My thoughts on the Pokemon Adventures Yellow chapter

Hey I'm doing a thing where I'm rereading all of the Pokemon Adventures chapters and giving my thoughts on them for a little context here's my thoughts on the red, green, and blue chapter. Another thing to note is that I will be writing this assuming you have read the chapter already so there will be spoilers so if you haven't read through it already than don't read this.

So here is the start of what sets the trend for this series in that for each new version or set of versions there's a new chapter for said version. So with that the Yellow version seems to have somewhat of it's own original plot that isn't really based heavily on the games plot but still takes place in Kanto since that's where Pokemon Yellow takes place. Here we have an original that stars a new main protagonist being a girl named Yellow and her main motivation is to find Red and bring his Pikachu back to him and later to stop the elite four from trying to destroy humanity.

So the first thing I want to talk about is Pikachu or "Pika" as he's named. I found it kinda strange how much spotlight this guy got in the last chapter considering he wasn't Red's first pokemon nor was he Red's starter. I'm going to assume it was solely because he was Pikachu that he got all of that spot light and a victory steal against Giovanni seriously that role should've been filled by Poli since he was his pokemon and he was a water type unlike this rule breaking electric type Anyway here Pika is with Yellow in this chapter having a lead on Red essentially serving as her starter because Pikachu is just that in the game. I do like that Pika had a little more diversity in his move pool(he even learns surf like he can in stadium, though it's through really weird substitution voodoo stuff) instead of just spamming thunderbolt like Ash's pikachu did in the Kanto saga.

So in this chapter they decided to have the elite four as villains just like how in the last chapter we had some of the gym leaders as villains. If I had to guess the reasoning for this I'd probably go with the fact that since team rocket was mostly outta commission at this point in the story and there wasn't much to the elite four and they were the final bosses of the game so they seemed like they could fit the role of villains. But anyway their motivations seem to kinda be team plasma before team plasma was a thing. Though they seem to be more of an environmentalist motivation since they're mad at humans for screwing up the land for pokemon and they wanna wipe out humanity leaving only themselves and pokemon so the pokemon can thrive again instead of wanting to liberate pokemon from their trainers. They were going to execute this plan by using Lugia, and they were going to get Lugia by using badge energy... I've already stated my opinion on badges as plot devices before hand so I don't need to repeat myself. Though I guess the badge energy thing does give it a bit of a tie to the legendary bird trio so I guess that give this Lugia a connection to the birds too? Outside of their main goal we see Agatha's grudge against Professor Oak that the games allude to actually play out here. Apparently Bruno wasn't even interested in the rest of the elite four's goals and he just wanted to fight strong opponents. With Lorelei she's just in on the plan and that's really kinda it with her. Now with Lance I sorta like the idea of how in his battle with Yellow with them being both Viridian trainers with these weird powers who hate seeing pokemon get hurt it kinda sets up a bit of an interesting battle of ideologies of pacifism vs extremism. Though it's not much but I appreciate what's there.

