Pokemon Advanced Generation

I didn't expect many reviews on this chp. of pokemon. The history of pokemon had done so well up until this point, as seen by many. However, hardcore/loyal pokemon fans stuck around and watched the entire ADV generation. We embraced the new characters, though many did not want to see old ones retire away. We took note of even more pokemon added to anime, though some felt the originals could never be replaced. The games were stellar, I've played every single pokemon game out there and I can honestly say ruby/sapphire or emerald are must haves. So what is about ADV? I mean, it should ... be better than Kanto's and Johto's saga, right?

PMKN ADV features the return of our main heroine Satoshi (better known as Ash Ketchum) as he explores an entire new region, Hoenn. Here, he encounters totally new pokemon with different aspects and abilities nowhere seen in the previous regions he was in. During his journey, he meets new friends and some returning ones. Haruka(May) and Masato(Max) are some new faces this time around, both are brother and sister. May, a once serious trainer competing for gym badges, focuses on a new goal to be a serious PKMN contest challenger. Max provides the group with in depth strategies to PKMN battling despite given his age. He takes a real liking to Ash, since he too also wants to become a pkmn trainer. The final character to the group is Brock, a familiar face seen with Ash throughout the series. He is still is normal self, acting perverted anytime a nurse joy or any of the likes of a cute girl is near. Ash himself is still competing for badges, so that one day he can participate in the "Hoenn League."

PKMN ADV is divided into several different titles. When the timeline gets serious enough and Ash gains more badges, the story is known as ADV Battle. From there, the story gradually gets deeper into harder challenges otherwise known as PKMN ADV Challenge. The style of "Double Battling" ie is introduced to where two pokemon battle another two in the same fight. Everything is still considered the ADV timeline, the story just gets deeper and possibly better.

PKMN theme's around this time are very solid. Perhaps better than it's previous counterparts. I do enjoy the opening ADV Challenge theme A LOT. The art is slightly better than Johto, however much improved from Kanto sagas. Battles are better detailed, and animation is more fluid. So it seems like ADV is just perfect, right? Well no. The story lines between travel are STILL the same: Team Rocket attacks Ash and gang until he reaches a gym or certain point of relevance in the story. I do like presentation of different groups like Team Magma and Team Aqua, but still most of the time it's the annoying Rockets doing the dirty work. Another thing is accepting the fact of just understanding new pokemon and how they work. There's LOTS of names I wouldn't begin to remember then, there was like 350 known species in this timeline. Sometimes, I questioned "oh what type is this?" or "what atk was that!?"

Overall, I wouldn't be quick to say ADV is the "rotten apple" in the history of PKMN. There's good scenes and action waiting to be watched here if you haven't yet. I think it naturally depends on if you are willing to accept the many changes to PMKN when you brace this saga of pokemon.

Note: Given the nature of this series, this review will be split into two parts to cover both the Hoenn League and Battle Frontier.

Regardless of what we think of Pokémon, it's a successful franchise, and the original series was popular even with its ups and downs. However, its popularity began to decline during the Johto season, and the Pokémon phenomenon that rocked the world lost its luster. That didn't mean Pokémon was done with, as the Ruby and Sapphire versions rolled around for the fairly young Game Boy Advance on November 21 of 2002 in Japan, and then March 19, 2003 in North America (April ... 3rd in Australia and July 25th in Europe, can't forget you guys). The final Johto episode aired just weeks before the games' release in Japan, while in the U.S., it aired in late October of 2003, months after Ruby and Sapphire were released.

Statistics say the Ruby and Sapphire versions sold 16.22 million copies world-wide total as of March 2013. However, when compared to Red/Blue (31.38), and Gold/Silver (23.10), there's a plummet of sales. Why is that? It could be because of the new handheld, or it could be because the fans are moving on. Or it could be because the Hoenn region was different compared to Johto complete with new gameplay, and (gasp!) people don't like it when a formula that already works gets switched up. Who's really to say when there's millions of people with their own reasons for why they never bought the games. The anime was still on-going at this time, why didn't that help boost sales? Maybe it did, just not to the same extent as the original series.

Pokémon Advanced Generation is notable for being the first time the Pokémon anime tried something “new”, as in changing the location, changing companions (although Brock remained), changing battle strategies, and overall just better writing; and in America, there was a change in voice actors mid-series (more on that later). Saying there's “better writing” is a little weird to say since Pokémon's not the best story-driven anime in the world, not by a long shot. But when compared to the first three sagas, it's an improvement even without Takeshi Shudo's involvement (although it's sorely missed).

