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Pokémon Evolution/Capture/Release Thread

I mean, if we base aces of which Pokemon Ash can get or not, he won't get Urshifu either.
tbh, with two Fighting-types in his party already, I wasn't keen on him getting a third one to begin with.

But even if you don't think having three Fighting-types is a strong enough reasoning against Ash catching a Kunbfu/Urshifu... Urshifu does have two forms, so there's no reason why they couldn't just do the same thing the games do and have Ash keep one Urshifu form while Mustard gets the other. Easy peasy solution, really.
 
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I think we all now know why they gave Ash a fully evolved Dragonite and Gengar; if they gave him Dratini and Gastly we’d have expected development - it took us about 25 episodes before we realised “hold on a minute, they barely appear and rarely do anything”

I think Sirfetch’d and even Lucario have been resigned to this fate...
 
I think we all now know why they gave Ash a fully evolved Dragonite and Gengar; if they gave him Dratini and Gastly we’d have expected development - it took us about 25 episodes before we realised “hold on a minute, they barely appear and rarely do anything”

I think Sirfetch’d and even Lucario have been resigned to this fate...
I think they’re well aware that we expect development no matter what evolutionary stage they’re at.
 
I think they’re well aware that we expect development no matter what evolutionary stage they’re at.
I also believe they were aware at the time, but I do think it's because, if they were just Gastly and Dratini when caught, development would need to be more ''obvious'' and would need to be bigger, and also cover multiple episodes, since in the anime world, Pokemon, at least like, 99% of the time, evolve physically to demonstrate their mental/emotional development.

Think of Sirfetch'd for instance: it only evolved in every sense of the word when it overcame it's recklesness and actually listened to Ash and the two were able to connect fully. And this is an advantage in storytelling this anime always had: They can show growth figuratively speaking through physical, tangible growth.

It's an powerful weapon that the Pokémon anime has in it's hands, and they know even when to not use it, since Pikachu, and basically every other Pokémon in that series that conciously decided not to evolve also shows that you don't always needs an physical change to be strong and to grow. And even Pokémon that cannot evolve at all had their arcs, like how Hawlucha learned to think before acting and to be more precise with it's moves.

But let's take Dragonite here for a second: it appeared as an Dragonair, and what was it's challenge? To learn Dragon Dance and evolve. Ash helped it out, and then decided to follow him, and was captured, in the same episode it appeared. And Gengar? It learned what happened to it's trainer, and learned to overcome grief and rage, and most specially, to learn that is possible to still build and developt new relationships even if you had your heart broken before, and the whole thing happened in a singular episode, and was captured in the same moment.

See an pattern here? There's no complex, multiple-episodes-long arcs dedicated to his Pokémon. It's not lke Charizard, Glalie, Infernape, Gliscor, Greninja, Goodra, just to name a few, who had multiple episodes, spread out trough their series to have their arcs, even if some of them didn't had the best arcs. It's just another example of Journey's ''Kids are not gonna watch multiple episodes in order so we need an episodic format'' type of mentality.

And like, okay, they were already caught fully evolved, so, what's next? What are their new challenges and trials? Wait, they already surpassed them? In the same episode they were caught in??? Like, Gengar overcame it's distrusts towards humans, and Dragonite learned how to fly, so what are they supossed to developt now? They battle with/for Ash, but what now? I think my point is that, if they were caught in their base forms, we could've more out of them.
 
I think the reason that Dragonite and Gengar were caught fully evolved was mainly so Ash could have a couple of strong Pokemon ready and set for the PWC, but seeing how little those two have done since their capture especially with how rare PWC battles themselves have become, if anything it just kinda reinforces the idea that Ash should have just used his reserves.

However, a good compromise might have been if Dragonite and Gengar had been caught in their middle stages instead, that way they'd be strong enough to believably put up a good fight against tough PWC opponents (which would be especially believable in Dragonair's case, since pseudo-legendaries don't evolve early unless they're Ash's Goodra), but still have room to grow, and maybe then the writers wouldn't have so many excuses to not give them appearances...
 
Well, no one expects development out of Dragonite and gengar at this point. As other users mentioned, their character arc stated and ended in their capture episodes.
There’s different kinds of development, and it doesn’t always come in character arcs. In any case there’s still room for Gengar to get its Mega or G-Max.
 
Less than one episode of development. Are you serious? And regarding the Gengar part, I won’t argue on hypotheticals.
What are you even arguing at this point? You said people don’t expect any development at all from them, I said some people do. How does “amount of development they’ve gotten so far” even matter? We can expect it no matter what. I’m not sure why what I said was so controversial lol. Do you not want any development moving forward?
 
