What do you think of the XY anime in comparison to Best Wishes? I haven't seen to much of XY, but I like Best Wishes a lot better although I can't quite say why
… Isn’t it pretty obvious that I love Best Wishes! to death and that I am way less enthousiastic so far about XY? x’DThe main difference in conclusion would be: I could trust Best Wishes!.It was always playing with viewers’ expectations (that first tournament where Satoshi will fight against Iris in the finals, with Pikachu, and at a type disavantage? It’s obvious he will win!) (okay so, usually, we would be sure that Nyarth is lying about having been fired from the Rocket-dan… but the episode is ending and he is still with the group?! So is it trolling? Or double-trolling?!) (Shooti is so Satoshi’s main rival! … wait, no, Shooti sees Adeku as his rival.) (Well, anyway, Satoshi will fight against Shooti far into the Isshu League Tournament, rrrrrright?) (Satoshi and N will so be enemies!) (We’re SO getting the story behind Dent’s phobia of Choroneko!) (Wait… Mijumaru is leaving right now?!), it was dynamic, it was fun, so I quickly reached a point where I could… entrust myself completely to it, and everything, even the unexpected, would feel like PokéAni to me. I felt free to headcanon wildly when I was missing information, I felt that the universe was breathing, moving, that the regular cast was moving forwards in every direction and that their stories didn’t always have to follow a presentation-crisis-resolution pattern, but that they were fine just interacting and evolving naturally. And the Pokémon! The Pokémon were everpresent; indeed, Gamagaru and Gantle didn’t get their share, but they were the only ones: ever since Zuruggu hatched, the Pokémon were a “team”. Many episodes had their little adventures, characteristics, relationships, friendships. The main cast (Satoshi, Iris, Dent) were curious, open, focused on Pokémon; they had funny interactions and different values that didn’t get in the way of their friendship but instead nourished it. Satoshi gave his shounen hero speeches, but his way of shining wasn’t through power: it was by playing the role of a catalyst, someone driving people to move around him - he pushed for teamwork to happen, he often needed help. He could validate people but had so much to learn from others, and I felt a certain happiness and humility, in him, whenever he discovered new humans-Pokémon relationships.For me, Satoshi is not a being of power that uses übers in battle. It’s someone who learns; who has learned to naturally assume a posture of humility and respect and who is ready and open to being taught new things. I don’t care that BW!Satoshi lost a lot of battles: his personality was still “Satoshi” to me, because his reactions were humble and caring when it happened. I felt the happiness, the freedom. I don’t watch PokéAni for the accomplishment but for the journey; and Best Wishes!’s journey was most focused on values and discoverings.Not a spoiler: I feel XY is extremely arrogant and pompous by comparison, too focused on the results without showing me efforts to reach them. And overall, saying things but not really showing them? XY is trying hard to be something “in”, and it’s especially striking with the two faces used for advertisment (Satoshi is A Strong Action Hero, and apparently has a deep bond with Pikachu according to characters… but it only serves to Satoshi’s glorification in XY - we lack random moments where Satoshi and Pikachu would just be happy to be together or just talk to each other? (I felt insulted that Satoshi compared his behaviour to Corni and Rukario, and I’m supposed to be a Satoshi-fan!), and Serena is suuuuuuch a cutie in love! So French! So blonde! She doesn’t do anything in her life but who cares - you can totally relate to her, we’re saying she is totally lost even though there was no mention of it for 30 episodes, even though she keeps doing touristic things instead, even though she pretended to be a “Pokémon Trainer” to get a Pokémon without trying to do things with her!). AmourShipping used for promotion makes me gag - on Satoshi’s side, there is nothing established in him that could make him interested in Serena, because she is not dynamic and doesn’t offer any insight on human-Pokémon relationships (Serena doesn’t provide me anything that would make me like to root for her, except sometimes with Eureka)… and they had to basically rewrite his character as a kid in XY007 in order to shoehorn Serena into the universe (kid!Satoshi’s behaviour had nothing in common with what we had seen of him in flashbacks and in early series; I keep hoping that Serena’s memories are unreliable, but it still leaves a bad aftertaste).While I was curious about Best Wishes!, I’m actually wary of XY, because “what will they pull again this time?”. I’m reacting to XY like it’s a commercial shounen manga, where PokéAni, in the past, seemed to avoid shounen clichés and was offering me a “purer” tale. I don’t care about a one-sided love that exists just to exist. I don’t care about a strong character who doesn’t learn from others. I’m way less mean with Eureka and Citron because they don’t get much focus, and what they get? They turn it into something entertaining, into something that feels like “PokéAni” to me. On the other hand, all the Serena-centric episodes had something to make me cringe, and Satoshi being the strong leader that remembers Pikachu’s existence only when it got him screentime makes me sigh. I guess that the Summer Camp will probably glorify the XY!quartet ~dynamic~ ~relationship~ even though Tierno-Sana-Trova are said to be tough and Serena sucks in Pokémon-related fields (Millefeui’s episode showed that Serena is treated as a Mary Sue that doesn’t need to train, so I’m half-expecting her to win against Sana, or for it to end as a draw… despite Serena’s clear lack of experience).So yeah. I’m casually happy about a lot of things, because it’s in my nature. But I don’t really trust XY - and this is coming from someone who was actively defending it at first (I made my mistakes, I thought the series would keep to its values).And we’re also way past the point when I usually warm up to a new series (it took me 18 episodes for Best Wishes!, that was the longest, and I loved the first episodes retrospectively). XY has problems but, unlike past series, doesn’t treat them as such. It puts a beautiful front, beautiful animation, more standardized designs, but lacks content and uses very unsubtle plot devices (death, old age sickness) to try to make you ~emotional~ about things. And sometimes, I just feel like… it’s playing straight a lot of things that PokéAni usually parodied. So, really, trying to “be something in”, but relegating to the background what used to be the series’s original trait: human-Pokémon relationships, initiation, sharing, little friendly conflicts to move forwards, a way of loving the whole world, difficulties to overcome, the sacralization of communication, apologies and friendship.
