• A new LGBTQ+ forum is now being trialed and there have been changes made to the Support and Advice forum. To read more about these updates, click here.
  • Hey Trainers! Be sure to check out Corsola Beach, our newest section on the forums, in partnership with our friends at Corsola Cove! At the Beach, you can discuss the competitive side of the games, post your favorite Pokemon memes, and connect with other Pokemon creators!
  • Due to the recent changes with Twitter's API, it is no longer possible for Bulbagarden forum users to login via their Twitter account. If you signed up to Bulbagarden via Twitter and do not have another way to login, please contact us here with your Twitter username so that we can get you sorted.

Review JN009: The Promise We Made that Day! The Houou Legend of the Johto Region!!

I agree that this episode was no less interesting than the overglorified Twilight Wings premiere, but I had much higher expectations (and yet nothing too ambitious) that were not met. Despite the flashback, Ash treated Ho-Oh like just another rare Pokemon, much like Go did. Hitting the fake one with a Thunderbolt even though they hadn't started to battle?

I won't join the "let's rant about the anime club every day" club, but my interest has been severely diminished. If Ash ends up doing the Galar League after all this due to a lack of ideas, I'm out. Been there and done that.
 
Last edited:
I don’t mind that Ho-oh barely featured, that’s par for the course; a lot of episodes about Ho-Oh don’t have it appear in the flesh at all.

I am annoyed that after Ash’s flashback, this episode was all about two CotD and Ash did nothing- not even seeing Ho-Oh himself.

Once again, the series teases continuity but doesn’t deliver.
 
Then what about episode 8? It was a little meh though. I bet the Leon episode is gonna be great.
Beforehand we were saying "The Ho-oh episode is gonna be great".
At this point my prediction is that Ash misses the World Championship after being knocked out a window into a dumpster by some random Pokémon and seeing the finals inspires Gou to catch a Charizard at the end of the episode, and that's it.
 
Twilight Wings focusing on random kid in hospital who dreams of meeting Leon - great episode, "why the main anime is not like this".

Main anime focusing on random kid trying to restore his grandfather's faith in Ho-Oh - "boring filler".

I don't get this fandom.
Maybe because Twilight Wings shows the path of a different character with a different storyline which somewhat follows the SwSh games, and it's just starting out?

Maybe because the main anime already has a main character who's not getting much focus and the other main character has devolved into a psychopathic Gary Stu? Maybe because Ho-oh is supposed to be very important relevant to the former of the main characters, which is further shown in the artwork, but the actual episode is nothing like that and ends up just being exactly that - a boring filler? Maybe because of the bait and switch advertising, which in this case seems intentional and very rude?

To add to Panky's point, Twilight Wings' episode actually focuses on who seems to be the main character of that show (John) and on a major event that will potentially have a huge impact on his life (an encounter with Chairman Rose, during which he gives him a letter). Meanwhile, in this episode, the main character who should be in the spotlight due to this being a Ho-oh episode (Ash) is brushed to the side and, instead, the focus is put on a COTD that will probably never return, with the major event that should impact the main character (the meeting with Ho-oh) being connected to and affecting only the COTD instead. So, yeah, the two cases are far from being the same (unless you're willing to strip them of all context and reduce them to a bare-bones version of themselves).
 
Just seen it i was playing Kakarott

Normal episode I guess sub will make it better

+Normal plot with the grandpa not believing in raibow good and beleiving in the end, I think we have seen something similar, but I dont remember which series (Maybe wasnt' pokemon), the child COTD was nice and Cyndaquil is always a plus on my book
+Ash remembers something
- Go the Psycho continues to catch poor Pokémon to satisfy his Mew fetish

But the problem is still there we arent getting anything ressembling a plot and that psychotic kid and his bunny are stealing the spotlight, I gues we should call him Donnie DarGO or GOnnie Darko or Gonnie Oargo or something like that.
 
I guess it was indeed correct not to take a single piece of artwork as the gospel.
Well of course. As I said in a discussion of an earlier episode, the promotional artwork for this series is basically just bait-and-switch designed to build hype before instead just giving a subpar delivery that has little to do with the artwork aside from the barebones.
 
