Do you have any unpopular opinions about the anime?

[Cybersai]

My opinion on Dawn changed drastically, moreso than any other main character in the series.

There were times I really liked Dawn, times I found her to be a little bit stale, times I got bored of her, and then times I thought she was awesome again. Dawn is that one character you can never have a firm opinion on, she can either be really awesome or really bland, and I think its with her that people had more trouble holding a concrete opinion on.

Seriously, even to this day I'm not sure where Dawn ranks on my preferred characters list. There are obviously things she got to do that no other main girl got to do, but then there are other things I feel were a bit too boring like her general character interaction.

 

[Enzap]

I think Johto has been the most enjoyable series. And I think that most of the movies are not handled well and are actually pretty bad and boring (I don't really know where other people stand on that but I'm assuming my opinion is fairly unpopular.)

 

[Rex Kamex]

- We've gotta see Ash's grandparents... 'Cause... they're his grandparents.

- I wish Ash still had his 4Kids voice... from mid-Kanto. Actually, probably from the 30s or so, episode-wise. Many people don't acknowledge that Ash's 4Kids voice wasn't always the same...

- Still not a fan of May getting Munchlax with a PokeBall with the same gag where the capture failed with that Whiscash and a Master Ball. Fishing Master Sullivan threw a Master Ball at Whiscash and it ate it and didn't get captured. I thought it was great. Then later May threw a PokeBall at Munchlax and it ate it. It still got captured inside the ball. Even for a gag, I don't like that both of those things happened- I would've preferred one- especially if that one was the first one.

- The Lucario movie was... decent, at least. Or solid, or something. It was nice, but I didn't think it was mind-blowingly awesome...

- I haven't confirmed this is an unpopular opinion, but I have the feeling it would be. I'm not a fan of the last Johto episode, "Hoenn Alone", ending with a cliffhanger. In general I wish that, if they're gonna keep on keeping Ash, that they give each series a better closure. Not one that goes as far as to give a "don't watch anything afterwards" kind of feel, but one where one could quit watching after the end of the series (the original, AG, etc.) and feel... pretty satisfied, but if they kept watching it wouldn't feel awkward either.

- I'm glad they said Ash's age in BW!. Not saying it's the number I prefer, but hey... =/

- The non-game based Japanese background music needs more love... and not just the sad piece "After the Tears, the Weather Clears."

 

[The Master]

-Pikachu losing to "weak" Pokemon at the start of each new region. "Its power is drained at the start of each new region," it's equally if not worse writing for Pikachu to be plowing through the opposition like butter unless it's a plot point. The same could be said of Ash as well.

-DP isn't nearly as awesome as everyone makes it out to be. There were terrible episodes like Faced With Steelix Determination!, Teaching the Student Teacher!, and Up Close And Personable!.

-Team Rocket not appearing every episode is good, it forces the writers to be somewhat less lazy with plot ideas and antagonist outside of the usual TR.

-Pokemon Hunter J was more interesting than Team Galactic ever were.

-Dawn's team was very stale and the latter members were underdeveloped and seem like last minute additions for marketing purposes. Cyndaquil(HGSS), Togekiss and Mamoswine(Platinum).

-Iris' Dragonite is a fantastic addition to Iris' team, it gives her another Dragon to use, we see her struggling and working with it, and it moves her one step closer to the "Understanding the hearts of Dragons/attuning to Dragons' hearts" part of her goal, while Axew is the "Raise their power to maximum" part.

-Cilan's team is stale, mainly due to none of them having storylines/plot-points and active personalities, except maybe Pansage.

-I never saw Piplup as something to be hated upon constantly, more so comedy relief.

-Trip isn't nearly as terrible as people make him out to be.

-James' Growlie was more compelling than most of TR's Pokemon and I would have liked to see him return for BW2 advertising purposes.

-The reserves manage to be more entertaining and compelling Pokemon than the main group a lot of the times for me. For example, Krookodile is vastly more interesting and fun a Pokemon than Snivy or Scraggy with far more action-packed battles.

-Tepig was an awesome Pokemon, despite being criticized often for being personality-less and boring.

-Outrage was good, I like how it seemed like Axew had a shot of adrenaline and a "fight-or-flight" type situations with Golett.

-I never quite understood what made Cilan's Stunfisk so amazing to everyone. :

-Togekiss was a great addition to Dawn's team, mainly because of her personality as well as her potential to have been a very interesting battler. She livened up Dawn's very plain team since Buneary had 3-moveslot syndrome, Pachirisu never used Super Fang after learning it really, Piplup was for marketing, Mamoswine's potential was underused, Cyndaquil was powered up too quickly and never battled at all outside of two contest and two practice battles.

