Pokemon Best Wishes!

It's been years since this show aired and I still love returning to it! (Note: this review is based on the English-subtitled, Japanese anime. I strongly recommend watching this series in Japanese to better appreciate the characters for reasons I will explain in later in this review.)

A very fun, easy-to-watch show, with exciting moments, updated character designs [while still maintaining the charm of the 90's style, the new eye designs show the brown of Ash's eyes in more than close-ups and tearful moments], and better animation quality than its predecessors, although it hasn't reached XY's peaks of beauty or Sun & Moon's lively fluidity yet, ... it still has well-animated battles and very expressive characters.

The soft reboot-esque beginning of the series makes it easier for newcomers and children to start watching without prior knowledge of the series, but it also rewards viewers of the earlier stories by including references to the past, reanimated flashbacks, and returns of some familiar faces (human and Pokemon!) in its second season. This review will focus on the first season.

Despite its flaws (a weak league and a strangely one-sided rivalry where Shootie, while framed as the main rival, isn't really written as such and his story arc mainly concerns the Champion Adeku/Alder, a frequently misunderstood-by-fans scene in the first episode [a sick Pikachu with Electric type moves temporarily sealed after an encounter with a Legendary loses to a stronger-than-usual starter Pokemon given to a trainer]), it has a lot to enjoy if you liked the humour, friendship stories, sense of adventure of the original series, as well as some very unique/quirky main characters!

I absolutely love Satoshi/Ash's dynamic with Iris and Dent/Cilan, theirs is a very genuine friendship, each have their own unique inter-group dynamics, and no one is just pushed to the background or ignored until they get a focus episode.

The friendship is very genuine, balanced, and natural, with friendly teasing (the dub didn't convey this very well, so Iris' teasing still sounded mean later on for a lot of people) and their own in-jokes (Dragon Sneeze, etc.).

Ash is the same character from the first series, although he originally came here on vacation, before getting so excited, he decided to take on the Pokemon gym challenge and aim for the Unova league!

Iris is a Dragon empath with empathy issues due to her past and much of her story arc is about learning to open up to and empathize with others' problems!

Dent/Cilan, a Pokemon Sommelier (a sommelier is an expert in food/wine marriages; a Pokemon Sommelier judges the marriage of human trainers and their Pokemon... using wine terminology, do you see why the dub had to change his dialogue and character so much?) starts out very arrogant and self-absorbed (running a PG-rated host club that double functions as a Pokemon Gym with screaming fangirls does that to a guy), but learns to see a new point of view and becomes kinder, but still hilariously self-absorbed and dramatic.
He's played by MamoMiya (like Tamaki from Ouran High School Host Club) which makes him very funny to watch in Japanese due to his theatrics and gratuitous use of English.

And these are just the main characters!! The rivals (Iris and Dent/Cilan also have rivals, not just Satoshi/Ash!) are also very funny and quirky, with their own motivations, goals, hobbies, and personalities that play off in amusing ways in the many, many tournament arcs of Best Wishes! which make use of this large cast of rivals.

As for Satoshi/Ash's "main rival," I found Shootie/Trip a very unique character, even if he wasn't invested as a rival for most of it (Kenyan/Stephan, Virgil, and even Bell/Bianca stepped up to that plate more), but he was a unique character and it was interesting seeing him clash with Satoshi/Ash on issues of morality (BW! 22), his cynical world view is quite unique, and seeing them become friends was cute (even if I do wish we had more time spent on that!).

The rivals are so colourful and varied in this series, EVERYONE gets a rival or two, and they're all so funny and different, there's a rival to fit everyone's tastes (Burgundy and Cameron are largely comedic, Georgia can be very funny too but also touching in how she develops and directly AND indirectly furthers Iris' growth, Bell/Bianca is a naive and spoiled-but-sweet character you'd love to cheer on, Shootie/Trip is one of those morally dubious rivals but he's kinder to his Pokemon and less sure of himself, with a surprising motivation that puts him in a different light from Shinji/Paul).

In short, any time I go back to this series, I find it very watchable and fun!!!

