Do all these gimmicky stunts that Best Wishes! keeps pulling seem desperate to you?

Dogasu

Dogasu

ロケット団よ永遠
Retired Staff
Joined
Jan 2, 2003
Messages
11,355
Reaction score
3,951
...because it sure does feel like desperation to me. In just the last half a year or so:

  • The show went from being called Pocket Monsters Best Wishes! to Pocket Monsters Best Wishes! Season 2, complete with a new poster and opening theme.
  • Hikari and Pochama came back for a number of episodes.
  • Shirona also came back and assisted in the big Rocket-Dan plotline instead of Adeku.
  • The Rocket-Dan had a highly publicized "final battle" and then had a somewhat hyped up "comeback" all within the space of three months.
  • The show went from being called Pocket Monsters Best Wishes! Season 2 to Pocket Monsters Best Wishes! Season 2 Episode N and finally brought N and the Plasma-Dan to the TV series. Also, new poster and opening theme.
  • Satoshi's Lizardon is being brought back, randomly.
  • Takeshi and Kasumi are showing up in the Lizardon episode (there's a 99% chance they'll just be in flashbacks, but still).
  • Myuutwo's coming back and will fight Genosect in this summer's movie.
  • The show will probably get yet another title change after Episode N ends.
  • The last two ending themes have been done by girl groups in a very transparent attempt to try to cash in on the AKB fad going on right now.

So what gives? Why do you think the writers feel the need to keep giving us "big events" like these in order to keep our interest in the show? I don't want to be jaded enough to think that they're doing all this to distract us from the show's many, many problems, but it honestly feels like that to me sometimes.

What do you the rest of you think?
 
Re: Do all these gimmicky stunts that Best Wishes! keeps pulling seem desperate to yo

It's better than drawing out the series and pretending that it is all that interesting on its own merits without the fanservice.
 
Re: Do all these gimmicky stunts that Best Wishes! keeps pulling seem desperate to yo

Ugh... god, yes. I've felt that way for a while now, since even before Best Wishes started adopting subtitles like it was going out of style, they did all sorts of cheap stunts to try and make things more... fantastical. Such as forcing type disadvantages on Ash almost all the time to instill some fake dramatics to the battle that are canceled out when he almost always wins with a disadvantage (and more often loses when he has advantages), which applies to nearly every battle in this series that didn't involve Ash besides. Seriously, when it's common practice in this series now to have a Pokemon with a serious type advantage and at least decent defenses fall to the disadvantaged Pokemon in one hit from a not-very-effective attack, it's enough to make one think the rules of type interactions have been flipped around. Then there was that absolutely bullshit 6v3 gimmick they pulled with the final gym battle, which may have been to make Roxie look like a real threat since the sequel games were coming out around that time, but consequently made Ash look like a total chump for having to rely on 2:1 odds for a gym battle, something that's never been done before (with good reason!!).

I could list more but I'm running out of time. But yeah, one reason I'm not thrilled about Episode N ending in less than a couple of months is because Best Wishes needs another subtitle like it needs a hole in the head. These title changes are getting rather annoying. Many of their gimmicks are being blown through as quickly as possible, too, which just reeks both of desperation and laziness. As in they're too lazy to actually make long-term solutions to fix the problems in the show and prefer instead to resort to gimmicks to sweep them under the rug, so to speak. Though I find that doesn't really work well. I can see the dust piling out from under the carpet as we speak.
 
Re: Do all these gimmicky stunts that Best Wishes! keeps pulling seem desperate to yo

The anime has been doing desperate stuff long before Best Wishes!.

I do agree, though, that they are covering their issues instead of addressing them.
 
Re: Do all these gimmicky stunts that Best Wishes! keeps pulling seem desperate to yo

Well, I guess that's the main problem we all ahve about BW... BW went quite differently until the Club Battle. No lots of rivals, and tons of filler/COTD things... They found out that a B2W2 was coming, and that they should have made it more lively, and BOOM! Tournament 1, Gym Rushing, Tournament 2, even more Gym Rushing, New Season 2 Title, Dawn Cameo, Dragonite ex Machina, Tournament 3 (Which was also a Trip Setter, a Dawn Ender, an Iris Developer and a Cameron Introducer! LOL!) , 6-episode only League, League Rushing New Episode N Title, EVEN MORE RUSHING!!! Just hope that XY will be better, still having doubts though, cuz they seem to rush even the games nowadays.
 
Re: Do all these gimmicky stunts that Best Wishes! keeps pulling seem desperate to yo

Most definitely, I think they're just doing this for ratings. What the Pokemon anime is doing is basically what happens to a series begins to lose ratings and hits what can best be described as the "panic button", and when a series hits this "panic button", it tends to end up doing things such as introducing absurd and unrealistic concepts, overuse guest stars, build up "intense moments that will change the show forever" when in reality little to nothing changes and it's essentially a ratings trap, etc. Though most people just call it by a simple term: "Jumping the Shark".

