Soapbox: Pokémon Journeys Is Like The Original Series, But 151 Times Better

So i was wondering what happened to gloomy Drizzle ?
Did he get evolved into Inteleon in anime ?

It's good, but the original series will always be the best. That's not by influence of nostalgia, it just hits so many points harder. I mean, when's the last time Ash had to save a pokemon who nearly died because of their abusive trainer?

I'll check it out! Hope life gets a little less tough for you, bud!

That is your opinion, the writing and humor is nowhere as good as the original, you can have it, it is OK. But cannot even touch the original in writing. I will stick with the original thanks.

@patbacknitro18 literally last year with gengar was the last time.

Meh... this anime really is boring for me. Goh is way too perfectly written, there is no interesting female companion character this time around, Ash feels like a side character, and all the fan service feels more like ratings traps.

I haven't watched a Pokemon cartoon since the late 90s. When is Ash going to grow up and become a Pokeman already?

I haven’t watched the series since Master Quest and even that was the occasional episode. Johto League Championships was the last I watched the lot.

I was tempted to go back and watch XY & XYZ as people were telling me the series matured a bit with higher stakes and Ash acting a bit more maturely like he’d hit 13 and learnt from his years of “journeying”. But I didn’t get, strangely it was how everyone spoke to their pokeballs to “have a good rest” after EVERY return that had my eyes rolling so many times they risked falling out.

I simply can't stand Ash Ketchum.

I didn’t have Kate Gray praising the Pokémon anime on my 2021 bingo card.

The last season of the anime I saw was Best Wishes…it wasn’t as bad as people made it out to be, it was way better than the one episode of XY I saw lol.

Well, now I’m watching the new Pokémon series as well as downloading Fata Morgana (went on sale in EU today)

James still the best Team Rocket member ever since he refused to take his Growlithe with him and told it to stay and watch after his family cause he didn't want it to be evil like Team Rocket

Original series will likely always be my favorite. Show was fresh at that point. Great chemistry between the leads. Some genuinely emotionally devastating storylines. And the comedy still had a sharp edge to it. It felt much weirder (and, on occasion, darker) and willing to take risks because it was less of an established cultural institution at that point.

I rewatched it a few months ago for the first time in... fifteen years?... and was still impressed with how well it held up.

IMO the anime needs a complete reboot with new characters. If the show isn't going to age with its original audience, then it can at least provide a new protagonist for this generation of children to grow attached to. Satoshi is a relic.

I might give this a go actually. I do think cartoons that run for decades should allow the characters to age and then pass the lead role onto new generations of characters, but it's good to hear Pokemon is still staying relatively fresh despite that. I suppose the fact that Ash's companions (human and Pokemon) change every few years probably helps, it's only really Ash and Pikachu themselves that stay the same. Very sad to hear Snom isn't more prominent (Snominent?) though.

Pokemon journeys on Netflix.
Soon X-Men 97 on Disney+!

I actually love how they didn't set ash to level 0, and made all the other shows cannon.

So ya I agree with you.

But, I still need to agree with everyone else that the OG had the best writing in it, Tho in my opinion XY&Z is the best pokemon show, being a runner up for first place, Its the best show that isn't the Original.

In my opinion

Honestly for me, I watched when I was a kid for Team Rocket, and they are butchered in this one (mainly they don't get to develop bonds with pokemon they scare into submission/seduce, they get a random pokemon each episode) compared to the other seasons. At least as far as I remember. Haven't seen Indigo League through Hoenn in years and I've never seen Sinnoh through Alola.

I love this review. Got my kids into Pokemon, so occasionally I’ll sit down with them when they’re watching the anime. It’s never a bad time.

Yeah, it's pretty good, it's nice that Ash and Goh show different approaches and the format which basically makes it about all the Pokemon generations rather than being focused on a single region like before.
Team Rocket having random pokemon also allows the writers to shove as many of the little buggers into the show as they want.
My only complaint is no Hop, but I guess Goh kind of takes over his role.

