Pokémon Journeys: The Series

Does "fanservice" make a show automatically great? (This review does not include the 'Mezase Pokemon Master' miniseries) What I liked about "Pokemon (2019)" / "Pokemon Journeys": (+) Unpredictability (any story anywhere makes you wonder what comes next) (+) New world-scale Pokémon battle ranking system with all gimmicks (+) Continuity and fanservice (it remembers the past) (+) Yuki Hayashi was one of my top requests to make Pokémon OSTs (+) Some battles worth a look (vs Volkner, vs Bea, vs Cynthia, vs Leon) (+) Some nice little self-contained arcs and some of the best episodes in the show (mostly thanks to continuity)Even as someone who has followed this show for 20 years, I'll try to patiently explain why Ash's last season is one of my least favorites and whether I would still recommend it or not. 1. Formula / World-building / Fillers / Legendary 2. Goh / GO / Project Mew 3. Ash / Ash's Team / PWC 4. Chloe / Team Rocket 5. Fanservice / References & Callbacks 6. Conclusion / Recommendation _____________________________________________________________________ 1. Formula / World-building / Fillers / Legendary TL;DR - The "open world" format was an interesting new setup that many fans have been asking for for a long time and it definitely feels refreshing, but the seeming lack of planning brought a lot of pacing and world-building issues. 1.1. Journeys is finally showcasing off the world of Pokémon, which is what the series is supposed to be about, and it looks like a decent job when it transports us to some of the postcard locations, but even then Kanto is probably shown more times than all of the other regions combined, which may be an issue in itself. The new Galar region that we should know better didn't get enough attention and many of its characters and locations were shown hastily or not shown at all (like half of the gym leaders). They could easily have Sakuragi institute in Galar, replace the legendary birds with the galarian versions, train Ash with Leon's master, replace some Project Mew member with Peony and so on. In the later parts of the series, it seemed like they realized that the generation was ending without showing many Galarian Pokémon and then desperately started stuffing more than a dozen debuts into a single episode to make up for it. 1.2. About that, maybe one of the most noticeable mistakes they made with this new formula is how they try to cram practically everything into one to two episodes when it would be better to have a multi episode arc. The more episodic and less directed nature of Journeys, with little use of very effective narrative devices like build-up and foreshadowing, makes for a dragging experience when you don't feel the same sense of progress and fluidity as in the pre-Alola regions and this also affects the way we experience worldbuilding: traveling on foot and camping between towns, you really get a sense of scale in the region and feel like you're on an adventure with the traveling group, but now Ash and Goh quickly jump from one region to another from one episode to the next, barely giving us time to feel that we're in a distant and different place from the previous one, and even casually meeting the TRio on the other side of the world. For a series called "Journeys" that encompasses all regions, it's ironic how the Pokémon world has never felt so small. 1.3. Now this might be a hot take: fillers are actually a good thing. Filler is supposed to give insight into the daily lives of the Pokemon trainers, where Pokemon can develop, show more of their personality with fun interactions, or even learn new moves. We've seen in previous series that MC's Pokémon often shine during filler while still provided more interesting ideas for scenarios for the traveling group, and even Sun/Moon had so many of them but yet it was mostly entertaining and successful especially because of the character moments (in addition to fitting the theme of the season and its region). However, I usually notice that Journeys fillers don't really say anything. There are lots of food contests, random races, weird rap battles, boring COTD's, tiresome two-parter comedy episodes, but all without much use with writers not even trying to fix the lack of screen time of Ash's Pokémon. 