Reviews

Oct 20, 2018
Preliminary (61/146 eps)
People are very harsh on this but usually it’s based on first impressions. I think if people gave this a solid chance they’d realize it has a lot to offer.

Let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way first. Yes, the animation quality took a hit. The animation is kind of underwhelming and choppy at many points. It’s probably the hardest part of this new generation to get over. But there is another angle to it, being that this is the first time the show hasn’t looked like a generic shonen and it feels like it has an actual identity of its own now.

Ash’s personality has been reworked in this generation like it has in every other generation. But honestly this is one of my favorite Ash personalities. This is the first time he’s behaved like an actual ten year old since the Indigo League but unlike then he has retained his competence from the Kalos League. This creates a real great balance to his character where back in Kanto Ash was massively incompetent and only won through flukes which made the series borderline unwatchable at times. But here he can capture the childlike naivety and wonder while not being a constant fuck up. If you want to see what I mean, check out Episode 10 for his competence and Episode 22 for his childlike behavior. You shouldn’t worry about spoiling anything for yourself, if you are even remotely familiar with the franchise then you should know how everything plays out.

Then there’s the Pokemon School element to the show. Now when I learned about this I was convinced I would HATE this. But actually it has given some variety to the previously tired formula. See instead of tracing the footsteps of the generation’s respective game Ash instead attends a “Pokemon School” that he goes to daily to receive lectures from Professor Kukui or Professor Oak’s cousin. If you played Sun and Moon you’d already know Alola is a small place so the usual “Go on a journey” thing wasn’t going to work anyway. Instead they use the school as Ash’s sort of central hub for his adventures and whenever he thinks he’s ready he will attempt a trial.

Most episodes have him hanging out with one of his friends who in the game are some of the trial captains but in the show are his classmates. I thought I’d hate them too by the way but each of them has real personality far beyond the one note personalities of all his previous companions making each of them endearing. This is made all the more amazing by the number of them. Usually when a show has a large cast all the characters feel malnourished since the writers ave to divide up attention but here they feel wholesome and amusing. This makes me think very poorly of whoever was writing the show before now because now I realize just how little effort they had been putting into Ash’s companions before this generation.

There’s a lot more humor involved in this generation which I’m not entirely opposed to. The previous generations had jokes in them but they were usually all just recurring gags that got beaten to death early in the series. There is no shortage of lame recurring gags here either but they are balanced out with REAL jokes this time which I appreciate.

Lastly I want to mention Team Rocket’s role in all of this. In previous generations they would harass Ash in every damn episode like fucking Swiper the Fox but this time around they usually only have a brief “meanwhile” sequence that shows us what they’re up to. I LOVE this. Since now when they actually do come to mess with Ash it actually feels special. I can not praise this choice enough. I love Jessie and James but they were downright mundane until now. Also they caught some really devastating Pokemon this time around. Jessie’s Mimikyu is a psychopath and is borderline unstoppable. It kicks Pikachu’s ass regularly, James’ Mareanie is nothing to sneeze at either.

Overall I think this is extremely underrated and if you were turned off by the animation I strongly urge you to give it another chance and see what it has to offer.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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