THE HOENN LEAGUE

STORY: Continuing on from where the original series left off, Ash Ketchum arrives in the Hoenn region with his partner, Pikachu, and shortly afterwards met the new trainer May from Petalburg City, who picked out a Torchic. Accompanying them are May's brother, Max, and Brock, who chose to return to traveling but still doesn't change in personality even with his new roster. Ash explores the new region and Pokémon in his quest to collect the badges to challenge the Hoenn League, and May discovers her love for Pokémon Coordination. Team Rocket is still adamant in catching Pikachu, but have convinced Giovanni they were setting the foundation for the rest of the organization to infiltrate the region. They develop a brief rivalry with two other teams, Team Aqua and Team Magma, who proved to be slightly more competent than the Rocket gang.

That's pretty much it. There's not a lot of difference outside of what's on the surface. Likewise with the previous seasons, fillers still abound, but they're not taking up half of the journey like in Johto, and it's still used to give the illusion the Hoenn region is huge—although Ash and company don't cross the ocean as much as the player does in the games, and it's all in a later season anyway.

There are improvements from the first season such as better gym battles, and the presence of Teams Aqua and Magma (mostly Magma), and the two teams do occasionally clash. The payoff, however, is disappointing to say the least. The Pokémon anime tends to do that. But even so, there's still some enjoyment to be had during the season, especially with a fresh Pokémon roster that aren't overshadowed by Ash's older Pokémon for once. The Pokémon Contests shakes up the formula a bit by giving May a character motivation of her own, as well as some different rules and performances, showing some impressive and uniques strategies in Pokémon moves both inside and outside of battle. Luckily, the journey to collect ribbons is given equal focus and importance as the journey to collect gym badges.

ART/ANIMATION: A continuation from the late Johto episodes, the digital art and animation is the same, and remains rather consistent throughout, though wonky art still slips through on occasion—this WAS still the awkward early-to-mid 2000s transition. The biggest upgrade are many Pokémon moves being done in CG to make them look flashier. Sadly, outside of the Pokémon Contest events, nothing of note sticks out in this department. The two-parter episodes involving Kyogre and Groudon could've had impressive animation with their battles, but they were reduced to painted (or colored pencil) stills. They could technically pass off as beautiful paintings, though.

I didn't know where to put this, but I figured I'd mention it here. One of Pokémon's well-known traits is its “Who's That Pokémon?” eye-catch halfway into each episode. While it's still on-going in Japan, in America, 4KIDS decided to go a different direction starting in episode 41 with Advanced Challenge. Up until their contract expired, “Who's That Pokémon?” was replaced with “Trainer's Choice”, kind of like a trivia question in which out of three choices, the viewer chooses basically the “best” choice for type advantages, or what Pokémon evolves into what. It's a pretty good idea—however, someone in charge of it apparently was not that knowledgable about his or her Pokémon facts, with some questions having either multiple possible answers or incorrect answers, and some Pokémon's names were misspelled. What most people remember is the most infamous moment of “Trainer's Choice”, episode 77's “Which of these Pokémon evolves into Seviper?”. Advanced Battle got better with it in asking actual trivia with match-ups, battle strategies, and callbacks to episodes, but the damage had been done.

SOUND: The soundtrack is honestly the best part of this section and it's not just because it's full of trumpets—well, in actuality, the brass section (the trombone was the most prominent). Well, the reason is because most of the score, like with the previous seasons, are covers of the game score, and they sound fantastic. Unfortunately, the dub noticeably got iffy with the music by this point unlike with the previous seasons. The original soundtrack does still remain (which, if YouTube is anything to go by, consists of less new scores than with Johto), but more often than not, you're hearing the 4KIDS-implemented score from the movies or albums, and it's a little more easier at this point to not catch the original score if you weren't already familiar with it.

Veronica Taylor, Rachael Lillis, Eric Stuart, Maddie Blaustein, and Dan Green still give good performances. However, by Advanced Battle, the vocal evolution of the cast becomes apparent, particularly with Team Rocket. Jessie had the least change to her voice, but James got noticeably whinier, and Meowth's Joisey accent had become almost slurred that he started sounding a little like Elmur Fudd.

CHARACTERS: This is a bit hard to truly gauge because the Hoenn saga's a continuation. Ash, Brock, and Team Rocket are the same as they were from before (sort of with Team Rocket, I'll explain shortly), although Ash has some character development in becoming a mentor to his new friend, May—I say some since this is mainly up until after Advanced Challenge when she becomes able to stand on her own two feet, then he seemingly regresses back to the same-old Ash, just mature. There's also no shortage of COTDs, though whether they stick with you or not depends on your tastes.

