Yeah, this exactly. God forbid that a pseudo-legendary of all things be able to handle a threat that it has a double type advantage over. No, instead Metagross deserves to be portrayed as an incompetent wimp who can't fight its own battles because how dare it not be a marketable mascot.
Honestly, I don't really hate the idea of a pseudo-legendary struggling a bit, even if it is against a Pokémon that it has a type advantage over. However, if they keep showing it struggle all the time or give the win to someone that has already shown itself to be competent time and time again, then yes, it would be tiresome and get dull really quickly. It does seem like Horizons is constantly doing the later.
Because God forbid a character actually get to think for themselves in what is their own character episode especially when it comes to a solution that relies on their own area of expertise. Friede gets enough moments to show that he’s the leader within the main plot but the writers won’t even let characters stand out on their own in what is a low stakes filler episode about them. The Sun doesn’t need to rise and set based on Friede’s presence. At a point he and Cap end up coming across as a Spotlight Stealing Squad.
You're missing the point I'm trying to make that so far every Pokemon in the main cast that isn't Captain Pikachu (and to a lesser extent Friede's Charizard) has been either a helpless damsel that needs to be rescued by the franchise mascot or an antagonist that needs to be defeated by the franchise mascot. Literally every Pokemon so far has to be humiliated just to prop up a freaking Pikachu, the last species in the current Pokedex (besides Charizard, who not coincidentally is the only exception to the "needs Pikachu's help all the time" rule) that needs this kind of shilling. It's getting really old to see a Pikachu be the only thing that's allowed to be competent on its own. We literally saw one of these become the strongest trainer-owned Pokemon in the world last anime saga. But instead of letting it take a backseat to any of the over a thousand species in existence, it has to double down on its spotlight-hogging.
Your forgetting where he was basically dragged by Gmoltress. But yeah other than that he basically stomps every battle he is in
Totally agree. Just looking back at older Pokémon openings and comparing them with Horizons, you can really feel that quite a bit of the spirit of Pokémon is missing. If Journeys was essentially making every adventure akin to a day trip then Horizons is basically akin to a school trip where students can’t do anything without their chaperone being present.
I can't really comment on Horizons itself, but I do hope that we'll eventually go back to traveling through a single region. Not having the traveling aspect in SM was a heavy loss, but arguably it still worked out, or at the very least it felt justified due to the larger cast. They couldn't really stretch a four island region into a three year long series and the cast was too large to make more traditional traveling work. We still got to see most of the major locations in Alola, all of the new Pokemon and most of the characters from the games, so changing up the anime's formula didn't come at the expense of the then new games, which I don't think I can say about Journeys.
Galarian Moltres is a Legendary AND an Ancient Hero Pokemon who previously belonged to the most powerful Pokemon trainer in history. Losing to something like that doesn't knock Cap off of any pegs in the slightest.
There was the elderly Charizard in the Poketoon short with that girl and the Nidoran with the sleepyness, and a Chronicles episode actually had one that had a timid personality of all things. But yeah, those two aside, all Charizards besides Ash's are essentially battle machines and nothing else.
Honestly when it comes down to it, Cap is pretty one-note. People seem to conflate the writers trying too hard to make Cap cool with him actually having personality when in really all he is is a single gimmick. Compare that to Ash’s Pikachu who had an entire range of personality that made him feel like a character rather than just a manufactured cutout. Pikachu could be a leader or he could be as big of a goofball as his trainer. He could be played completely seriously or he could be the target of comedy. He could be caring or could even be a bit mischievous. And through it all, he had his own personal quirks. Compared to that, Cap rings pretty hollow and stoic with it being pretty obvious that he exists as a replacement goldfish for Ash’s.
Honestly I love Ash Pikachu but I felt like as the series went on it lost a big chunk of its unique personality and he just boiled down to a clone of Ash personality
I mean, to be somewhat fair to Cap, Ash's Pikachu had literal decades and well over a thousand episodes to show depths to his personality. Horizons by contrast isn't even a year old yet, so there's still a chance that they'll do more with Captain Pikachu's personality somewhere down the line.
Even so, even if you compare them based on similar time frames, there’s still much more personality to Ash’s Pikachu compared to Cap. And it kinda further becomes an issue if you consider that there’s a good chance that Horizons and its cast aren’t meant to last anywhere near as long as Ash and co did. So at that point, you’d want to show off the character of these Pokémon sooner rather than later given you only have so long with them.
They even have the same voice actress, Megumi Hayashibara, and are voiced in a similar way (both being cat-like Pokemon.) In fact, it's too funny you mentioned Skitty, because once I had started hearing Sprigatito's voice for a bit, I thought it sounded familiar. And after looking it up or realizing it myself (can't remember which) I was like no wonder it sounds familiar-it's May's Skitty's voice.
You hit the nail with sprig. It's legit doesn't do shit other than acting like a cat. It gets moments of jealousy which is true to it's dec but other than that nothing
