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They took everything Ash worked for (and almost won) in Sinnoh, then smacked him on a trip to Unova, where stupidity ensued. Then when Ash managed to earn eight badges with enough time left for a full conference arc, the doo-head writers wasted all of it up until the next plane ride over to Kalos.Within Unova, Ash had lost:-His right to age-His Pikachu's experience-His ability to call out those who insult him (Such as Iris. He at least snapped at Misty a few times).-The Club Battle-The Clubsplosion-The Wishing Bell Festival-Any mutual respect Dawn had for him to Iris.-The Meloetta that followed him for a few episodes.-The Vertress Conference, along with his top 4 record, and chance to fight his intended league rival, Virgil.
I hated this scene. Hated hated hated hated hated this scene. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it.
Ash lost. He lost with a smile on his face. I understand this is to show kids not to be a sore loser. It's a good lesson and I appreciate Pokemon doing it. But my feelings for the conclusion are separate from that.I had fallen out of the anime after Diamond and Pearl. It wasn't that I didn't like it, I just wasn't really watching it. I had other shows I was watching and Pokemon just wasn't satisfying. XYZ changed that. They developed Ash's character, expanded on the world in an interesting way, upped the animation to a grand scale to make everything feel important and hyped the Kalos League like something important was going to happen. It was enthralling. It was intoxicating. It helped unite 20 years of Pokemon fans. But ultimately, this season was no different from the others. And that is when it hit me.He is doomed to fail. Always. He will never win anything that has any importance and will never have any meaningful character development. No matter how the Pokemon anime presents itself, we will never see Ash win a meaningful event until the series is over. And that will never happen as long as it is marketable. This made me sad, more than angry. This is a kid I grew up with who I am to watch fail over and over again. This is a kid who is, by all definition, a good kid and we will never see it pay off. But he will always have a smile on his face. He takes it. He takes it like a champ. Like the champ he is destined to never be because it is marketable.This series is somehow optimistic and sadistic at the same time. It teaches us it is okay to lose, but at the expense of this poor character who is doomed to never reach his goals or achieve his dreams until the show he is in dies.I will likely not be continuing with the series after XYZ. Not because I doubt the next arcs will be poorly written. But because there is no longer a reason to stay invested. Thank you Pokemon anime.
The salt is understandable thought. It's been twenty years of loss for Ash. His goal to become a Pokemon Master is not yet fulfilled. Fans think Ash is losing his edge and he might have run past his prime without him achieving any of his goals. Thus the salt.It's not about the sportsmanship right now. We've had five leagues for that kind of show. We need[ed] him to win badly right now.
Unfortunately, the Pokémon [anime] has ended up in repeated cycle that has irked many fans. What could have been a great coming of age story has devolved into bad writing and characters that has now earned Pokémon in the cesspool of other anime that would have great like Sword Art Online or Guilty Crown. Mars of Destruction only wishes it could be this bad.
Yeah I'm sure everyone would have loved the ****ing Rocky movies if Rocky lost his rematch to Apollo, lost to Clubber Lang, and then lost to Drago. Winning is not the end. Winning is a new beginning. You guys think Alain is gonna stop trying to get stronger now that he won? Nope. When you get invested in a character whose sole goal is winning, eventually they need to ****ing WIN.If there ever was a time, this would be the ideal time to make Ash win the Pokemon league.
I'm still trying to understand this 'true message of the anime' without remembering that Ash fought on so many leagues before with the sole intention of winning them, even the most recent one.I don't see any problem in focusing on the 'journey', but...slapping your audience with wrong expectations is not the right way to do it, I don't blame the salty fans for this (the name of the episode, all the foreshadowing, character development, even the moves...).
The journey IS the destination, though. If they wanted to focus on the journey, they shouldn't have even BOTHERED giving Ash a goal in the first place. In fact, just have him say he doesn't care about winning or even having a goal, just having an adventure, like Sonic does, or even that old adage about how it doesn't matter if you win or lose, but just getting out there to play the game. Instead, Ash has an explicitly stated goal, and the entire point of even HAVING a goal is to achieve it. And in order to achieve it, one needs to actually REACH the destination.If the journey was truly the true message of the anime, they should NEVER have given Ash a goal in the first place. I know if I were writing the series and that was the intended message of the anime, I'd make SURE Ash and the others NEVER give a goal other than 'hey, this sounds like fun' specifically to REINFORCE how it was never about the destination (no goal = no destination). Heck, even Dragon Ball doesn't have Goku having an explicit goal of becoming the absolute greatest Martial Arts Master, just the best he can be. Heck, considering that he constantly resets at the end of each region and doesn't seem to retain much of what he learned, we can't even say it follows through the intended theme anyways (if it did, Ash would have actually RETAINED what he had learned and not have his Pikachu especially undergo level resets), since even under the argument that it was the journey that matters, not the destination, he needs to actually RETAIN that knowledge he gained on the journey for the journey to truly matter.Even ignoring all of that, however, it's not like if Ash actually beats Alain, he's finished. Remember, DP revealed that even if he won the Sinnoh League, he'd still need to challenge the Elite 4 and Champion before he can truly become Champion. They could have had him beat Alain, yet lose against an Elite 4 member, so that he technically beats a league, yet still has work to do before Ash truly manages to succeed in his goal.Instead, we most likely have to wait until Generation VIII before he even HAS a chance to accomplish his goal.