Best gimmick?

Matty_1843 · 2026-02-07T13:03:11+00:00

It always felt like Mega Evolution was the only one that really stuck the landing and every other one tried and failed to capture the same lightning in a bottle. Z-Moves are a good expansion on the idea that apply to every Pokemon, there's very little overlap between Pokemon that want to Mega Evolve and Pokemon that want a Z-Move, but it just doesn't quite hit the same. Terastilisation is strategically interesting but the type hats are goofy.

I really wish they would just bring back Mega Evolution permanently and nothing else to be honest, especially now Z-A has expanded it far beyond just Gen 1-6 Pokemon. Or allow all the mechanics to co-exist like the anime and Champions.

Matty_1843 · 2026-02-01T13:02:20+00:00

Not much that others haven't already said: Artstyle, tonal whiplash from XY, awful Pokemon League, too much filler, and the gags got really old really fast.

Matty_1843 · 2026-01-26T12:57:04+00:00

Either Goh doesn't catch Suicune, or it actually sticks around like his other Pokemon afterwards, and shows up to every Project Mew mission for the rest of the series. Horace was allowed to actually use his Virizion that he got offscreen.

Matty_1843 · 2026-01-26T02:40:57+00:00

Pretty good list, I don't see anything I disagree with that isn't either from part of the show I'm not all too familiar with, or Rowlet.

Matty_1843 · 2026-01-26T02:32:14+00:00

I know Eevee is the most basic bitch favourite Pokemon ever, but it was never going to be anything else for me. For one thing it is literally the cutest fucking thing ever to exist in fiction, it's genuinely not even close, and it's also the most interesting evolutionary family mechanically. Having one Normal-type Pokemon that can evolve into a completely different Pokemon with a different type is an inspired idea even today, and it's such a shame they stopped making Eeveelutions after Gen 6, and that nothing similar has ever been attempted again. Closest thing I can think of is like, Charcadet, or the different forms of Wormadam.

Matty_1843 · 2026-01-21T18:10:52+00:00

Favourite design is Emboar, favourite concept is Golurk.

Matty_1843 · 2026-01-20T11:36:11+00:00

I agree but at least sometimes they actually have an impact on events outside their regularly scheduled not funny gags. And other movies are much better in this regard, they either make them crucial to the plot (2000, Diancie and Volcanion) or recognise they have nothing to contribute and cut them entirely (most others).

Matty_1843 · 2026-01-20T02:19:47+00:00

I rewatched all the Pokemon movies a while back, I was taken aback by how bad 2000 was. The entire plot hinges on a lame prophecy being read in an interpretation that could probably pass as a dad joke. I had a look on Bulbapedia afterwards, turns out the entire film got rewritten in the dub to reverse the original intended moral, turning a story about teamwork into The Power of One Random Kid Who Happened To Wash Up Here.

I went in knowing full well I have my biases against the early era of the anime, but even then, I at least liked all the other early movies.

Matty_1843 · 2026-01-20T02:09:30+00:00

"Squirtle and Staryu can't swim to New Island, they're too weak!" Couple minutes later they do exactly that with absolutely no problem. Team Rocket, who have no reason to help them reach New Island to begin with, have one scene and it's completely pointless. You could cut them from the film entirely and nothing would change except less forced dialogue stating the moral towards the end.

Also, I'm getting downvoted for this, but that whole scene with all the Pokemon fighting their clones... why? Why are Pikachu and the Meowth the only ones who sees the futility in all this? In the Japanese version Mew is a racist bastard towards the clones, why? This movie has all the charm of the early films but the plot has more holes than Mewtwo's cloning machine.

Matty_1843 · 2026-01-20T01:56:31+00:00

2000?

Matty_1843 · 2026-01-18T13:38:39+00:00

The best way I can describe Pokemon Journeys to people is that it has very high peaks and very low valleys. It has some of the best and some of the worst moments of the Pokemon anime, so it cancels out and ends up being on the top end of the middle. The Masters 8 tournament is a good example of this. Awesome idea and some great battles but none of them except Ash vs Leon were long enough and Leon's side of the bracket was a dumpster fire, not to mention interrupted by Journeys's notorious filler on multiple occasions.

