The good the bad and the poke of DP

[UnovaSkittles]

DP was the worst saga due to TR being idiots and Brock being there.
However it had some good stuff like Team Galactic and focusing on the story a lot. What are some things you guys liked but disliked bout the DP series? I liked Dawn but thought Brock should of been replaced with Max. Max could of went to a new region with Ash to learn about Pokemon in Sinnoh.

 

[Blackjack Gabbiani]

I was with the Galactic plot until Cyrus told the rest of his team to screw off and wandered into the portal. Not only a complete ripoff, but also entirely against everything he stood for in the games. Where's the screaming shitfit about bringing justice and how he CAN'T "go off somewhere alone" because he's the only one who can do it? Where's the threats to someday succeed despite having his zombie ass completely beaten? Where's the hidden morality that caused even his agents that had turned against his extremism to continue fighting for his core beliefs?

I know games=/=anime but you have to have SOME continuity or you may as well fill it with original characters.

 

[SolgaleoGX]

The anime can't handle it's original characters, let alone game ones. *sighs* I don't really fight it much anymore. D:

Despite all the potential with the Galactic plot, it was a heck lot better than the Magma/Agua one. So I give them credit for that. But there was so much more they could do.

Heck, there is so much more they could've done with many characters in DP.

Dispite that dissapointment, which I get every season, Dawn and Piplup where my biggest one. Dawn's rivals felt really bland. I wish they had introcuded Ursula sooner and just got rid of Kenny. That boy went nowhere. And the penguin, his limelight hugging got freaking annoying. He was just a Pikachu knock off wannabe. And finally Dawn's Togekiss....why did they even give her that? The thing acomplished nothing.

Oh and yeah, Tobias.

Cut those out and DP was perfect.

 

[Lilac]

I liked Dawn but thought Brock should of been replaced with Max. Max could of went to a new region with Ash to learn about Pokemon in Sinnoh.

But Norman Would Want May To Be There To Look After Him

TR being idiots and Brock being there.

Team Rocket Was Good And Made The Sinnoh Leauge Watchable For Me
And They Needed Somebody To Tell Them About Things

Dawn's Togekiss

Dawn Togekiss Was Made To Give Her 6 Pokemon Before DP ends probily

 

[Dr. Buni]

You need to watch Johto series before saying that DP was the worst. Actually I think DP was the best saga until Best Wishes.

 

[Pidgeot]

The DP series was definitely not the worst. How can you think that Johto is better than Sinnoh, despite the cruel amount of fillers that Johto had? (50% of Johto was filler)

 

[Lilac]

i think Jonto Was Flitter's Most of The Time

 

[Karamazov]

I don't think there is a "worst saga," since that's an opinion.

As for DP: I disliked how some of Ash's rivals (Conway, Nando) didn't nearly show up enough. I would have loved a Conway-Paul episode.

 

[Jukain]

I did a personal comparison of the sagas once. Sinnoh was the one I seemed to think had the most positives. It has better content, a more interesting Contest arc, better villians, and having Dawn share screentime instead of merely tagging in Ash's footsteps was a good idea. The worst for me may be Johto like it is with a lot of people. Just way too much filler, and the good TR plots are fleeting. If there is a single word for it, it's stagnation. This is what made people tired of the anime and perhaps the franchise in general. I may have to re-evaluate some of this, because my opinion has changed on some of these aspects. I always feel it is my duty to take the nostalgia factor out of shows like this, because if I included it, the first season would always win regardless of the glaring flaws it has, and a couple of the middle sagas may be balanced out, leaving the later ones to stand on their content alone, which I don't think is fair. I shall come back once I have made more careful consideration of what each saga presented itself as.

 

[Ranger Jack Walker]

The problem with Johto is not that the 50% episodes were filler but rather most of them were reallt bad and even most of the plot related ones were bad.

 

[TokoWH]

Sinnoh is one of my least favorite archs of the series. I want to say it was the worst, but I honestly don't remember enough about Jotho to say that for sure, seeing how everyone else says Jotho was the worst.

