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What is your favorite saga of the "classic era" of Ash anime?

What is your favorite saga of the "classic era" of Ash anime?

  • OS (Kanto & OI)

    Votes: 3 16.7%

  • OS (Johto)

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • AG

    Votes: 3 16.7%

  • DP

    Votes: 12 66.7%
  • Total voters
    18
MiH

MiH

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So, what do you think? Generations I to IV are the options here.
OS (Kanto & OI): Pocket Monsters (1997, Generation I portion) / Pokémon the Series: The Beginning
OS (Johto): Pocket Monsters (1997, Generation II portion) / Pokémon the Series: Gold and Silver
AG: Pocket Monsters Advanced Generation / Pokémon the Series: Ruby and Sapphire
DP: Pocket Monsters Diamond & Pearl / Pokémon the Series: Diamond and Pearl
 
Well, I could've gone that route, but I ultimately decided to put AG together.
 
I vote AG. I haven't seen it in a while so my opinion could change when I rewatch it, but it always felt like it had a great balance of comedy and character development with great secondary and main characters.
 
It's really difficult to pick because imo at least, all the sagas have their ups and downs that kinda balance them out:

Kanto and Orange Islands have by far the most wonky and uninteresting battles (save for the ones against Lt. Surge, Blaine, and Drake) that would eventually become the main selling point of the anime and the way Ash's character is treated can also be pretty jarring at times; Kanto in particular kind of has a pretty big issue here in that despite the narrative doing its best to pretend otherwise, it often punishes Ash when he doesn't actually do anything wrong and conversely rewards his flaws, with the Indigo League in particular being a huge offender, as Ash using an untrained Krabby not only has zero consequences for him, he actually wins with an evolution and a 3-0 sweep against an ostensibly experienced trainer, but later when Ash loses to Ritchie almost entirely due to circumstances outside his control they're framed as his sole failing. But, Kanto+OI make up for this by having by far the best humor (there's a reason almost all clips of epic burns are compiled of scenes from this era) and some genuinely poignant storylines that I think are only matched by the Infernape arc in DPP and several of Alola's arcs.

Johto is infamous for the copious amounts of filler, most of which is quite boring and uneventful and no doubt happened at least in part due to the fact that the GS Ball arc was scrapped, but this is also the saga where Pokemon Battles finally found their footing, it managed to have a fairly strong conclusion, and there were still some genuinely charming fillers and even mini-arcs amidst the slop. Also, Ash's Bayleef is goated and I will die on that hill.

Advanced I feel is the most average saga accross the board: nothing about it really stands out as especially extraordinary, but at the same time there's not really any super-glaring flaws about it either. The introduction of Contests was also a fantastic solution to the padding problem mentioned before, even if they themselves were pretty rough around the edges in execution.

DPP has one of the best rivalries for Ash; the Infernape storyline is also easily one of the most complete and well-written arcs that any character, human and Pokemon alike, has ever recieved in this show; the Contest formula was finally nailed; and the strategies and action were on a real roll. Unfortunately, this is also the saga where the cracks of keeping the same protagonist for so long started to show, and as good as Infernape's story was it did kinda come at the expense of Ash's other Pokemon, most infamously Torterra; and finally, there were some odd issues with the pacing, as the Badge Quest got postponed for a ludicrously long time due to the Team Galactic arc and Dawn's Contest finals being shoved between the last two Gym Badges (though to be somewhat fair, the games themselves kinda did this too).
 
Ghost Diplocaulus said:
Kanto in particular kind of has a pretty big issue here in that despite the narrative doing its best to pretend otherwise, it often punishes Ash when he doesn't actually do anything wrong and conversely rewards his flaws
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Interesting obervation I don't think I'd really thought about before!

Advanced I feel is the most average saga accross the board: nothing about it really stands out as especially extraordinary, but at the same time there's not really any super-glaring flaws about it either. The introduction of Contests was also a fantastic solution to the padding problem mentioned before, even if they themselves were pretty rough around the edges in execution.
Click to expand...
For what it's worth, I'd suggest AG's big flaw is (as I've noted before) having an uninteresting league you could tell got rushed badly (cramming full battles into pretty much one episode--and even then cutting away to TR stuff pretty regularly). It seems every other league had more to discuss.