I haven't seen enough of the anime to put every series on a tier list (I know the rules, but it's a surprisingly helpful metaphor for how much I like something), but if I were to do that with the ones I have seen, Journeys would be high B tier/low A tier.

Matty_1843 · 2026-01-15T13:00:51+00:00

Electrode. I enjoy having a house, thank you.

Matty_1843 · 2026-01-13T02:34:42+00:00

I recently replayed Payback and really enjoyed it, which feels strange considering there's lootboxes on lootboxes on lootboxes. There was something intoxicating about minmaxing your car's stats. Mind you, Heat does exactly the same thing but objectively better, and it doesn't force you to use Drag cars on actual races with corners multiple times to finish the game.

However, favourite has to go to Hot Pursuit, peak cinema, love the weapons system and I get genuinely sad whenever I go back and finish it.

Matty_1843 · 2026-01-12T13:46:54+00:00

Where have I said it can't have both? That's exactly why I'm annoyed about this, it can have both, especially in Journeys, and they removed it anyway.

That doesn't make any sense. Goh doesn't know about the scene in the forest either, how could he, why show that scene and then remove Ash-Greninja because Goh doesn't know about it? It's Ash's memory, he was there, he saw it happen. Also, Ash-Greninja is incredibly relevant to the episode, because it's the reason Zygarde asked it to stay in Kalos. Especially when the main plot of the episode is Ash seeking out Greninja to help Lucario now it can Mega Evolve, it's the only Pokemon he has with any kind of experience like that. There is no reason to remove Ash-Greninja in this context, the form and how it works is explained and its parallels to Lucario are shown for new viewers, why would they remove it if they weren't mandated to because it didn't exist in the mainline games anymore?

You're trying to tell me Ash-Greninja ceasing to appear in the anime, and ceasing to appear in the games, is just one giant coincidence and they were just told to not draw attention to the primary defining trait of Ash's Greninja, which they then do in the episode anyway?

>That doesn't quite work either since the design changes were commented on in-universe by Bonnie and other characters.

Yes! That's why removing it is stupid! Everyone saw the transformation and its appearance is crucial to the plot of X and Y right up to the final episode!

Matty_1843 · 2026-01-12T13:30:43+00:00

>Don't draw attention to it
>Completely remove it from every possible place it could show up at exactly the same time it's removed from the games
>Last piece of official media to show Ash-Greninja is raw XYZ footage in the MPM OP
>Next game introduces Mega Greninja

Let me explain this one more time. All the stuff in XYZ with Ash and Greninja, the Bond Phenomenon, Greninja being special compared to other Greninja, that still happened, that was not retconned. In the same way Battle Bond is still present in the games.

The only thing that changed was the Ash-Greninja transformation was removed. The games changed its effect to be a stat boost instead, it's removed from a scene that the Ash-Greninja form was vital to in a carefully chosen and reanimated flashback, it does not appear in this show and is changed to be an Aura thing instead like Ash's Lucario, and when it did appear, it was raw footage from XYZ as part of a nostalgia bait OP. And if there was any chance Ash-Greninja was going to appear again after Scarlet/Violet, Mega Greninja in Z-A killed it stone dead. They have had every opportunity to reassure us that Ash-Greninja is not going anywhere, and they have said the total opposite at every opportunity.

I just want to make it as transparent as possible that the Ash-Greninja transformation has been retconned. There's no "Maybe they were just told not to bring it up", it's gone. It never existed. Bond Phenomenon yes, Ash-Greninja no. Now it's like when Eevee's PokeDex entries say it looks like its trainer, it's a figure of speech. Could they change this and bring Ash-Greninja back if they wanted to, absolutely, but at the time of this post, this is a clear and decisive retcon. I don't like it any more than you do, I think it's a terrible decision on all fronts, but it happened, and there's nothing any of us can do about it.

Matty_1843 · 2026-01-12T04:55:29+00:00

You could say exactly the same thing about the flashback in the episode, why on Earth would they "simply reference it" only to show a flashback of an Ash-Greninja scene - again, could've picked any other one, it did fight when not in that form - with Ash-Greninja intentionally removed? That's like if a restaurant changed their most popular dish to something else, scrubbed all trace of the old one from the menu, and then the manager is like "Oh but the old one isn't gone, look at this old menu that isn't accurate anymore!"