1.4. Despite being a commercial series and having made mistakes with Legendary/Mythical Pokémon in the past, the writers still have done a noble job maintaining the proper sense of rarity. When they weren't chased by rich and powerful organizations & people with broad resources and knowledge, they were usually only seen captured by powerful and mysterious Trainers or under unique and special contexts with some fair development. In Journeys however, we see 2-3 'Legendary encounters' almost every month with some episodes cramming 5 to 7 Legends into it. There are novices easily locating and catching with just a regular Poké Ball and a can-do attitude; characters having 3-4 Legendary with them; kids casually pulling one from their pocket out of nowhere etc; and of course, the infamous EP053 - one of my worst Pokemon episodes of all time - in which a fan-favorite one was featured intensely weak and incompetent to inexplicably let himself be part of a kid's collection at the end (they even made a part 2 in which the majestic Pokémon reappears only to clean up Grimer's waste in a stream; yes, that's how low Legendary has come). What would Takeshi Shudo - who literally got depressed when they simply 'gender-swapped' another beloved legend from Johto - think about this? (which now two kids climbed onto the back of it just for the sake of riding it) These creatures are suppose to be a fundamental segment of the mystique of the Pokémon world that keeps kids dreaming and seeking the unknown, now they're something so expositive and merchandising that I wonder why producers even bother calling them by that name. All the magic is gone. 1.5. Goh's story and Ash's battles feel like two completely separate direction teams that have nothing to do with each other, which makes the season just aimless and random - there's a prevailing sense of lack of overall storyline. This becomes less noticeable in the last third of the series as Ash approaches his climax, but for majority of the season the anime staff seemingly struggled with the dual protagonist story formula not knowing how to suitably balance screen time between Ash and Goh while still trying to find space for Chloe. __________________________________________________________________________________________ 2. Goh / GO / Project Mew TL;DR - Goh/Go is the most controversial companion Ash has ever had for reasons already talked to death. A gary stu rookie trainer with inconsistent skills and personality who follows his own special set of rules in the universe, while making it feel like Ash's PWC goal and his team's development are frequently taking the backseat for Goh's casual adventures. 2.1. Worldbuilding. As is known, battling and weakening or befriending the Pokémon in order to catch it somehow does not apply to Goh who's not only filling the Pokédex but getting a ton of special treatment. The goal of catching Pokemon could be a useful show for kids if it talks about the types of pokeballs and the different ways to catch a Pokemon, but instead he just throws a pokeball and the mon is all his, which it makes a large number of his accomplishments feel handed to him on a silver platter without any impact or entertainment. I know how they want to make the anime familiar to the crowd that got into Pokémon through GO to capitalize on the audience, but there just downright bending the long-established in-universe rules set up for the anime for one singular character are a different thing. The fact that Ash, who embodies the older audience and took 20 years to start getting bigger stuff, is always there by his side, not only shows a certain contempt for the demographic that played Pokémon long before GO became a thing, it makes the worldbuilding random and confusing. Goh had so many powerhouses still in the beginning of his adventure, even Alphas and Legendaries (!), what would happen if he decides to join the PWC for instance? If they were in such a rush to make Goh an Ash's equal, couldn't they introduce him as a mid tier Trainer at the very least? 2.2. Personality. This slips a little more into subjective territory, but the inconsistencies seem glaring: while the idea is great, his "shyness" only pops up when it's convenient. He is suppose to be an introverted boy with no friends and got a good contrasting characterization to Ash in EP003, but this was promptly thrown out the window to show a newcomer who is competent at everything he does to the point of even outshining Ash in battle skills progression (as in EP036). Since he was younger, he's been a know-it-all who draws attention to himself and can allure any antisocial Pokémon with literally just a look. Writers seem to have also tried to make Goh seem brave and confident to kids audience but he came to look a bit petulant and pretentious instead, as when he insolently pointed a Poké Ball at Mewtwo's face or drew the entire cast's attention to himself in a self-absorbed speech in the first Ash's return to Alola. They also made overdramatic conflicts like Flabébé and Drizzle so we can sympathize with him better but it still feels forced since it's not a clear part of any ongoing development. Only in the last third of the series do writers try to deconstruct his Mary Sue status by showing him the way he was supposed to be in the beginning, though that ended up just making his character's inconsistency easier to point out (as in EP102 in which he suddenly becomes selfish and uncooperative when he never had that problem posed by the script before - only mishandlings - just to force "development" at the end of it). Regina (EP087) was an antisocial kid much better written in 1 episode than Goh in over 100. 