Pokemon season one a case of nostalgia goggles?

I'm not talking about how Gary acted; I was referring to how Ash and Gary came from the same town, had the same goal, and Ash had a stronger desire to beat Gary than he does with Paul (whom he seems to just want to prove wrong about pokemon traning.)
 
The entire rivalry still only stood on Satoshi wanting to shut Shigeru up about calling him names and making out as if he were better than him. It wasn't until that one little battle in the second saga that they even fought and even then it was a small one-on-one battle that felt more like the writers finally saying "Y'know...maybe they should actually battle for once" and then proceed to have Pikach
 
Whatever. You can think the rivalry between Ash and Paul is written better; but I find the so-called tension between them boring...just like I find the characters themselves boring.

And some advice: stop using the Japanese names when nobody else is. It's annoying.
 
So, you would have preferred it if the writers had completely changed the main characters with every saga/series? If it was done in a right way, such as how the writers of Pokemon Adventures handle that change, then it could have been interesting. However, I don't think that the writers were interested enough in changing the entire cast and they obviously still aren't with having most of the cast the same for twelve years. They could try to make a different character with the same goal as Ash for the main character and there have been a couple of times were they honestly could have done so, but they didn't for whatever reason.



I didn't think Johto was that bad. I've only watched Master Quest recently, but it was pretty enjoyable, mostly by the point where Ash got his seventh badge. I also remeraber how Johto League Champions kind of dragged on too long, but I always watched it when it was on.



Well, Giovanni did promote them as Gym Leaders before he left, so I thought that the promotion and the fact that Ash actually fought, as apposed to not finishing the battle and getting the badge for some other poor reason, made it more of a legit badge than the other five badges that were just given to him. In retrospect, the writers probably just didn't want Ash to face Mewtwo, as Giovanni probably would have called it out, so that he wouldn't lose and not get the last badge. I'm sure that they didn't want them to meet before the movie too. In my defense, I did forgot some of the details about this badge since I haven't seen season one for awhile.



That makes sense. Gary stopped constantly insulting Ash sometime around Johto, but Ash would still try to beat Gary in practically everything anyway.



I agree with you. The rivalry between Ash and Gary was pretty much based on the insults Gary said about Ash's skills as a trainer. I remeraber when they first had their battle that it was going to be intense after not having a battle throughout the Indigo League saga. Then I saw the battle that was pretty much the first five minutes of the episode. Yeah, that was kind of anticlimatic.

The main reason why I prefer the rivalry between Ash and Paul is because there is more than just insults being the foundation of the rivalry. Paul appears more than Gary did in Indigo and Johto corabined and when he does appear, he usually provides something more than just calling Ash some names and then leaving. I think that it also helps that we see Paul's skills as a trainer early on, while we didn't have a clue to what kind of Pokemon Gary even had for a long time.

Ash didn't have a battle with Gary in the episode where they introduced his Urabreon. That would have been cool since Urabreon was one of the few Dark types back then, but Gary said no after Ash asked since he studied all about Pikachu's moves and speed so he thought that it wouldn't be a challenge.
 
Yeah, but instead of insults, all Paul does is treat his pokemon like crap and argue with Ash on training styles. It's the same freaking thing, just like it was with Gary, but of course people seem to prefer it since, as I've observed before, they have a bizzarre obsession with battles and training tactics on this show (And an even more bizzarre obsession with Paul himself. Seriously, the Naruto and Pokemon fandoms would not get along...the Pokemon one's practically worshipping the same character type the Naruto one despises!)
 
I wouldn't call it the same thing. I mean, I've always seen Shinji as sort of a polar opposite of Satoshi. Somebody who Satoshi could turn into if he's not careful about how he raises his pokemon.

You couldn't really get that vibe from Shigeru.
 
Too bad they've done a horrible job at portraying that. Seriously, nobody in their right minRAB should think that there's even the slimmest possibility that Ash would ever become like Paul, since ever since Johto Ash has been portrayed as a nigh-perfect heroic trainer who loves his Pokemon more than people.

Really, the Ash-Paul rivalry really boils down to this:
Ash = Uninterestingly Good.
Paul = Uninterestingly Evil.

At least with Ash and Gary, both had flaws and strengths to their actual characters, which again, is MORE IMPORTANT than crap like battling or training.
 
Maybe you prefer to root for incompetent losers, but I for one do not feel like cheering on the guy who couldn't even beat a gym leader without interference from joke bad guys.

I do recall early Kanto Ash sounding consistently constipated all the way up to the Celadon City episodes. He did get better but the better Ash didn't really stand out from Hoenn Ash to me.
 
I wouldn't say that it's the same thing. Gary barely appeared during his run as Ash's rival and when he did, he didn't really do that much. At least Paul does something with his Pokemon and, as Rolling Cloud mentioned, he's like the polar opposite of Ash. I couldn't see Ash ever becoming Paul, but I think that he's a sign that there are non-friendly trainers out there who are not a part of an evil team/organization.

As for the whole battles and training tactics thing, I always thought that was a key part for the anime series. They have stressed about how the trainers bond with their Pokemon through traveling, training and battling pretty much since the start, so I don't see why it's so wrong to really enjoy how the battles have developed over the course of the series.
 
