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Would You Have Preferred Pokemon: Sword and Shield The Series Over Journeys?

Sure they could fully evolve Grookey under Ash. However I think a Rillaboom would fit Go more. Heck fully evolve all the new starters under Go.

I can't really see how Rillaboom would fit with Goh that much more with Ash. I'm not really sure if I could see him with an Inteleon either, but that might work more depending on what plans they have for Sobble down the road.

Black&White said:
If Ash needs starters he can just use his older ones instead of some Monkey

Grookey isn't just some monkey. It's one of the newest starter Pokemon and being one of the more marketable starters at the moment would give it more of an edge than say Ash bringing back Bulbasaur or Sceptile. I think that you're too focused on the number of starters Ash has when that has never really been an issue. A lot of fans like the starter Pokemon and would want to see their favorite one get more attention within the anime. Giving one to Ash is pretty solid way of giving that starter more attention and screentime in the anime. It obviously doesn't always work out well, but giving a starter to a iconic lead character isn't really a bad thing in itself.

I also have a hard time believing that Ash will use his reserves in Journeys. It isn't impossible by any means, but given their track record, I have an easier time believing that Ash will rely on his new captures for the PWC and he'll just end up catching more than the typical five or six Pokemon per series given how fast he got five Pokemon in Journeys.
 
I'm quite disappointed that my "home region" didn't get its own dedicated series. It's been a long time since I followed the anime, but a Sword and Shield series would have tempted me back. I think it's a good thing that they're trying something new (I mean, it's about time), but it's a shame that they chose Gen 8 to do it, because this would have been the series where I watched every episode for the first time ever (even in Gens 1-3 when I did follow the anime, I only saw a handful of episodes because it wasn't on TV much). I watched the first episode of Journeys when it was uploaded to the official YouTube channel (seeing Pikachu's origin story was cool), and I'm definitely going to watch the special Sword and Shield arc, but I don't feel especially compelled to watch the rest.

The saving grace, of course, is the wonderful Twilight Wings, which I suspect was created partly to make up for the lack of a traditional Sword and Shield series. Despite its short length, this series was miles better than the main anime. If there had been a Sword and Shield anime, Twilight Wings might have never existed, so in that sense I'm glad that things turned out the way they did.
 
Sure they could fully evolve Grookey under Ash. However I think a Rillaboom would fit Go more. Heck fully evolve all the new starters under Go.

If Ash needs starters he can just use his older ones instead of some Monkey
In what way do the starters fit Go? Go literally has no actual style of his own nor does he seem interested in developing one. I’d rather not have all three fully evolved starters wasted on one who is incapable of showing them off in meaningful ways.

And what kind of logic is that that if Ash needs starters, he can use his older ones? By that logic, why give Ash any new Pokémon when he could just use his old ones? At least explain your thought process rather than just making these statements.
 
Sword and Shield had so little to offer in terms of story that they did the whole thing in four episodes in its entirety, and it was better than the game! So yeah, I'm good with all of the regions being included because it offers endless story possibilities.
 
In what way do the starters fit Go? Go literally has no actual style of his own nor does he seem interested in developing one. I’d rather not have all three fully evolved starters wasted on one who is incapable of showing them off in meaningful ways.

And what kind of logic is that that if Ash needs starters, he can use his older ones? By that logic, why give Ash any new Pokémon when he could just use his old ones? At least explain your thought process rather than just making these statements.
Go can use Grookey in a more meaningful way though. He is already starting to battle more and is getting better as a trainer. Let him use the Gigantamax forms for Cinderace, Inteleon, and Rillaboom.

And Ash has been restricted to starters since the beginning. Freeing him from that burden will lead to more interesting captures
 
Go can use Grookey in a more meaningful way though. He is already starting to battle more and is getting better as a trainer. Let him use the Gigantamax forms for Cinderace, Inteleon, and Rillaboom.