2.3. Concept. There's a reason they never went "Gotta Catch 'Em All" with Ash: it doesn't work. If the MC catches all the different Pokémon he sees, the sheer volume of them makes it impossible to have enough time to focus or develop each one of them. One of the major themes and appeal of the anime is how Pokémon are characters themselves or valued companions, not tools, but Goh has stored all but three of his captures in a lab without ever getting to know them well. They're not his friends, they're just part of his collection. Writing staff tried to fix this by doing stories about Goh "bonding" with some Pokemon, but this is still innocuous because 1) they're still ignoring the vast majority of the other catches, 2) keeps consuming the Ash's much more interesting screen time with stories that do feel fillery, and 3) we pretty much never see these Pokemon again doing anything interesting anyway. There are so many damaging aspects about the goal of "Catch 'Em All" (which is kinda a discarded western slogan): it means eventually becoming literally a God-level Trainer; it lessens the thrill fans used to feel about captures by becoming so common and easy matter; makes the character's identity lost since the Pokémon is the expression of its Trainer; etc. (in addition to being ironic to happen precisely in the generation of Dexit). This all makes sense from a gameplay perspective where the protagonist is you, but for an anime adaptation that's supposed to be the portrayal of living in the Pokemon world, rejecting this concept was probably one of the best OLM/TVTokyo's decisions ever. 2.4. Project Mew. It gave Goh a plot structure for his goal paralleling Ash's and brought some solidly written and entertaining episodes as far as adventure and exploration can go, but unfortunately it came too late. Writers didn't tell us anything about the new characters, they took too long to remind us that Goh is indeed in a competition, they hard-nerfed Ash in it, the missions don't have any clear correlation to Mew, and it has such an anticlimactic conclusion that the only reason I didn't find this arc a waste of time was Gary. On top of that, it was more of a Legendary showcase to make them feel more like prizes waiting to be caught and less like extremely rare and strong living mystical beings. Now that Goh will simply leave the show with his goal at 10% after all the damage the production has done through him, you really wonder what was the point of introducing a character like this into Ash's final season in the first place. __________________________________________________________________________________________ 3. Ash / Ash's Team / PWC TL;DR - Mostly due to the previously mentioned issues, Ash and the most important campaign of his life are sidelined for a sizable part of the season which gives rise to serious development and powerscaling problems, lack of interactions and rivalries, and huge missed opportunities. 3.1. Profile. Ash spends the first half of the season often being overshadowed by a rookie companion when he should be more like a mentor figure to him, which doesn't help his status as still being the fairly strong Trainer from Sun & Moon despite his current design and personality doesn't sell that impression. Unfortunately, his success in the Manalo Conference is his only previous feat mentioned and Ash is never properly treated as a League Champion until 100+ episodes later. 3.2. Difficulty. Although the writers got it wrong by making any Trainer allowed to register for PWC/WCS (World Championships) instead of giving worthy value to Ash's history, the underrated Vs Visquez battle set up the difficulty level of the Championships very well; however, Ash's battles to make up for his early losing streak started to take place against random opponents off-screen taking the weight off each victory and making progress seem unimportant. Even when Ash starts to face stronger and familiar faces, the matches still feel weightless as they are almost all 1v1 or 2v2 in addition of happening in an isolated way after long gaps with unrelated episodes (where Ash barely mentions PWC as if he isn't interested or engaged at all). Furthermore, Ash's progression through the ranks was so fast that he jumps thousands to hundreds to dozens of positions with just the occasional quick match without ever suffering a single loss, which makes it feel like his skills isn't really being tested. And speaking of being proven, where have all the rivals been? Ash had many of them even in Alola but in the world ranking he only has Bea who barely appears? They could easily make Volkner, Marnie, Raihan and a ton of other options be recurring rivals interacting with each other based on the Class he's in but pretty much all of Ash's competitors look more like NPCs that he will predictably beat on the first try than real challengers with their own dreams and development. 