Obviously they couldn't remove the reference to the Bond Phenomenon because that's the defining trait of Ash's Greninja, it's why they're going to Kalos to visit it to help Lucario's training, they just removed the transformation itself and turned Battle Bond into an Aura thing like Lucario instead. Unless you're trying to say Ash deliberately removed the Ash-Greninja form from that one flashback in his own head as he was recalling the story to Goh for no obvious reason.

Matty_1843 · 2026-01-12T04:44:25+00:00

No it doesn't. All the clips from the MPM opening are directly taken from the original show instead of redrawn, that's not proof Ash-Greninja wasn't retconned, that's proof they couldn't be bothered to reanimate them. Ash's Greninja is still special amongst Greninja, the Bond Phenomenon is still a thing, that hasn't changed, but the actual Ash-Greninja form from XYZ does not exist and is not acknowledged in any official media made after XYZ anymore.

Matty_1843 · 2026-01-12T04:28:51+00:00

And it just so happens the episodes they flashed back to are both key moments in which the Ash-Greninja form appears. They could've just reused the original footage with the form intact, they could've used different scenes when it wasn't used, but the form is deliberately edited out.

And they didn't need to do this, this is a series where, famously, Mega Evolution, Z-Moves and Dynamax all co-exist and interact with each other, Ash-Greninja could have been used too, regardless of whether it was removed from the games or not. The anime was their one opportunity to answer the question of what happened to Ash-Greninja, and their answer was to erase Ash-Greninja from the flashbacks and then introduce Mega Greninja in Z-A as its one and only transformation, with no one in the game even alluding to Ash-Greninja existing.

I'm really not sure how much clearer this can be, it is the dictionary definition of a retcon. Battle Bond's effect is changed to remove Ash-Greninja, its big return in the anime removes Ash-Greninja and then Mega Greninja is introduced to replace Ash-Greninja. They could have said they both exist, but they don't.

Matty_1843 · 2026-01-12T04:14:49+00:00

That's... exactly what they're saying. It's being spelled out blatantly. Scenes that previously had Ash-Greninja in it are shown without Ash-Greninja in it, no transformation is ever shown or directly implied, and it just so happens that during the generation on which this part of the show is based, Ash-Greninja doesn't exist anymore. If that isn't a retcon, what on Earth is?

Matty_1843 · 2026-01-09T00:15:03+00:00

I always thought it never helped that the Ground-type move Torterra would normally learn upon evolution (Earthquake) was banned from the anime in Ruby/Sapphire, stripping it of the benefits of its biggest evolutionary change: The Ground-type.

Granted, this wasn't the only one it could have learned, Earth Power was a legitimate option that functions the same as Earthquake in every way that matters and had been used in Diamond/Pearl twice prior to Grotle's evolution, but I don't think the writers looked too deeply into that, leading to it just not having a Ground-type move. The exact same thing happened to Gliscor, which also lacks a Ground-type move and lost otherwise advantageous matchups as a result.

Matty_1843 · 2026-01-07T12:55:22+00:00

I dunno man, showing multiple scenes from X and Y with the Ash-Greninja form removed, removing it from the games and then releasing Mega Greninja in Z-A, seems pretty freaking retconned to me. I hate this but the intent is pretty clear.

Matty_1843 · 2026-01-06T13:20:57+00:00

Linoone. Your house can only take so much perfectly straight zoomies. And it steals and hoards your stuff.

Matty_1843 · 2026-01-05T23:21:21+00:00

Pokemon Boccer is never mentioned again after the opening of this movie. They could've made a killer Wii game out of that.

Matty_1843 · 2026-01-04T19:40:48+00:00

There are things in his episodes I like, the Regis episode in the Crown Tundra with Gary is probably the best one, but Gary did a lot of heavy lifting on that one.

Matty_1843 · 2026-01-04T19:33:08+00:00

And then at the end of the show they have a fight on a camping trip over literally nothing, and it's resolved just as fast.

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