I don't really see how Goh can use Grookey in a more meaningful way. Even if he is getting more used to battling and becoming a better trainer, Ash still battles more often and would be potentially able to give Grookey more experience to make evolving it into Rillaboom believable. Giving Goh all three starters with their Gigantamax forms sounds a bit too much, especially when we don't know if Sobble is going to evolve yet.

Black&White said:
And Ash has been restricted to starters since the beginning. Freeing him from that burden will lead to more interesting captures

Saying that Ash has been restricted to starters is kind of strange to me. I've never really heard anyone complain that Ash always get at least one starter Pokemon. A common discussion for every new generation does is basically people theorizing which starter Ash will catch. Starter Pokemon haven't really prevented Ash from catching more interesting Pokemon either. His teams usually consist of popular/marketable Pokemon, along with one or two wild cards.

I can understand wanting Ash to have more interesting captures, but acting as if starters prevent that from happening is just such a strange claim to me. Plus, there's a really easy and obvious solution here. They could simply just have Ash capture more than five or six Pokemon so he can rotate different Pokemon. They've already done that before in BW, even though I don't think it was handled particularly well. Considering that he already got five Pokemon less than thirty episodes into Journeys' run, I'm still pretty sure that he'll end up with more than five or six captures, especially if they don't want to use his reserves Pokemon for the PWC. Ash can get Grookey and other different kind of captures. It doesn't necessarily have to be one or the other.
 
Sword and Shield had so little to offer in terms of story that they did the whole thing in four episodes in its entirety, and it was better than the game! So yeah, I'm good with all of the regions being included because it offers endless story possibilities.
I really have to disagree there. Was it better than most of what Journeys has been doing? Yes, but that’s what any epic will do for you. Was it done better than the games? Outside of Ash helping against the Dynamax rampages, not by a long shot. Journeys took a story that built up over the course of the entire game, allowing for the different key events to have weight and diluted it into 4 episodes where they just rushed it all. This resulted in numerous events ringing hollow such as Chairman Rose being revealed as the villain, Sonia becoming a professor or the revelation of the 2 heroes. Had they done a traditional series, these events would have had time to actually have the buildup over the course of Ash’s time in Galar that would lead to this event having actual meaning. The way that it is in the anime is like reading a book where you just skip the majority of the pages, only reading the bigger story beats this losing out on what makes them so big to begin with.
 
Honestly if there’s one thing Journeys has taught me, it’s that I probably have higher chances of being struck by lightning than I have of accurately predicting what’ll happen within the next batch of episodes. Nothing is off the table here. So I’m still far from giving up on the series at this point.
 
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You keep looping around in circles (again) and throwing around the phrase "more meaningful way", but you've yet to describe what that exactly means in your terms. Why would he want to use G-Max forms exclusively for them when they're not in Galar all the time?

And what is this fallacy that Ash has been "restricted to starters" since the beginning? If anything, he gets the popular Pokemon regardless of whether they're starters or otherwise
Why wouldn't he want to use them? He has a Dynamax band and if he has all three of them might as well use the GMAX forms. And Go will be back to Galar plenty of times and there is also Isle of Armor and Tundra. Heck Mustard could train him how to use his starters GMAX forms


And I still don't want Ash with Grookey. Plenty of other fans on this site feel the same. It's preference
 
Why wouldn't he want to use them? He has a Dynamax band and if he has all three of them might as well use the GMAX forms. And Go will be back to Galar plenty of times and there is also Isle of Armor and Tundra. Heck Mustard could train him how to use his starters GMAX forms


And I still don't want Ash with Grookey. Plenty of other fans on this site feel the same. It's preference
Gou hardly battles, and I don't know if they would give him a battling goal without him intruding onto Ash's goal.
 
