Which Johto Episodes are pointless, which are interesting?

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shoomiz_723x

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There are only around 70ish Johto League Episodes worth watching. Which ones ARE worth it, and which ones are just random fillers? You tell me.
 
My favorite Johto ep was the one with Houndoom and Togepi. The wooper one deserves special mention. It was very cute.

Anything that resorts to the rigid formula isn't worth watching.
 
Its impossible to make a list because everyones opinions are different.

Your best bet is to just watch the whole saga yourself, and then after you've seen it, you can avoid the episodes you didn't like the second time.
 
I love ALL of Johto.

Yes, you heard me right. All those boring filler episodes that most fans hated? Bring 'em on! Because I loved those episodes!

Though, I guess the reason I like those episodes is because I'm an Ash fangirl, lol. And everyone knows that I love the 4Kids dub. XD

So yeah, I really enjoyed watching Johto Journeys, Johto League Champions and Master Quest. Those seasons are awesome!! ^_^
 
The two worst episodes of Jotho that spring to my mind are Carrying On (The carrier Pidgey episode) and Whichever Way the Wind Blows (The episode with the fighting Vileplume and Bellossom)

Why?

It certainly isn't because of the Pokémon. (I happen to actually like Pidgey for it's relative simpleness and Bellossom is a cutie).

No, the reason why I didn't like this episode was that the lessons they delivered were nearly pointless to me, and they were resolved in the crappiest ways possible.

Carrying On sucked hard because it ended up with the character of the day wanting to be like his grandfather, even though the job of the Carrier Pidgey were going the way of the Dodo (which incidently, were a kind of giant pidgeon). You knew it wasn't going to come true.

Whichever Way the Wind Blows blew as well because what started off as an interesting conflict, Warring factions between Vileplume and Bellssom, it could have been made even more intriguing if the Bellossom and Vileplume who evolved into the forms opposite to what they wanted were more involved in the plot. Instead though, they were barely involved and were only given the crappiest, most ham-handed of aseops from Misty: "You evolved into what you are now because you were ment to evolve into that way" or something. That's a pretty horrible explaination, and a way to skip a perfectly good plot. Oh, and instead of subverting the usual outcome and have one side actually lose and one win, they instead went the easy, more predictable and less realistic route and made everyone at peace with one another. This never actually happens in real life.
 
The better Johto episodes have always been during Master Quest.

Johto Journies had some decent episodes, but as said, it was hit or miss.

Johto League Champions is where the really tedious fillers started coming in full force, this is the season which really started the hatred of the Johto era. Aside from some gems like "The Heartbreak of Brock," and some other isolated great eps here and there, this is probably the most difficult part of the entire anime to enjoy.

Master Quest is when things start to get better again, we got some good Team Rocket arcs and everything from Claire's Gym through the Larvitar episodes and the league matches is good.

But as said, its not just the tedious fillers that hurt Johto. Its the lack of character development of the humans, the lackluster development of Ash's Johto Pokemon, and the lack of anything really innovative.
 
I like "Enlighten Up!" that episode's hilarious. But there are tons of Master Quest episodes I skip.
 
I did not really see all Johto, but all I did see, I liked. I liked the first (was it?) episode where the heracross were upset at the pinsir eating the tree sap at their side of the forest. And the episode that the girl had the chicorita, rattata and pidgy and was trying to beat Ashs Chaizard, it was ok.

I never saw the master quest episodes though, around the time those episodes were on, I kinda got tired of pokemon a little and came back to it around the middle of advanced Gen, but I did see a few of the pokemon chronicles episodes.
 
I certainly don't find all of the Johto episodes atrocious. Now that I've ruminated over it, I don't think they're atrocious at all to begin with - I just would say that the ample repertoire of filler material that came midway could have been executed much better above all else. The nature of the episodes doesn't seem to know the cruxes well, or just plain doesn't mesh. Too many of the episodes seemed forced, predictable, rushed, but even worse than that very, very redundant.... even linear (though I feel that intercutting stories can dramatically reduce tension, depending upon how the pace is set). Not only are the episodes redundant, but the characters begin to lapse into a point where they seem to be limited to the same... tendencies they've always been limited to.

But that doesn't make them inherently bad in my eyes. If anything, it was great to see the original, main cast together one time more for me, and the latter portions of Johto call to an epic nature that not even the end of Season 1 did to me (what with episodes like "Rage of Innocence", "Promise is a Promise", "Address Unown", and "Hatch me if you can", amongst a great many others, though I do prefer Season 1... it's just that things were kept a bit condensed so as to build towards the more epic episodes as the series was being introduced). IMO.

Top it off with Ash finally becoming a great deal more mature (much more collected and placid in tone, and a greatly more kind person, as well as being more responsible when it comes to the things for which he is responsible), as well as Misty's departure (which I always find heartwrenching - I feel run through the heart whenever I watch it), and I feel the Johto episodes are rather solidified, even moreso than the Orange Island filler arc. If anything else, if I had to choose an apposite place to end the series, it would have been Johto. I feel the Master Quest season made for a great ending. I'm satisfied with the resulting season(s) as an overall, even given the point to which they went.

I'm not a fan of all of the Pokémon of the Johto region, but I do like a number of them enough (Cyndaquil, Chikorita, and Bayleef come to mind, amongst a few others). But I suppose whether you enjoy the episodes or not just greatly depends upon opinion. It also may tie into which one you saw first - for some, Season 1 will always be prevalent. For other's, it's the new plethora of episodes. That's not the case by full intents and means, though - everyone has their own preferences. But to draw this post to a close, while I find the Johto fillers somewhat vexing, I don't hate the series at large or even dislike it. It certainly could have been improved upon in my opinion, but I still feel they're good when all is said and done.
 
