Opinions on Season 11

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As the title implies, what are your (general) opinions on Season 11:Pokémon Diamond & Pearl: Battle Dimension? Your favorite/least favorite episode, favorite gym battle/contest etc. This includes Movie 11 and also the theme song.
 
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So many good parts to this season: the Wallace Cup, the Kidnapped Riolu two-parter, the Team Galactic episodes, the Summer School arc, and Chimchar's and Paul's episodes come to mind. My favorite feature is easily the episode-to-episode continuity and ongoing storylines. You can tell the writers are trying to inject some character-driven, continual drama into the series more and more as time has gone on, and it's working very well.

Low point of the season in all has to be several of the early episodes: Bibarel Gnaws Best, Nosing 'Round the Mountain, Luxray Vision, Hot Springing a Leak, and Sleight of Sand. And then of course there's The Bells Are Singing, a.k.a. the single worst episode of DP so far.

Favorite new character? Gliscor! Love it. It's just so adorable and humorous. Easily my favorite of all the main cast's DP Pokémon, including Croagunk and Chimchar. Also, I wish it had a gender so I could demonstrate my affection by using the correct pronoun. In second place comes, of course, Barry.

Biggest mistake? Probably giving Swinub so little focus. That was just ridiculous.

Favorite Gym? Maylene. Having her confidence crushed by Paul- who usually respects authortiy figures- was very interesting, as was Dawn challenging a Gym. (Although I do think it was a mistep not to tie that in more with Dawn's similar self-doubt story, although she did compare her situation with Maylene's earlier). Least favorite has to be Wake's. The Croagunk episode was fun, but they simply didn't utilize Wake like they should have.

Dawn's Contest storyline hasn't been as intcing as May's, but the Wallace Cup ruled. And it was exciting to catch up with May while we were at it. Dawn's storyline of doubting her ability was rather interesting, as was- I think, at least- the way her friendship with Zoey has developed. Ever since the Wallace Cup I've pretty much lost interest in her.

Our annual movie was alright. Not the best, but not the worst. Liked it more than Rise of Darkrai, anyway.

All in all, a pretty good season. Hands down the best "middle portion" of Johto, Hoenn, or Sinnoh.
 
I like it. I think it's far better than the first season of DP.

My favorite episodes are the Team Galactic and Wallace Cup arcs (and all the episodes with Barry in them <3). The worst were at the beginning of the season.
 
Darkrai Vs. Cresselia was the biggest piece of crap episode I have ever seen. I know there have been some horrible fillers during the show that are worst than this, but the fact that the Japanese title of the episode was in fact, "Darkrai Vs. Cresselia" and they give us some 7 second nonsense about the two bumping into each other was just pathetic.

Other than that, and some crud episodes like the Chingling filler, I had no problems with this season.
 
Crossing Paths is easily my favorite episode of the season. Jessie smashing that pokeball gets me everytime.

The Bells are Singing isn't as bad as everyone is making it out to be. There were a few amusing parts here and there, and I really like Buneary's new vest. Lil Brother listed pretty much all the stinkers. But I didn't like the Summer Academy arc at all. Good characters, but the situations they were put in just bored me (and James got screwed out of screentime).

The Galactic stuff was good, but I forgot which episodes came where so I was disappointed that we weren't at the episode I thought we were. What we got is great buildup.

Barry is awesome, and his presence makes every episode he's in a little better.

I'm not really good at remembering which episodes make up which American seasons, so I can't say too much more.
 
Rocket Girl said:
But I didn't like the Summer Academy arc at all. Good characters, but the situations they were put in just bored me (and James got screwed out of screentime).
Click to expand...

I thought the summer school arc was fairly decent for what it was. The highlight was definitely the Ash/Angie and Dawn/Conway interaction, but there were some other good points.

I also liked how in the first ep the group used rental Pokemon, Dawn with Grimer, Ash with Raichu, and Jessie with Smoochum was pretty fun.

Also one of the middle episodes had a gigantic Pokemon race, which I also thought was pretty fun. I'm not sure if I want to see something like the summer school again but I thought it was alright.
 
Duckgon Z said:
It goes from Chimchar's Tears to Darkrai vs Cressy.
Click to expand...

I totally forgot about Chimchar's Tears. Really loved that as the audience got a really good feel for what life was like with Paul, but the other characters could only speculate and didn't quite understand what Chimchar's problem was.
 
I like what they are doing now! The storylines, the new characters, everything! Now there were some flaws in some episodes, but other than that, this is probably Pokemon's best season!
 
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Summer School, Riolu episode, Galactic episodes, gym battles, and most importantly meeting Barry!
 
I was glad to see May, but I cant say much else.