I can agree that Best Wishes was very unpredictable but that doesn’t really mean much when most of the unexpected events were stuff that a lot of the fans really didn’t want to see. Trip’s and Ash’s rivalry should’ve gotten more development instead of dedicating all of Trips attention to Alder, Trip and Ash SHOULD’ve fought later in the league, Ash and N being enemies would’ve been more interesting (imo anyway), I would’ve preferred getting an explanation for Dento’s Purrloin fear, etc. I could never entrust myself to Best Wishes because pretty much every single thing that happened (especially in Season 2) was a disappointment. But that’s just me.
It’s indeed an old post and: -> “a lot of the fans really didn’t want to see“ Sounds like “fans who weren’t the targeted audience wanted […]”. -> “Trip’s and Ash’s rivalry should’ve gotten more development instead of dedicating all of Trips attention to Alder“ I was SHOOTI’S CHARACTERIZATION to not care about Satoshi. It would have been another character, then! :3 He was clear about the fact that Adeku was “his goal” since BW031, and his whole crisis revolved around Adeku, and got solved through and by Adeku. Then, when he got his resolution? => -> “Trip and Ash SHOULD’ve fought later in the league“ Why? Because it’s the “usual route”? Personally, precisely because Shooti got his resolution with Adeku at the end of the Junior Cup, it felt logical to me that he and Satoshi wouldn’t get a “hype” battle in the League. Shooti had nothing to prove to Satoshi, didn’t care a lot about Satoshi (it was his personality, characters had been previously commenting on his behaviours); there was nothing at stake between them except Satoshi’s previous losses (and Satoshi hadn’t been “humiliated” in a way by them, as he has been with Shigeru or Shinji). Personally, I found that dynamic quite interesting, because a “rivalry” which wasn’t exactly a main one like before (ie Satoshi’s comment during the Donamite “We’re all rivals!”). -> “Ash and N being enemies would’ve been more interesting (imo anyway)“ As an UnkNownShipper who had been waiting for two years for them to meet, I feel really confident in saying that their meeting got, in substance, what I would have liked to get dynamic-wise if they were enemies. I was curious about them being antagonists; I was provided with an UA of the games’ plot (Reshiram marking a rupture between Ghetsis and N&the goddesses before the Plasma-thing) that made, in a way, things a bit more depressing and substantially interesting: “what would happen if N had understood that Ghetsis was a bad person, but still had trouble getting rid of his logic and the distrust of humans that he was taught?”. I liked how Episode N handled it, showed that N wasn’t a free-roaming spirit (his eyes lacked the “light” in them except during his conversation with Satoshi during the climax; N’s way of giving compliments was with the use of a negative form (“I don’t [negative] you”). So, we didn’t get the exact same thing as the games’ plot, but for me, BW! offered something really accurate, while still remaining kids-friendly, about a form of mental conditioning and abuse. -> “I would’ve preferred getting an explanation for Dento’s Purrloin fear” The episode was toying with the viewers, it was a big “=DDD” from the script, I know kids who got that the situation was supposed to be HILARIOUS given that the situation was over and the characters were provided with an explanation but the viewers’ omniscient point of view just switched to an exterior focalisation just to prevent viewers from knowing. It’s supposed to be frustrating. It’s also supposed to be funnily frustrating. And overall, that’s why I liked a lot of “tricks” in BW!; because it was playing a lot with usual schemes or motives which had been used in previous series, and just adverted the usual consequences or follow-ups :3 (D&P did that a lot, too, though a bit more straightforwardly and mostly around Team Rocket).