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I think the reason that Dragonite and Gengar were caught fully evolved was mainly so Ash could have a couple of strong Pokemon ready and set for the PWC, but seeing how little those two have done since their capture especially with how rare PWC battles themselves have become, if anything it just kinda reinforces the idea that Ash should have just used his reserves.

However, a good compromise might have been if Dragonite and Gengar had been caught in their middle stages instead, that way they'd be strong enough to believably put up a good fight against tough PWC opponents (which would be especially believable in Dragonair's case, since pseudo-legendaries don't evolve early unless they're Ash's Goodra), but still have room to grow, and maybe then the writers wouldn't have so many excuses to not give them appearances...

Honestly, it makes me think that they should have just given Ash unevolved Pokemon from the start instead. Ash having new unevolved Pokemon would have helped his team to grow and develop. Even though fans complained with how much screentime Riolu got, I still think that was in part due to how it did have room to grow by virtue of being unevolved, along with Lucario being a really popular Pokemon. There isn't much to do with Dragonite and Gengar by comparison since they're fully evolved. They aren't unbeatable or perfect, but beyond learning some new moves or just have them battle, there isn't much for them to do. At the very least, I think that their options are more limited than if they were still unevolved. That's a big reason why previous series would usually wait until the end of their runs before giving the character fully evolved Pokemon.

Considering that how rare it is for Ash to battle against a tough PWC opponent, I don't think it was even necessary to give him fully evolved Pokemon from the start for this goal. He doesn't really need fully evolved Pokemon to beat the one-shot trainers with Pokemon like Tauros, Meganium and Elekid. It would have been more ideal, at least for me, for Ash to have a team of unevolved Pokemon, including some more Galar Pokemon, and we could see their progressions as Ash makes his way through the PWC. Granted, it would have also helped for the PWC to be more front and center instead of being mostly an afterthought given how the bulk of Ash's progress has been off-screen against one-shot trainers, but maybe having more Pokemon that were capable of evolving would have helped to give more focus to Ash's matches too.

While Ash using his reserves would have been neat too, I still have a hard time believing that they'll bring them back anytime soon.
 
Even though fans complained with how much screentime Riolu got, I still think that was in part due to how it did have room to grow by virtue of being unevolved, along with Lucario being a really popular Pokemon.
To highlight this point even further, Lucario's screentime has diminished immensely since evolving, with its last major appearance being the battle against Mewtwo. Granted, it'll probably pick up again when the time to rematch Bea approaches, and Lucario has gotten a couple more bit parts than Gengar or Dragonite (what with it being chosen to fend off the poachers who were trying to capture Suicune despite Dragonite and Gengar arguably being better equipped for that job, seeing how Lucario's moveset of all Fighting moves was resisted by the Poison-type army), but it's still not appearing anywhere near as much now as when it was a Riolu.
 
What are you even arguing at this point? You said people don’t expect any development at all from them, I said some people do. How does “amount of development they’ve gotten so far” even matter? We can expect it no matter what. I’m not sure why what I said was so controversial lol. Do you not want any development moving forward?
The thing is, I have personally stopped expecting development from the fully evolved members of the cast, since JN has shown us a definite trend of developing a Pokémon only when it wants to evolve. Gengar are probably the least developed Ash's Pokemon bar captures like Kingler, Muk and Palpitoad.

Seeing the current trend, I think I’m setting myself for disappointment if I expect any development for it. When did Gengar even appear last? What was the last notable thing it did? I’m already bracing myself for Dragonite not even appearing for 10+ episodes after the Iris one because that is what JN has set the expectations to.
 
The thing is, I have personally stopped expecting development from the fully evolved members of the cast, since JN has shown us a definite trend of developing a Pokémon only when it wants to evolve. Gengar are probably the least developed Ash's Pokemon bar captures like Kingler, Muk and Palpitoad.

Seeing the current trend, I think I’m setting myself for disappointment if I expect any development for it. When did Gengar even appear last? What was the last notable thing it did? I’m already bracing myself for Dragonite not even appearing for 10+ episodes after the Iris one because that is what JN has set the expectations to.
To me, the fact that they haven’t had many appearances since their captures (actually, Dragonite has had quite a few though only one or two were significant), points to the possibility of seeing them more in the future. There’s plenty of upcoming battles and things I could see them being useful for. Though, I don’t personally subscribe to the pessimistic outlook some people have with JN as a whole, so maybe it’s easier for me to be hopeful.
 
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