Anime and Movies: Too Predictable Nowadays?

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CosmosShipper

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While I was at my local regional school competition, something hit me like a ton of bricks. I realized how a little too easily predicatable the anime has been getting.

For example, I KNEW that during "Ghoul Daze", Angie and Ash weren't going to the spirit world with that girl (it would've been interesting if they branched off several episodes devoted to the two getting back to the real world).

And movie-wise, I KNEW that Lawrence III/Jirarudan (choose the name you'd like to refer him as ) was going to be dealt with one way or another. And the crystals in Greenfield weren't going to stay. Personally, I think Celebi should've been the first Pokemon to die without resurrection in the fourth movie.

Latios' death obviously surprised us, which is a first. The fifth movie had more surprises, such as the Bianca/Latias kiss at the end (DO NOT START DEBATING) and the wave almost destroying Alto Mare.

I could go on forever and ever about how too predictable the anime is, but I'll let you guys express your thoughts.

What would be REALLY nice and unpredictable is that those unreleased BGMs get released, but that's just my personal thought.
 
Well, the fact of the matter is that since it's a show geared towards kids, the good guys have to end up winning in the end. And also everyone has to learn a lesson in the end and go home happy. So that's what makes it so predictable; the writers don't have many endings to choose from for each story arc.
 
I think "nowadays" isn't really applicable. It's always been quite predictable. Sure they've handed us some twists and turns, but it is essentially a kids' show. They can't make it too weird and/or negative.
 
How was it a surprise that Jirarudan was going to be "dealt with"? The only two movie baddies to get away without consequence were Mewtwo (although he was saddled with all the clones he then had to take care of) and Molly Hale (although she's *got* to be scarred for life) (maybe three if you count Butler, but he had to almost kill himself to accomplish that).

As for the Dusknoir episode, given that they were *already* doing a multiparter with the school, they weren't about to diverge from that because even the ongoing subplots have to be kept simple and that would have been a sub-subplot.
 
The show has always been like this. The only things that are surprising is some captures/evo's we didn't expect.
 
Up until about now it has been somewhat predictable. Ash goes to a new region, Oaks his pokemon from the previous region, and goes through the gyms of that region with pokemon he catches in that region + pikachu who he will never Oak. TR tag along and try to capture pikachu, but inevitably fail. There is a female that joins him on his journey too which always happens.

I think the reason this happens that way is because each region is fresh, a new bunch of kids could be watching the show. Keeping the pokemon and maybe the female from the previous region (with the exception being Misty) and Brock for the guy, from the previous series would do two things, one, make it easier for Ash to beat gyms and the new kids watching the show won't eactly know about the pokemon Ash has, so thats why he sticks with Pikachu as his first. It was like me when I missed alot of Advanced Gen, when I came back to watching the first episode of D/P, I never knew of Aipom and no idea where it came from.

Also, it seems that from Gen II onwards, Ash has let most of his pokemon evolve, rather than having thm in their unevolved forms.

Movies always are there to show a story about a legendary pokemon, so that's predictable. Usually they have someone trying to capture the legendary... TR catching Celebi in Pokemon4Ever, The guy trying to capture the legendary birds in Pokemon the Movie 2000, the magician trying to capture and use the power of jirachi in Jirachi the wishmaker and so on, either that or they have an epic battle between legendaries or have some connection between bad guys and legendaries most of the time.

Now with movie 12 coming up and the Johto pokemon, no one knows what will happen next this time as Gen V is nowhere in sight, first time that the show has been unpredictable past the 8th Gym which has not happened yet. Some think Ash will go back to Johto, but really I don't see why to to promote a remake. He has beaten the Gyms and been through the region already and I can't see him challenging them again, so I don't see much point. Also, one or two people suggested changing the gym leaders so he'd have new ones to face, but if that happened, they'd have to do that in remake too and I can't see it happening. But this is not really what this thread is talking about here, so I'll stop on that.
 
CosmosShipper said:
Well, the movies could have just a FEW more twists. They'd sell better.
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Pokemon doesn't need to "sell better". They've been in this money-making groove for nearly fifteen years now. No, Pokemon doesn't sell as well as it used too, but it is still one of Nintendo's most powerful franchises.

When you are a multi-billion dollar franchise you don't risk changing your formula, as it usually ends in failure.
 
CosmosShipper said:
While I was at my local regional school competition, something hit me like a ton of bricks. I realized how a little too easily predictable the anime has been getting.
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Looks like someone just discovered universal plot structure. Congrats. ;-)

No, the anime is not getting any more or less predictable, nor are the movies, nor anything. What's happened is that you have changed - you've started to see the patterns and anticipate them.

The bad news is, once you've started to see them, you can't UN-see them, and plots are going to suprise you a lot less often.