It did have it's positives. The battles were much more action packed, expanding on the stuff they were given by the games, there was much more focus on the Pokemon, Barry was awesome, most of the non-filler eps. were pretty cool, Hunter J was an epic villain, and, as much as I want to punch the guy, Paul was a very well handled rivial. (Except until the very end of the League when Ash finally beat him. Still think he should have got PO'd and did something like a rage quit like most random Wi-Fi people do, but that's just a personal oppinion.)

Sadly, as good as those were, the negatives just out way the positives for me.

The dub voices were annoying (although that can easily be fixed with subs), the main group just felt awkward, Piplup, DEAR GOD PIPLUP, too many damn fillers for my taste, the Tobias Darkrai BS at the end of the league, the TRio got on my nervs really fast that season, and there were just a bunch of pointless things that seemed to go nowhere. (Ash getting a bunch of hold items he never used, Kenny and Dawns rivialry, and Buneary having a crush on Pikachu. Althoough the last one was mainly because I ship it. *shot*)

All in all, DP seems to be a lovee it or hate it season. Honestly, I kind of want to like it, but there are just too many things that keep me from doing so.

 

[Jukain]

Ok, I did a little bit of re-evaluation of the sagas. Pretty much what I said above is still true, I think Sinnoh was the current best one, and Johto was the worst, as it had very little content. You probably want to know about the inbetween ones, though. Unova is looking to follow in Sinnoh's footsteps, except improve on it even more. I cannot say for certain until the story arcs end, but for now, it runs second to Sinnoh. Battle Frontier runs 3rd, merely because it has less filler than Hoenn, which is 4th. Hoenn is in it's place because while the Contest arc did improve the story line, whenever there was filler, it was still pretty bland. I considered it a fair balance. Kanto has a similar factor, except that it's flaws chew into the important episodes, which I found more grating than sifting through Hoenn's filler. Again, though, I found it to be a fair balance. There is a lot of good to be found in the first season, but there is also a lot of bad. Orange Islands placed under it for obvious reasons. It continued the style of the first season, but I did admit that it was a little less grating than Kanto simply because it's a totally original story arc with unique ideas. I couldn't say it was better, though, since it just comes off with a resounding meh from me. Again, not much is going on here, and it is plain that this entire arc is filler. (In some aspects, well done filler, but it leaves something to be desired)

 

[SolgaleoGX]

I think it shouldn't really be argued that Sinnoh was the one that was handled the best over all. It has it's faults, and they're very annoying. But it's pretty good. Not my favourite, but I still see it as the best overall delivery considering what this writers tend to do.

As to Best Wishes, time will tell. I currently believe all the praise it gets is because it's new, but time will tell on that too.

 

[LuxrayOfTheWild]

The Diamond and Pearl saga was a rather interesting one I'd say.

For the main cast, I wish had a better reason for Brock being there and they could've established his goal of becoming a Pokemon Doctor much earlier than they did. As for Dawn and Ash, I loved how they handled them. I loved the development they did with Dawn, and Ash was portrayed to be slightly more mature this saga.

As for rivals, there were some pretty stand out and interesting rivals. There's never been a rival for Ash like Paul before. The way they portrayed him as a complete and total ass just made you want to see Ash defeat him every time Paul comes by and tells Ash he and his Pokemon are pathetic. Barry is another character worth praising due to his character. I just wish they introduced him earlier. Dawn's rival Zoey was another stand out for me because of how she was portrayed as the tough girl, and watching her perform was pretty cool at times. Ursula was another interesting rival, given her character. As for rivals like Conway, Nando, and Kenny, there's so much more they could've done. I mean those three hardly ever appeared!

The plots and all were pretty good from the Team Galactic stuff to the Wallace Cup arc. Series need more arcs like this one did, I think.

