PACE: Highly inconsistent. Intolerably slow at times, extremely fast in the other times resulting in a Filler Arc in end. Spread of fillers was still better than last series. Though, the fillers were mostly incredibly terrible.
CHARACTERS: Ash was one dimensional and back to zero after years of development. It was strange and his goofiness was annoying. Although, I found Cilan to be the most annoying character. His connoisseur gag got old too quick and thankfully the spam stopped by the time Unova League arrived. Iris, on the other hand, wasn't bad but she didn't recieve huge chunk of development and remained poorly stagnant throughout. In the end, both of their ambitions remained as ambitions and recieved no temporary conclusion like the past characters. Besides, none of the the side characters were memorable. Trip, the rival of Ash, in particular was bland and edgy for no good.
POKÉMON: The Pokémon of the three main characters had good chemistry mostly. But that's about it. No Pokémon in the entire series stood out to be an ace or icon of the series. But I liked how most of Unova's Pokémon were gradually shown.
REGION PORTRAYAL: Pretty good, much better than the previous generations (maybe except Johto). But the annoying extra vibrant and one dimensional backgrounds made it look bad.
TEAM ROCKET: First half was about seriousness for nothing, second half was a hard attempt at redeeming their characters, resulting in a mess. Lack of chemistry with their own Pokémon resulted in an even dull Team Rocket than ever. The comedic relief aspect of their characters were long gone.
TEAM PLASMA: Just why couldn't they appear beforehand? Their relevance pretty much lasted only for the N arc and that's very disappointing considering the immense potential they had for the plot.
GYM BATTLES: No memorable battles at all. Not that great battle choreography either. Animation was mostly mediocre (pathetic in fact for a 2010-2013 show).
LEAGUE: Outright pathetic. The worst league ever. No more comments.
ANIMATION: Great character designs. Bad and extra vibrant background arts. Negligible animation update from its predecessor, resulting in a mediocre animation for its era.
THEME SONGS: All the theme songs were extremely great. Probably best set of theme songs Pokémon have ever delivered alongside Advanced generation!
VOICE ACTING: Ash sounded extra childish but other than that, I believe this was the peak of English dub alongside its predecessor.
OVERALL DIRECTION: Inconsistent. The potential for the series was immense and it failed to cash in on that unlike its predecessor. It feels as if the franchise would've been much better without this series' existence. The director was probably clueless throughout.
MOVIES: Two bad movies. One good movies. The movies' qualities were very much relatable to its core series.
SPECIALS: Both Cilan & Iris' special were decent enough. Much better than most of the episodes of its core series.
FINAL RATING: 6/10, at best. Two or three good arcs, with three or four "great episodes" in the entire series. Much too disappointing.