I actually prefered the first season of DP. It seemed to be more carefree and light. I think they're trying to hard to make a cute anime hardcore.

But the movie was nice for me. The funny scenes between Ash and Shaymin really lightened the mood, and it felt like the old days of 4Kids puns.
 
Good:

- Swinub and Gliscor are amazing.
- Hot Spring A leak and Tanks For The Memories
- Dawn winning a contest
- All of Maylene's episodes
- More Croagunk
- Yanmega's cry. Scary at first, by=ut hilarious after words.
- The Opening. great song.
- Jun. Crazy kid.

Bad:

- Brock in everything but Tanks For The Memories
- Little to no Yanmega
- Bells Are Singing. My 2nd least favorite episode ever.
- Sleepless in Pre-Battle I hate this episode with a passion. And it isn't a filler. *cries*
- Aaron.
 
I can't really say that this season is better than last season, due to the fact that it is collectively under Diamond & Pearl.
However, there are less episodes devoted to "filler" and more devoted to character development and story arcs.

The good parts are:
Wallace Cup arc- May returns for a fair amount of screentime (the same applies for Zoey). The only "issue" I have with this is that, despite being mainly a water pokemon competition, Misty did not compete it in or was not seen at all.
Team Rocket episodes- it's good seeing 2 pokemon who really haven't that much screentime go bye-bye. Also, the "back to basics" episodes was also somewhat nostalgic from the original series.
Barry episodes- Although he was introduced fairly late in the season, Barry makes for a decent support character.

The bad parts are:
Opening- I know they didn't have that much to work with (since they already used most of Together's footage), but they could have found better animation to recycle for the opening.
Starting off the Seasons- After the first three episodes, there are a series of filler episodes. Similar to Johto and Hoenn's fillers, they just introduce one-time characters and pokemon of the week formats. Not a good way to start off the season.
Summer School arc- This arc is perhaps one of the worst arcs in Diamond and Pearl. First off, they introduce some one-time character who serves as another love interest for Ash. And after the filler, she is nothing more than chopped liver (even if she did appear in another episode, it wasn't really great). Then, for the arc, they have multiple episodes with crappy plots whose purpose is to introduce Gen IV pokemon. Also, Team Rocket really did not do much. James and Meowth were basically as useless as Max in Advanced Generation. The only episode of the arc that was actually decent was the last episode, that's it.
Ending the Season- Really, they did not pick a great episode to end the season with. The Cresselia VS Darkrai episode was a terrible one even with Swinub's evolution.
 
Season 11 was a good season overall. As I already wrote in the episode threat for, “ Sleepless in Pre-Battle !”, I thought that the best episode of Season 11 was, “ Barry’s Busting Out All Over! ” because Barry is a great character and it was fun that the writers brought in the D/P rival from the game’s. “The Bells Are Singing!” was easily the worse episode of the season because the Chingling were so annoying in that episode.

“We Will Be Heroes” was the first PUSA/PCI opening that I liked and here’s hoping that Season 12’s opening is at least “decent”. A lot happened in this season as, “ Pika and Goliath! ” and the Wallace Cup were some the best episodes of the Sinnoh Saga. “A Lean Mean Team Rocket Machine!” was easily for me one of the best Team Rocket episodes ever. Dawn’s third ribbon episode was a lot of fun and we got two great two-part “serious” episodes (or as serious as Pokémon can get) with the debut of Cyrus and the Pokémon Ranger 2/Riolu episodes. The Maylene Gym Mini-Arc was the best Gym Battle of Season 11 and Dawn’s self-doubt mini-arc was great, too. Jessie winning two ribbons was also a surprise. I love Jessie's Yanmega for the simple reason that it has a cool look and voice. Plus its debut episode was great, too.

This season had its low points too. I already mentioned that “The Bells Are Singing!” as the worst episode of Season 11, but “ Luxray Vision! ”,“ Journey to the Unown! ”, and “Hot Springing a Leak!” were all real stinkers too! The Summer Camp Arc was just okay, but the return of Conway and Angie’s debut made it entertaining at least.

I didn’t care for Aaron’s debut episode. I mean if you think about it the episode’s message was if someone thinks you suck you should run away, become stronger and reunite with your old friend who told you that you suck. I don’t know about everyone else, but if I were that Beautifly, the second I saw Aaron again, I probably would give him a Gust Attack and send him in a Team Rocket-style blast-off.