-Gible's Draco Meteor gag was awfully overused at times.

-May was more interesting than Dawn.

-Drew and Harley were better than all of Dawn's rivals.

-Nando had the potential to be a very good rival, but suffered from lack of appearances. He was something new and fresh.

-Ursula was made out to be too Harley-ish.

wow when they said unpopular opinions i never imagine seeing one i agree 100%

 

[Bikini Miltank]

Iris is better than Misty, May and Dawn combined.

Brock never should have been brought after Kanto.

A lot of the early episodes are terrible, while Advance is quite underrated.

Gary was never an interesting character.

J lives.

 

[sunyshore]

i love iris.

i cannot comprehend the hatred i see towards her here.

she's the only female ash friend i have ever been able to relate to in my life. she doesn't care about her hair style, fashion, anything like that. she's a total tomboy, wild and free. she doesn't wear tiny booty shorts or the shortest skirts possible. she takes no crap. i know she is inconsistent with her handling of axew and her dragon master goal, but overall, i think she's quite unique; i love her. like i said, i've never ever related to the female companion in my life until her. i feel so alone in this! but as a not very stereotypically girly female i often have felt alone and strange for not caring about what every other girl seemed to care about while i was growing up.

i've got many other unpopular opinions but i am afraid i'd be utterly hanged so i will stick to iris.

 

[Almonds]

Misty is way too overrated and I dislike her

Dawn was pretty much the best female companion

Am I the only one who got tired of Brock during DP?

Piplup was so cute and epic

Cilan is NOT overrated - he's the best

They should've done more with Gary

Am I the only one who disliked Cynthia's return? I keep getting this feeling that she's going to steal Alder's spotlight some day, just like how Lance stole Steven/Wallace's role in the Magma vs Aqua arc.

Serious TR is much fun to watch than TR as a comedy

 

[Cybersai]

i love iris.

i cannot comprehend the hatred i see towards her here.

she's the only female ash friend i have ever been able to relate to in my life. she doesn't care about her hair style, fashion, anything like that. she's a total tomboy, wild and free. she doesn't wear tiny booty shorts or the shortest skirts possible. she takes no crap. i know she is inconsistent with her handling of axew and her dragon master goal, but overall, i think she's quite unique; i love her. like i said, i've never ever related to the female companion in my life until her. i feel so alone in this! but as a not very stereotypically girly female i often have felt alone and strange for not caring about what every other girl seemed to care about while i was growing up.

i've got many other unpopular opinions but i am afraid i'd be utterly hanged so i will stick to iris.

I think the concept of Iris is a sound idea, people were actually quite excited about her when BW first started. The execution since then has been a bit unfortunate.

My opinion on Iris is mixed because I can understand the potential of the character and how she is unique compared to the past girls, but at the same time I feel like her character is being squandered and is going to wind up forgettable. Probably doesn't help matters that Iris is likely going to have the shortest run for a female protagonist in the series, especially if Gen 6 does begin next year like speculated.

 

[lalalei2001]

Getting REALLY sick of Cynthia in-game and in the anime.

I don't like Cilan.

I like the TRio silly AND serious. ^^

 

[Frazay]

I stopped watching, because it was the same thing over and over again. It's obvious it's a "kid-friendly" anime, and that just doesn't appeal to me anymore.

 

[Bikini Miltank]

Nothing wrong with kid-friendliness. I'd choose that over something self-consciously "adult" anytime.

Oh, hey, I thought of another one. The most interesting rival in DP was Zoey.

 

[Airi-Chan]

- Trip has great intelligence and having big role in rivalry instead of previous rivals.
- Iris has been written as better female companion than previous girls.
- Bianca has being the best female rival in Pokemon Anime universe.
- I like running gag of Stephan. It is not too annoying
- Dawn had been bad written
- Iris the strongest female one while Trip is the strongest male one 10-year-old kids trainer in Anime universe.
- Trip's Serperior's combination Leer+Solarbeam was extremely awesome.
- Iris's and Trip's development are quite better.

 

[Moe]

Tracy was the best written of Ash's travelling companions.

I like Totodile, Bayleef and Piplup.

Trip is and deserves to be stronger than Ash and all of his BW rivals.

The dub replacing music has never bothered me in the slightest.

 

[Trainer Gabriel]

I find the 4Kids dub to be overrated. Just about everything people complain about in the PUSA/TPCI dub was also present in the 4Kids dub; only at least now we no longer have paint edits (save a few understandable ones) or wall-to-wall music every second. And the new voices are not necessarily worse just because you didn't hear them first.

