XY/Z Edgy?

[TheGoldenToon]

I never really understood this. It had serious moments sure, but it didn't seem anymore dark than DP. For the record, I'm not trying to be rude to anyone who didn't like XY(Z), I'm just trying to understand where this notion came from.

 

[MarshiyanMisutaa]

If anything, it was light hearted compared to Sinnoh.

 

[Nicolas721]

It has its dramatic moments, specially in the XYZ part, but none of them feel particularly dark or depressive. For example, Ash receiving pain from the Ash Greninja transformation is forgotten eventually and he recovers from his "depression" within minutes of the next episode.

 

[Pulsaro23]

Personally, I believe that this notion comes from a misinterpretation of the word "edgy". While yes, the term "edgy" does refer to dark stuff, said dark stuff is grim for the sake of shocking the audience and doesn't have any actual meaning (in the context of the story). Edgy stories and characters are gloomy, sombre and depressing for no reason, often contradicting (or, more accurately, betraying) a character's pre-established... well, character (usually by unnecessarily taking it to the negative extreme and reducing their traits and personality to, mainly, only one: edginess (you could say that the characters are taken over the edge)). In short, a case of style over substance mixed in with shock value.

Now, back to Pokémon. While the XY series did have a somewhat more serious and dark storyline, the characters weren't overly gloomy, depressed or extreme, their personalities weren't reduced to that of an angry teen and serious moments that they went through made sense in the context of the story.

Compare the serious tone of XY to, say, the "original edge lord" himself, Shadow the Hedgehog. In his first appearance, he was a black-colored version of Sonic, an antihero who had a tragic story that concluded in an emotional sacrifice. Yet, despite the somewhat darker tone of his story, his character wasn't exactly "edgy" due to the fact that the dark part of his characterization and history fit with the overall story and help flesh out the character, thus having a purpose. However, things changed when he got his own game. I have no idea what Sega was thinking when they made that game, 'cause the Shadow from it is an insult to his pre-established character. They to the dark tone of character and cranked it up to eleven and turn it into his defining characteristic: he's always irritated and angry at the world, he wields guns and kills people and aliens, he swears and (depending on the paths and choices you take in the game) he might end up becoming an evil overlord bent on world domination or even kill Eggman. Not to mention the extreme post-apocalyptic "End of the World" atmosphere that the intro gives off. All for the sake of appealing to a mature audience that was interested into Sonic games to begin with. Compared to all this, XY is far less edgy. More serious? Yes. But edgy? Far from it.

 

[Hidden Mew]

I think that this notion is at least partly due to the last few months of the series. The Kalos League and Team Flare arcs were pretty intense and action packed, which I think gave a lot of people the impression that all of XY was like that. I'm not sure if I recall people calling it edgy per say or even dark. A lot of people just considered it more serious and action packed than it was as a hole due to the more intense last few months of its run.

 

[Daenerys]

I guess it depends on how you interpret the ever-so-popular Internet term "edgy". I don't think it was a dark saga per se, but it did have moments where I was somewhat surprised that the censors let things slide, like the whole pain syndrome that Ash went through when he synced with Greninja, and some of the Team Flare stuff in Lumiose.

 

[MizuTaipu]

I don't think so. The XY series was still pretty lighthearted compared to other shows airing at the time. TV Tokyo has shown much more intense content before.

Compared to the rest of the show, I'd say it was slightly less dark than DP. XY didn't show something like a bunch of people dying in an underwater explosion.

 

[LuxrayOfTheWild]

I never thought it was "edgy". It still had a lot of lighthearted moments. The only reason I feel like people say its "edgy" is because of stuff like the Team Flare arc, which was considerably more serious than other arcs, but it doesn't represent the whole entire XY+Z series. It still had a lot of lighthearted episodes, even in XYZ, from Ash and friends watching over a Litleo trying to be more independent, to Serena posing as Ash to battle a rock star Pikachu trainer, all the way to everyone getting split up at a fun house.

 

[mehmeh1]

It really wasn't that edgy, I get why some people call it edgy, but the "edgy" stuff (which isn't all that edgy anyways) is only a small amount of the series. Heck, before the XYZ part of XY began, I remember someone even callling the series saccharine

 

[Takumi_Tarou]

A anime or movie doesn't need ''edgy'' moments for having a good or deep story.
The pokemon anime is always about heartwarming moments.

 

[KyseL]

I'm not sure if edgy's the right word. But after rewatching some episodes there is a weird tone dissonance, where a very trivial conflict would arise but it would be over-dramatized and treated as deep when it generally boils down to something to some extent superfluous (first thing that comes to mind is the episode when Braixen's branch breaks), there are also a few sort of teenage angst moments that really feel out of place, and again, feel over-dramatized for the sake of shock value or something (like when Ash loses to Wulfric and it's treated as if it's the worst that's ever happened to him so far). Also Alain exists.

On the other hand, there are definitely a lot of lighthearted moments, but when most characters (bar Eureka, Arceus bless her soul) spend 90% of their screen time acting far more stoic than anyone below 40 would IRL, they're a bit harder to appreciate.

P.S.: I'm well aware I'm mixing English and Japanese names, at this point I can barely remember which is which.

 

[sc190191]

spend 90% of their screen time acting far more stoic than anyone below 40 would IRL, they're a bit harder to appreciate.

I really strongly disagree with this notion. In fact, I really can't even imagine where you would even come up with such an idea. XY characters displayed a wide range of emotions. Sure in a serious scene characters acted serious, rather than acting goofy and ruining it, but stoic just doesn't make sense to me (and these serious scenes weren't even that common - people just overemphasize them because its what they remember - especially if they didn't even watch the entire series). The main cast acted lighthearted the vast majority of the time. I accept the critique that there wasn't enough internal conflict between the group, but a lack of conflict does not equate to a lack of emotion. The characters were able to display a wide variety of emotions, instead of acting goofy all the time, and their personalities were all quite different from one-another, instead of being cast as stereotypical "little kids", because the stereotypical TV little kid is not actually representative of the variety of personalities that children can have, and the amount of self-awareness and intelligence a child can have. Not every 10 year old is off the wall goofy or immature, there are hugely varying levels of maturity and ranges of emotions displayed by everyone that are discernible even at quite young ages.