Do you like the way the Kanto Battle Frontier saga got handled?

[Rоulette Goddess]

i'm bringing up something that happened aaaages ago, i know.

as we all know, after the hoenn saga, ash went back to kanto to compete in the battle frontier. may, max, and brock followed him, and may competed in contests. when you first heard that ash would be going back to kanto, what were you expecting? i was anticipating a lot of things. i knew the gang would revisit cities and towns that ash had previously visited with misty and brock. however, most of the locations that the hoenn gang visited during the season were pretty much animé-exclusive. some people didn't even recognize the region, hence the fact that not a lot of in-game locations were revisited. so much for advertising fr/lg :\. the only in-game locations that were revisited were: pallet town, mt. moon, saffron city, fuchsia city, and the pewter gym (i don't think they showed pewter city. the gym itself seemed to be on the outskirts of the city). and let's not forget that technically, the gang didn't *revisit* fuchsia city, because in the original series, they only reached the fuchsia gym, which was located in the woods outside of the city. viridian was also revisited by ash, but you know, viridian city gets revisited practically every time ash heads back to pallet town. same thing for brock and pewter city. feel free to point out any locations i missed, by the way.

i personally didn't recognize saffron city at all. obviously, locations change over the years, but you'd think they'd kind of stay loyal to the original designs and all.

saffron city - 1997

saffron city - 2005

how do you feel about that? also, were you looking forward to seeing past characters, such as gym leaders? sabrina could have made an appearance, and we could have seen how she behaved this time around.

as for the battle facilities, do you like how they were scattered all around kanto? for example, the battle tower was located practically in the middle of nowhere... it was in a forest, if i recall. now who would have thought a high-tech looking tower would be located in a forest? :lol: of course, when you look at it the other way, the battle frontier is all about challenge. so finding the battle facility is a challenge also. idk.

this is reaaaaally frivolous and unimportant, but i'd like to know what people would have liked to see.

 

[Jukain]

I think everyone enjoyed seeing Ash take on such a great challenge. Although I think it's speed was also a factor. There were very few fillers. We also had a lot of great moments like fighting against legends and three long awaited evos. May's Contests were always a joy to see thanks to her rivals and random one shot opponents. All culminating in the great return of all three Kanto starters, and a surprise appearance by Gary himself. I think my words speak for themselves, this was an enjoyable saga. I wish others would appreciate it, but I won't go into why that is.

 

[BugMite]

I really believe the reason the BF saga made few references to the old Kanto saga was because it was rushed. But at least a few Kanto cities and landmarks were visited again. Outside of the pacing and the few Kanto references, I thought it was handled fine.

 

[Ash6K]

I really believe the reason the BF saga made few references to the old Kanto saga was because it was rushed. But at least a few Kanto cities and landmarks were visited again. Outside of the pacing and the few Kanto references, I thought it was handled fine.

^ Pretty much this. There was limited time between the start of BF and DP so BF was kinda rushed but tbh, I didn't mind that we didn't get to reminisce about old stuff that happened back in the first league in the Kanto region. The battles and contests kept me interested as well as all the development stuff for Ash and co.'s teams. New captures and the evolutions...yeah, that plus the battles and contests made BF one of my favorite regions to watch.

 

[Psychotic]

I would have much have had the Hoen team get more development but the Battle frontier is a interesting concept. If it wasn't so rushed it would have been a lot better. 5 Ribbons and 7 Symbols in one season? Yeah..

 

[Miar]

I think everyone enjoyed seeing Ash take on such a great challenge. Although I think it's speed was also a factor. There were very few fillers. We also had a lot of great moments like fighting against legends and three long awaited evos. May's Contests were always a joy to see thanks to her rivals and random one shot opponents. All culminating in the great return of all three Kanto starters, and a surprise appearance by Gary himself. I think my words speak for themselves, this was an enjoyable saga. I wish others would appreciate it, but I won't go into why that is.

Pretty much what he said. In a way, I liked that it was rushed. May had great character in this saga, and she got Eevee and Squirtle. And fighting Brock in a contest was a great plot twist. But fighting Ash in one, resulting in a draw and May getting Blaziken, and then splitting the ribbon, was even better. Plus, seeing Brock's Family, Cassidy and Botch, and Gary and Tracey were great.

In all, Battle Frontier made a much better filler saga than Orange Islands. (I still wish Ash had his Lapras)

 

[Ashfangirl22]

I really didn't mind the way it was done.
Though, for me I felt May's good-bye was kind of rushed.
I can understand no tears, cuz it was her choice, but no flashbacks?
Awe wells, not gonna get into that.

 

[Ranger Jack Walker]

It was quite good. I was disappointed that the Frontier Brains were nothing more than Gym Leaders. The battles were awesome though. Some of the best battles I've seen. Aside from the Epic Fail that was Pikachu vs. Regice that is.

About Saffron City, what original design? A generic large city with a large population as compared to at least a little more variety? I'll pick the latter.

 

[GreatLiver]

Yeah it was disappointing. They could have done so much throwback, but opted out of it. I didn't feel like it was rushed watching it because every few episodes was a facility or contest, which was really nice. But I really would have liked to have seen old characters for the first time in like 10 years.

 

[Rocketshipper]

I thought it was great. Would have been nice to see the Frontier Facilities follow the rules from the games more closely, but we still got a lot of epic battles. Ash's battle with Tucker is one of my favorite in the series. May's contests were also all pretty good.

