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Review PG04: The Lake of Rage

I'm still not a massive Lance fan despite this, but his Dragonite absolutely stole the show. Dayum!

It was also a pleasant surprise to see Ethan, even if we never saw his face. Petrel's presence brought a smile to my face as well, it confirmed that this is based on HGSS. My favourite remake.
 
Thought this episode was great! Very action-packed and fun to watch.

Best moment was by far the way Dragonite used Fire Punch; I thought that was a fantastic interpretation of it. Also appreciated the angle they took with the story, and how Gold was working with Lance to stop TR instead of him just showing up last minute. Seems like Gold was actually a diversion of sorts which is pretty neat.

Also loving how they aren't focusing on the protagonists at all (though admittedly I wouldn't mind seeing more of under-appreciated ones doing something). However it is nice that we are seeing other characters take the spotlight for a chance.

& Was I the only one who thought that the animation looked similar to what we've seen for the SM anime? Thought it looked pretty similar, but either way I really like the style they're doing Generations in.
 
Nice to see Ethan and Petrel.

Also lol at the over the top swag from the Rockets XD The animation was a bit off but nonetheless cool
 
I'm just not sure about Hoenn but I am positive to see them being based on ORAS too.

Primal Groudon and Kyogre are on the poster, and the Weather Institute in PG01 used the ORAS design of the location, so yeah, I'd say this is a certainty.

EDIT: Just watched it for myself.

- The animation quality is pretty bad in this one. The Rocket Grunts' approach was an embarrassment.
- Lance's voice acting has improved slightly since last time though
- This is an extremely minor nitpick, but wouldn't it make more sense for to use the jewel/third-eye as the signal light on the Persian statues? I mean, it's a more obvious focal point, and it's colored red for like, "Warning!" and such. As I said, extremely minor aesthetic complaint.
- "Dragonite, break through!" = Dragonite BREAK confirmed canon lol?
- I agree with @Alola, that was a nice little realization of the Sturdy Ability.
- Oh look, Lance's Champion theme. One of my least-favorite pieces of music in the series.
- Petrel looks seriously goony
- "We're taking it down!" = This Pleases Ethan
- Nice scene at the end, despite the animation woes throughout the rest of the short.

Overall, not as good as PG02, but not nearly the waste of my time that PG03 was. Flawed, but an interesting retelling nonetheless.

I do hope that they don't just default to the male protags, though.
 
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Yeah, strut that stuff!

Admittedly they do look a bit silly. Probably because they’re trying to exude coolness and look intimidating, but inside they’re scared shitless!

Also, the scene is kinda familiar:
wTPYs2R.jpg
 
Ethan!
This was a good episode, but I wish we saw more of the Red Gyarados vs. Dragonite battle. Oh well...
 
Can't believe no one has commented on THIS:
UuEFLHj.png

What are you doing here?!

Otherwise, a weirdly enjoyable episode. The animation feels somehow knowingly awful and in that way also quite amazing. The art style reminds me a bit of those old Sugimori TCG designs. Music was first rate, I love hearing new mixes of favourite old tracks!

Lance remains supremely dull, but everyone else was fab. Dragonite is really too cute to be convincingly intimidating but I love how it tried so hard! The Rockets were great fun. Like someone else mentioned, it was cool to see the grunts chilling out before the alarm sounded.
 
I have a problem with the way Ethan was sidelined. Lance encountering Petrel after "Ethan acted as a diversion" is not what happens in the games; Lance and Ethan should have had a double battle against Ariana and a grunt.

I respect this series favoring NPCs over player characters, but why show us in-game events that involve the player characters in that case? Be creative and come up with tangential stories akin to the second episode with Looker. An episode exploring Lance and Clair's history in Blackthorn would have been nice.
 
& Was I the only one who thought that the animation looked similar to what we've seen for the SM anime? Thought it looked pretty similar, but either way I really like the style they're doing Generations in.

Episode #4 used a lot of web gen animators, like Austrian BajiJD. 'Web generation' refers to animators who started out by making animation on the internet and then joined the professional industry. Given that OLM is currently switching over to digital animation (animation drawn on pads, rather than paper) it makes sense that the producers and production assistants are making connections with specialists. The character designs for Sun & Moon are specifically tailored to more expressive animation, too, so there's definitely a lot of improvements coming to the animated franchise right now.

