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Review Pocket Monsters: The Origin

No they aren't. How in the world are the of the "same coin"? There's nothing backing this up.

-.- By same coin I mean same person. Red is Ash and Ash is Red it's just the views of the fandom that make it seem like they aren't the same person. They may be counterparts or whatever but in the end they are pretty much the same guy.
 
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It seems I'm late to the party, but I finally got to watch Pokemon The Origins.

I was nearly crying from all the nostalgia. The old save/load screen, the music, the whole journey and additional sidequests (such as getting the rods)... Everything just made me want to play the old Gen 1 games again.

The voice acting was splendid, and I was impressed with all the new animation - especially the battle effects. They certainly put a lot of effort into all those movements. Also, I like how they had Red narrate some of his journey so we wouldn't miss out too much :D I also liked how they had Red start out as a character who was only trying to fill the dex for Prof. Oak to someone who gradually matured into someone who understood pokemon and created a firm bond - hence, the Mega evo at the end felt more dramatic and made plenty of sense.

My favorite battle was Red vs Giovanni. The flashbacks were a nice addition, and I felt I could understand more about Giovanni's character. He was more than just a villain boss in this special.


If I were to give my personal ratings, I'd give it a 10/10. I couldn't ask for more :D I appreciate the time they took to develop this, and I loved it!
 
There shoulda been an epilogue to this showing either

A. Red looking under a truck
B. Red surfing up and down the east cost of Cinnabar island.
 
Another favorite part of mine

When the Marowak ghost appeared and scared Green, he started screaming and then ran downstairs into Red's arms XDD.

shippy <3
 
Is there any possibility of, when the DVD/BD Version appears, there being character sheets or a booklet with them?
As an artwork maniac, I'd sure love to see all the character arts from this Special. Maybe there could be surprises for us, who knows...
 
I just registered to post this. I see many people saying that the first seasons of the regular anime were superior to Origin. The writing in the anime is really awful, and yes, I'm including the first seasons when I say that. Nowadays that I can't watch a single episode (old or new) of it without cringing really hard at all the plotholes, the poorly directed battes, the terrible animation (though I'll admit that this one got better in the latest seasons), the unbelievable and unrealistic characters, the banal, repetitive and predictable plots, the hamfisted broken aesops (they expect me to believe that trainers are supposed to work hard in and train their Pokémon order to earn victories when Ash tended to kick far more butt in battle whenever he used untrained ones such as Primeape, Krabby and Tauros?) and the way the characters act like morons. Origin's writing, animation, action, story, character designs and art style are vastly superior. While it's not perfect (the battles should have been longer and it should have skipped less stuff), all of its problems are a result of being limited to just four episodes. Keeping it mind that the writers had to squeeze all the plot in only 4 episodes, they did a masterful job, and I'll take a rushed four-episode OVA series over a show with almost 1000 episodes where 95% of it is filler and every single episode is a rehash of the same darn plot any day of the week. Moreover, Origin's writers were under the pressure of having to stay extremely faithful to the games, and still did an amazing job. The anime's writers took a lot of liberties, and yet they couldn't manage to write a half-decent story.
 
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It's fairly obvious that something with 700 episodes is going to be both less faithful to the original content and have more 'filler'. The fact you can do a good job of putting most of the major plot points in 4 episodes shows how hard it would be to expand that out to a 2-3 year series, they are coming at the concept of a Pokemon anime from totally different angles. You can't be true to the storyline for an anime that long with the amount of content in the games. They've certainly had a mixed history on adapting game plots, but equally there are some great anime only plots - Paul was a far better rival than anyone in the games that series was based on.

Ash's wins with untrained Pokemon were no more unbelievable than Red being able to win despite nearly totally changing his team every battle - and the short battles means I don't know how someone can come to a conclusion on his battle style - it was type advantage + Charizard magic. Red only having success is no better than Ash's failure to win a league.
 
