movepools in the anime

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Have you guys ever noticed that a lot of Pokemon in the anime have crappy move sets? I just looked at Ash's Snivy on Bulbapedia and guess what? It's moves are attract, Leaf Blade, Leaf Tornado, and Vine Whip. If it went up against a Beedrill, it's screwed. Why are the move sets so bad in the anime? It's like only normal type moves and STAB moves.
 
I've noticed that some of the Pokemon don't even know the moves or the type they are. Like Ash's toreterra and giscor don't know any ground type moves (from what I see)

Also, why replace Pikachu's volt tackle with electro ball? WHY??
 
Like Ash's toreterra and giscor don't know any ground type moves (from what I see)

Mm, well this is because many usable Ground-type moves involve shaking the earth, akin to a earthquake. There was a major earthquake in Japan that resulted in the Japanese refusing to animate the move, or anything similar, out of respect for those affected by the tragedy. Then, the 2011 earthquake (which was one the biggest in the entire world, ever) came along and really reinforced those 2004 sentiments. Because of this, said moves are rarely illustrated. The most you'll get is probably either Dig, Mud-Slap, Earth Power, Drill Run, or Bulldoze (ironic, I know).

Now in regards to the original topic of this thread, yes-the writers don't care too much about move-sets. Heck, these are the same people who took forever to grasp that Ghost-type moves don't work on Normal-types, and vice-versa. Remember "aim for the horn"? While it happens, it's rare when a Pokemon's move-set is acknowledged. Most times, the writers just go with whatever they think looks nice and is fitting thematically, type coverage be damned. Best Wishes in general wasn't that good about that-Oshawott was pretty bad with his final moves being Water typed, Iris' Emolga and Dragonite never learned a Flying type move, Ash's Scraggy never learned a Dark type move, etc. However, some Pokemon, like Ash's Krookodile, fared a lot better with an actually diverse move set.

However we do have to give the writers some credit as of late-James' Mareanie just learned Knock Off, a move the species could only legally learn six months ago. Knock Off, Sludge Bomb, and Spike Cannon are pretty diverse, barring missing a fourth move.
 
This is an area of the anime where it isn't related to the games. Some moves don't even have the same effect as they do in the anime, we haven't seen any accuracy drops for example. I think they mainly put moves on a Pokemon to show the aesthetics e.g Snivy's physical side, Leaf Blade, special side, Leaf Storm (note there isn't a SpAtk drop). The anime isn't really about type advantages and STAB, it is about flashy moves which do a lot of damage e.g. a Giga Impact vs a Quick Attack (even though surprisingly Pikachu's Quick Attack seems strong lol).

So in summary, what I'm trying to say is that I'm not surprised because moves work differently in the anime.
 
The anime isn't really about type advantages and STAB, it is about flashy moves which do a lot of damage e.g. a Giga Impact vs a Quick Attack (even though surprisingly Pikachu's Quick Attack seems strong lol).

thats the Pokemons on diffrent Levels issue that they take on with stats too.
We dont know on what level Pikachu is and on what the Gigaimpact user. That evens out the chances.

(ironic, I know).

but atleast they could have given it sand tomb at some point?
give gliscor/tortera sandstorm and use it in a combo with gliscor/torterra? or in a double battle?
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thats why the anime had the most problems with loosing viewer amount, if they would make the movepools better , then the battles would get better and more interesting.

Also that they dint use effects properly (dragontail swithing) is bad for the anime and games.

Its like lying to the viewers and players that make them disappointed... If only someone from japan or knowing japanese would make a debate about this in Japan on japanese websites.

Also that they didn't use type immunities more with auto-regular-switching by trainers was a lot disappointing.

Imagine if Ash would switched to Greninja before Metagross or a other pokemon would have used a psychic move in the same turn?
In the past hey did such things some times and occasionaly but not in main battles(gyms and league)

Its like the anime and game creators don't have contact and see each others works; dont talk with each others and don't see there failures or that in Japan they don't watch more what fans around the world think about it all.

If they would change that attitude more, make less failures then they would earn more money on all what they do and win the hearts of fans all around the world.
 
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thats the Pokemons on diffrent Levels issue that they take on with stats too.
We dont know on what level Pikachu is and on what the Gigaimpact user. That evens out the chances.
I think it is better that levels don't exist in the anime as it should just be about the Pokemon, therefore, there is more focus on them which is what the anime should be all about.
 
I think it is better that levels don't exist in the anime as it should just be about the Pokemon, therefore, there is more focus on them which is what the anime should be all about.

the level of experience always is every where,
you cant make something thats natural in real life disapper totally and making it unrelevant.
Sports, education, science, politics...
the level of experience alwas do matter everywhere.
that would be like lying to yourself or beeing blind to it...
Its not a problem it would fix that issue, that you know why there is a power diffrence between pokes and their moves.
 
Its not a problem it would fix that issue, that you know why there is a power diffrence between pokes and their moves.
I just think that if Pokemon are on a level playing field it would be better as you know that the battle could go either way. It is just something to raise suspense, that's all.
 
Pokemon in the anime generally have a combination of close-range attacks and long-range attacks.

Trying to compare the anime to the games is a futile effort.

Ash's Greninja was a pure water type for all intents and purposes in the anime. It’s dark type wasn’t acknowledged, and it didn’t get any dark moves.