I kinda liked the idea behind each of the final fights against each elite four member by having a different trainer face a different elite four member and having each trainer be paired up with a gym leader from team rocket with the three trainers from the previous chapter fighting the one they beat. Though sadly the same can't exactly be said about the fights themselves. The fight with Lorelei was won through sheer plot armor because there is no way Blue could of logically had the foresight to know what part of her body Lorelei would freeze let alone even knowing how to counter it at all since she's never seen it before. Also on the topic of Lorelei's ice voodoo dolls; it really is way too op. She literally just has to have her Jynx make dolls of a person and then she can just toy with them there, there's nothing limiting it like say for example having to tag the person first. Which is disappointing because I like the idea of being able to combine Jynx's psychic and ice powers like that but it's just so broken that it's just dumb and the fact that she didn't win easily by just breaking her opponents necks or something just makes her look like an idiot. Finally there's the fact that she didn't even have all of her pokemon(based on the pokemon shown in the back covers) taken out only her Cloyster and her Jynx were taken out even though she still should have had her Lapras, her Slowbro, and her Dewgong should have still been in there. In fact it would have somewhat made up for the anticlimactic moment if she got back up and used her Lapras to continue the fight and make it more of a struggle since Lapras is usually her ace. So yeah the Lorelei fight was kinda disappointing. Now with the Agatha fight she also doesn't use all of her pokemon with her not using her Haunter but generally it is better since it actually feel like Agatha went all out. I also like how Mato made Agatha's Golbat and Arbok look different from Koga's Golbat and Arbok. Speaking of which I find the idea of having a special Arbok(or maybe that's just something Agatha can do with any Arbok? Idk) that can change its patterns to boost certain stats (kinda like Deoxys when I think about it) by changing its patterns interesting, though I do find it weird how Koga thought that just covering the pattern up would cancel its ability, but strangely enough it happened to work. Also here we see that Koga's Arbok can regenerate as long as its head is intact and this is the same Arbok that Green fought, now can people stop using that moment as an example of pokemon dying in this manga because that Arbok didn't die. With Bruno the fight was decent before Red showed with a good amount of tension with the battlefield and the teamwork between Surge and Bill but after Red came the fight kinda went downhill with Hitmonlee kinda just disappearing from the picture after a sweet scent and his other pokemon going down too easily. Finally with the battle against Lance, I liked how with Mewtwo Blaine had the sheer power to take out Lance but due to circumstances like the damage the DNA bond does over time Mewtwo could only be out for a short amount of time, though Lance's pokemon do end up being healed from the Mewtwo battle completely so it kinda just puts Blaine and Mewtwo outta commission without really being useful. I did enjoy seeing Giovanni step into the fight having the previous villain face off against this current one. I did find seeing Yellow's pokemon let loose and evolve to be a cool moment, though megavolt was a major asspull, albeit not the worst in this series(I'll get to that in the Ruby and Sapphire chapter) seriously how Red, Green, and Blue knew to send power up that beam of light and how that power just became power for Pika is beyond me.

Now I'll talk about the characters; Starting with Yellow one of two OC characters in this series, she is alright I guess. I like the idea of her being a kid who is really strongly bonded with pokemon but not liking fighting. And over time having to learn to fight in order to do what is necessary to protect. Along with how she doesn't want her pokemon to evolve and with the dream in the end we see that kinda as a metaphor for not wanting to grow up but in the end letting it happen again in order to do what's right. Though my problem is that her inhibitions on battling kinda just go away without having to go through much of an arc. Like I think it would've at least been enough if she overcame her battling inhibitions during her training with Green and they had to fight the group of Mankeys and their Primeape leader. Also her weird abilities like being able to read pokemons' thoughts, heal pokemon, and control a pokeball telekinetically. Yeah is it obvious that she's an OC, though I can tolerate her reading pokemon's thoughts because of her connection to pokemon along with how it helps her be the one with the lead on Red. But this along the other two just make her way too overpowered. Also there's the elephant in the room of her masquerading as a boy throughout this chapter to hide her identity, though I kinda found it pointless because she doesn't do anything but hide her ponytail(even though she could just cut her hair) behind a hat and saying she's a boy but going by the same name(though that can be blamed on her just not being very smart about it because she was told not to by Blue), revealing that she lives in the same city, and even wearing the same outfit, again completely pointless disguise. Overall I will say though that I do at least like her better tha nthe other OC in this manga. Red is kinda just a mystery of where he is throughout this chapter, though I do like how he got the three elemental stones so that he can control his Eevee's(or "Vee as she's named) evolutions. Though why he didn't ever use the thunderstone to evolve Pika into a Raichu is beyond me because Pika doesn't seem to have a problem with evolving like Ash's Pikachu, Idk maybe Yellow talked him out of it. Speaking of which Red suggesting the idea of them living together because of some joined pet custody with Pika is kinda where the series seems to start subtly shipping Red with Yellow. Now for the most part Green is still just Green, though he takes on the role of Yellow's mentor it isn't gone into very much depth. Same thing with Blue here. Blaine and Mewtwo sorta continue this series long subplot involving Mewtwo that continues even up to the X and Y chapter, though here we just have Blaine using Mewtwo and struggling with the drawbacks of the DNA bond. The "gym leaders of justice" here kinda start to cement the role as the regions protectors that most gym leaders take throughout this series.

Overall while I think this chapter was in some ways a little better than the last I still think it is brought down by rushed pacing and some things just not given enough development. Along with some of the elite four matches ending anticlimactically. I still think it's somewhat enjoyable for what it is but I think from here on the series gets a lot better in terms of storytelling and character development.

I will be back next time to go over the Gold, Silver, and Crystal chapter.