3.3. Powerscaling. This has to be one of my main annoyances with this season: how did Ash's newly captured team manage to defeat the world's most powerful Trainers and their longlife partners with just a few 'months' of training? I can see how Ash would be an Elite-level Trainer at this point of the show, but the Pokemon he uses is a different story. Even though it's an inexperienced team, they've all somehow able to reach the Elite Four degree with very insulated arcs (when theres actually one), a few official battles, mostly off-screen training, and as a result, Ash's victories feel like the most ridiculous plot armor ever seen on the series. Dracovish's resilience is aberrantly inconsistent and it just beat a Champion-level mon in its first battle ever knowing only Water Gun until a few episodes earlier. Lucario is basically still a baby Pokémon and was able to beat a well-trained Gmax Machamp without practice his newly acquired Mega Evolution even once, literally one-shotting a Champ-level Trainer's Gmax ace without even using Mega boost (!), and even taking down the two greatest Sinnoh Champion's threats, and this was the Pokemon with the highest screentime among the new ones. Remember when Ash used to try some of his strongest partners at the time against an Elite and was completely humiliated? He didn't even scratch Flint's Infernape using Pikachu + two Pokemon that were already strong before they were caught (just like Gengar and Sirfetch'd - what makes these special?). All that godlike aura Elite Trainers used to have is gone thanks to JN team making them look like just the usual gym challenges, with Drasna and Raihan being the worst cases alongside Wallace who has literally become a joke. I know 'powerscaling' has never been this anime's forte, but since Ash is in his last and most important hooray, it's fair to expect the writing staff to be more careful in this regard in such a special competition. On top of that, we rarely see them interacting with each other or with other characters throughout the season to build some genuine bonding and empathy with the audience like we see happening with other Ash teams, and the writers still have the daring to make them win major battles with literally the power of friendship - a friendship that was never really shown. Alola Team felt like a family; JN's team look like battle bots. I just couldn't ever root for these new Ash Pokemon and their success never felt earned to me. Pikachu was the saving grace. 3.4. Rotations. Sadly, Ash hasn't used any of his reserves at any point in the World, Global, All-Region, Biggest Competition. Using the old Pokémon from the start of the championships not only would it automatically create the emotional connection with the older audience that they failed to do with Gengar and Dragonite, it would also make the power curve more organic and believable. Need to do Gen 4 propaganda? Bring back Infernape, Torterra, Buizel. Need to advertise Gen 8? Dynamax Melmetal, Kingler, Snorlax. This event should represent much more the culmination of all of Ash's past adventures than just "the Gen 8 thing", so making teams with his older partners would be very symbolic and a pleasing gift to fans. This was the unparalleled waste of the season. 3.5. Battles. If you don't care about things like powerscaling and plot convenience, some great battles can be found here, but never expect the dynamic animation of XY's heydays. The animation is more stationary, angles and camera are static and there is a strange practical absence of evasive movements this season. I know about the production hell OLM has been through over the last few years and therefore I tend to cut them some slack. What really bothers me is the lack of emotional weight in the battles. Without the heartfelt conflicts, clash of dreams, rivalries (even between Pokémon), as we saw in other seasons, there is no soul in the fights. They're just fights. 3.6. Masters Tournament. The greatest tournament of all time... or it should be. Atsuhiro Tomioka (writer) really nailed the presentation of each Champion's battle style, wrote many references to combos and move effects from the games, and gave Pikachu due spotlight on every round. The staff also granted the necessary attention to Vs Cynthia and Vs Leon matches, the latter being perhaps the biggest and best battle in the show from a technical point of view, as well as delivering some surprises during battles with some unexpected highlights for secondary Pokemon like Spiritomb and Rillaboom. Unfortunately they missed a few key elements and really brought the experience down: It's literally a showdown between Champions but the choreography is constantly slow and unpolished making the battles feel actually turn-based; There are no rivalries between Pokémon like we've seen in Leagues; They made Leon way too superior to other Champions, and the lack of significant buildup within the confines of Journeys itself for all matchups except the Monarch vs Ash made the results too predictable; Alain was brought back only to make the Worf Effect barely interacting with Ash; Champion's aces never felt menacing enough; etc. Most matchups lack energy and intensity and just look like exhibition