Johto may have been plagued with too many repetitive, bland fillers - though it did also have the occasional enjoyable ones, too - but outside of that, and I guess the lack of slap-stick comedy compared to Kanto (which one could argue was actually lost in the Orange saga), I really didn't think it was that bad. At least Ash was no longer "earning" free gym badges, and the league certainly gave it an epic finale. Remove all of the worst fillers, and I honestly think it's even better than the Kanto and Orange sagas.

I didn't dislike Zoey nearly as much as most did. Sure I had the same opinion as everyone else at first, but as DP progressed, she started to grow on me. I think my main qualm was that she didn't seem to get any development and basically do nothing but tell the main heroes why trainers shouldn't be both challenging gyms and doing contests and such - it also didn't help that she seemed to get too many apearances for while, which could have been used to give Nando and Kenny more screentime - but she eventually lightened up on that belief and we got to learn more about her, including her past. Overall, I could say that I ended up being content with her character by the end.

I never understood how people could claim the DP group were nothing more than three zombies walking together. They probably weren't the best group, but that was mainly because the Brock/Dawn dynamic was lackluster compared to Ash/Dawn & Ash/Brock. But it's not like Brock and Dawn had no chemistry either; Dawn had a whole episode dedicated to remembering some of the things that Brock had taught her - that's gotta speak for something. I also don't see how their chemistry was any worse than Brock had with May.

-DP isn't nearly as awesome as everyone makes it out to be. There were terrible episodes like Faced With Steelix Determination!, Teaching the Student Teacher!, and Up Close And Personable!.

Every saga had its share of bad episodes, however. It was the plotlines that got everyone tuned into the DP series.

-I never quite understood what made Cilan's Stunfisk so amazing to everyone. :

Oh, it's just the same deal as with Mukubird, Jimmy Ray, etc. ;-)

-Drew and Harley were better than all of Dawn's rivals.

That actually happens to be a popular opinion.

-Nando had the potential to be a very good rival, but suffered from lack of appearances. He was something new and fresh.

Agreed. I also liked Nando as a character, even if he was underused and underdeveloped as a (double) rival, if only because of his unique characteristics.

-Ursula was made out to be too Harley-ish.

... I don't think anybody hasn't drawn a comparison between those two - which was what made Ursula so popular in the first place.

 

[Little Miss Eevee]

I think togepi made misty boring, and Gary isn't best rival; he usually shows up for comic relief (Like when he found fossilised pokemon turds in the original series.) Personally, although he isn't as good as paul, i like trip because of his annoying albiet, condescending nature.

 

[pokemon fan 132]

Let see:
-Unlike most in here i view Johto as fairly enjoyable series not being waste of time and filler hell (less than half of total number of episodes were only filler with many Misty, Ash or Brock episodes which contained development being wrongly classified). Battles were a lot better compared to first 2 seasons, Ash sidekicks actually battled more receiving some notable focus and growth(especially Misty) ,we got several great arcs and memorable gym leaders, return from older characters(like Todd, Duplica, Ritchie or Aya) and there are many episodes from this region i always like to go back and watch being well written and enjoyable.

-people usually acknowledge chemistry first group had in Kanto but disregard their dynamic in Johto.

To this day i actually find that original trio had better chemistry in Johto than any other group which came afterwards. Ash naive and stubborn temperament, Misty flamboyant, caring and snarky side mixed with Brock eccentric personality added humor, tension and clash which was never reciprocated that good afterwards. You can notice how much they grew to each other in Johto feeling like close group of friends which understood themselves creating balanced and dynamic interaction, having hardest time to split out of all groups in end. "Gotta Catch Ya Later" hardly left anyone indifferent.

-I don't share view how "May and Dawn were best handled females in pokemon" with quantity not necessarily following quality. They got better handle of their goals and pokemon, but in character sense i find Misty was more complex not caring what others think being tomboyish but also girly at times creating perfect balance. She had one of most believable growths character went through in show and goal with lot of fresh potential which wasn't fully used.
She started with "go to hell attitude" often erupting over every little detail, felt insecure and inferior having sad background with everyone underestimating her. But with time we saw there was more than surface meets showing girly, romantic, sarcastic and other sides adding new layers to character eventually getting over various struggles and fears learning to be more patient and levelheaded, appreciated friendship with Ash and Brock viewing them as family and improved as trainer coming long way since early days. Which ultimately made her more realistic growing in mature, strong person while still being sarcastic, and adventurous adding fresh note to it.