Judging the new main characters, they aren't bad. May is a rookie with some lack of self-confidence, and her brother is a know-it-all who gets annoying at times. What makes the two endearing, however, is their sibling relationship. They have their squabbles, but they truly care about each other. What also makes them a little bit different is they're the children of the Petalburg City gym leader Norman, and we do get to see them as a family on occasion. Sure, when it comes to Brock and Misty, we've seen them interact with their families, but not to the same extent. Still, the character development all went to May as she slowly became more confident and independent, who gained rivals in Drew, Jessie (in various disguises), and later Harley in Advanced Battle. Max was hinted at to have some gift with Pokémon bonding, but due to his young age, there wasn't much he could do about it, even though he once made a promise to a Ralts to be its trainer one day. He also later took up Misty's mantle of dragging Brock away by the ear whenever he got girl-crazy, but that's got nothing to do with his character in the slightest.

Team Rocket... ehhhhh, this is basically a continuation of their Johto personalities, except it got taken a step further depending on the writer. The Giovanni fantasies were a thing at that time, but they became ubiquitous by this saga that it began to get rather uncomfortably annoying rather quickly. Sure, it's a possibility we as children loved those segments, but the older we got, the more creepy and “ho yay” (although not necessarily in the same boat) it became. Maddie Blaustein enjoyed doing those parts, good for her, but when looking at it from a character perspective, it's like looking into the mind of a mad man, or in this case, a mad cat who may-or-may-not have a thing for his boss. This is similar to how Brock chases after every skirt he sees, except this is how Meowth sees his boss and believes this is how he's going to react for every rare Pokémon they bring to him. The ways the Pokémon are being used in these fantasies are rather reminiscent of servitude, and Giovanni doesn't look like the man who treats his Pokémon very well outside of his Persian (who is absent from all of these fantasies, funnily enough), but I personally doubt he'd use rare Pokémon for such mundane tasks as breaking open coconuts for him or be his personal alarm clock or workout partners.

THE BATTLE FRONTIER

STORY: Upon coming home from Hoenn, Ash stops by for a quick invited battle with Agatha, the temporary Viridian City gym leader and one of the Elite Four, accompanied by a man named Scott, who took interest in Ash because of his skills in the Hoenn League. Although Ash lost, Scott encouraged him to take the Battle Frontier challenge, and thus he travels the Kanto region once more, briefly visiting familiar places along the way, but there were more new places than there were old.

ART/ANIMATION: Outside of CG becoming steadily more abundant, there are no changes, although the battles get more clever. But there is a funny scene in the Deoxys two-parter of Meowth having one of his fantasies of Giovanni riding on the back of a Deoxys. You might've seen it around.

CHARACTERS: Everything still carries over, there are no changes to the main cast, not even to old faces who make appearances (since this is in the Kanto region). The Frontier Brains, however, fall under here. The problem(?) is, they don't all get the same amount of character development—well, screentime. The most notable Brains are Lucy of Battle Pike, Anabel of Battle Tower, and Brandon of Battle Pyramid, the former two because they had showed interest in either Ash or Brock (weirdly enough), though with Ash for the most part, it was mainly due to his skills.

SOUND: The voice cast is where this gets messy for the dub. From the beginning of the saga until “Pasta La Vista!”, it's still the classic 4KIDS cast. But thanks to the previous airing of “Mastermind of Mirage Pokémon”, the audience knew the voice cast was going to change at some point or another and were fearing the worst. This didn't come to fruition until the contract expired and there was a change of networks from Kids' WB to Cartoon Network (this was a problem personally, but by then I was turned away by the replacement of the voice actors, though I was disappointed to see it leave the network). Pokémon USA, wanting to find a cheaper company to produce the dub, went to TAJ Productions (when it still existed) where they cast newcomer (and actual Pokémon fan) Sarah Natochenny as Ash Ketchum, plus others—although a few such as James Carter Cathcart (Jimmy Zoppi) still remained, but were cast in new roles, or in the case of the narrator, Rodger Parsons returned.

Weirdly enough, the change wasn't AS jarring as people claim it to be. It's a gradual change in style in terms of the localization and script, but the quality wasn't any different. The theme and end credits songs are the only things I can say weren't as good as 4KIDS' themes, although they're both short and easy to brush off. On the plus side, the soundtrack from the original remained, so it's not a constant cacophony against your eardrums like it was before.

But needless to say, the Battle Frontier can be the roughest sit of the dub if you let it get to you. Although yes, some episodes and characters were better dubbed than others.