Technically yes. If you were a stupid trainer who got lost, never took the idea of level grinding, and then forgot to fight Lt Surge, so when you got to that one cave, Flash wouldn't work outside of battle and you were forced to trek blind, then yes, you were Ash.



Y'know, anime overall is full of incompetant losers. Goku. Naruto. Luffy. Ash was practically one of them, just not as strong.
 
Exactly. Especially Naruto. I hope Marvin's not a fan of Naruto the character, because that would really be hypocritical.

And the point was that Ash grew and developed. He became a better trainer. And then suddenly, instead of retiring the character once he finished his development, the show makers decided to keep him a certain way and drag that out. I mean, people like Terror of Death say that "now Ash is competant, so he's better than in Season 1." Thing is, without Season 1, he wouldn't have gotten to this point, and the fact that's he's staying at this point with nothing interesting happening to him whatsoever is, IMO, much worse than seeing him be an idiot and develop.
 
2001? Man, were you late. :P Season 1 premiered back in 1998.


I think one of the big reasons was the fan outcry when Brock was replaced in the Orange IslanRAB. It didn't help that Kenji/Tracey was a really bland character. That's also probably why Brock is in Sinnoh, because they don't want to face that kind of negative PR again.

As for Ash, he's still around because of Pikachu.


Early Johto was pretty decent, with some great episodes here and there, and Master Quest had a lot of multi-episode arcs to make things better, but 95% of Johto League Champions was complete and utter crap.


To be exact, it was his loss during the Indigo League. That loss broke his ego and forced him to do some soul-searching while Ash was in the Orange IslanRAB. Hence why when Gary came back he wasn't as antagonistic as he was in Kanto, especially compared to the still-childish Ash, which exemplifies that the Orange IslanRAB didn't just stagnate Ash's Pok
 
Or have the show pull the reverse of that Naruto wallbanger and have Paul's brother (whose name I don't remeraber or care) turn out to be actually evil all along.

Yeah, Paul's not as annoyingly dominant as Sasuke, but I still feel more time is placed on him than on things the show could actually improve on by focusing on...like say, Team Galactic. While they're not as disastorously portrayed as Team Aqua and Magma, they still feel horribly inconsequential when they should feel pivotal. They only seem to be consistently used in this current season (which is even called "Galactic Battles"), when they should have been prominent back in the other two as well.
 
I won't really expend myself too much because my opinion is almost 100% the same as LighLu-chan, and it would probably be 100% if I had watched more Sinnoh episodes. I rarely have a chance to watch Pok
 
That makes sense. I remeraber a lot of people didn't like how Tracey replaced Brock, but, as you mentioned, it helped a lot that he was a pretty bland character to begin with. I also agree with you that Ash is still around because of Pikachu. I'm sure that the writers wouldn't want to get rid of the whole Ash + Pikachu + Team Rocket formula anytime soon.



I actually don't remeraber much of Johto League Champions other than that I wondered every once in awhile when Ash was going to get his next badge and that the last part to this Articuno special aired on my birthday. Still, I wouldn't mind seeing that season again due to how long its been since I've seen it.



That's true. I forgot about how that loss in the Indigo League forced Gary to re-think his way of training and he wasn't as mean to Ash as he was before, which I kind of liked.



I don't think that's the main point of Pokemon, but I do think that it's a key factor for the show. The main point of the series is the promote the video games, but a way for it to do that is to show characters battling and training. Besides that, I think that the main way to see character development for the trainers is through their interactions/bonRAB with their Pokemon and how their skills as a trainer develops over time.



I think that you bring up an interesting point. Seeing Ash struggle was a key factor for season one, but the main reason why he was struggling was
because he was a total rookie back then. It wouldn't make sense for him to still be like that after traveling through different regions and having train so many Pokemon. Besides that, I can't help thinking that there would be a ton of people complaining about how Ash shouldn't be a rookie anymore if that happened. Though, from a few experiences on different forums, the Pokemon fandom almost always argues over stuff like that.

Even though Ash does spend more time working on his strategy, I wouldn't call him a brilliant strategist. There are quite a few of his victories over Gym Leaders in recent years where he makes something up right on the spot in order to win.



I never actually thought Veronica Taylor's voice for Ash sounded feminine. It was lower in Hoenn, but it didn't sound like a girl. Most of the male characters of the day that Rachel Lillis voiced sounded like girls to me though.



I'm not sure if I ever saw Ash as incompetent, even though he was during that season. I saw him more as an underdog kind of character, but as he developed into a better trainer, he wasn't so much of an underdog anymore. I personally never had a problem with that since it would be kind of weird if he was still like that as he was back in season one.



Yeah, Ash's early season one voice wasn't that great, but it improved by the time Ash got all of the starters. I preferred Ash's Hoenn voice too, but it probably helps that I like that arc in general too.
 
Er, I wasn't asking you to begin with.



Sasuke-robot? Why call Naruto that? Is it because he's always whining about Sasuke these days?
 
I'd always root for the incompetent loser over the lame do the right thing use only one pokemon while ignoring the others one note character we've seen so far.
 
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