Pokémon: The Electric Tale of Pikachu

Dengeki! Pikachu is based on the anime Pokemon (1997). If you know the anime, you will be familiar with this manga. It’s basically the story about Satoshi’s adventures, aiming to be a Pokemon Master, covering some of the same events of the anime, from the moment that Satoshi begins his journey in Masara Town to the Orange Islands. The problem with this manga is that it cuts much of the content that made the things work in the anime, making everything here meaningless, very rushed and without impact. For example, in the anime there is an entire episode to show Satoshi meeting and forming a friendshipwith Pikachu. In this manga, Satoshi just find a random Pikachu that appeared in his house and they become friends for whatever was the reason. The same thing goes for the other Pokemon that Satoshi captured in this manga (some of them off-screen), they all lack personality and seem like just wild creatures. The fast pace also affected the world-building, making everything feel dry compared to the anime, even when the manga was trying to be creative in its own way. Another problem is when the manga makes technical explanations about the Pokemon or about other things, which are just a few pages and panels of info dumping. The manga is more like a bunch of selected episodes of the anime adapted in a poor story than a proper story. It's hard to talk about the progression of the story, because the manga has a lot of time jumps (due to the way the manga was written). For example, the gyms weren’t even shown properly. The only gym battles that actually happened were Kasumi and Natsume (water and psychic), all the other gyms happened off-screen. Some gym leaders don't even appear. The manga skips how Satoshi get all the badges and also skips other important events, like some battles, training and how Satoshi’s Pokemon evolved. When those events weren’t skipped, they were just rushed and making no sense. The characters seem more like a parody of the anime characters or just a very superficial version of them, with no personality, charisma or development, especially looking how the characters act in some parts, like Satoshi in the forest of the Pikachu, where the manga is not capable of creating the slightest drama, even in a moment like that (something that was very well done in the anime). The art style and designs are a bit different comparing to the anime designs or the original game designs. The Pokemon look more menacing and wilder (looking like monsters), some humans look older and sillier, and the girls, in general, are more sexualized. This manga also has some fan-service moments and sexually suggestive illustrations (probably because the mangaka also made some hentai), which were censored in the American version of this manga, thinking about the target audience. Overall, this manga doesn’t work as an adaptation of the original games, it also doesn’t work as an independent story, it’s more like a very bad retelling of some events of the anime, which is not interesting enough to read if you already know the anime and if you don’t know the anime, it’s just a messy story, with erratic pace, lots of time jumps, uninteresting battles, bland characters, unsatisfying conclusions and some parts that just felt wrong.