The good news is, it happens to all of us...and it doesn't have to ruin your enjoyment of Pokemon, or any other story. You just have to shift focus a little.

The patterns that you're seeing are older than Pokemon, older than anime, older than TV or movies or even books (though TV, movies and books all helped crystalize them for the modern world). They used to say there are only three plots in the world ("Boy meets Girl," "The Brave Little Tailor," and "Man Learns Lesson") until Joseph Campbell came along and said there's only ONE plot, the Hero's Journey "Monomyth," of which those three are mere variations. But the number doesn't really matter. The point is that "story" has pattern, and patterns...repeat. That's what makes them patterns.

It's true, kids shows are more predictable than some...Pokemon is never going to be a ground-breaking show like some HBO original series. Despite that, despite the fact that you can predict where the characters are going to end up 99.44% of the time, you can still enjoy the smaller surprises of how they get there, and what they do in between.

The interesting part of the second movie to ME was not that Ash saved the world, but that Team Rocket sacrificed themselves to help him do it. And the interesting part of Ash saving Angie from the spirit world was not that they didn't get sucked into the abyss, but that Ash's determination got Ash yet another girl for his future harem show Angie's affection, which he was just as clueless about as ever. (I find that way less interesting than Team Rocket being heroes, but other people suck up that stuff like water). And the interesting part of the fourth movie (to me) was discovering who Sammy was...well, actually, I got accidentally spoiled beforehand, so it wasn't. But even knowing that didn't ruin my enjoyment of it, it was still lots of fun to see Sammy and Ash interact.

And of course, the second, third, or eighteenth time you view a movie or episode, nothing is a surprise...but you can still enjoy it anyway. Your first time will just be a little more like that than before.
 
The show has always been straightforward. The only reason it is more predictable now is that it's all been done before, and we have about 500 episodes behind us with similar plots.
 
Another thing is we're all older now, so we all recognize things easier.

When Kanto was airing for the first time, many of us were kids ourselves, so as young kids we didn't notice how straight-forward the plot was.

But in reality we're all above the target audience, the Pokemon anime has always been aimed at the 6-12 year old crowd, so as teens and adults we view the show differently now.
 
The show has been getting better in my opinion and improving considerably. D/P is still predictable in a way, but it is far improved to the previous arcs. The current movie trilogy is light years away from the previous movies, especially the ones from the original series.
 
CosmosShipper said:
And movie-wise, I KNEW that Lawrence III/Jirarudan (choose the name you'd like to refer him as ) was going to be dealt with one way or another.
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You knew a bad guy was going to be dealt with one way or another? Oh wow, really? The antagonist being dealt with one way or another?
 
One things I would like to see the movies avoid is making the villains see the errors of their ways at the end.

Even Zero in Movie 11 seemed to be forgiven, (if you see the Movie 11 credits that CN skipped), and it happens in almost every movie:

- Mewtwo sees the error of his ways
- Lawrence III sees the error of his ways
- Molly realizes she made a mistake
- Butler realizes the error of his ways
- Rayquaza realizes the error of its ways
- Darkrai is misunderstood
- Zero realizes the error of its ways
- Magma/Aqua disband and learn the error of their ways


The only movies that had villains stay as villains to the end were the Movie 4 villain, Annie/Oakly from Movie 5, and Phantom from Movie 9.

I realize Pokemon is about friendship and learning from your mistakes and stuff, but we need more truly evil villains in this series.
 
I actually like the ending with Zero and I thought he was the best villian we have had so far. The costume, the crazy air and the bad ass attitude were pretty sweet. But I found Darkrai to be extremely disappointing to say the least. The same goes for almost all the other villians we have had, but I actually had high hopes for Darkrai unlike the other baddies.
It appeared far more bad ass than it actually ended up being. Instead of being a scary and evil legendary, it came across like a big misunderstood child with nightmare powers that just wanted to play. Darkrai was a let down for me and I second the motion that there need to be more evil and bad ass characters.
 
Scott85 said:
Even Zero in Movie 11 seemed to be forgiven, (if you see the Movie 11 credits that CN skipped),
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They didn't skip them, just sped through them like gangbusters.

- Lawrence III sees the error of his ways
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I think he realized he did *something* wrong, but not what it was. I think he *could* realize what it was, but he'd have to have someone *tell* him.

The only movies that had villains stay as villains to the end were the Movie 4 villain, Annie/Oakly from Movie 5, and Phantom from Movie 9.
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And that's why Vicious is badass. Although pfffft Phantom couldn't evil his way out of a paper bag.

And the Aqua/Magma thing was from the games at least.

(Blackjack post checklist--Nitpicking? Check! Jiri characterization comment? Check! Vicious defense comment? Check! Dig at movie 9? Check!)
 
^ I hope when Pokehunter J gets her final episode, she doesn't reform but rather gets arrested or blown into oblivion.
 
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