I was originally hoping that both Ash’s Staravia evolved into Staraptor and Chimchar evolved into Monferno around the time that the dub is at, but not much you can do about that. Though it wasn’t just lack of evolutions (actual the one’s I wanted to see since there were a few evolutions in Season 11) that was bad. I feel that Season 11 is really when Dawn’s development takes a hit. Her self-doubt storyline and the Wallace Cup were great, but for me this is the season where Dawn’s poor Pokémon handling really shows. With all the captures she makes in Season 10, Piplup is really her main Pokémon all season and is always out of it’s Pokéball this season, She gets Aipom/Ambipom, but outside of Contests we never see it, Pachirisu spends most of Season 11 M.I.A. and the same with her Swinub. These problems actually occur towards the end of Season 10, but Season 11 is the first full Season where these problems occur on a regular basis. This is also the Season where I feel that the writers give all the focus on Jessie and forget about James and Meowth and the Summer School Arc is the biggest example of this.

That’s my thoughts on Season 11. Here’s hoping for a great Season 12.
 
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It was a great season. The past year was the most exciting year of my life, with platinum, giratina, shaymin, rotom...

The best gym battle was probaly the Fantina gym battle. It lasted all episode, and it was just damn good. The best contest battle? Wallace Cup. May came back, Dawn got her first ribbon for fifty episodes.

'Jumping Rocket Ship' was easily my favourite episode, with 'Bells are Singing' going low.

This brings back loads of good memories. And now, for one final time:

We Will Be Heroes,
Battle Dimension Pokemon!

Goodbye, Season 11!
 
I've gotta say, season 11 is probably my favourite so far. I also (for a change) really liked the OP. Ok, so I prefered it in french, but it's still the same song :p

Clearly, being my most favourite episode of all time no less, Crossing Paths was my best ep of the season. I have to applaud Michelle Knotz' performance in the ep, especially at the end when Jessie breaks that ball T_T *sniff*

But of course, this season also had my highest ratio of episodes-I-like:episode's-I-don't. I'm loving Chimmy's story, so all those eps were great. And of course I also liked: Pika and Goliath, Wallace arc, a lot of the fun fillers, TG and of course, through bias, my 3/4 TR focus eps ;-)

The Chingling filler I really found not as bad as people are making out. Much worse in fact was the season end. An utter load of bullshit.
 
Even though I didnt see much due to my mom dropping cable and having little time to watch tv shows anyway (due to homework), what i saw of it was that it was a great season. The opening was great, especially "we will be heroes" (best opening in Pokemon yet). The background music was also different (It was different from the other 10 seasons and was less repeative). The only problem was the name as it sounded dumb. Other than that the season was great.
 
Aaron's Elite 4 episode was pretty bad, and the whole thing was just poorly done. The other Elite 4 episodes are usually good.

Bruno, Lorelei, Agatha, Lance, Drake, Steven, Cynthia, Lucian and Wallace all got much better debut eps than Aaron.

Then again I don't think Aaron is that interesting anyway, so I didn't really care.

Hopefully Flint/Bertha's inevitable episodes are much better.
 
I'm usually neutral about certain things, so I'm not sure if I could gauge properly how I felt about this season, by separating them into the bad and good categories, but I'll give it a shot.

The Good-

Gligar- Probably one of my favorite Pokemon belonging to Ash (at least personality wise)

The gym battles- Every gym was great even Wake's because Ash didn't lose a Pokemon to Wake.

The Wallace Cup- May returns and shows off her newly evolved Pokemon. When I first saw May, I was pretty excited even if we "knew" she would be coming.

Team Galactic- Just the few episodes of them were great.

The Evolutions (with maybe the exception of Swinub)- Gligar, Turtwig, and Aipom all got decent evolution episodes. Probably the best was Turtwig's because the episode actually revolved around it evolving. Gligar doesn't count since the episode primarily focused on Gligar rather than it evolving.

The Bad-

Lack of battle screen time between Gligar and Swinub before they evolved- Gligar basically only had one battle before it evolved, the episode in which Gligar evolved was fine, and it was good just the lack of battles were bad. I would've liked it to have won at least once before evolving. And Swinub didn't do jack pretty much it's whole time as a Swinub, I mean it could've at least battled once. But I suppose if you take in account how Swinub evolved, you could argue if it battled earlier it could've evolved then. But a Phanpy evolution?

Lack of Chimchar's Storyline- I know, I know they have so much to do but if they replaced a few of the "boring" episodes with storyline with Chimchar and it's blaze it could've been more fulfilling than a crappy wrap up with Ash saying he won't use blaze, not that it would be Ash's choice anyway considering Blaze occurs when the Pokemon chooses. Not some cheap moment where Ash says "Chimchar activate Blaze" and it does.

Lack of battles- I think this is always going to be a problem, but instead of training them like Ash does in "Aiding the Enemy" why not train them by battling them. I don't care if we get some formulaic story lines I would love to see some more battles especially for the Pokemon who really need it.

I really can't think of anything more, I really didn't like about the season, so I guess I'll stop here.
 
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