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Review JN007: The Hoenn Region, Site of Fierce Fights! The Battle Frontier Challenge!!

I think Go would work better as one of those "I don't know what my dream is yet" protagonists, which would give him a good reason to jump around from goal to goal as the plot leads his motivation around by the nose. Kids could also relate to the adult world being a confusing place and not knowing where their place is going to be in it yet. And yes I realize that people will then compare him to Serena but he would actually be much more proactive about it than she was through most of XY.

But instead what we seem to be getting is Go will keep adding new addendums to his poorly thought out "catch Mew and be his trainer with no strong Pokemon of my own" plan from episode 2, but he will never acknowledge that his old plan is a complete bust when faced with reality and no one is going to call him out on it either. He will just pretend that whatever he is doing is really going to lead him to Mew, somehow and someway.

So that is probably why people perceive him as kind of a delusional narcissist even if he did get kicked around a little last episode.
 
Aside from the writing with the all too brief battles, the animation was just perfect

Loved how we went from Houji's mouth direct to Mightyena's mouth, wonder if that was why Houji had fangs
 
KrspaceT said:
Go is more a Go trainer while Ash is a Mainline trainer.

...TOGETHER THEY FIGHT CRIME!
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They should add more characters and get more of the spinoffs in here.
*A Coliseum/XD trainer who rescues Shadow Pokémon.
*A Stadium trainer who never captures anything, only participates in tournaments using rental teams.
*A human who gets turned into a Pokémon and goes exploring dungeons.
*A Ranger.
 
Daren said:
They should add more characters and get more of the spinoffs in here.
*A Coliseum/XD trainer who rescues Shadow Pokémon.
*A Stadium trainer who never captures anything, only participates in tournaments using rental teams.
*A human who gets turned into a Pokémon and goes exploring dungeons.
*A Ranger.
Click to expand...
Honesty I’d pay to see that. Having a Pokémon Ranger, a human in a Pokémon’s body, and/or a Pokémon Rescuer/Pokemon Purifier as traveling companions would be awesome and holds a lot of potential (I mean we’ve seen Satoshi-tachi interact with Pokémon Rangers before so why not make a Ranger companion and Shadow Pokémon are a part of Pokémon Go now)
 
TRNatalie said:
Honesty I’d pay to see that. Having a Pokémon Ranger, a human in a Pokémon’s body, and/or a Pokémon Rescuer/Pokemon Purifier as traveling companions would be awesome and holds a lot of potential (I mean we’ve seen Satoshi-tachi interact with Pokémon Rangers before so why not make a Ranger companion and Shadow Pokémon are a part of Pokémon Go now)
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Actually, the Shadow Pokémon in GO are not the same kind of Shadow Pokémon as in Orre. The terms "Shadow Pokémon" and "purification" are the same in English between the two canons, but not in Japanese and many other languages.
 
This was actually the most watchable episode for me since episode 2, so well done Deko Akao - a vast improvement on your debut. It was very Satoshi to just enter a battle tournament on a whim, and satisfying to see him quite convincingly sweep. I really like Houji the CotD. Maybe because game tracks were remixed, but I also found most of the music far more pleasing to the ear. Satoshi doing one of Suiren's jokes at the end was <3

Many questions were also raised, like 'How did Satoshi find out about the tournament?', 'How'd they just... get to Hoenn?', 'Since when did Barrierd have a ball and when did that transfer to the possession of child he has been sent to safeguard?'.

I am trying to be terribly, horribly positive for the sake of my own sanity so I won't delve into the negatives, most of which are continuations of ongoing issues with this series and all of which have been explored in some detail by the rest of you. Suffice to say, more like this and the PM series might just about be respectable. Keep up the ok work.
 
What was even the point of setting this in the Battle Frontier? It makes absolutely zero sense no matter the way you look at it.

I'm glad Ash is shown to have experience as a Trainer, but then again that's the bare minimum they could do. The fact that one has to hope for continuity to not be a total mess for once is just making this whole show painful to watch, if anything.
 
I'm torn on Ash using Mr. Mime. On the one hand, it very rarely gets to show off in battle. On the other hand, I also wanted to see his old Pokemon returning. Glad to see they didn't make Go's battling as unrealistic as his catching and got creamed instead.
 
Kyriaki said:
They probably picked Battle Frontier because it is the most recognizable location in Hoenn.
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:bulbaFacepalm:

Last time I checked, there was no Battle Frontier in Hoenn in the animeverse for it to be a "recognizable location".

Let's also completely forget other actually recognizable locations capable of hosting a small scale tournament like Evergrande, Sootopolis, Slateport, Mossdeep .etc.
 
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Just been doing some research on the writer Deko Akao, turns out her real name is Hitomi Mieno is she is a Japanese singer and screenwriter

Along with SS004, these are her only credits on Pokemon and I'm not too sure about her writing at present

What do you think?
 
Its pretty hard to believe, but I actually went into this week looking forward to the dub of the SM episode more than the Pocket Monsters episode (for context I’m one of the biggest, if not the biggest, SM hater on here - at least for those that didn’t quit the series), and for the second straight week I preferred the SM episode to the PM episode. Wow, would have never thought this possible. That being said, this is a huge improvement over last week, and I did enjoy Ash's battle, as well as arrogant Go getting his butt whipped, but the rest of it was very PM, which to me is very bad.