I've been watching every Journeys episode, up to the most recent 90th episode. Unfortunately, Snom has not appeared at all in Journeys so far. Interesting that Team Rocket is mentioned in this article as well, because they have barely appeared throughout Journeys. Hopefully Team Rocket gets more screentime soon.

@Handy_Man What do you mean? They seem to appear at least every third episode and Meowth even got to gigantamax.

@SmaggTheSmug In the last six months alone in Japan, the only episodes Team Rocket appeared in are episodes 70, 72, 74, 75, 81, 89, and 90. That's pretty poor. Also, while it's true Meowth got to Gigantamax in two episodes, it hasn't happened again since then. All I'm saying is that this is the least Team Rocket has ever appeared in the anime, and I hope it gets improved on in the future.

They really just need to oust Ash and make faitful animations of the games, like they did with Pokemon Origins, Pokemon Generations, and Pokemon Evolution. Journeys, as well as the rest of the main series anime, does not hold a candle to those series.

The weird thing is they are keeping all of Ash's adventures canon, but he is still 10. You have to watch Pokemon Origins, Pokemon Generations, Pokemon Twilight Wings, and Pokemon Evolutions. They are much more mature shows and more like the Pokemon Adventures manga.

@Kevember He is the worst. He's nothing more than a poor representation of the greatest trainer of all time.

@eaglebob345 Absolutely right.

@Trikeboy Yes! And they are so much better for it. The main series anime has been bad since the very beginning. Nostalgic, sure. But still bad. Like the first season of Yugioh and most of the original Dragon Ball.

Kate only has an hour to herself after work?! What kind of Foxconn factory is NL running

It was also aired on Live TV in Canada, via Teletoon. It wasn't on Netflix Canada until a while later, which was why I got a VPN. To watch the series. I haven't, yet.

@Kevember I can't stand any of the characters in the anime, or any of the voice acting. The entire show feels like pointless filler, and the writing is horrid. The smaller pokemon anime projects like Evolutions, Generations, Origins, and Twilight Wings are so much better, and it pains me that we will never get a full series akin to it.

@eaglebob345 What they should do is make an entirely new anime for the older audience of the games, and give them something of actual quality to watch, akin to those three series, rather than pointless filler where the characters have the IQ of a sack of bricks.

151 times better than the original? are you kidding. You're trolling

tbh I binged the entire series that's available on Nextflix in Australia and my golly gosh it was so much more fun than I was expecting ~ 10/10 highly recommend

@VoidofLight who buys the games? Who watches the anime? It’s the kids, we’re in the minority

@VoidofLight I think a lot of the fan base have been asking for that but they keep denying to provide that. That's one of the reason why XY was really popular. Ash was confident, he was battle smart and acted more mature, it was a grow up Ash without having him grown up. But then S&M came out

@OnlyItsMeReid I know it's mostly a kid's franchise, but that doesn't mean that older fans of the series don't exist. Most of the vocal people in the fanbase are teens and adults.

Edit: Hell, most of the people I've seen who watch the anime are fully grown adults as well. I get it's popular with children though, and that's why I know they'll never cancel or end the original anime. It's also why the original anime takes more priority than the games at this point.

Yes, the new series is great. Despite what these bearded wailords are typing with their greasy fingernails ready to post another dumb reply this very second.

Sun and Moon is the best Pokémon series without question.

Mymikui is the best Pokémon ever, and if you don't giggle like a school kid when you see a Pokémon mimic Ash as he goes thought his insane z-move build up you are legit dead inside.

But the new one is still pretty great.

@VoidofLight @OnlyItsMeReid

I tried to find it for you but it's old ... but around 8 years ago Microsoft responded to fans calling out the Nintendo as a "kid's" system by doing some analytics that showed the average age of Halo players was 16 and the average age of Pokémon players was 32.

