I KNOW saying this is going to make you throw a hissyfit, but from what I have read of Special (which, granted, isn't much), I think that in terms of FEEL, of MOOD, Special didn't match RBY (the games) very well.PokeSpe is way more faithful than 99% of the other Pokemon adaptations barring the occasional fuck-ups, lol.
Once the plots of the games got overly serious, well, maybe it matched then. I dunno.