Average doesn't mean bad though, but it doesn't mean good either. The beginning of Pokemon Adventures follows the story fairly well and flows at a slow enough pace for the audience to warm to Red and Blue. However, soon afterwards there is a time skip. It's here when I realised that this series is aimed at people who played the games Pokemon Red and Pokemon Blue as children. If a viewer watched this without having played those games, it would be hard to understand the significance of the events seen during the time skips. The pacing is too fast for anyone to understand what Red is going through on his adventure and there's not enough time to flesh out other characters.
Nevertheless, Pokemon: The Origin manages to choose the right events to focus on outside of the time skips such as the Team Rocket hideout, the Elite Four and Lavender Town. For the most part it's enjoyable to see the games unfold in anime form and it's nice to finally see a lead character in Pokemon being successful at battling.
In the last episode of Pokemon: The Origin the series crosses into gimmick territory. One of the main draws for Pokemon X and Y was the new mega evolution feature. Since these games were being released soon after the anime release, the creators of Pokemon: The Origin took this opportunity to include mega evolution in the series. It was quite obvious that this was used as a marketing gimmick, but it was not done in a terrible manner. When mega evolution finally occurs, it is not cringeworthy or out of place, but it might distance the viewer from the series.
The art and sound for Pokemon: The Origin aren't bad, nor are they great. They're what you'd expect for a Pokemon series. The action scenes are high paced and done well enough to understand what's going on, but outside of that there's nothing spectacular. The choices made for the voice actors were almost perfect though as each character is unique yet sound exactly how you'd expect them to after playing the games. The character designs follow the designs seen in the games which was a nice touch. Otherwise, everything is fairly standard.
The characters themselves are very similar to the ones in Pokemon Adventures. Red is the brave protagonist and Blue is the cocky rival. Their interactions with each other are the best parts of the anime. Unlike the main Pokemon series, the starter pokemon Red chooses is Charmander. Charmander doesn't feature as prominently as Pikachu does, which I believe is better since it places more importance on Red's choices as a trainer.
As a stand alone anime, Pokemon: The Origin doesn't offer much. The main issue the series has is that it doesn't have enough time to develop its plot and characters, ruining its potential. Nevertheless, if you are already a Pokemon fan, this will be entertaining and it is better than the main series.