I wish the postponed two-parter would air (even if parts of it were repurposed for the Meloetta arc's finale, even XYZ's Flare finale), just to satisfy curiosity for how the first major Rocket mission ended in this series (the earthquake and Fukushima Daiichi disaster unfortunately occurred, preventing the episodes from airing [likely due to earthquake imagery and a possible nuclear power metaphor with the Meteonite which the Rockets seeked to weaponize... it would've been in very poor taste to air after that]).

Its exclusion leads to some episodes being reordered and a bit of a lull after episode 22 (which was supposed to lead up to the two-parter), but the series picks up again after a few episodes. Understandable. The original series also had similar issues after the banned episode.

The first season is more strongly liked and has wider appeal than the second (which takes different directions every few arcs and changes of the title the series to match).

A lot of characters aren't what they seem at first and should be given time to properly judge them; the Champion Adeku/Alder, for instance, is disappointing due to his character flaws compared to the idealized image another character has of him. That's the point. Keep watching to see him actually display his good qualities too, like his wisdom and strength.

There was some time, long ago, when I watched Pokemon Diamond and Pearl, it was in 2012, and then after a long break I wanted to go back watching Pokemon, but didn't want to rewatch but complete the series I have started watching from my childhood and completed DP later, so I started off completing the Pokemon anime with Pokemon BW - Best Wishes in Japan, Black & White in the International Dub, it was in 2018, long time after finishing DP, and when I watched Black and White I totally enjoyed, I mean, Ash maybe went back to learn basics, but as I remembered ... Pokemon with lots of useless episodes and stupid stories for most of the times, Black and White came to me with lots of Pokemon catches, lots of battles and importantly the series didn't took much time from Gym to Gym. I was completely enjoyed from Black and White, that was until I decided I do want to rewatch Pokemon from the start, and when I did rewatched Pokemon and reached for the Advance and the DP which took Ash to more mature places from each series I felt that my first impression of BW were cheated by my the mere long time it took to me to watch the BW series after DP.

First of all, the DP series concentrated much more on Ash and Paul than beating Gyms and Contests, more on character development than story, and when reaching the league we all kinda felt cheated by that troll character who invited to prevent Ash going to the Champion League, so Ash forced to return to Pallet Town, and for what? to visit a new region while vacation, not because he needs to be a Pokemon Master, but to purely enjoy himself, it's not taking much time for Ash after Legendary Pokemon attack to be convinced to stay in the new region for another Pokemon journey, and then he meets the fake Paul under the name of Trip, which is trying so hard to be Paul, but before of that, did we mentioned that Ash forgot how to damn-how-can-you-forget-obvious-things-you-learned-in-4-different-regions - how to catch, types matches and important of all good battle tactics you so invested on the DP series, the writers didn't just lowered Ash level to stupidity, they lowered him down to the start of the series, yeah the same Ashy boy that doesn't know what to do in battles and sometimes just having luck due to his Pokemon loving, the only thing is that he knows he traveled in far away regions. great example for that is the scene that is shown in DP where Ash is thinking about strategy, there in DP he concludes he will believe in his Pokemon and that's it, and that was very fitting for Ash in DP as he combined his believing in Pokemon in his strategy, but when scenes like this appear in BW he says clumsily "It will work out somehow, like always!" I believe that there's no need to add much... As a joke I told myself this - between Kanto and Johto Ash didn't had time to relax at home but went away immediately, same with Hoen and Sinnoh, but then he stopped running away from home and stayed, so Pallet returned his stupidity.

Now that I finished with the Ash stupidity, we will go to the more burning issue - seems the writers had been replaced, and knew that DP story was great, so why not rewrite it in Unova? let's create the same model only with some addition, and so Ash has another *hem*fake*hem* rival named Trip, and he's so much alike Paul that Ash is encountering now and then, making their rivalry like Paul and Ash in DP, the problem is that Trip is not Paul, while Paul has some kind of training ideology, Trip doesn't have, he's more like Gary in look-like Paul, the writers so tried to make a "rivalry" like Paul and Ash that they forgot that, what made Paul and Ash rivalry was their argued ideology, Trip on the other hand is only thinking that Ash style is lame and he has better (mainly since ash got a restart from the writers so Ash really feels lame compared to Trip). their rivalry is maybe better than Ash and Gary, but it's nothing compare to Ash and Paul rivalry. the problem is as I said - the writers just went with it and made their stupid rivalry for the entire BW league arc, some of their encounters are very good, but the feeling of forcing their rivalry is devastating, and again Trip is not that interesting and should had got Gary treatment to show once in a while instead we get a rivalry theme for the series which is not catchy or serious. so yeah their "rewrite" had ultimately failed.