I'm kinda done with this. I'm having a really hard time trying to figure out what's the point of this series, it's like they decided they should make a whole show consisting purely of filler. I guess the only point is trying to showcase the Pokémon World as a whole or something, but I only think that because they're actually trying to make every town and city they go to feel distinct, something they were not very good at during most of the show's run (y'know, when it actually mattered).

I said I could have an actual opinion after watching the Battle Frontier and Ho-Oh episodes, and here we have it: it's all just clickbait. Sometimes I wished the ratings dropped like never before because that's literally the only way The Pokémon Company is going to care about the fact that their product is trash.

The scene where Ash and Pikachu run after the fake Ho-Oh has really good animation. That's the highlight of this episode. The CoTD's story had potential.

They referenced episode 1 and Ash does remember the day he encountered Ho-oh. I find that to be a nice callback.
The bare minimum they could do at this point. How horrible this show's continuity has to be that we actually feel relieved that the protagonist is allowed to rembember one of the most important events of his life for 20 seconds. I have to hand it to them though, after so many dissapointments I wasn't expecting that to happen in the first place.
 
So I'm going to create an episode right now. Let's call it...

Hoenn Region! Contest Spectacular!

In the episode, Satoshi and Go visit Hoenn to watch a contest... and Satoshi has no idea what a contest is. It needs to be explained to him by a character-of-the-day, it bears no resemblence to the contests of the past, none of the familiar judges appear and Satoshi never once mentions that he's travelled with two coordinators.

Oh, and Go captures a random Hoenn Pokemon because why not.

That's pretty much what all the episodes are now, titles that tease continuity but don't deliver a scrap of it. Satoshi has gone through a mind wipe since he got back to the Kanto, to the point I was genuinely surprised that he remembered seeing Ho-oh in the first episode.

The episode itself was the same as the last few weeks... an absolute utter chore. We're in the opening episodes of a series, we should not be getting dull fillers yet. We have a whole slew of new Pokemon, and they're not getting used. Also, Satoshi is so sidelined by now I actually believe he was intended to be dropped after SM but someone higher up insisted he remain.
 
I'm kinda done with this. I'm having a really hard time trying to figure out what's the point of this series, it's like they decided they should make a whole show consisting purely of filler. I guess the only point is trying to showcase the Pokémon World as a whole or something, but I only think that because they're actually trying to make every town and city they go to feel distinct, something they were not very good at during most of the show's run (y'know, when it actually mattered).

I said I could have an actual opinion after watching the Battle Frontier and Ho-Oh episodes, and here we have it: it's all just clickbait. Sometimes I wished the ratings dropped like never before because that's literally the only way The Pokémon Company is going to care about the fact that their product is trash.

The scene where Ash and Pikachu run after the fake Ho-Oh has really good animation. That's the highlight of this episode. The CoTD's story had potential.


The bare minimum they could do at this point. How horrible this show's continuity has to be that we actually feel relieved that the protagonist is allowed to rembember one of the most important events of his life for 20 seconds. I have to hand it to them though, after so many dissapointments I wasn't expecting that to happen in the first place.
Does this really need a "point"? It's as you say, it's a showcase of the pokemon world. A world tour of sorts. After many years of Ash going for the same goal, do we really need a plot that'd essentially be the same? It's an adventure, to wrap around that aspect.
 
Watching the subs, I can't help but find it funny that Ash says he'll work on becoming a Pokemon Master whilst Go aims to catch every Pokemon including Mew

Well at least one of them is working on their goal
 
Also, Satoshi is so sidelined by now I actually believe he was intended to be dropped after SM but someone higher up insisted he remain.
I suspect that they wanted to use Gou and Koharu as the two main characters before the executives demanded that Ash and Team Rocket remain. Would explain why Ash and Team Rocket are both stagnating horrendously in this series.
 
What a bizarre episode; I can't tell if I liked it or not. There was continuity so I expect that some people will be kinda happy with the episode one flashback. I liked Cyndaquil and most of the Ho-Oh storyline and I'm not even mad that there was no payoff between Ash and Ho-Oh because it wasn't realistic to expect that to happen anyways imo. I just felt that the episode was kinda dull aside from a few cool moments. So I'm neutral right now.
 
After skipping the last two episodes, I decided to watch this one since I was intrigued by the mention of Ho-Oh.