I don't really feel that it was that rushed at all. 61 episodes is longer than your average full anime series, and a pretty descent lenght for a story arc. And if they;d made it longer, its most likely that it would have just been more filler episodes. I also don't really buy that the reason there weren;t more callbacks to the first season was because it was "rushed". the saga had approximetly 18 filler episodes total; the writers could have used any of those episodes in there to focus on gym leaders or locations from season 1, instead of what we got (stuff like the jigglypuff, caterpie, Onix, and Mr. Mime/Sneasel episodes)

 

[Ranger Jack Walker]

We also saw May beating her rival(something which Dawn hasn't, as of yet) in one epic battle.

We also saw Phanphy being salvaged into becoming a excellent Poke.

 

[PlatinumDude]

I like how the Battle Frontier facilities were scattered around Kanto. If they had been together, just like Emerald's BF, then Ash wouldn't have done a lot of traveling to get to them (and the traveling was one of the good parts of the show, even though it tended to get stretched out too much).

 

[Thingamajig]

It's interesting how at the very start there were a lot of references to Gen I Kanto; Ash battling at the Viridian Gym, Mt. Moon, Saffron City and the Fighting Dojo. But between leaving Saffron City and arriving in Pewter City just before the first Brandon Battle - Kanto was pretty much unrecognizable, and the pacing was a little off at times, what with that whole string of fillers before Saffron City, and then a new contest, Facility or party change pretty much every 2 or 3 episodes after that.

Still - despite the wacky Geography, the saga worked well. May's contest arc was really good - even getting Brock as a one-shot rival. Ash's Battles were good too, while perhaps not as unique as the Emerald Battle Frontier - the different types of battles still worked well.

 

[BattleStar]

it was one of my favorite season team rocket was awsome here too

 

[Alyxy]

It was alright. Although I would have liked to see Sabrina again, it wouldn't have made much a difference. We got to see Misty again for a couple of episodes.

But I just didn't watch too much of it because that was the season where the English voice transition occurred, and I still haven't gotten over them yet.

 

[NeoKING]

It sucked not only because of the lack of throwbacks, but other than some of the rules they basically made the entire Frontier look like another Gym Leader challenge.

 

[Hellion]

It sucked not only because of the lack of throwbacks, but other than some of the rules they basically made the entire Frontier look like another Gym Leader challenge.

You know, we keep hering that but what were they supposed to do instead?

Be closer to the games and make Ash fight 30 trainers or something before facing Brandon? Have him use random pokes against Noland?

Go totally off the games and make some anime only facilities sorta like the Orange Islands? Do we really want to see Spenser do pokemon bobsleigh skeleton? Do we really need to see Lucy surf on her Milotic?

I'm not disagreeing that they failed to see the BF really stand out as a challenge, but at the same time...

Also, on the OP, some people don't even know that the anime BF wasn't in Hoenn, so yeah, the writers failed on that one.

 

[Blazing Charmander]

I loved the Kanto BF saga because of the pace that events happened, given its nature of a filler saga to wedge a gap between Gen III and Gen IV. From the start I had high hopes for the saga because we were treated to seeing all of Ash's Oaked Pokemon again and the likes of Misty, Tracey, Delia, Oak and Birch before the gang visited Mt. Moon again which was a nice throwback. However, following that, much of the beginning of the saga was very 'fillery' (Jigglypuff and Psyduck fillers were really chronic) and I felt that the first two Battle Facilities were really dull. The Charizard Vs Articuno battle could have been heralded as one of the best ever if it wasn't for one of the worst animation directors on the team (i'm looking at YOU Takeda) being chosen for the job.

The saga grew on me though eventually as May's Contests were always a treat with character development and interesting characters culminating in a fantastic Grand Festival. Meanwhile the likes of Phanpy and Grovyle evolved and the fillers were largely worth watching - I especially enjoyed the May time travelling episode even if it wasn't technically filler as May's Eevee hatched from its egg.

However, my main beef with this saga like many others is the lack of throwbacks to the original Kanto after the visit to Mt. Moon. I think a lot of us were hoping for one-shot characters such as Samurai and AJ to reappear for their long-awaited rematches. We even stopped by in Saffron, which even then was unfamiliar without an appearance/flashback for Sabrina and her family. Thankfully Pewter Gym was given an allowance in a great episode with a bit of continuity to boot, but that's about all we got.

 

[NeoKING]

You know, we keep hering that but what were they supposed to do instead?

Be closer to the games and make Ash fight 30 trainers or something before facing Brandon? Have him use random pokes against Noland?

Go totally off the games and make some anime only facilities sorta like the Orange Islands? Do we really want to see Spenser do pokemon bobsleigh skeleton? Do we really need to see Lucy surf on her Milotic?

I'm not disagreeing that they failed to see the BF really stand out as a challenge, but at the same time...

Actually, that's what I expected. They could have simply done the sensible thing and showed Ash's first battle so we get a full understanding of the rules of a particular Facility and then showed quick scenes or images of him winning his other challenges, kind of like the Pokemon Adventures manga did in the Emerald arc and skip right to the Frontier Brain.

 

[The Puppetmaster]

Minus the voice changes (which I got used to after a while), I'd say it's one of the better seasons. The lack of filler episodes was a gigantic plus and the battles were really intense and unique. The return of Phanpy was well deserved since it was barely seen during Johto. I also enjoyed May's contests and when she finally beat Drew. Harley was incredibly annoying in a good way (for entertainment) and sinking to Team Rocket's level was something else.

I wish they would've spent some more time on a few of the brains (Tucker and Lucy since they only got one episode while the rest got 2+, if I recall). I think it would've been cool if Brock stayed with Lucy and helped her with her facility until DP started and they could've pulled an Ivy (THAT NAAAAAME!). Also, I felt the battle between Brandon and Ash should've been a full 6on 6 match. But that would've thrown off the Kanto-originals theme for which they were aiming. One last thing is I would have liked to seen May's Combusken evolve a bit earlier so we'd see it for more than 2 episodes.