I just registered to post this. I see many people saying that the first seasons of the regular anime were superior to Origin. The writing in the anime is really awful, and yes, I'm including the first seasons when I say that. Nowadays that I can't watch a single episode (old or new) of it without cringing really hard at all the plotholes, the poorly directed battes, the terrible animation (though I'll admit that this one got better in the latest seasons), the unbelievable and unrealistic characters, the banal, repetitive and predictable plots, the hamfisted broken aesops (they expect me to believe that trainers are supposed to work hard in and train their Pokémon order to earn victories when Ash tended to kick far more butt in battle whenever he used untrained ones such as Primeape, Krabby and Tauros?) and the way the characters act like morons. Origin's writing, animation, action, story, character designs and art style are vastly superior. While it's not perfect (the battles should have been longer and it should have skipped less stuff), all of its problems are a result of being limited to just four episodes. Keeping it mind that the writers had to squeeze all the plot in only 4 episodes, they did a masterful job, and I'll take a rushed four-episode OVA series over a show with almost 1000 episodes where 95% of it is filler and every single episode is a rehash of the same darn plot any day of the week. Moreover, Origin's writers were under the pressure of having to stay extremely faithful to the games, and still did an amazing job. The anime's writers took a lot of liberties, and yet they couldn't manage to write a half-decent story.

I want to argue this, but I can't. So I won't. I have to agree, as a long-time fan of the series these are legitimate problems with the show. They've definitely improved many aspects considerably over the years (for me personally the main one being that Team Rocket no longer appears in every episode.) but I also have to agree that while watching Origins I couldn't help but think to myself "if only the actual anime were this good." Well they had over 15 years worth of episodes to learn from and now it's certainly paying off now.
 
HumanDawn said:
I don't know where you're getting the idea that it would be taken as him choosing Squirtle because of his name, despite telling Oak that it's a lame reason for Red. It's not exactly copying him, and I don't know how it's out-of-character for Blue to do something Red wants to do when he went into the tower.

It's kind of like how, in the early Kanto days, Satoshi would ask Kasumi why she keeps following him and she'd respond by saying something like "You think I'm following you!? Don't make me laugh! You just happen to be going the same way I'm headed, that's all." She was, of course, bullshitting.

"Blue" choosing Squirtle would feel the same to anyone who hasn't seen the Japanese version before. "Don't be ridiculous! I'm not choosing Squirtle because he's blue, that'd be childish. No, I'm choosing him because...um...because Water beats Fire! Yeah, that's it. That's the reason..." It won't be phrased like that, of course, but it's not unthinkable that whoever doesn't know that Blue was called Green in Japan (all...zero of them, because that's like the single most well-known piece of trivia connected to the franchise) would see Blue's choice as being similiar to Misty's explanation for following Ash.

And Green's reason for going into the Pokemon Tower was to become the hero of Shion Town. If he could drive out the Rocket-Dan before Red could, he figured, his name would go down in the town's history and he would become their hero. He found out about the Rocket-Dan from eavesdropping on the townspeople's conversation, and Red just happened to be among them, but his rival wasn't really what motivated him to go into the tower.

Somari said:
I wish NOA hadn't kept his name as "Blue" in the HGSS remakes though.. This special really has it thick when it comes to his name, like his green apparel and Red asking him if he'll get a grass type because of his name.

Can you blame them though? If so many other video game fandoms can get over their silly Japan -> US name changes over the years, then Pokemon fans can as well.

Mr. Blaze said:
Just promotion for XY... come on, this was supposed to be an hommage to the very first games.

I don't like it any more than you do, but to be fair...a lot of the promotional material for this special stated that this was being made "to commemorate the release of Pocket Monsters X & Y." It sucks, but at the same it's not too surprising.

HumanDawn said:
@Dogasu; Has there been any news of a soundtrack of these episodes being released?

Not yet, though, as you may already know, five of the tracks from this special will be included as Bonus Tracks on the Pocket Monsters X & Y video game soundtrack that's coming out in November. Beyond that, though, nothing's been confirmed.