However, I think a lot of what it's most important elements carried over to later series'. Whatever character inconsistencies boxing the team caused, it did mean the Hoenn team got a shine a lot better than the Johto one. Heracross infamously didn't even get one Gym battle!
In that way I think it's pioneering gets overlooked a bit nowadays.
Also, I feel like on a whole AG took itself less seriously than the whole of OS had and had a really relaxing vibe a lot of the time as a result, but some people would call that a flaw (considering I felt the games were doing the same thing at the time I think it could be connected).
 
In terms of enjoyment:

Kanto > Orange Islands > DP > AG > Late Johto > Early Johto >>>> Middle Johto

To be more objective in terms of writing:

DP > AG > Kanto > Late Johto > Orange Islands > Early Johto > Middle Johto


The anime had such varying degrees of quality, like early and late Johto are actually fairly good but the middle drags it down a ton. Kanto and Orange Islands are the most entertaining but the battles weren't that good yet.

DP is obviously the best written in terms of battles/team handling/rivals/villains, but it's also less funny than the series before.

AG is probably the most well rounded series, where it doesn't truly do anything better than most of the others, but it's fun to watch. Also May is hands down the funniest and most entertaining Pokemon girl when she was at her best (besides Season 1 Misty), and she has a lot of great eps focused on her outside of contest-related eps too. She had this fun outgoing and sarcastic vibe, liked to eat and travel, was a bit girly and had a temper but it was more balanced than say Misty, Dawn (or later Serena, etc). I have no idea why I don't see more people bring this up. Where have we ever seen any other pokemon girl more balance without being overly girly or overly tomboyish, but the perfect blend in the middle? That's May.
 
DP has the best battles and rival but AG isn't too far behind in both those categories and it has my favorite version of Ash. I like his Hoenn team more than his Sinnoh team. I never really cared for either May or Dawn because they couldn't replace Misty from a strictly a character standpoint and I didn't care about the contests all that much, but what helped in AG's favor was having good rivals to keep me invested. Rivals like Zoey and Kenny pushed me away from the contests in DP.

OS Kanto had the best humor/COTDs, Ash is his most entertaining here, him, Brock and Misty have the best chemistry and it's not even close. I liked Ash's Charizard, Bulbasaur and Squirtle. Team Rocket was at their peak here before they eventually got stale and overstayed their welcome. My biggest gripe are the battles, the Kanto League is practically unwatchable, it eventually gets better towards the end of OS/Johto. Gary was a great rival for Ash but they only battled twice throughout the entirety of OS and Gary hardly appeared in Johto.
 
D&P but not really much of a surprise considering this was one of three regions I have wonderful memories of (the other two being Kalos and Alola). It's not perfect (Pikachu was terribly treated for quite a few Sinnoh gym battles and TR showing up in every episode got old fast unless it was Jessie participating in contests which was nice to see) but it's still a series that manages to hold up well.

AG is there I guess. It's a series that exists and it has its good moments and some bad moments. It's not terrible but it doesn't stick in my mind all that much. The most "sitting in the middle of a list" series if there was one.

It's no secret I don't have much nostalgia for the OS era. There is no denying that the humour is funny (especially TR) but it really has not aged gracefully in other departments especially when it comes to battles which are either mediocre to straight up badly written garbage. Even animation wise (aside from one or two episodes) it kinda looks ugly in this day and age and I don't think the series really gets into it's groove until Masaaki Iwane becomes an animation director. The Orange Islands stuff is pretty good though, I'll give it that.

Still more preferable than sitting through pretty much nearly all of Johto. If this had been my first exposure to the region as a kid I would have thought it was a boring little place cause this was just filled with the most stagnant copy-pasted filler episodes imaginable. Really no wonder a bunch of people moved onto other things cause quite a few of these are such an utter drag.
 
Diamond and Pearl because I think it had the best bit of everything and mostly everything I wanted out of the pokemon anime. Both Ash & Dawn had rivals that made them think, contests were amazing & a great way to move the show forward, Jessie's contests were taken as a more serious goal for her, good group dynamics between Dawn, Ash & Brock, The pokemon league has some of the best battles and most of the rivals weren't last random arrivals (except for Tobias), Dawn & Ash helped each other and grew in their respective fields inspired by one another, it was the first saga to introduce all elite four members and give significant screentime time to the champion, there's plenty of funny moments, Hunter J worked great as a competent villain without usurping Team Galactic and it was the first time the regional evil team had a plot worth paying attention too and a decent climax to it as well.
 