This is basically what the Pokemon anime is doing is that it's basically trying to be a showoff in front of the viewers just to get more ratings, the constant name changes are unnecessary and are just being done for more ratings, as well as everything else such as bringing back characters for instance. This is a desperate attempt to keep people's interests in the series, when in reality, these are the kind of things that cause a series to lose ratings and viewers even faster than it already was.

At this point, I think the Pokemon anime is basically doing one of two things:

1. The writers are compacting everything it wanted to do since BW started all into only 9 months so that X/Y can be released on time and the reset button is hit for the 5th time in a row, because of all the things that have happened in the past few years (the tsunami in March 2011 for instance) that caused the anime to essentially begin to lose ratings among other things, after the original Team Plasma episodes were cancelled and the "Plasma Embargo" began, they were essentially told to only focus on the Gym Badge plot alone, and once that ended as soon as BW2 came out, they've basically started rushing through all the planned stories and concepts they wanted to do with the series, which is what I think ultimately lead Iris to suddenly get a Dragonite, why the league was rushed, etc.

2. The more likely reason is that the writers just want to be showoffs that want to appeal to long time fans by reintroducing Dawn (and not using her at all), bringing back Ash's Charizard, and trying to make Team Rocket more like their original selves (and failing miserably at it), among other things, and are doing it quickly because Gen 6 is going to be released soon.

Trust me, once X/Y comes out, everything will (hopefully) go back to normal, but for now, we have to get used to these stunts and ratings traps.
 
Last edited:
Re: Do all these gimmicky stunts that Best Wishes! keeps pulling seem desperate to yo

My guess is after how terrible parts of Best Wishes were, they're pulling fanservice moments in desperate attempts to get people to watch again. Mewtwo returning for the first time since 2001 was a big indicator of this.

Sure, old characters always came back in AG and DP, but they were also able to stand on their own and the new characters all became popular. It's like with the exception of Cilan, the BW cast has never become that popular due to the controversial opinions on Iris, Trip and the other rivals.
 
Re: Do all these gimmicky stunts that Best Wishes! keeps pulling seem desperate to yo

The Fighting Misty said:
My guess is after how terrible parts of Best Wishes were, they're pulling fanservice moments in desperate attempts to get people to watch again. Mewtwo returning for the first time since 2001 was a big indicator of this.

Sure, old characters always came back in AG and DP, but they were also able to stand on their own and the new characters all became popular. It's like with the exception of Cilan, the BW cast has never become that popular due to the controversial opinions on Iris, Trip and the other rivals.
Click to expand...

I agree with you, most of Best Wishes was pretty dull and plot-less that it didn't seem like the Pokemon anime it used to be before it began, and as a result, it began to lose ratings, so as a result, they're pulling a bunch of stunts and building larger and larger ratings traps to get people to continue watching, when in reality, this is only causing people to leave the series at an even faster rate than it already was to begin with. Basically, they have just made the coffee stain on the rug even bigger rather than cleaning it.
 
Re: Do all these gimmicky stunts that Best Wishes! keeps pulling seem desperate to yo

It reminds me of the Johto saga actually. By late Johto everyone gave up on Ash's boring Johto team of Bayleef/Cyndaquil/Totodile so the writers said, "Screw it, we're bringing back the Kanto starters!"

Claire's Gym was dominated by Pikachu, Charizard and Snorlax...all Kanto Pokemon. And then the actual Johto league had Bulbasaur/Squirtle/Charizard star in all the matches while the Johto pokemon got limited screentime.

I guess everytime an arc is poorly received the writers bring Charizard in for the rescue.
 
Re: Do all these gimmicky stunts that Best Wishes! keeps pulling seem desperate to yo

Yeah, at this point even the writers seem to have caught on to the trainwreck that Best Wishes has become and are manically pressing the Panic Button.
The problem is that BW is unsalvageable, and trying to solve the issue with MORE BLATANT ADVERTISING and mindless pandering isn't going to help.

Hopefully the writers will have learned from this failed "reset button" experiment and go back to what they were doing in DP and maybe stop overusing gradients so the wooden furniture Ash's room doesn't look like it's all made of solid gold? I swear, it's like one of the higher-ups in the writing staff decided that DP was too good and told everyone to shift the focus from plot and characterization to marketing everything as blatantly as possible.

The worst part? You'd think that with everything getting a downgrade at least the battles would be better or at least as good as DP.
But no, they're worse than ever and reuse stock animation to the point where a 6-year-old could point it out.

On the bright side, the writers have stooped so low that there's no way to go but up.
...Right?
 
Re: Do all these gimmicky stunts that Best Wishes! keeps pulling seem desperate to yo

Don't really see it. I'm enjoying the show normally, and I don't see what's so gimmicky, except for maybe Mewtwo and Charizard.
 
Re: Do all these gimmicky stunts that Best Wishes! keeps pulling seem desperate to yo

Personally, bringing back Cynthia and Dawn had been one of the worse stunts tried out. With all the hype of bringing back the two popular women of the previous gen, they couldn't even live up to the hype and were sacrificed to horribly rushed writing, and Cynthia actually doing nothing special except for maybe talking to Iris about her Dragonite, which could've been easily done with Alder since it didn't HAVE to be someone with a dragon to give tips on how to tame your pokemon.