I will point out, however, that on the night the The Origin aired various hashtags related to the special - #オリジン (Origin), #メガリザードンX (Mega Lizardon X), etc. - were trending on Japanese Twitter. And a lot of the people Tweeting about the special expressed the desire for a CD release of the soundtrack.

So the fans in Japan want it and have said as much. I guess it's up to Media Factory or Overlap or whoever to make the next move.

xrick said:
Is there any possibility of, when the DVD/BD Version appears, there being character sheets or a booklet with them?
As an artwork maniac, I'd sure love to see all the character arts from this Special. Maybe there could be surprises for us, who knows...

Unfortunately not. Overlap's page on the DVD / Blu-ray simply lists an A3 size poster as being included with the DVD / Blu-ray. If there was going to be a book or anything like that included then it would have been listed there.
 
It's kind of like how, in the early Kanto days, Satoshi would ask Kasumi why she keeps following him and she'd respond by saying something like "You think I'm following you!? Don't make me laugh! You just happen to be going the same way I'm headed, that's all." She was, of course, bullshitting.

"Blue" choosing Squirtle would feel the same to anyone who hasn't seen the Japanese version before. "Don't be ridiculous! I'm not choosing Squirtle because he's blue, that'd be childish. No, I'm choosing him because...um...because Water beats Fire! Yeah, that's it. That's the reason..." It won't be phrased like that, of course, but it's not unthinkable that whoever doesn't know that Blue was called Green in Japan (all...zero of them, because that's like the single most well-known piece of trivia connected to the franchise) would see Blue's choice as being similiar to Misty's explanation for following Ash.

Ahh, that makes a lot of sense! I guess in the end it depends on how Blue's voice actor acts on that line. If he acts like how Misty would with her tone then I can see how somebody would take it that way. I really doubt people would misinterpret it.
 
Yeah, I guess I should've expected no less with the whole Mega Charizard X thing, it was sort of announced the special would have some ties with XY after all. Still came as a surprise to me and felt really out of place for my liking.

If anything, the music in this special was still amazing. I hadn't heard some themes for such a long time, so when I heard them a nostalgic string was touched and I actually had to search it up what parts of the games some pieces of music came from. Especially the Rocket's Hideout theme and the Lavender Town theme were great to hear. 10/10 on the music department for sure.
 
I went into watching it with low expectation and I was a little surprised on how good was it, but if I had to give it an actual rating I would give it 7/10 for the great music and the feels.
 
Was just rewatching the fourth part, and spotted this... one of the photos in the Hall of Fame sports Rougela in her original, black-face design.

 
I'm curious how Marowak was killed by an electric rod considering it is a ground type... hqdefault (12).jpg
 
One problem I had with it was the fact it was too short. They cut so much stuff out that I would have liked to have seen, and with Red and Green's 6 v 6 battle, we only saw 2 pokemon fight each other. And as much as I like Charizard I felt he was kind of over glorified. I also thought the Mega Evolution debut was kinda unnecessary and I disliked the drawing styles of the humans.

Over than those complaints I LOVED it. The battle animations looked great, I loved how dark it went, it was fantastic how they went into detail and included minor things from the games (About Marowak's death and the Hall of Fame. This is what the anime should have been. No bullshit fillers, no annoying jokes, just putting the story of the games onto the screen. Though it's unlikely, I would love it if the actual anime became like this. That's why I think it would be amazing if they made more short seasons like this, maybe about 10-15 episodes for each game (Imagine the Red battle or the story of BW being presented in this way).

To summarise, I am a long term fan who is very satisfied and wants moar!
 
I just finished watching the japanese Origins anime (with English subtitles).

It was the best thing I ever watched.
 
Cubone's screams will haunt me in my sleep D:

It was a good special, although I'm not sure if that's nostalgia or if it was actually good.
 
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