-Sinnoh is incredibly overrated imo, not understanding what warrants to call it "masterpiece in writing". It lacked humor, it had weak interactions and chemistry between main cast, contest and gyms were dragged down for longer than it was necessary and i didn't found battles that much spectacular like everyone say. They were good, but so were battles from Hoenn and Johto.
Only thing which made big improvement compared to other regions imo was treatment of rivals and villains.

-i don't think Iris is bad character either. Putting aside rushed development and inconsistency in writing i find her character enjoyable. I like that wild and hyperactive personality, connections with nature, snarky incitements and connections she establishes with pokemon adding fresh interaction within cast.

-unlike most in here i don't support character replacing, being draw in false belief "how such things are necessary to keep anime fresh". Many shows like One Piece, Naruto, Bleach, Ben 10 etc keep same cast and they are still interesting with fandom every day learning something new.

You can do risks and changes with same characters too, add new life to story by introducing new twists, refresh them through new designs, pokemon and subplots like aforementioned anime do.
Benefit behind character stay allows that writers do sequel to his story and give him more complex development ,since they already have background and developed story to pick up and work upon.

If you want to get rid of repetitiveness than long term solution doesn't lie in constant cycling(form of repeat too), because that's just writers excuse of not having to try implementing new ideas and doing more meaningful development with others. But in actually changing formula by adding new innovations, taking story and established characters forward in undiscovered directions which allows to keep show fresh,have better developed cast and more continuity.

Not really. Most of my opinions are the general consensus of the entire fandom.

For example I thought Johto was one of the weakest arcs of the show, certain characters became stale as they progressed, the DP coordinator rivals weren't handled very well, Trip is a poor rival, etc.

In multimillion franchise like pokemon thought of general consensus made over something is illusion, with there existing so many different perceptions and views of what was good or bad making it virtually impossible to achieve agreement over question in hand.

Not to mention opinions or preferences within majority aren't always best answer. Just because many people believe it to be so doesn't make something right.

I pretty much agree on the opinions of the majority of the fandom.
For me, the first movie is my least favorite, and Misty got to be pretty boring.

Its actually opposite. Majority find Misty was interesting character.

 

[Robo-Floatzel]

• Brock became rather bland in AG and DP, to the point where he was just THERE and treated as nonexistent, and sadly, the same is slowly happening to Cilan
• I thought May was a more interesting character than Misty or Dawn
• I think Max shouldn't have ever been on the show in the first place, what was the point in his character at all, he had no Pokemon, and didn't do much to actually progress the plot, same goes for Togepi.
• Paul was a more interesting rival than Trip
• The anime needs to have more villains besides the Team Rocket trio
• They should have done a lot more with Tracey
• I think Hunter J survived and is still alive
• Iris didn't need Dragonite, and Cilan needs more Pokemon and overall focus
• Kotetsu shouldn't have even appeared in the anime
• Ash should have evolved more of his Pokemon, and more often, especially the starters save for his Charizard, Sceptile, Infernape, and Torterra.

 

[Grave-E]

-While I agree that they should be handled better, I really don't care much for the villain teams either way. Few of the characters in any of the groups are ever fleshed out enough for me to ever invest much interest in.

-I couldn't stand all the episodes in Diamond & Pearl the revolved solely around training X pokemon, and am glad they're gone.

-I like Dent, but I don't like him as much as a lot of folks here do. Sometimes I just don't get it.

-I prefer the show when it doesn't take itself seriously. I don't mind that it's 'kiddy' and lighthearted.

-Most of my favourite episodes are fillers, and Johto had the funniest ones buried underneath all the crap. Can we can some belly-button-licking Shuckle in here?

-I thought Spell of the Unown was the first good pokemon movie, and I enjoyed it's fantasy elements. Mewtwo Strikes Back and Power of One make me cringe.

-Corphish was BY FAR the funniest pokemon on the show.

 

[Chatsy]

- Misty is awfully overrated and I can't for the life of me understand the desperation of some wanting her back on the show.

- Iris is actually a really decent character and I think she's handled well so far. I wish her hair would change to the style of her Champion design, though *_*

- I think the running gags in BW (and in general) are quite hilarious.

- I quite like the aura subplot bit and wish it would be focused on again and/or expanded upon.

- I liked Brock's character throughout every saga and never found him having become stale. He's always been an amusing character and Croagunk simply added that little extra in DP.

- Cilan can never be overrated!

 

[Mikuri]

- I don't like Charizard.
- I love Piplup.
- The DP Contests were better than those of AG.
- Zoey was a very interesting rival.
- Cilan is overrated.