It could have learned Night Slash, but Cut was for all intents and purposes the same move. But the Japanese name of Night Slash translates to Crossroad Killing; and well, yeah... You can see why they wouldn't want that coming out of Ash's mouth.
 
This is an area of the anime where it isn't related to the games. Some moves don't even have the same effect as they do in the anime, we haven't seen any accuracy drops for example. I think they mainly put moves on a Pokemon to show the aesthetics e.g Snivy's physical side, Leaf Blade, special side, Leaf Storm (note there isn't a SpAtk drop). The anime isn't really about type advantages and STAB, it is about flashy moves which do a lot of damage e.g. a Giga Impact vs a Quick Attack (even though surprisingly Pikachu's Quick Attack seems strong lol).

So in summary, what I'm trying to say is that I'm not surprised because moves work differently in the anime.

I agree with this for the most part, but the inconsistency makes it frustrating. We have seen Overheat depicted as a power drop, hyper beam sometimes leads to immobilization, while other times it is fired off in succession, type immunities sometimes work and other times don't, characters talk about super-effective moves (even mention critical hits at times), sometimes a move, like water gun for example, is as good as hydro pump and other times shown as not as good, showing stat increases on moves sometimes (Sawyer's Aegeslash comes to mind as an example that showed even the game animation for stat increases), but not always, as well as countless other inconsistencies. I don't mind them not following the game perfectly, but it would be nice if they were consistent with what they decide to go with.

Also, since they don't follow games on effects/impacts for moves, I wish they would go ahead and ditch the 4 move limit. The first few years didn't really follow the 4 move limit, we could see a move not be used for a long time and come back later, we could see a ton of moves in the same battle (Drake's Dragonite comes to mind), and the variety was entertaining. They started to adopt the 4 move limit, only to continue to have some inconsistencies (such as Snorlax in BF and a few other examples). The 4 move limit has taken away interesting moves (Volt Tackle seems to be the biggest loser of this limit, although there are many others). Since Pokemon aren't stupid, the only way I can justify the 4 move limit in my own mind is to imagine its a battle rule, and that can somewhat be backed up by move reminders and TMs being reusable. It would be nice for the anime to allow for more than 4 moves, although lately the other direction seems to have been taken, with many SM Pokemon not even reaching 4. I guess it must cost to much to have different move animations, but its really disappointing.
 
Even though Dark types are no longer banned for "twerps", Dark type moves are still a big no, as most of them imply dishonesty and cheating and not allowed for Ash and his friends.
 
Have you seen Ash's Snorlax against Greta in the Battle Frontier series... I think it used 7-8 moves in the battle.
Uhh yeah, that's what I was referring to here
They started to adopt the 4 move limit, only to continue to have some inconsistencies (such as Snorlax in BF and a few other examples)
That one might have been a little over the top, I still don't mind limiting to around 4 in one battle, just thinking the 4 could rotate throughout a series rather than having to ditch a move forever when a new one is learned.
 
I wish they would consistently explore the idea that you need to make the most out of your move limits and be more creative, like Contests tended to do.

It's so frustrating whenever someone comes up with something creative, but then this strategy ends up disappearing or just coming out of nowhere 9 times out of 10.

Like, even as hype as Ash-Greninja's later fights were, we had no prior idea that you could do things like make a red super-shuriken, or magically suck your Double Teams into a different move to give it more energy. They just kind of come out of nowhere and rely on Rule Of Cool to be accepted.

Also, sometimes I ask myself how much you can modify a move without it counting as a different move... Like, if you know Thunderbolt but you can tone the strength down when you need to, will that count as "Thundershock", or is it just "weak Thunderbolt" and you still have a move slot? What about if you control it to only cover your body, or your fist. Do those have to count as "Spark" and "Thunder Punch", or can they still be considered a modification of Thunderbolt? If you can disperse it to hit a wide area, does it have to be considered "Discharge" now?

I'm assuming all of this should actually be perfectly legal, given that Ash has done things like Counter Shield and Thunder Armor and it was accepted that they're just unique uses of a regular move... meaning that with a sufficiently flexible movepool, a Pokemon with "four" moves could technically know a lot more than that just by being creative.

And I would definitely get a Pokemon that knows Psychic, it basically seems like the holy grail of flexibility in the anime-verse. If there's a Dark-type, just slam them with rocks and trees and crap. If attacks are coming towards you, just catch and redirect it. Etc, etc.

Basically, I mostly get frustrated with how novel strategies that you can't do in the games come up sometimes, but not nearly often enough, and often not even in a satisfying way.
 
Even though Dark types are no longer banned for "twerps", Dark type moves are still a big no, as most of them imply dishonesty and cheating and not allowed for Ash and his friends.

but for their oponents they should... dishonest? dark? I would say they overcomplicated the logic of dark types...
For me they are mostly night active beeings that try to survive and needed to become darker to fight pokemon with psychic abilites to survive in the nature...

Dishonest? every move could be counted as such, but Bite was used by ash Totodile and Turtwig...
He got a dark type Krookodile in generation 5... what is so dishonest in existance? they arent bad , they only gained immunity and use moves to survive... but they are used by dishonest people to do dishonest stuff sometimes like every other type...
 
Ash's Greninja should have had Night Slash. It fits Greninja way better than Cut. The Night Slash final smash looks brilliant in Super Smash Bros.
 
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