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List so far

kk, there were a lot of thoughts so far. I appreciate it. You guys said that you loved it and there were some mixed feelings about The Johto league. But for this thread, i am trying to develop a sort of general "list" of the god episodes. I am going to paste the Episode Titles you guys have mentioned you like, and these are them so far. Ill try to do this every few days:

Forest Grumps
Carrying On
Whichever Way
The Heartbreak of Brock
Enlighten Up
Rage of Innocence
Promise is a Promise

keep em coming!!
 
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention something.

Personally, if I were in charge, I wouldn't have removed any episodes from the Johto seasons.

I like all of Johto, and therefore, there really aren't any episodes that I dislike. Heh, I guess I'm pretty weird for liking the entire Johto region of the anime, lol. XD

I mean, those Johto Journeys and Johto League Champions filler episodes are so cute!! <3

And speaking of those seasons, I can't wait until Viz releases the box sets. Pokemon Karaokemon needs to be officially released! :-D


Also, this is kinda random, but it's sorta related to this topic. Anyway, I happen to have one of those Johto Journeys T-shirts that KidsWB gave away during their Super Stuffed Saturday Sweepstakes. Yeah, I'm actually one of the 100 (or so) people who won that shirt! I remember being so surprised when I got that shirt in the mail a long time ago! XD
 
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Wow that's so awesome that you won that!

The only thing and I mean pretty much the only thing I'd change about Johto is giving the characters a costume change, and keeping the BGM all intact.

That's what makes the regions so great now they get their own distinct music, and the characters get a costume change. I think that's why Johto just felt like a watered down Indigo...namely because the good storys were gone, but the replacement of the BGM took away some of the unqiueness of that region.
 
Yeah, I agree with you.

It is sad that they replaced some of the Japanese BGM during Johto. But on the other hand, I'm personally satisfied with whatever tracks 4Kids did keep. I mean, they at least tried to keep a good portion of the music, and I'm glad that they did this. ^^
 
I'll agree on the BGM. I've been watching through the Japanese version, and I find that sitting through Jouto, while still a bit of a chore, is a lot more enjoyable than it was when I sat through the English version. Partly because anime (when it's not butchered for western distribution) has great atmosphere in general (I really love the silence ^^), but there were a lot of nice original tracks, as well as an occasional track from the movies, that never made it into the dub. Some of them also kinda surprise me because I heard the tunes in AG or DP, but had no idea that they were from way back then (ex. the music that played when Haruka lost against Harley... I heard that playing at the end of the episode with the guy who could supposedly speak to Pokemon).

I can't help but wonder what the fuck 4kids was thinking trying to make Jouto even more repetitive than it already is by replacing many of these tracks with their same old in-house music... I mean, it's like their treatment of the music was doing kinda sorta alright through the Orange Islands, and then decided "aw, fuck it!" right when the show's ready to hit its low-point. Considering, at the time, they released episodes about a year after Japan does, they should've been well-aware what they'd be in for... maybe they were aware, and as a result they refused to pay for any more music rights, but that logic's thrown out the window when they're replacing music that has been heard several times in the earlier seasons (they also kept the OK! instrumental for some reason... would it be wrong of me to assume that the theme song instrumentals from each generation are thrown in as a freebie by the Japanese distributors?).

BTW, since this thread's about episodes that're worth watching, I figure I'll throw in my two cents and defend a couple episodes that others may find overlookable:

"Poppo and Fat Poppo! Towards the Still Unseen Sky!" ("Fly Me to the Moon"): Yeah, it featured some extremely common 1st gen Pokemon that've been featured before (which is pointless when you'd think Jouto's meant to show off the new guys, as you'd be lead to believe from their painfully slow process of introducing them one-per-episode in what is obviously their first real attempt to wait out a future generation), but the concept of Poppo becoming too fat to fly is kinda interesting. If nothing else, this episode gets major points from me for its focus on Nyaasu.

"No More Nokocchi!?" ("The Dunsparce Deception"): Originally, I didn't think highly of this episode neither (and like many other Jouto episodes, the basic plot sucked ass)... but then I saw the Japanese version, and one hilariously punny scene makes it all worth it XD (I'm unable to post it on Youtube, sorry). But obviously, I could see it being lost to foreign audiences, so any flack this episode receives isn't unjustified.
 
Not bad

Ok, not bad for a few days. You guys said a few more thoughts about Johto from both the Japanese side and the Dub side. It was interesting how you guys mentioned the music as a factor in the repetitive-ness of Johto cuz i never thought of it.

List-Wise: sorry Yamato-San, but i cant go listing all the eps people thought were good only because that would take longer because there are less pointless eps than good ones, and also cuz some of the pointless ones are "good" eps in a way, but still thanks for putting your cents in :)

But here's the list so far, no change from last time:

Forest Grumps
Carrying On
Whichever Way
The Heartbreak of Brock
Enlighten Up
Rage of Innocence
Promise is a Promise

Also, i dont know any order i can put these lists in so soz about that.

And also soz to the ppl who thought i copied their threads, it wasnt intentional and ill leave any posts from those threads off this one. (as in, i wont go copying crap from yours onto mine)

c yaz
 
I seem to think Johto League Silver Conference episodes were pretty awesome especially the part when Satoshi beat Shigeru for the first time
 
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