battles for fanservice, and with such an easy and quick climb through the ranks utilizing a freshly caught team, Ash seems out-of-place among the greatest Champions in the franchise (it was particularly painful to see Cynthia being beaten by this team and specifically by a baby Pokémon). We know it's only fair that Ash becomes the very best after so many years, but from a short-term perspective it felt undeserved. The event to decide who is the best Trainer should have easily been the utmost challenge test of his character and for the most part felt like a side story without any strong sense of hype or competitiveness. At very least, the ending was so well done that maybe it made up for all the plot armor Ash putted on to get where he got. __________________________________________________________________________________________ 4. Chloe / Team Rocket Chloe/Koharu's personality has a very well written, flowing and authentic evolution, but her arc about not having a clear goal is just not interesting at all. She rarely interacts with Ash, and at the end of the day she was just a walking advertisement for Eeveelution. As for Team Rocket, the charisma of the Pokemon they bond with are the only element I really like about them and writers took that away with Rocket Gachat. The rest of the core cast was irrelevant to me. 5. Fanservice / References & Callbacks The main selling point of the season is a pretty mixed bag. Ash and the other previous characters look younger than ever and because they haven't grown up a bit with their audience most of the redone flashbacks and callbacks don't pack as much emotional punch as they should. Writing staff have delivered things fans have been asking for for years but it feels so mechanical, insincere, and in contrast to the rest of the season, like they were just doing it because they're being ordered by executives to sell a product and not out of passion and understanding of the material, that as a result much of the fanservice feels hollow and surface level (many returns are just used to serve as springboards for new characters they haven't worked successfully on to make us care about). As an example, Dawn got 8 episodes for Gen 4 merchandise and her first proper interaction with Ash was only at the very end of the eighth (their trademark high-five), and while she has changed virtually nothing since D/P, Iris with only two appearances got one of the most massive buffs in the whole show with the power of off-screen (twice!). Sure, we also have the bright side of the picture: they found the perfect balance with Gary and Serena (except for the long-awaited reunion scene with Ash I guess) and they put so much genuine heart into the episode about the comeback of a certain memorable rival from Diamond & Pearl as well as into Sun & Moon's two-part conclusion that both are a must-watch for any fan of these series. Also, even though the cameos during the final tournament are just thrown at our face, the last 10 minutes of Pikachu displays what might be the greatest fanservice moment in Anipoké history. __________________________________________________________________________________________ 6. Conclusion / Recommendation Pokémon Journeys lack soul. It feels corporate - like it's decided by a board of executive rather than by a team of writers and a director, where they just throw in what would be the most marketable material without really delving into it from an in-universe perspective; misdirected - like it doesn't know its own identity for trying to be a fanservice season, a GO ad and a Gen 8 showcase all at the same time; alongside a lot of missed opportunities. When we see Ash singing to Pikachu, being celebrated by Alola people, or slowly remembering Greninja at the sight of a Frogadier, we can recognize that there's still soul somewhere there, desperately trying to untie itself from the corporate shackles and show its full potential. You can argue "It is just a commercial show for kids", which is fair enough, but again, I wouldn't be writing all this if appealing and pleasing older audiences wasn't part of the very purpose of the season. TL;DR - 'Pokémon (2019)' is all about chasing "hype", so I still recommend this show to fans who just want to "see" things happening (Ash with mega evolution, Ash becoming the very best, protagonist catching everything, old characters showing up, etc.) but don't care all that much about the "how" (powerscaling, worldbuilding, development, interactions, rivalries). And I also recommend it for the kids in your family, if you have any. It's still Pokémon nonetheless. NOTE - At the time of this review, the "Mezase Pokemon Master" sequel miniseries is yet to air and looks like it will be the true final tribute to Ash that this season should've been entirely about, so let's hope they don't waste the last moments of the end of this era. (My apologies for the lack of synthesis skills, but if you like to talk more critically about Pokemon I'm sure you've read everything.) Thanks for reading.