What's more bad about BW characters is the replacement for Brock which survived 2 regions, Brock though to lose his "role" in the first series over the seasons, still felt necessary for the series for two simple of reasons - one which Brock who was a gym leader has a lot of information about Pokemon and battles which contributed a lot for Ash's benefit, secondly is that Ash and the second teammate doesn't know much about surviving in the nature which is the most of the journey, especially in the food category, so his appearance seems essential even though to have some chicks problems. but then he's been replaced by Cilan in BW, in the start Brock's replacement seems rational to hold the above commitments - he himself is a Gym leader from the first gym and the gym itself is kind of a restaurant which makes him immediately the new cook for the gang, he declares when joining Ash and Iris (which I will write about her in the "good" section) that he's aiming to be a better Pokemon Connoisseur, which his job his to evaluate Pokemon abilities, he's aiming to be class A, which are actually better ambitions than Brock's breeder ambition which seems he have gained it long time ago. but that's only for the start. Cilan quickly shows a different problem which Brock had, if Brock had problems seeing-girls-without-starting-with-her, Cilan is quickly claims he is Connoisseur for everything that moving, and it's annoying, very annoying which I will not even start to explain why but only to say that guy doesn't have much of a life if he can't find one thing to concentrate in and every couple of days saying "IT'S CONNOISSEUR TIME" for stupid things like trains or "IT"S EVALUATION TIME", which is very annoying hearing it very each episode, even Team Rocket motto is much more bearable. my only thought of "why did they do this?" has come with simple answer - Piplup with his annoying "pip-lap pip-lap" cry had been out, they wanted another one.

After so many bad things, there's some good things, though not to "save" the BW series from being the worse, they makes the series more bearable.

First of them is Iris, which is the Misty-May-Dawn replacement, the first good thing about Iris is that she's written much more tomboy than May and Dawn and reminds a lot of Misty whom liked a lot to tell Ash he's a kid not-literally, Iris doing the same only literally, and I mean she literally calls Ash "you're such a kid", no wonder though she's calling him that way after the restart the writers gave him. And that's not only in the beginning, the more the story continues the more we learn about her and her love for Water-sorry, Dragon Pokemon, and her ambitions are to be... yeah that's right, a Dragon Pokemon Master, Misty anyone? I won't deny for Misty to be one of the best characters, but Iris just has to offer much more than Misty - there's really a lovely story between her and her Axew which develops along the story, and her mature attitude on Pokemon (unlike Ash in this series) really makes you grow on her, so if there's really great pearl in BW is Iris.

Another great change that everyone loves, is the change of Team Rocket, and no, they haven't became less annoying or less "let's catch Pikachu", but they finally seem more fitting to their mature age, doing secret missions for their Boss Geovany. this great "change" making them first of all less annoying by the fact they are not appearing in every episode anymore, and secondly to make "Team Rocket" how they should have been done in the first place in the anime like in the games - the Player is encountering the evil team in the region doing their schemes and sabotage their scheme but not enough to catch them, and finally it's done in BW with Ash and Team Rocket. Their BW special appearance is continuing 'till the lousy Decolora arc, and might be their best appearance in the series, their characteristic may not have changed much though their mature work, but that's how we like them, only in much better performance.