ENJOYMENT AS A WHOLE: Eleven years—that is how long it took to finish Advanced Generation. Hoenn was oddly enough not as memorable as the original series was despite being the “more recent” of my childhood. Upon my rewatch, I have no idea why that was the case, though it could be there was something different about it from the start. But there wasn't anything completely terrible about it, so I must've just had slowly lost interest. And even as an adult viewer, it was still a bit of a chore at times to watch even before the Battle Frontier saga, which had a noticeable change to the feel of the show. The season may not have had the 4KIDS touch, but it didn't really need to.

Still, there were good moments, good ideas, and memorable characters that helped make the Hoenn saga stand out from its predecessor. The transition from Johto to Hoenn was a bit of a whiplash, and again with Battle Frontier, but over time, it calmed and felt more natural. There were more places to see in Hoenn than in the past regions, because this time, it was an entire region getting coverage. It left almost no stone unturned, though in the process, it still skimmed over a bit in order to progress.

While not a personal favorite, Advanced Generation still left a good impression behind, generously rewarding those who stuck with it to the end. I'd dare say it was a better reward than the end of the Johto saga. But like they say, the journey continues, and so it does.

One of the reasons for the Advanced series to be likable but still not a favorite for the fans, most of it is since the Advanced series comes right after the lousy Johto season, though effected by it creating some boring and excepted "filler" episodes the Advance series tries to fix them, in the most parts of it succeded but once the filling episodes that are not connected to the main story appears, the quality of those episodes are going down like the most of Johto episodes.
The simple reason for the improvement is Misty - the female character in Ash's gang - is replaced by ... May, a young beginner trainer who begins her Pokemon travel at the start of the anime, not much later Brock is returned and May's little brother joins the gang. the big change in May's appearance is not that she is much better than Misty, not any fans will say that and even me, but still her role in the Advance series is much larger than Misty - if Misty was only served as the company of Ash without effecting much the adventure of Ash and the series, May's role is much larger since her reason to travel is to be a coordinator and show her Pokemon in contests than gym battles, her choice to do that is filling the series in more important episodes except the usual Capturing and gym battles episodes with contests and grand festival episodes, besides that even the "filling" episodes feeling much more connecting to the main story to be an unnecessary episodes ("filler episodes"), and not just this but Ash also have much more mind in his Pokemon battle and raising it's Pokemon.
But all that not change the fact that the Advance series is such a good series - three full seasons is only on the Hoen league and the Hoen grand festival while the final season of the Battle Frontier somehow has much more important episodes but however have more problems than the first three seasons, to make the comparisons I will divide this review to two:

Hoen league Arc
One of the good things about the big arc of the Advanced series is like I said above, it contains a lot of important episodes, from the first gym battles to contests battles and the capturing Pokemon episodes, unlike Misty who caught a Pokemon only in a while, as May is a beginner she has a lot of room in the anime to make her Pokemon team, not only that but Ash also not disappoint and except for some Pokemon he evolved all of his team.
Not that alone, the gym leaders have a lot of room in the Arc to be explained and a lot of development even before the gym battles, which makes them a lot more interesting to watch.
But all that aside, the Arc still suffering from "Johto episodes" that comes to time to time, but what makes the Arc better is that those episodes are much rare than it was in the Johto seasons as I said above, the contests and the grand festival episodes making this Arc much better.
Though that to be said, the contests episodes and battles feeling much less tense and thrilling than the Gym battles and the League episodes, though their necessity and preferring them above the filler episode, they don't feel like canon episodes of the Advanced series and have a feels of "come to fix Johto seasons problem".