I guess I’ll start by beating the dead horse, Go caught 4 Pokemon this week, 3 of which were off screen. Main character catches 3 Pokemon offscreen, pretty unbelievable, but of course with as boring as Go’s catches are, I guess its a good thing. @thomaswiencek got a lot of flack for his theories that all of Ash’s Pokemon are permanently gone, but who’s laughing now? (Not me, I’m crying). Thank goodness Go caught himself a Taillow so that a main character can have one, and who needs Ash’s Swallow, when Go’s Taillow is just bursting with personality. Then he catches not 1, not 2, but 3 of the same Pokemon, what a great guy. Jessie (and the audience) learned a really important lesson when Jessie didn’t get the Beautifly she wanted, but wound up really loving her Dustox all the same, but no such lesson applies to the great and powerful Go, enslaver of all Pokemon. I think we're coming up on the point of Go just calling out Pokemon that we didn't see or even hear of him catching, as the plot demands. Go saying "catching is better anyway" or something along those lines just further disgusts me, he really is cruel and awful. Just catching shouldn't be a thing, he should have a reason to take these Pokemon from their homes other than lighting up his fucking phone. When Go's phone says "excellent" I just want to punch the screen. Okay, minor rant over, I'll probably complain about this every week though, because I'm not letting this shit slide, its just way too awful.

Next issue for me is just how they are treating girls in this series. Couldn't we have gotten a girl in the tournament (yeah I see the bracket showed one, but she couldn't be shown battling, of course). Girls can't battle now, girls can't do whatever disgusting thing Go is doing, girls just go to school so they can run the world and let irresponsible boys play with Pokemon (wow it really is Shudo's original intention, isn't it?). We'll see how our Cotd is next week, but it sure doesn't look like she is a trainer at this point. Its just weird that Pokemon is regressive in gender equality, but it is also regressive in "animal" cruelty as well as a number of others things, so I guess, why not?

Being in the Hoenn region was again a bunch of flash with no substance. Its on a freaking island and they couldn't even make the forest look tropical? That really wouldn't even be difficult, drawing a palm tree is quite easy. Getting game battle frontier I guess isn't a huge issue, but it is a bit troubling to me in general, because its just another minor point that makes this feel less and less like the anime universe we are accustomed to. Also, it apparently is easy enough to get from Kanto to Hoenn that you can decide you are going there, go there, spend a bunch of time there, and get back in one day. Oh how I miss the foot travel taking weeks to get through forests and seeing all sorts of interesting stuff during the journey. This hollow traveling is really depressing.

Other than Ash's battle, this episode really dragged on for me. It seems like the majority of what is happening really doesn't matter (I guess that's an episodic thing) so if it isn't entertaining, its just crap trying to fill 24 minutes. It probably doesn't help that I hate Go with every fiber of my being. Its funny people analyzed the Mimey poke ball issue so much, only for it to be a complete non-factor, if there's anything PM does (other newer series too), its that it complete ignores anything that might be an issue and pretends like it doesn't exist. No reason for Ash to say he had a Taillow, competed in a battle frontier, or has any Pokemon of his own, that would just confuse poor children who we must not respect the intelligence of in any way. I really don't have hope left for this series, although I wouldn't be shocked if they threw some nostalgia crap in later, but do it in a sloppy way that really doesn't mean a shit.
 
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It's gonna be really weird when we have the first episode set in Alola and Satoshi goes out of his way to avoid any of his friends or let Gou know about anything that very recently happened to him.

Would have been great to hear Battle Frontier in the episode about the Battle Frontier but alas...
 
Going back to Alola in even the first year of this show would just remind fans how many mysteries that the island region holds that are ripe for research along with Ultra Space and the importance of finding Lillie's dad. Which would then beg the question: if Satoshi is just going to play researcher then why wouldn't he use the vast resources of the Aether Foundation to do it? Or stick to Ultra Guardian quests instead of the fetch quests he is currently being sent on?

He had a real extended family there and he dropped them all hard without even having a grand adventure in mind, which is the reason he left his home town at 10 years old in the first place.
 
Panky.. said:
:bulbaFacepalm:

Last time I checked, there was no Battle Frontier in Hoenn in the animeverse for it to be a "recognizable location".

Let's also completely forget other actually recognizable locations capable of hosting a small scale tournament like Evergrande, Sootopolis, Slateport, Mossdeep .etc.
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Ah yes, the places that have never been shown with tournament facilities in any medium. Even the Battle Tents were based on non-Dome facilities. I'm sure that no one would have complained about that.

The anime exploring unused locations is a good thing in my book. At the same time, they don't have to spend too much time in a single location. Maybe when Ash has a bigger team, he will visit one of the other facilities he's never been to.
 
Silktree said:
Ah yes, the places that have never been shown with tournament facilities in any medium. Even the Battle Tents were based on non-Dome facilities. I'm sure that no one would have complained about that.
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I said they're capable of hosting tournaments, and given how much Vermilion has changed since we last saw it, it's safe to assume that they've grown even more. And uwotm8? Evergrande does not have tournament facilities? I wonder which AU anime you've been watching.
Silktree said:
The anime exploring unused locations is a good thing in my book. At the same time, they don't have to spend too much time in a single location. Maybe when Ash has a bigger team, he will visit one of the other facilities he's never been to.
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The anime, if it continues along this path, will continue to explore "unused locations" or anime exclusive areas like it has done so far just to avoid visiting areas Ash has been to in the past. Watch as SS009 introduces us to a Uranium Tower in Blacktea Town that has a Ho-oh clone and Eugene and Norty looking over it.
 
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