Sure it's a kid's game marketed to children, but every year for the last 25 years the current fans get older, and every year they get new adult friends both from word of mouth and from parents who keep playing the game after their kids lose interested. The 10-16 year old base is never going to grow fast enough to overtake the 25-35 base that's had so much longer to grow.

I played my first Pokémon game at ... 30, 32ish because my wife's girlfriend was super into it. I've bought every game sense then.

Sadly I dropped watching Pokemon shows when X and Y shows started. Something about the X and Y shows just turned me off from watching them.

I did enjoyed Pokemon shows from the original all the way up to the Black and White series though.

“so this isn't just a straight reboot”

It’s not a reboot full-stop. Journey’s has the most continuity and callbacks out of any series of the anime period.

The only series that attempted to be a reboot in the beginning was the BW series due to directorial changes and they ended up abandoning that later into the series. (Still the worst one by far though.)

@OnlyItsMeReid Nah I don't believe the older audience is a Minority.

lol absolutely not IT'S TERRIBLE.
It doesn't come anything near the emotional storylines of season 1, the whole logic of the series is completely lost with the presence of Goh.

They go through silly trips instead of going through an actual adventure in Galar, which became a completely rushed saga which should've been the climax (I gave up after that, but seen things that made me hate the series even more that come after it, like Goh catching Suicune).

Journeys definitely killed a series that for me has already been a huge waste of time with the exception of a handful of episodes ever since season one. I wished Goh was burned to his bones by Entei, on-screen. Best anime death ever.

@mariopartyfan68 That's not fair. Take it back!!

I remember waking up early on Saturday mornings to catch the latest Pokemon episode. I fell away just after the first Johto season started, but a few years back I stumbled onto the Sinnoh seasons and was surprised at how well done it was. I rewatched the Kanto and Orange Island seasons after that, and my nostalgia got me through it (until partway through Johto again)

I'll definitely keep an eye out for Journeys, as it sounds a lot like what I enjoyed about the Sinnoh seasons

@HeadPirate I was a kid when I first discovered pokemon, but I've been a fan since. Most of the fanbase seems to be people who either grew up with the series, or adults who got into it from friends or other family members, so the older playerbase is pretty much the main playerbase at this point.

@eaglebob345 Why do they need to oust ash if they already have all the other series you just listed?

Team Rocket would win every time if they had guns

@patbacknitro18 The Best Wishes series, with Tepig.

Original series was very well made. Kids were watching it and then wanted to buy a gameboy color to play it. Gym fights were really interesting. New series still try to be a big ad for main series and make us care for new pokemon but its not the same

Ash feels like a different character from the Kanto/Johto days

@Anti-Matter Yeah he does

@RareFan It may have taken a while but Koharu/Chloe has become a lot more interesting in the past year or so and is much more of a regular than she used to be

@CheekyZelda Because he is one of the biggest problems with the main series. He sucks as a character and as a trainer. The sprinkling of other series are table scraps in comparison but they are just so much better. They are literally just bits and pieces showing off what the anime should have been and should be now.

Couldn't and wouldn't say The Witcher was "Heartstopping" on account of me not only not seeing much of it but not exactly liking what I saw.

As for the Pokemon Anime the whole thing always seemed like an anomaly, an overstreched marketing gimmic that didn't always add much to the main games. That, and as far accusations of stagnation within the franchise go the anime was often singled out as the worst offender for it which may have ultimatley necessitated the change in direction that the Sun and Moon half took and now again with 'journeys' though having not seen either, I can't really measure how much of of difference they had if any.

I know it's pure nostalgia, but I can't stand watching the dub post voice actor change. Especially Team Rocket. It feels so long. I've watched XY dubbed though. Maybe I'll try watching this, but probably subbed

“Sure, some of it is predictable — Team Rocket will always blast off again, Ash will almost always win any battle, and there's never any true conflict — but who cares?”

Ah! Easily the worst part of the late 90’s series! Good to know my time is (still) best spent doing...almost anything else! Thank you for the update.