Battle Frontier Arc
In Battle Frontier Arc Ash and his friends are going back to the Kanto region, or much more accurate, they meet again after a short splitting in the Kanto region, from Pallet Town again for two goals: for Ash to conquer the Battle Frontier and May to win the Kanto grand festival by gathering five ribbons all over again.
Before the review I will introduce a little thing about the Battle Frontier, in the games, the Battle Frontier serves as the post-game materials, in the games, all the Batlle Frontier's facilities are placed in one big island west to the Hoen region, the point of the Battle Frontier facilities is to challenge the player in Maze quests or different ways of Pokemon battling in challenging way to test the Player knowledge, one example for that is the Battle Factory, which the player not using his Pokemon at all but choose between three different Pokemon, testing the knowledge of the player in abilities and types of Pokemon against NPC random player who using also three-to-choose Pokemon, after a couple of winnings in the facility, the player is battling the Frontier Brain who like the player using random-pokemon-to-choose, once winning him the Player gets the Knowledge Symbol that presents the Facility challenge.
Now let's get back to the anime, in the anime as I said, Ash and his friends already split only to be rejoined in the next episode to continue traveling again, it makes the same feeling as the Battle Frontier in the games is - only a post-game after the League and nothing more: the story isn't that interesting and the battles at the Battle Frontier are much less intense, the rules for each facility are much less rigid than the Gym battles and the "excitement in the air" to beat the Battle Frontier isn't there as to win the league.
But that's not my point, my main point is that the Anime ver. to the Battle, Frontier is the worst adaption ever seen not only in the Pokemon anime but in the anime ever. if in the games the battle frontier facilities have much more point on testing the trainers abilities the battle frontier in the anime is as Scott the founder of the battle frontier states - "like" gym leaders, while he says "like" the facilities is more "unofficial gym" than a battle frontier facility that designs to test the trainer, the only fact that they are "much stronger than gym battle" is of course since Ash just win the Hoen league gyms and if they weren't strong that strong what will make Ash go to them?
Though it may be a real bad adaption, it makes sense once you say the reason - the studio didn't really mean to create the Battle Frontier season but just to not make more "fille episodes" and to stretch more episodes on the Hoen league, so they only created this Arc to wait 'till the diamond and pearl games to release, in their actions of that they actually said - "if we will make much more accurate adaption of the Battle Frontier for the games, we will make more seasons only for that since it's requiring more than one season to do that, and we don't want to since we don't really need it, and it's not that interesting", though I didn't read officially statement it's clear from the rush "feeling" of the arc.
And that rush "feeling", though make this arc much more eventful actually make it worse - though every 2-3 episodes there's a contest or battle frontier battles this "rush" make the things made the Hoen arc good to bad - the Frontier Brains are much less introduced and even those who are much developed not so interesting; not only that, though it's Battle Frontier arc, the winning of the battle frontier feels much less necessary and meaningful than win the league, even to win the grand festival feels much more important and meaningful to "beat the battle frontier", which makes this season though more eventfull to less interesting.

Story - 9

Now to the characters.
Ash feels much more confidence in the advance series, no more "friendly gym leader" or "not to think" strategy and touch of luck, Ash really trains his Pokemon not only in theory but dedicate his time to raise them well, this makes Ash much more than "guy who loves pokemon" to a strong trainer, although his personality didn't change much, it's much more interesting to watch him in this series.
May, though to be Misty's replacement, is more girlish than Misty either in her attitude or her look, but with that being said she still has some "tomboy" in her, though not to be likable like Misty, she's still much more effecting the story.
Max who joins the group, has some mystery effect fading off in the series, in the start his smartness makes him useful and has much more effect on the story, but with time his importance is fading away quickly and feels like "extra character" than even supporting character.
Brock, though returned for the series is a good point, feels in some way more of "supporting character" than main, if in the previous series his ideology and his guidance feels necessary for the story and Ash, feels now only the "cook guy" who helps from time to time, his appearance in the series let me feels like he can be with some other groups of trainers and do the same things, his "sick of love" feels more important than his supporting the story.
Though Ash doesn't have the main rival in this series except for his league temporary rivals May has two main rivels except for temporary ones, one is Drew, which in the start can be rude and evil, as the story continues he feels much more like stubborn-friendly rival than evil, in his replace for evil-rival she gets Harly that not just evil but rude and cunning.
Team Rocket didn't change at all from the Johto seasons, and though being funny from time to time, their stubbornness is still annoying, though for some episodes James can be interesting enough to still the show, Jessy stubborn to take part in the contests don't help Team Rocket much.
Team Aqua and Team Magma, on the other hand, not only interesting but feels much more canon than Team Rocket, though the adaption of them can be much better.

Character - 8

The Art, though being "feels" better does good only on the character designs, but the backgrounds still feel like child paint, in the Battle Frontier season though it's getting better but only slight improvement.

Art - 7

The sound didn't change much than the previous seasons, but still enjoyable.
Only one note on the dub, although I have already gotten used to the Pokemon company dub, in its start on the Battle Frontier season it's pretty horrible and even Sarah dubbing Ash doesn't sound like the Ash I know from the newest season, only in the last few episodes of the series there's some improvement, but May's and Max's voice annoyed me a lot in this dub.
But if we talking about the voices, one of the annoying things in the dub is the narrator getting replacement halfway through the first season, but returned in the new dub for the Frontier season, and that was actually one of the good things I admired about the new dub, the new narrator 4Kids got was not only as good as the old (or rather, the known one) but his narrating feels as he didn't wanted to get the job but forced there, at some episodes it even feels as he's bored from Pokemon and his narrating is not as exciting and interesting, that is actually one of the good things I enjoyed hearing when watching the Frontier season, and the usual narrator doesn't fail.

Sound - 7

Enjoyment\Overall 8\8 - though the Advanced series still has problems, it's much more enjoyable than the Johto series with good character development and better animation.