I just watched the Indigo, Orange Island and Johto anime of pokemon in 10 days. Here are my thoughts

This is a continuation of my post from about a week ago. I watched the entire Pokémon Diamond/Pearl Anime in 2 weeks. Here are my thoughts

Backstory

At the end of the last post, I said "I’m going back from the beginning and watching the indigo league. I've never fully seen it so it's going to be interesting to see how the series has evolved". That’s what I have done here. 10 days for 200+ episode sounds impossible, but almost episodes I watched in X2 speed and I watched it during my bus rides to college and whenever I had free time.

Also, the reason that I didn't write the indigo one and orange island one separately is because if I would've done them separate, my opinion of the first season of Pokémon would've been very negative, so I continued watching since bulbapedia list the first 5 seasons as "The Original Series" so it felt more appropriate to watch it all together.

Indigo League Arc

The first season of Pokémon. The most iconic season by far. Later seasons actually made me appreciate this season more. (I'll explain later.) The season starts out with a bang. There are a lot of major events happening in the first few episodes and the series does a great job with pacing. It never feels like there is many filler episodes. In fact, during the biggest break between badge to badge where most things are filler (And trust me, they are fillers), it doesn’t feel too bad just because there are some iconic episodes in there like goodbye Pikachu, the Kangaskhan kid, Computer Warrior Porygon and Snow Way Out that keep it from feeling like they drag. Not only that, because this is the first season, there is a lot of back story. Go west young meowth and holy matrimony are great episodes because of this.

The bad about this series, which I won’t blame them too much for, just because they were still trying to figure out how to do the series properly, was the MAJOR lack of character development among the pokemon. Seriously, the season where ash lets go of so many Pokémon, there is almost no character development. I am talking mostly about the Pokémon side of things. Everyone has probably seen bye bye butterfree, but what people fail to neglect about that episode is that butterfree, prior to that episode, hadn’t made an appearance since battling misty in episode 7. Bye Bye Butterfree is episode 21. There had been 0 progression in butterfrees character so the ending video package of that episode feels almost hollow. This problem is also prevalent in Ash’s Pidgeot. That thing barely does anything as a pidgeotto before it's let go. Ash’s charmeleon is barely shown before he evolves into a charizard.

Another thing which I am so glad they stopped doing now is team rocket interfering in gym battles. You can’t find most of the first season gym battles on youtube at it's full because most of them (5 out of 8) end in a non-definitive win for ash. This is the same for the indigo league. Ash loses to Richie because his squirtle is put to sleep which means it's unable to battle apparently, and because of team rocket's interference, Ash has to rely on Charizard who refuses to battle giving Richie the forfeit win….. Whatever I guess.

However, despite it’s flaws, this season still holds up. If you can stomach the 26 episodes of filler between the battle between koga and blaine, it is a greatly paced series that sets the pokemon series off with a bang

Orange League Arc

Nothing to say about this series. It was very forgettable. The major events that happen in this series is Ash catching a snorlax, leaving his charizard at the charicific valley and obviously winning the orange league cup. The non-standard gym battle worked but the gym leaders themselves were so forgettable that It really didn’t matter. If you ask people what the first gym with a double battle in the pokemon universe is, they will probably say liza and tate, but it's actually the gym battle at Kumquat Island (Yes, I had to look it up). The biggest thing that keeps this series from fading into distant memory is that ash actually won the major tournament for this series. There are a lot of forgettable characters in this saga and overall, just feels entirely like filler. (Because that’s what it is). Besides the gym battle and the key episodes of pokemon captures, this series is entirely worth skipping.

Johto League Arc

Oh boy this series sucked for the longest time. Seriously, if you are planning on watching the Johto league arc, I recommend going to the bulbapedia page called “timeline of events in the anime” and watching the list of episodes they have. FILLER GALORE is the name of this series. The series starts out strong enough with new pokemon captured, gym battles fought and new rivals that actually recur in this series (Yay). This series is a good mix between the first arc and second arc but the biggest problem in this series begin after ash beats morty. His next objective is to go to olivine town. He ends up getting to olivine town in 26 EPISODES and fights chuck in the 27th. Seriously, why the massive gap between gym battles baffles me. And the fillers aren’t good either. This was the part of the season where, I no joke, took a break from the series and watched the first 15 episode of sun and moon. That’s how bad this break between episode is. And then, from chuck back to jasmine is another 14 episodes. WHY? I guess I am so used to in the game the battle between chuck and jasmine being so close together that it probably hurt my enjoyment of it more.

But, the series does pick up after ash beats Pryce. The jump to major events don’t feel as long and things feel much better. Also, the addition of larvitar before the Johto League kept the gang from feeling like they had been doing the same thing over and over again. The development of Gary is fantastic as well. He mentions something about the world being about more than pokemon battles in episode 266 and it pays off 10 episodes later when it is revealed he will no longer going to try to be a pokemon master, but rather a researcher. Of course the Ash vs Gary fight is legendary and is still worth watching. And then “catch ya later... boy that episode pulled at the heart string. That episode might be my favorite non-battle episode of Pokémon so far. Misty and Brock leaving (Even though I know he comes back) is really sad and had ya boi in tears. Overall, the series was alright. It definitely picked up at the end but boy did it struggle in the middle.

Overall

The original series of pokemon is overall a good series. The filler episodes can feel quite wasteful and long, so if you skip them, that’s fine. The Johto arc fixed a lot of issues with the Indigo arc and the Orange Island is just filler. By the end of the series, you feel like you saw all of our heros grow. We see how their pokemons have changed and how it's made them better. It’s a feel good series for the most part that does a good job of giving you good morals and showing how working together can help solve problems. I enjoyed this series a lot. But that also maybe because I just finished watching.

Next Up: Hoenn.