I I just watched the entire Hoenn anime of pokemon in 15 days. Here are my thoughts

Discussion

This is a continuation of my previous two post on my binge watching of the Pokemon anime.

Backstory

So on my journey to catch up to the anime, I started watching the hoenn anime but this time, it was a bit different on how I watched the other two. For Kanto/Johto and especially Sinnoh, I felt like I got to really enjoy the anime much more and it had nothing to do with the anime itself. My midterms coincided with my watching of Hoenn so a lot of my watching, I can't remember well since I was so stressed out and dialed into my midterms. The first half of the anime at least. It's crazy how the environment you watch something in, really affects how you feel about a series.

The initial journey

The first half of the hoenn saga. Pokemon knows how to make the early episodes really well. May's goal is clearly defined from the start. Also, team magma is shown off really well. You don't know what they are looking for, but you can assume it's something not good. The contest system for the first season isn't perfect. Because I watched Sinnoh first, I was used to the more updated system (In which dodging and countering were worth more). Of course, they do get a pass since this was their first time doing such a thing.

This first part of the seasons big issue has to do with the huge nothing happening in the middle from the time ash loses to brawly the first time to the rematch. Maybe I was just too used to ash going for his rematch if not immediately, the next episode after, but a 10 episode break between rematches felt too long. Again, maybe it's just me.

The second and probably the biggest issue with this series in general, but especially the first couple of season for hoenn, is that team rocket's involvement is massively amplified. Appearing multiple times an episode after being blasted off repeatedly. That got annoying quick. The reason team rocket worked in the original series was that unless something massive was happening, once team rocket blasted off, they were done for the episode. That was the joke. For them to be so heavily involved in almost every plot of the episode got tiring quick.

Also, this inconsistency shouldn't bother me as much as it did but A FAILED MASTER BALL? BS!

The league..... well, that's something that I have to agree with the majority of people on. It is weak. It is very forgettable and we are talking about the hoenn LEAGUE. The best part of the johto journey was the league. It was very memorable due to the fact that ash's goals and gary's goal being the same, helped create a sense of real competition. This one, not so much. Maybe it's because Morrison is nowhere near as memorable as Gary. This is something that they definitely appended in future seasons from what I can tell but for hoenn, not having a defined rival, really hurt the hoenn league.

Tyson and his meowth are definitely more memorable but, I find it hard to believe that tyson's normals type meowth could keep up with an electric pikachu's thunderbolt head to head. The entire fight felt convoluted. Pikachu loses to an iron tail and that's that.

Battle Frontier

The second half of the hoenn series is much shorter but much better. After Ash loses and goes back to kanto, he meets a man named scott and agrees to fight the substitute gym leader for vermillion city who turns out to be agatha. Scott is impressed with ash and invites him to the battle frontier. Not only that, but May decides to join the contests in Kanto, so our heroes are back at it again.

This season feels much better paced. There are only about 60 or so episodes and everything feels much more tight knit and focused. There are some very memorable fights in this part of the season, starting out with Noland's articuno vs Ash's returning charizard. To be honest, I remember seeing this as a kid and thinking this match was awesome, but this match is really not that great. Still though, it is very memorable as this is the first legendary pokemon ash defeats (I believe at least). His battle with snorlax defeating 2 fighting type pokemon while using 6 moves. His battle with queen lucy isn't memorable, but the brock angle with her definitely is. And of course his match with Spencer and Brandon are memorable as well.

The problem with this season really boils down to ash's battle with brandon. Sinnoh did this a lot better, which is the only reason I bring it up. It seemed like ash was learning something from each of the frontier brain and using it against them. But when it came to brandon, it's like ash forgot everything he had learned before. The trust thing from mayline, the calmness and combination style from tucker. Being one with nature from spencer. All of that was completely forgotten in ash's battle with brandon and he had to redo everything that was done in the previous episodes. That was a bit disappointing.

This is also the season where ash's voice changes completely. If I hadn't watched Sinnoh before watching hoenn, I don't think I would've been able to get used to the voice change. His voice changes from sounding like a kids voice to sounding like a teenager or a kid that smokes 50 packs of cigarettes per day. His voice is way too raspy for a 10 year old. I won't dwell on it too much though since that's ash's voice till the foreseeable future.

May's contest here are much better than the first half of the season and she faces some good rivals. This was actually the best thing about the side story was may's redemption over all of her rivals. This is something I wish Sinnoh had taken. Instead of dawn losing to zoey, have dawn and zoey face off in the semi's and dawn could beat zoey and lose the final to nando or something like that. With may, you felt like you saw growth when she was finally able to beat drew. (of course, this was completely undone afterwards when may loses to drew bad in an unofficial contest which makes the entire thing pointless, but at least in an official setting, may beat her biggest rival.)

Overall, the second half of the series definitely gave it more life. The only thing I wish is that ash had a defined rival because the chase for his character is what makes him Ash. Even though the first half ended so flatly, it definitely picked up and improved during the second half. The battle frontier helped bring life back into the series and carry the momentum towards sinnoh.

Pokemon Development

I don't have much to say here since his team was really small in Hoenn. What I will say is that they didn't do a good job when it came to pokemon development. It seemed like the only pokemon that got any type of screen type were pikachu (obviously), Treecko/Grovyle/Sceptile, Taillow/Swellow and Corphish. I completely forgot that ash had a Glalie, Donphan and an Aipom. He never used any other pokemon in battle. And since Ash brought back his older pokemon for the frontier, his newer pokemon besides the one I mentioned, stayed in the back burn.

Regional Bad Guy Team

You notice how on the top, I praised how team magma was done very well, but I don't mention team aqua. There is a reason. Team aqua is almost non existent on this series unless they are up against team magma. Team magma stole things and did almost all the on-camera work. And then, the writers realized they hadn't made them even, so they threw in that team aqua had both Groudon and Kyogre. Such B.S and lazy story telling, but these don't bother me as much because both team magma and team aqua are hardly there. They do things here or there, but until their final battle, they are very quiet. And after the Groudon/Kyogre Fight, they are completely non-existent. There is no character shift in Maxie so his whole plotline feels incomplete. And archie looks like a complete idiot after all that build up since he can't control Groudon or Kyogre. There is only a pass by reference that they split the teams and are disbanded and a tiny mention from archie that they can't control pokemon so they won't try anymore but besides that nothing. The build up is alright, but the resolution is way too rushed and not really done well.

Overall

I don't want to end on a negative note so I am going to write this extra piece. The series is fun to watch with the exception of the things I mentioned. It doesn't have any glaring flaws that hurts the series enjoyment as a whole. In fact, it feels like the season gets better towards the end, which is a good sign that the writers were starting to realize how they could improve things. Also, the switch to digital looks great compared to the cell drawing of the past seasons which is good.

Now, on to black and white. I am a bit worried about this series since there seems to be such a bad rep towards the series in general. I am going to go in with an open mind. I am probably also slightly mentally prepared since I heard about pikachu losing to a brand new snivy and the fact that it's trainer is a dick through the series and never gets his comeuppance. Knowing that, I can get myself ready for this series.

Wish me Luck!

TLDR

Hoenn is a good series that becomes a great series by the end of the series.

Posted Oct 28, 2017, 8:14 AM UTC · edited

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