The more skilled Ash got the more bland his character became. OS Ash is very entertaining but doesn't come close to his DP self in competence. AG Ash has the best of both worlds.
 
Nostalgia may be speaking here, but the OG Indigo and Orange Islands sagas most likely. They had some of my favorite episodes and antics. The Tower of Terror comes to mind and is an episode I adored rewatching as a kid. :') I also loved Go West Young Meowth so, so much! Love the TR lore!
 
An issue with the earlier seasons of the anime is the writers never truly knew how to balance screentime on the main cast correctly. Season 1 probably got it the closest because the show was brand new back then, so having Ash + two supporting characters + TR worked. But every other season:

Orange Islands: Tracey was a new character at the time and he only really had 3 episodes focused on him (Scyther capture ep, the Magikarp Quackenpoker ep, and I think 1 other), but he didn't really serve much role other than sketching.

Johto: This is where the writers infamously ran out of things to do with Misty, at least until the last year. She had some good eps focused on her, like the Totodile duel, Seaking catching ep, Poliwhirl evolving twice, then Whirl Cup+Corsola, but these eps were too far apart in episodes. For a large chunk of Johto, Misty really is not doing much more than holding Togepi and standing on the sidelines. She did help blast off TR in a lot of eps, but I doubt most people even remember that. Takeshi Shudo later admitted he didn't exactly know what to do with Misty's character around this point, and it kinda showed.

AG: Unfortunately the same happens to Brock here that happened to Misty, with Brock quite literally having nothing to do most of the time. Max also got a little focus at the beginning, but again they ran out of things to do with him pretty quickly that he wound up being forgotten for the whole backhalf of the series besides a few eps.

DP: Brock arguably had more to do here than in AG, but the heavy focus on Ash/Dawn made Brock feel more left out than usual.

BW: Iris/Cilan got decent screentime, at least for their type of characters, but BW wasn't structured very well.

XY: Serena during the first year of XY was BRUTAL. She literally felt like a background character in her own series a lot of the time. She did get more focus as it went on but man, I feel bad.

SM: Mallow and Sophocles at times felt left out. Kiawe only had 4 episodes focused on him all series, surprisingly. Lillie also took a backseat after the Aether arc ended and felt sidelined till the Mohn stuff happened.

JN: Koharu, 'nuff said.


It really feels like every series the writers ran into the same problems balancing screentime on the cast.
 
Classic Era > Modern Era
Best Battle (Ash vs Paul/Sinnoh League)
Best Rival (Paul)
Best League (Sinnoh)
Best COTDs (OS/Kanto)
Best Humor (OS/Kanto)
Best Traveling Companions (Brock & Misty)
Best Pokegirl Rival (Drew)
Best Villain (Hunter J)
Best Openings (OS-AG)
 
DP is so peak! I love almost everything about it! It's the one classic series that features the Team Rocket formula but doesn't get too stale with it!
The characters are great, the battles are awesome, the animation is really good, the Japanese opening themes are phenomenal and the insert themes that play in the Japanese version just feel so epic!
I remember marathonning all of DP a few years ago subbed and it was an awesome time! A lot of other Anipoke series are hard to get through in their entirety but not so much DP, I only took one real long break from it! Other series, I find I need to take longer breaks lol
 
I feel the AG doesn’t get enough love. DP wasn’t bad but Dawn I feel was a weak replacement for May. Honestly it would have been better if Ash & Dawn DID NOT travel with each other. That way, they would focus on their goals better.
 
AmourshipperTommi said:
I feel the AG doesn’t get enough love. DP wasn’t bad but Dawn I feel was a weak replacement for May. Honestly it would have been better if Ash & Dawn DID NOT travel with each other. That way, they would focus on their goals better.
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Dawn and Ash traveling together helped them grow actually, since they were both applying strategies they learned from each other in their respective careers. Nothing about traveling together derailed their goals and in fact Ash was at one of his peaks as a trainer at that point in time.
 
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