Why wouldn't he want to use them? He has a Dynamax band and if he has all three of them might as well use the GMAX forms. And Go will be back to Galar plenty of times and there is also Isle of Armor and Tundra. Heck Mustard could train him how to use his starters GMAX forms

Wouldn't that also apply to Ash though? Ash has a Dynamax band, has already Gigatamaxed Pikachu, could potentially get a Gigatamax Gengar too and would be in Galar more over the course of the series to use Gigatamax forms. It would also fit more naturally for Ash to get multiple Gigatamax Pokemon simply because he'll be battle more often than Goh due to his goal. It would make way more sense for Mustard to train Ash since battling and training are pretty important aspects of the Isle of Armor. Goh is becoming more interested in battles, but I don't think that he would be that into them when he and Ash are suppose to represent the catching and battling aspects of the franchise respectively.

I could still see Goh getting Gigatamax Cinderace. Cinderace has shown more interest in battling since it first evolved into Raboot and I assume that is at least part of the reason why Scorbunny became fully evolved so fast in the first place. But getting all three starters with their Gigantamax forms still sounds like a lot for someone who isn't going to be battling that much compared to Ash. Not to mention that there still isn't any indication of Sobble evolving anytime soon, so claiming that he'll get Inteleon and Rillaboom just seems like a huge assumption to make at the moment.

Black&White said:
And I still don't want Ash with Grookey. Plenty of other fans on this site feel the same. It's preference

I can understand just simply not wanting Ash to get Grookey out of a personal preference. My problem is that most of your claims either don't make any sense or just come off as unnecessarily harsh, like the notion that Ash would be burdened with another starter when that has never really been an issue.
 
I really have to disagree there. Was it better than most of what Journeys has been doing? Yes, but that’s what any epic will do for you. Was it done better than the games? Outside of Ash helping against the Dynamax rampages, not by a long shot. Journeys took a story that built up over the course of the entire game, allowing for the different key events to have weight and diluted it into 4 episodes where they just rushed it all. This resulted in numerous events ringing hollow such as Chairman Rose being revealed as the villain, Sonia becoming a professor or the revelation of the 2 heroes. Had they done a traditional series, these events would have had time to actually have the buildup over the course of Ash’s time in Galar that would lead to this event having actual meaning. The way that it is in the anime is like reading a book where you just skip the majority of the pages, only reading the bigger story beats this losing out on what makes them so big to begin with.

Then we'll have to agree to disagree because I felt the anime realized the potential of Pokemon as kaiju where as the anime kept most of that off screen. That was the part of the game the disappointed me the most so I was glad to see it here. I still think that including all of the regions is a great idea because we can get all kinds of stories. I just can't picture what little SWSH had to offer being spread across 100+ episodes. In terms of adapting the actual story of the game in to the anime I think XY did it the absolute best.
 
Then we'll have to agree to disagree because I felt the anime realized the potential of Pokemon as kaiju where as the anime kept most of that off screen. That was the part of the game the disappointed me the most so I was glad to see it here. I still think that including all of the regions is a great idea because we can get all kinds of stories. I just can't picture what little SWSH had to offer being spread across 100+ episodes. In terms of adapting the actual story of the game in to the anime I think XY did it the absolute best.
I’d say that the part of them realizing the rampaging Dynamax Pokémon is something that we agree on as far as that goes. However things like XY and DP show just how such plots can be built up within a 100+ episode series with how they made use of key plot points, while further expanding on them rather than it just being a 1-1 retelling. And if anything, XY’s grand finale showed exactly why such a story is best served up having been built up over the course of the series. By the end of that, we had the gym leaders and numerous important characters we’d come to meet coming together to stop Team Flare and even had emotional moments like with Clembot. Things like that only work because the story was built up. You just don’t get that kind of payoff from their handling of the Darkest Day in the anime.

As for the world travel, it could lead to good story but it doesn’t feel like the anime is living up to that potential especially when it’s a pretty well agreed on opinion that not only are they spending far too much time in Kanto but even when they venture to a new region, it feels super generic and interchangeable rather than feeling remotely memorable.
 