It was a major letdown.

I guess it was nice to see that flashback to the first episode, when Ash first saw Ho-Oh, but it really loses any sort of emotional impact when ultimately, the episode has literally nothing to do with Ash. It's really just a cheap attempt at nostalgia. Unless you're actually going to connect it to the rest of the episode, I don't think they should really bother to include it. It does come across as baity at this point, especially when compounded with the fact that Ash acts like he's never even been to Ecruteak City.

Speaking of which, this episode reminded me why I didn't miss COTD episodes in SM! It was just dull, and I couldn't find any reason to care about these two characters who we'll never see again. At least when these kinds of episodes were in older series, we still had an overarching goal to care about. There's nothing else to look forward to right now...unless you count Gou's goal, which is starting to get really old, really fast. Seriously, he just gets to catch multiple Pokemon an episode with zero issues? No battling, no moral dilemmas, no bonding...nothing. So far, the writers have taken everything that was interesting about Gou the first couple of episodes and pounded it into dust. He's kind of gone from being this character with an interesting backstory and personality deficits to an effortless Pokemon catching machine. I would really like to see Gou have some more struggles to deal with than he currently has, which is basically nothing.

What's most disappointing to me after watching this episode, however, is how apparently misconstrued the "dual protagonist" descriptor of this series has been thus far. Right now, I feel like Gou is the protagonist, and Ash is more of the co-star. A Ho-Oh focused episode would've been perfect to make Ash the star of...and it didn't happen. Gou's had quite a few episodes where the spotlight was on him, and he's catching new Pokemon every episode. Ash really hasn't had much focus on him so far, and he hasn't caught a thing. I don't mind the idea of a dual protagonist show, but I do when it's not actually being executed.

I said I would give this series 10 episodes before I really started to judge it more critically, but this is the episode where I'm gonna tap out from watching every single week (though, I guess you could say I already did that since I skipped the last 2 episodes). I'm still hoping the series picks up at some point, and I'll probably watch any episodes that sound interesting to me, but it's just not worth my time to watch the new episode every single week.
 
Credit where it's due, with subtitles it is marginally better. Aside from the previously mentioned flaws endemic to this series as a whole there was nothing particularly wrong with it taken at face value. Actually there was, mainly that they were interacting with the illusions as if they were real. That's not how illusions work, just because they're seeing a cliff-face or a stair slide shouldn't make the physical realm of Tin Tower suddenly gain those effects. They might think they're climbing a cliff but they're still standing on a staircase and therefore should not actually be able to climb the cliff. Guess they didn't watch the previous illusion episodes, because if this it how it had worked back then Brock would have been trampled to death by a Stantler herd while Ash and Misty burned to death in Burned Tower.

But if we ignore all that and pretend the episode existed in it's own bubble then it was all right, certainly better than the 'Gou catches bugs in Pokémon Go for 22 minutes' episode.
 
Does this really need a "point"? It's as you say, it's a showcase of the pokemon world. A world tour of sorts. After many years of Ash going for the same goal, do we really need a plot that'd essentially be the same? It's an adventure, to wrap around that aspect.
I mean I don't understand what they're trying to do with this series. When I say it needs a "point" I mean, as a rule of life, every single piece of media needs to be about something. It's the whole reason every show needs a director and it's not just a bunch of writers doing what they want.

It's hard to point out to me what this show is supposed to be about now. A "showcase of the Pokémon World" sorta makes sense, but they're doing that so poorly IMO I'm not entirely sure if that's really what this is supposed to be about. And even if that's the theme of the show, it only works as a setting. This series lacks an actual premise right now.
 
I might bother to watch this episode when I have more time but after seeing the last two (which were really really boring) I'm not sure. For now I'm thinking of only watching episodes with Galar characters or that takes place in Galar or one that could have references to the past (although I'll check if it's not clickbait). At first I thought there was some chance to finally have a series with a bunch of throwbacks, references and appearances of old characters and old series but doesn't seem the case anymore.

I don't doubt OLM'll rewrite it eventually (maybe also add a subtitle like they did in Isshu), and I hope to be one that features the Galar League Tournament.
 
Please note: The thread is from 3 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.
Back
Top Bottom