Pokémon: Black & White: Adventures in Unova and Beyond

This part of the series is the worst because it's just fillers. In the previous series, the fillers were balanced between the main episodes. They feel stale here because they are all lumped together. There are few fun episodes like the Oshawott scalchop competition and the episode where Emolga joins the Team Rocket. But many episodes are unnecessary. Charizard is here for no reason. There is nothing to talk about in this arc and mal wants me to write a longer review. why do I need to write a long review for a show where there is nothing to talk about?

Well, I ended Episode N with my only hope being that this last Unova arc wouldn't be a total waste of time... Was it? Eh... Kind of. It follows the end of the Pokémon formula. After Ash participates in the region's Pokémon League, he always returns home, albeit briefly, before becoming acquainted with a new region in some way or other and then setting off on another adventure. Was this season terrible? No. But did that last step of the journey really need to be stretched out to last 20 episodes? Also no. It's like this... Each season is always a collection of mini adventureplots with the occasional important bigger plot episode thrown in. This last season of Best Wishes was kind of like the mini episodes without a bigger story to tie them together. There were pieces of it that I liked. Alexa's inclusion felt tasteful. It was nice for Ash to get to spend some time appreciating the new Kalos Pokémon before he decided to rush off and catch some himself. Usually, all we get is Ash's mother mentioning a new region he's never heard of and then he's off. Especially because the ending of this formula is usually a little rushed, I kind of enjoyed not seeing Ash's journey home and plans for the future crammed into a single episode. (Though it is worth noting that his decisions being very last minute is totally in character for Ash.) So I would have liked seeing it spread out a little... Just not quite as much as it was. And then the conclusion of his travels with Iris and Cilan were rushed anyway. I didn't think they would be at first. Three episodes out from the end, we get to meet back up with Cilan's brothers who've come up against a challenger threatening to take their gym if she succeeds in defeating all three of them. Cilan manages to come out on top, using some of the things he's learned over the course of his travels, but this does leave him worried for the sake of his gym. And though it's been done before, I was totally expecting him to cut his travels short and return with his brothers to Striaton, and I would have been totally okay with that. I think that would have been the end of a good character arc for Cilan, and he could always set back out on another journey in the future after affirming that everything was all right at home. But he doesn't... His brothers assure him that they can handle the gym (despite all evidence to the contrary) and send him on his way. It was just a little strange to me, because the writers had such a fitting, heartfelt place to leave Cilan... And they didn't take it. Though he does depart the very next episode, on a note that doesn't feel nearly as well-thought out... And we get even less for Iris. Basically, she just meets up with the Dragon gym leader from Johto over the course of their travels and decides to go challenge her. It's just... they were both so excited about getting to Kanto, and then they're both only there for, like, a day before they go rushing off on their own adventures elsewhere. It just felt very... perfunctory. Like, the writers knew they had to get rid of Iris and Cilan somehow, they just didn't have a good way to do it. And honestly, they didn't even look that sad to be going their own ways. It all just felt a little lukewarm to me. But whatever. I've been excited to get out of Unova for a while. So I guess I wasn't terribly sad to see them go either.

STORYTELLING: Nothing sort of a great story as expected. Generic as Pokémon has always been but this time the execution was nowhere near what its predecessors have otherwise offered in the past. Some arcs like the Tournaments Arcs were good and the N arc was fantastic. But that's about it. Every time time it feels the show is about to peak, it goes downhill straightaway. PACE: Highly inconsistent. Intolerably slow at times, extremely fast in the other times resulting in a Filler Arc in end. Spread of fillers was still better than last series. Though, the fillers were mostly incredibly terrible. CHARACTERS: Ash was one dimensional andback to zero after years of development. It was strange and his goofiness was annoying. Although, I found Cilan to be the most annoying character. His connoisseur gag got old too quick and thankfully the spam stopped by the time Unova League arrived. Iris, on the other hand, wasn't bad but she didn't recieve huge chunk of development and remained poorly stagnant throughout. In the end, both of their ambitions remained as ambitions and recieved no temporary conclusion like the past characters. Besides, none of the the side characters were memorable. Trip, the rival of Ash, in particular was bland and edgy for no good. POKÉMON: The Pokémon of the three main characters had good chemistry mostly. But that's about it. No Pokémon in the entire series stood out to be an ace or icon of the series. But I liked how most of Unova's Pokémon were gradually shown. REGION PORTRAYAL: Pretty good, much better than the previous generations (maybe except Johto). But the annoying extra vibrant and one dimensional backgrounds made it look bad. TEAM ROCKET: First half was about seriousness for nothing, second half was a hard attempt at redeeming their characters, resulting in a mess. Lack of chemistry with their own Pokémon resulted in an even dull Team Rocket than ever. The comedic relief aspect of their characters were long gone. TEAM PLASMA: Just why couldn't they appear beforehand? Their relevance pretty much lasted only for the N arc and that's very disappointing considering the immense potential they had for the plot. GYM BATTLES: No memorable battles at all. Not that great battle choreography either. Animation was mostly mediocre (pathetic in fact for a 2010-2013 show). LEAGUE: Outright pathetic. The worst league ever. No more comments. ANIMATION: Great character designs. Bad and extra vibrant background arts. Negligible animation update from its predecessor, resulting in a mediocre animation for its era. THEME SONGS: All the theme songs were extremely great. Probably best set of theme songs Pokémon have ever delivered alongside Advanced generation! VOICE ACTING: Ash sounded extra childish but other than that, I believe this was the peak of English dub alongside its predecessor. OVERALL DIRECTION: Inconsistent. The potential for the series was immense and it failed to cash in on that unlike its predecessor. It feels as if the franchise would've been much better without this series' existence. The director was probably clueless throughout. MOVIES: Two bad movies. One good movies. The movies' qualities were very much relatable to its core series. SPECIALS: Both Cilan & Iris' special were decent enough. Much better than most of the episodes of its core series. FINAL RATING: 6/10, at best. Two or three good arcs, with three or four "great episodes" in the entire series. Much too disappointing.

Pros: - Season 1 - Team Rocket in the begining of Season 1 - only few good episodes - maybe Iris Cons: - Team rockest starting from mid season 1 - Ash nerf, - game story adaptation into anime,- were is Team Plasma???, - Ash doesn't win neither Unova League, - A lot of battles are ridiculous, - Team Rocket appearance get's to annoying from mid season 1, - The story development is being held up by corporations policy (tradition at this point), I must say the begining of season 1 was interesting but after certain point it becames boring and it downgrades in quality. The cast shifts now to 6 permanent members. It's really hard to find anything positive in this generation.