Another thing which is good in the series, is the fact that though Ash is acting like he never battled a Pokemon battle in his life, he's catching much more Pokemon in BW than the rest of Pokemon seasons, BW will be remembered by me as the first series when Ash caught more than 8 Pokemon per series and actually request to change his 6 Pokemon team much more often, which can make you be surprised from battle to battle, he is also not afraid much to evolve them, though some evolution treatment reminds me the Johto evolution treatment he still has a variety of Pokemon in BW. Also, though the complains about Ash's stupidly restart, seems he hasn't forgot to treat his Pokemon with good training from time to time, one of the best moment in the series is when Ash actually goes to Pokemon fitting gym to train them, or rather training their new moves so Ash is not completely lost cause about Pokemon training though he is clueless about everything else (which is a really big contradiction for his training attitude, but I will not go further this since BW is bad enough). add to that the fact that like the Advance and DP series the gym leaders development before the actual battle is kept which makes things better.

Something more that makes the BW story bearable, is the fact that the battle tournaments are much more often instead getting fillers episode style "the gang meets a trainer with his Pokemon bla bla bla", in some way it's making BW much better because after all Pokemon is about Pokemon battling, and we have that a lot here, making Ash battle more than only Gym battles, but it also has the other way around - though to be more interesting it feels like the writers didn't know how to stretch the story anymore, and because there aren't contests anymore they are filling the holes with more Pokemon tournaments, maybe to once again make BW resemble the way of DP that did this kind of tournaments but it just seems forced.

Before we end this long "Story & Characters" section, I will talk shortly about two rather supportive characters that feel like "Paul" fakes but not for Ash but for Cilan and iris, one of is Burgundly who is rival with Cilan and Georgia who is rival with Iris as she calls herself "Dragon Buster", the two make good interesting points in the series, but they get similar "Paul" treatment like Trip for Iris and Cilan which is in another word a pain in the butt. there's also Bianca which is a replacement for Barry from DP to adapt the character chibi from the game, but has annoying style though to still add some story to the anime.

Story: 6/10
Characters: 7/10

Thing that may making the BW a little better from DP is the thing with Art and Animation, finally the moves don't look stretched and old but more like the attacks from the game, don't get it wrong, there is still used frames, but they are now looking much more refreshed and new than DP reused frames.

The art getting serious update as well, some may complain about Ash's anime style eyes and looking as a child with those, but the general idea of the animation is completely fresh making huge step from DP.

The OST as well making some changes, first of all, to use many of the games sounds is a great idea that used well especially since the BW game sounds are much more cleaner than the old GBA sounds, and secondly those are used more smartly.

All these great upgrades in the OST and animation really made me wondering loudly while writing - why they couldn't invest their brains in the story like they invested it on the OST and the animation? though that treatment came in the next franchise series XY it's still making the OST and animation pale in comparison to the DP's story quality which I'm preferring more on rather good OST and animation as BW.

Sound: 8
Art: 8

Despite that the BW is maybe the worst series in the Pokemon franchise, precisely from the story and characters problems mentioned, it still has the more filler clean story than the other Pokemon series which must be brought to point together with the other good points, but it still disappointing to see BW right away after the good DP, so those points only make the series to be bearable, and not that fun to watch.
There's a good potential in BW and I will admit it, like Iris, some Characters and the Gym leaders development, and especially with Team Rocket that too bad they didn't continued to be like in BW for the rest of the franchise, the problems are those bad points, the too much trying to resemble the rivalry of Trip and Ash to Paul and Ash and above all the stupid restart of Ash after great development in DP, all that together making BW worse as Johto arc. too bad OLM didn't used the good potential, especially since the game is one of the best in the franchise for me.

Enjoyment: 5/10
Overall: 6/10

I actually can't believe that anyone would give this a rating above 5.
I actually wanted to watch it after playing my Pokemon Black, however to say that I was disappointed would be a major understatement.

With that said let me get down to the review part.

Story : 5

The usual fail-safe Pokemon story, so can't really complaint about anything here.
However, I just couldn't understand one thing, HOW CAN ASH's PIKACHU LOSE TO A LEVEL 5 SNIVY ?!?

... Art : 4

The art was let down. It broke the tradition and did not seem right.

Character : 2.5

I was not against getting new characters in the series but the characters must be of some quality. The new characters were just pathetic. To be honest the only characters I did like were some of the new Pokemon (that too only because of the game)

Enjoyment : 1

This was a series that made me drop Pokemon temporarily, I completed the first Unova season but I did not even bother with the rest.

Overall : 3