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The Pokemon Anime: Slice of Life vs Action-Adventure

LuxrayOfTheWild

LuxrayOfTheWild

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The Sun and Moon series is a huge contrast to previous series, especially the XY(Z) series. In the past, series focused on Ash and his friends as they traveled the region, helped out random CotD’s, trained their Pokemon, and competed in leagues. Ash and his companions will tackle every obstacle in their way as they make their way to their ultimate goal, whether its the regional league or Grand Festival. The tone was sometimes more serious, notably in the XY(Z) series. The Sun and Moon series meanwhile sticks to a more lighthearted and comedic tone. It often sticks to one location 80% of the the time and focuses more on the daily lives of Ash, his classmates, and their Pokemon. When the Sun and Moon series isn’t focusing on the Island Challenge, it often focuses on more lighthearted and comedic plots, whether its a school play or a day at a water park.

Do you want future series to have more slice of life elements, or stick to the action-adventure elements that past series have had.
 
I am more of a hyped-for-battle fan. I majorly miss the journey of battle spirit in the past two years, especially having it right after the high budgeted battle animations in the last series. I may tolerate it for one series, in this case S&M, but I would definitely want the next series to be more like XY/XY&Z. Not only the battles in the core, but on the other hand, I liked how characters develop themselves throughout their journey and change their characteristics less or more. Sadly enough, characters in S&M barely do anything to improve themselves for more solid reasons than winning a one-episode contests.
 
I frankly thought XYZ started going too far in its action tone with the almost successive series of high-intensity Ash-Greninja battles, to the point where Ash stopped feeling like Ash. After all that over the top stuff, going a more comedic route is what I wanted to see out of SM all along, even if it is just for one series.

In that extent, yes I do prefer Slice of Life right now. It's just the kind of sedate experience I need to help chug down the rock music and frog ninja hype of yesteryear.
 
I think the series needs both, but there just needs to be more emphasis on the journey and the action. The nice and easy going slice of life kind of episodes are always nice, but should be done as kind of a breather between plot heavy or battle heavy episodes. I get bored when its the other way around.
 
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I really can't believe this is even a thing, the whole point of Pokemon is action/adventure. The anime is supposed to reflect/promote the game, which SM doesn't do. When I watch past series and they did something really well it made me want to pick up the game and play that part, which SM hasn't done at all.

Now that doesn't mean you have to go to action extremes, there has always been a strong mix of character development and random storylines that had nothing to do with games that were mostly about characterization that were fantastic episodes, but the backdrop of the series was still a Pokemon adventure. It just doesn't make sense to me for the series to not be a Pokemon adventure, I could see a side series focusing on this pure slice of life type of stuff (not that it would actually be worth producing for them), but the main series really needs to be adventure based. They are still capable of doing really interesting, non-adventure based arcs, with the adventure just always being in the background - having a main goal and driving force throughout the entire series that makes it more interesting and gives a sense of direction. For me personally, it just makes the series really fun and exciting knowing they are in the middle of a journey even if it isn't a significant part of the episode, and seeing new places all the time is really fun and exciting.

As far as serious vs comedy, I think many (yes I know there are going to be some that don't...) agree that XYZ was too serious and SM is too comedic. I think AG was really great at finding a balance and other series have found good balances as well (even XY). Balance is really important here, I think SM's greatest downfall here is that they won't let a serious moment stay serious, they have to gag it up (plus I just don't find SM humor funny like past humor- but that may just be me). I hope in the future that it will return to more of a pre-XYZ level of balance.
 
The problem with SM is that it doesn't want to get rid of adventure completely, but it does want to tell us that Slice of Life is more important than adventure, like if it was a transition between XYZ and a SoL series without any quests at all. It's very frustrating to watch 4 fillers in a row about crazy situations when things like Ash's Pokemon becoming better in battle, Ash's rivalry with Gladion, Lillie's development, UBs appearing and many others are left behind and almost forgotten. If everything has to happen in the same place, then the writers should aim for Slice of Lice with a purpose, like some episodes have been (SM008, SM039, SM084).

The new format has brought some advantages, like recurring characters appearing more times (some of the important ones like Gladion and Team Skull should appear more though), the better humor (which I'm not sure comes from the format), the option to see the characters' normal lives and the use of a mentor character (both of which are fine but aren't used to their full potential), but I don't think they are really worth it.

Gengarzilla said:
I frankly thought XYZ started going too far in its action tone with the almost successive series of high-intensity Ash-Greninja battles, to the point where Ash stopped feeling like Ash. After all that over the top stuff, going a more comedic route is what I wanted to see out of SM all along, even if it is just for one series.

In that extent, yes I do prefer Slice of Life right now. It's just the kind of sedate experience I need to help chug down the rock music and frog ninja hype of yesteryear.
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If you'd talked about the Flare climax I'd get your point. But the Ash Greninja Arc? That one was followed by two comedic and excessively cartoony episodes, and had a lighthearted episode near to its beginning. And even then it's just a small part of a imo balanced series, you can't always have comedy and action combined.
 
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XY is not the framework we should be looking at. It was far too serious (which was why it didn't work). Johto and Diamond and Pearl perfected the pokemon formula.
 
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