Absolutely not. SwSh are mediocre games and I would not have watched more than a handful of episodes based on them, if any at all. Pocket Monsters 2019 (Journeys who?) Is far from perfect, but at least old Pokemon and characters are allowed to be more than background fodder. I will say that if the Mewtwo episode is just a one-off return, my interest will dwindle. But at least there's something worth speculating about rather than which Galar Pokemon Ash will catch.
 
Journeys who?
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I really don't give af who gets Grookey at this point.

Both of Ash and Gou's "Teams" outside of Lucario and Cinderace have been treated like shit and I don't expect Grookey to be any kind of exception so I don't have high hopes for it either way.

I think it's probably worth pointing out that today's episode does suggest that Cinderace is no longer a Walking Pokemon (and it's not shown at all in next week's Episode preview either). It does have make one have to wonder if there's a particular reason for why they did this when this Pokémon who has been following Gou around since episode 4 has suddenly stopped now?

Sure you could say Cinderace's size prevents it from being out of it's Pokeball as much as it was when it was a Scorbunny/Raboot but then that only brings forth the question of why'd they even evolve it so fast to begin with?

Maybe perhaps they want to make room for Gou to have another walking Pokémon?

Now don't get me wrong. I strongly disagree with @Black&White reasoning that Ash is too good for a Starter.
And I think Ash has a good chance of getting Grookey as well. I think it's like a 50/50 even split between Ash and Gou tbh.


As for Journey's I think it's fine as it is.
 
Definitely a traditional romp throughout the Galar region; how they have treated Galar as of now is underwhelming-not even fifty episodes in and Sword & Shield's story has been resolved.

One of my favorite aspects about the anime is seeing the regions come to life in ways the games don't reach (or bother to). Whether that's seeing Pokémon charismatically animated (and gaining a newfound appreciation for them) or hearing renditions of regional OST (some of these songs have been absolute bops), the anime adaptions (anime Contests vs. game Contests) of regions and their characters make such fantastic aspects even richer; for example, I love the Gym Battles with Viola-they took the first Gym Leader of a region and gave her so much dynamic strategy and personality-it is things like that I enjoy watching. I enjoy seeing Ash interact with the regional Gym Leaders and player character, catching new Pokémon, exploring new towns, and the like-I know it can be formulaic, but the recipe never dulled for me because each interaction is different in some capacity.

Given how culturally relevant Gym Battles are in Galar, I think that would have been a neat path for Ash to engage in; especially coming after the battle-lax Alola saga. Journey's substitute for it is uninspiring; if Ash's goal can have progressive strides made off-screen, that is not adequate to me. I also do not like how the regions are being treated like stores in a plaza that Ash & Go simply visit-when they go to a new region, that region's identity is normalized; what happens in an episode feels like it can happen anywhere-they just slap a regional title on it. Given how the writers are not treating the regional visits as I envisioned, I think them sticking to one region would have been better.
 
Given how culturally relevant Gym Battles are in Galar, I think that would have been a neat path for Ash to engage in; especially coming after the battle-lax Alola saga. Journey's substitute for it is uninspiring; if Ash's goal can have progressive strides made off-screen, that is not adequate to me.
Early on I assumed Sw/Sh would be a battle heavy series because of the way the games portrayed the Gym challenge. When it was revealed it wouldn't be a Galar series and the PWC was revealed I thought it sounded like a fun way of pushing Ash into something bigger and really advancing his story after Alola let him win a league.
I can't pretend I'm not disappointed with what actually happened. I wonder at this point if we'll never another battle heavy series.
 
And what is this fallacy that Ash has been "restricted to starters" since the beginning? If anything, he gets the popular Pokemon regardless of whether they're starters or otherwise

Ash hasn't even gotten all three starters for a region since Johto, and apart from Journeys the starters have been fairly equally distributed between him and his companions. He's actually yet to get a Galar starter at all, Go has two of them!
 
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