To some extent, Episode N could be them trying to grasp at the last straws, finally throwing in the most popular game character in BW to try and hype people (which they succeeded in hyping for very obvious reasons...). So far, it's relatively better than the past few months of Best Wishes, so we'll have to see if it's a gimmicky stunt or not.


Oh, and Cameron is more of a stunt than not. They gave him a friggin Hydreigon unexpectedly out of the blue to sweep most of Ash's pokemons at the league.
 
Re: Do all these gimmicky stunts that Best Wishes! keeps pulling seem desperate to yo

I think the writers know that they've fudged up Best Wishes and are constantly trying to jump the shark. Honestly, I felt Diamond & Pearl was the best series of the anime so far, so BW was always going to have a lot to live up to. I haven't really been motivated to watch the series since season 2 started.

I thought the series started off really well with things like the Don Battle and the Donamite, but the main thing that let it down there was Trip being the worst written main rival in the series' history. I do agree so much with the Roxie gym battle being an absolute load of crap - it doesn't really show any skill when Ash needed 6 Pokémon to take down 3. Sure, having a two-episode battle was cool, but it should have been with both of them on the same standing (preferably 6 v 6). Don't even get me started on the league though...

Funnily enough, reading comments about ratings did remind me of this article. It's still in the Top 10 so it's not that bad, but during the beginning of Best Wishes, wasn't it usually in the top 5?
 
Re: Do all these gimmicky stunts that Best Wishes! keeps pulling seem desperate to yo

Pretty much what Shinneth said. BW ratings were getting shitty day by day (except for this week's)... Desperate times call for desperate measures.
It's the 'Senju DNA' of the Pokemon world.

And they seem to have mastered Kishimoto's ultimate technique... Pulling out of the ass no jutsu!
 
Re: Do all these gimmicky stunts that Best Wishes! keeps pulling seem desperate to yo

To be perfectly honest, it doesn't seem more gimmicky than normal. Sure, there's more hype for things, but that just gets me more excited for the show. And some things you do mention are pretty clear attention-grabbers. But,

The show went from being called Pocket Monsters Best Wishes! to Pocket Monsters Best Wishes! Season 2, complete with a new poster and opening theme.
Click to expand...
I don't think that's desperate. This is the first time we had actual sequels instead of a third version, so obviously you need to capitalize on that. They're referencing the games and showing that the show will be different in tone; we got a lot of changes in BW2, such as them bringing back older Pokemon. And we were long due for an opening theme.

The N subtitle wasn't necessary, though.

Hikari and Pochama came back for a number of episodes.
Click to expand...
To promote the return of older Pokemon, and the fact that they always bring back the girl from past generations.

Myuutwo's coming back and will fight Genosect in this summer's movie.
Click to expand...
Eh, mixed. Ever since we knew about Genesect 3 years ago, people saw the story potential with Mewtwo a mile away.
 
Re: Do all these gimmicky stunts that Best Wishes! keeps pulling seem desperate to yo

Charizard returning when he didn't appear in DP at all says a lot. It's actually kinda funny when you realize DP was the only saga Charizard didn't appear at all.
 
Re: Do all these gimmicky stunts that Best Wishes! keeps pulling seem desperate to yo

Not so much "desperate" as they have little choice. Like any show made to promote stuff, they're at the mercy--what little there is--of corporate executives.

They had big plans for BW, then the Seismic Disaster all but ruined them. Then B2W2 and and Gen 6 made things even worse :dead:

The things they've done since may be stupid, but they need to do SOMETHING to pass the time (this is another reason I wish Japan would learn the concept/importance of seasonal breaks). Every direction they've tried to take the series in has either been effed up or backfired. It may suck for fans, but it can't be any fun for the creative staff either...
 
Last edited:
Re: Do all these gimmicky stunts that Best Wishes! keeps pulling seem desperate to yo

Joshawott said:
Funnily enough, reading comments about ratings did remind me of this article. It's still in the Top 10 so it's not that bad, but during the beginning of Best Wishes, wasn't it usually in the top 5?
Click to expand...

It's in the same position it's always been, being in "that block of shows that consistently rates just below the One Piece/Doraemon/Conan/Shin-chan quartet". Reports of the Pokemon anime dropping in relative popularity are highly exaggerated.
 
Re: Do all these gimmicky stunts that Best Wishes! keeps pulling seem desperate to yo

I guess I didn't really notice all of this as gimmicky fanservice to cover up the writing of BW; after all, Cynthia's return was done for promotion and no one would have been surprised to see Dawn make a comeback, regardless - not to mention more Piplup promotion. Still, now that you mention it, things like bringing back Charizard and Mewtwo, changing seasons to hype the series, and likely Misty and Brock appearances in flashbacks may very well all be just an attempt to keep the viewers watching, after all the bad writing choices that Shinneth mentioned.
 
Please note: The thread is from 12 years ago.
Please take the age of this thread into consideration in writing your reply. Depending on what exactly you wanted to say, you may want to consider if it would be better to post a new thread instead.
Back
Top Bottom