a reason to travel with Ash and Co (besides the crush on Ash, that's not a good reason in my eyes), I started to like her more. Her friendship with Bonnie was especially adorable. Then of course Alain and his character arc in the specials, then merging into the series was awesome. But while I definitely did like these character dynamics, their connection just did not seem as strong as previous and even later series.
 
Best Wishes. Kanto is far from perfect, especially it's League. Johto more often had unimaginative filler and SM had some blunders worth critique.

Even considering that some properties are closer to be perfect from the starting gate, I think allowances can be made for a first go around.

And yeah even when I get as critical as fellow adult fans do, I recognize that decisions we disagree with are still business or merely an honest fumble.

The misfires from BW are the one time I can help but feel that the decisions are made to be a turn off to any viewer.

1. Plenty of stupid moments from Ash feel like a middle finger to be sure. Can't even dismiss complaints as just longtime fans unless one believes that the turn around in XY is mainly for our behalf.

Also debates on how much or little it compliments Ash, I still point to the Nimbasa Gym match as not working since there's no good reason for the referee not to end the match as:

A. Embarrassing display.
B. I think not having three Pokémon for a 3 on 3 match is violating the rules isn't it?

2. Yeah Iris still comes off short compared to Misty.

A. All Iris has was you're a kid, you're a kid, you're a kid. Misty had more of a reason to rib on Ash besides him being a genuine newbie.

She first saw him with a Pokémon in his care injured, while taking something belonging solely to her that was costly. Plus despite her fear of Caterpie, she rightfully calls him on endangering it due to not understanding basic type advantage, and just things like him slacking off for League training or getting a Badge on technicalities.

I don't know, just felt too one note in BW.

B. Yeah giving her a type she detests seems like trying to copy Misty's anti-Bug Type thing (based off fears of real bugs), while making it a Type disadvantage thing is just to make it seem fresh.

3. Why is the rivalry with Trip a thing? It would work if there was some self awareness that this experienced trainer lost to a rookie, but that's not a thing.

With Paul, it was proving his methods were better/legit. With Gary they started on the same day, in the same town, but the former was off to a better start and Ash wanted to prove that his setbacks didn't mean anything in the long run.

Other than, "he beat me", what's the stake? This is Pokémon, not Beyblade (only seen the first three seasons, btw).

4. One thing I can say for better or worse is the Rocket Trio not having to appear all the time.

But being more serious? Taking a page from Dogasu, especially after the abandoned TR/TP stuff, serious mannerisms don't mean much unless you give them at least an arc long victory.

Heck despite SM being a lot more relaxed, they have a victory over Ash in Episode 12.

5. Despite my misgivings, I do admit that some episodes are fun at the end of the day and I seriously don't understand the assumption that hating BW means that we somehow hate people who enjoy it.

Now the writers probably have contempt for the ones who do like it. The rivals and traveling companions don't get the best of departures. I don't care for BW as a whole, but I think it's a serious jerk move when the ones crafting the story just rush send offs and giving a middle finger towards the ones who enjoyed this season.

Heck why have Cilan for example expressing his desire to travel with Ash the episode before he takes off? Have the third to last episode being his end, and give Iris some space next episode for a better departure.


I mean you could say that any decision that favors money over art is cynical, but usually if the anime does something to annoy/upset viewers it more often than not tends to be a side effect, whereas this is deliberate.
 
Too soon. It's not even a full year old yet. First impression is everything, but it could get better (the next several episodes sound promising).

Heck, every saga has its ups and down as they go along...
True, I doubt many people will choose it right no, and if they do and then change their mind they can also change their vote.
 
Please note: The thread is from 4 years ago.
Please take the age of this thread into consideration in writing your reply. Depending on what exactly you wanted to say, you may want to consider if it would be better to post a new thread instead.
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