As for the league...Oh god! I'll never get over how they screwed this up! Though there was the epic 3 parter Ash vs. Paul where Ash finally defeats Paul along with Ash vs. Conway and Barry vs. Paul, the fact that they screwed over Quilava in Ash vs. Nando so they could show Team Rocket's shit nobody cares about, the fact they skipped the Top 32, and last but not least, that fucking plot device Tobias! His only purpose was to be there as an excuse for Ash to lose. If they could've threw out some fillers in DP or waited to air Best Wishes, Ash would've never had to lose to some guy who literally came out of nowhere who uses legendaries.

The DP saga was rather enjoyable I thought, apart from the league being fucked up.

 

[Cybersai]

The DP trio itself was rather awkward. I look at all of the shows other groups and they all feel natural. The DP trio felt poorly put together.

Its like Dawn and Brock both had the common link of Ash, but nothing toward each other. I would have preferred they do another group of 4 with some other new character joining them.

On top of that, there was no real, "sarcasm" or conflict among the group. Aside from those few short times, the DP trio were all super-nice to each other 90% of the time. The other groups had more sarcasm between them.

 

[Froakie]

I wouldn't call it sarcasm, more like playfully insulting each other. In both Iris and Misty's case they are actually meaning what they say to Ash.

In response to the OP, I disagree. I think DP was the best saga of the show. The show was getting better until they brought out Best Wishes which ruined the spirit of Pokemon.

 

[Duckgon Z]

I wouldn't call it sarcasm, more like playfully insulting each other. In both Iris and Misty's case they are actually meaning what they say to Ash.

I think he means "conflict". Conflict is entertaining, one of the reasons people loved Ash/Paul rivalry. DP's group was like "Oh we're friends and everything is wonderful all the time, tra la la la la....", except really for those first 30 episode where Dawn and Ash butted heads a few times.

Any, so saga is, ever was, or ever will be perfect, regardless of how obvious their flaws are. But DP the worst? Some stuff yeah, some stuff no.

 

[Grave-E]

I'm kind of on the fence with DP as a whole, and not entirely sure if I like it or not.
On one hand, the story structure, while still not brilliant, was lightyears ahead of everything prior. Some of it was clunky and suffered from obvious rush-rush syndrome, but it was clear that a lot more thought and care was put into the show's storytelling elements than usual. There was little filler, and as a result, many interesting avenues were explored. Ash and Dawn occassionally taking part in each other's tornaments, the ongoing rivalries, the recurring characters, pokemon development, the galactic and J stuff, Dawn's confidence thing and Ash's quest to prove himself to Paul, some of the series best battles. This was all a step in the right direction.

However....a lot of it was just...boring. The characters themselves, the previously mentioned 'nicey-nice' atmosphere, the way even plot-relevent episodes would just plod along (dear god, that Aipom/Buoysel trade one was awful), the amount of damn battling and training episodes, the bland and often unecessary rivals. None of this was particulary fun to sit through. The series certainly did have good episodes, which is why I still watched the show. But they weren't very frequent, in my opinion.

As a story, it was pokemon at it's best. As entertainment, it wasn't by any means great.

 

[Froakie]

DP wasn't perfect, it was far from it. Although nor is pokemon in an entirety. It was my favourite saga thanks to the pokemon, Brock, Ash's rivals and Paul. Along with the galactic plot it had the best storyline and best rivalry in all of pokemon.

I don't judge a saga based on character interactions. Who honestly specifically watches it to see what jokes the characters have between them.

I only really got back into Pokemon a few years back when I caught the Probopass episode rerun when I was channel surfing. I hadn't watched pokemon before then for years. I only joined this forum just before the beginning of the league, and the galactic episodes onwards were truly the best part of Pokemon. Some things, such as DP190 and the Tobias episodes were flawed and the writing wasn't perfect, but it was and will be the best saga of the series.

It's a shame it all went downhill after a high.

 

[CommanderPigg]

I don't judge a saga based on character interactions. Who honestly specifically watches it to see what jokes the characters have between them.

Um...I do

I think I'm with Grave-E with this; The story for DP is definitely one that I hold dear to my heart and will remember for a while, but...boy, did it take a while to get there! I'm not sure if I would have enjoyed it as much had it not been for the Ash/Paul rivalry.