Kairyuu defeating the Rocket Gang's Pokémon was key animated by Yoshinari Kou, the elder brother of Yoshinari You. Yoshinari You is the director of Little Witch Academia and an extremely good animator, just like his brother.

The cuts with the Rocket Gang members running and walking are intentionally animated to be exaggerated. They definitely feel like the animator was thinking "these guys are a bunch of douchebag grunts!" when he was drawing them.
 
The animation may have been questionable but Dragonite looked awesome!
 
Man watching this episode brought alot of memories when I played Pokemon Crystal as a kid(and later on as a teen with Heartgold and Soulsliver) (The lake of rage was my fave part of the game!) overall this was a good episode, can't wait for the next one!
 
This episode was way more enjoyable than the previous episode, I really liked it actually. Although a handful of elements definitely made it certain that if these shorts are canon to the games at all unlike other media, it's definitely a case of broad strokes because I can spot a few contradictions. I'm definitely on the boat that believes these are mostly their own thing, however.

Aside from the scenes where Kairyuu is completely kicking everyone's ass, which I thought looked fantastic, every other scene did feel somewhat lacking in quality. I guess I've been spoiled ever since the B2W2 animated trailer, but you can't really blame me for expecting the same level of eyecandy from a production just as small and less resource-straining compared to a full-length anime. On another note, so OLM is the animation studio for Generations? I can definitely believe that, it doesn't feel like any other studio's work, but is there perchance a solid source for that? Info on these animated shorts have been quite the enigma to me so far.

A continuity error in the animation I caught: rewatch the scene where the grunts takes on Wataru/Lance again, and you'll notice that each of the four grunts threw one Monster Ball each... but all of a sudden five Pokemon came out. Magic?

It was cool seeing Hibiki's cameo, but his sidelined involvement did feel "off" at the same time, considering how much the protagonist contributed to the hideout infiltration in the games. Speaking of which, there goes that fan-explanation of them not "canonizing" any specific boy/girl choices for the protagonist roles, they just did so right here. I'm expecting to see cameos of other game protagonists later on, although I won't put my money on ever seeing Blue (girl) animated.

inb4 it's just Red wearing Hibiki's clothes.

IA0UZnL.png

So far, every time the male GSC protagonist is animated in some form or another, they've given him purple hair even though his hair is clearly black in the game artwork. lol

The Rocket Gang grunts looked alright, but Lambda looked like he was the victim of malnutrition.

Also, no Kairyuu using Destruction Beam on a human being? That's a sin.
 
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The cuts with the Rocket Gang members running and walking are intentionally animated to be exaggerated. They definitely feel like the animator was thinking "these guys are a bunch of douchebag grunts!" when he was drawing them.

There's exaggeration to make someone look like more of a douchebag, and there's making them look like they have cerebral palsy. It's good to know that Team Rocket are equal opportunity employers, at least.
 
I like this episode a lot more than Ep 3. I like Lance a lot, even though the only dragon poke I care for is Tyrantrum because dinosaurs.

I did find it hilarious that in Ep 3 and also this one, Lance doesn't bother calling out moves he wants Dragonite to use. Basically he's just "Hey Dragonite, go bust shi*t up" and Dragonite picks out its own move that it wants to use.

And omg, those TR grunts. I think they have a liquor stash at the base that Giovanni doesn't know about....

I am hoping they'll give us some more episodes like Ep 2 with Looker. I like seeing events transpire that I didn't realize were supposed to have happened. I mean, I knew that Green(Blue) trounced the League & got the Champion's chair even though I didn't see that happening. And again, I knew that Lance was also off battling TR, as I was, even though I didn't see his part.

I am liking this series. Can't wait to see the next one.
 
I was watching PG04 again, and I think one of the TR Grunts had the same voice as Ken Ichijouji?
Yeah, the one with the brown hair does sound a lot like he's voiced by Derek Prince.
 
Actually this is accurate for the Generations series in general. No Trainer called a move yet, only said "Attack", "Do your worst", "Go" etc. I think this is done on porpuse but just don't figure out why.

When I took screenplay writing in college we would always write 3-5 min shorts. We would always be looking for a way to save time while writing these things since we needed to get as much into a short amount of time as possible. I think haveing a moment of dialogue where someone says: "Dragonite, Fire Punch" takes way more time than having someone just say "attack" when you only have so much time to work with your always going to have to cut somewhere and in this case having trainers shout attack names is just a waste of what little screen time they have. People are already complaining that these things are to short.
 
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