06-22-2014, 01:13 PM | #26 |
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The thing is, with wikis most online users with a modicum of exposure to yelling fire are savvy enough to confirm if what they're looking at is legit. Often times too, since there are so many venues reporting things, some might not pay attention and miss errors or mis-reporting and the consequences for a mistake are rather low.
When it comes to Wiki or Wikia, I think the most topical threat right now, currently overshadowed by piracy, is/are comprehensive or semi-comprehensive plot, episode, chapter summaries, which can effectively spoil a plot and cost a studio investing a ton of money in a project significant demand. In the 1990's, critics or journalists would only provide a premise and general review - I have my Dad's guide to the '90s film by Leonard Maltin and it never spoiled anything, and that kind of reservation which was unique to newspapers isn't shared by wikias. It's a useful tool for someone who has seen episodes and doesn't want to forget - like, when I can't watch a Jojo episode I read up the character on Wikia to remind myself of the events and timeline placement, but the fact that it can also be used as a near-perfect substitute for watching is really dangerous. And people are conditioned so much to wanting this kind of spoiler dump, if you don't provide it or try to enforce witholding them people won't read your wiki and go somewhere else (like TVTropes).
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06-23-2014, 10:49 AM | #27 |
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06-23-2014, 11:10 AM | #28 | |
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I find Eureka to be much less annoying than Max. While I've only watched a small handful of Hoenn episodes (the first six or so and then a couple of random ones here or there), I think I've already seen enough to appreciate that Max is supposed to be the series' equivalent of that bratty little know-it-all boy we all knew (or perhaps were!) in childhood. I didn't care for Max's voice whereas Eureka's I'm neutral towards. Max often felt like a third wheel / fifth wheel whereas Eureka doesn't quite so much. (A little, sure, but not quite so much as Max.) I dunno. I'm not the biggest fan of Eureka but it is obvious why characters like her and Max exist -- they're the "Me too! " characters of a children's television series, the 4-to-8-year-old children who are meant to give the youngest viewers someone to relate to and/or feel superior to. Nowhere is this clearer than Eureka's pseudo-ownership of a Pokémon: while Max never got to own Pokémon because of the rules against children below the age of 10 becoming Pokémon Trainers, Eureka gets to own a Pokémon (Dedenne) because she *teeeeeeeeeeeechnically* doesn't own it -- she's "keeping it" for Citron, her older brother whose Pokémon Dedenne technically is. By playing with loopholes like this, the writers try to have their cake (not retconning half of Max's reason for being) and eat it too (titillating the youngest viewers by giving them a tot character who can kinda-sorta-not-really help out too). Given how Serena is the series' first official, no-two-ways-about-it girl in love with Ash, I sometimes wish that instead of having little girl Eureka we could've had older girl {someone} instead. It would've been nice to have given Serena a same-age girl to relate to and talk girl things with; the writers've tried it with Eureka but it went down the same way it does in real life when a 10-to-15 year old girl is at her parents' friends' party and the only same-gender playmate she can find there is a little 6-to-8 year old. I think it would've also been satisfying on a primal level, our instinctive desire to see people paired off nicely and neatly. "Ash goes with Serena, Citron goes with {person}." But it's okay. Eureka being present yet not being the girl I've just described is effectively little different from having no fourth character at all. I think that in a way her presence makes the Ash x Serena pairing less awkward for Citron should ShoPro ever have the balls to explore it further. Fans've often joked how awkward it would've been for Brock to have been this third wheel while Ash was shacking up with Misty or Dawn. I think it'd have been no less awkward for Citron. He'd just sort of be there ... inventing things ... while Ash and Serena are making out in a tent. ^^; It becomes a lot less awkward in this regard if you have a fourth character present. That's possibly what partly motivated their decision to have Ash have three traveling companions this time instead of just two. Who knows. Only time will tell.
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06-23-2014, 11:56 AM | #29 | |
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Honestly, it's not that much different to me. There's 4 people, but Eureka is like 1/2 of a person, so it's more like there's 2 1/2 supporting characters! You would think with more supporting characters, and Satoshi having less Pokemon, the development would be more focused on the humans. Maybe it'll happen in the future? Doubt it, but we can cross our fingers! It gives more room for gags, and leaves Serena in the tsukkomi spot (which she doesn't really do). I personally like Eureka. She has some good expressions, and she gets knocked around like everyone else. It's nice to have some playful energy in the group. Also with her and Citron supporting each other, it's kind of hard to imagine them apart. EDIT: One thing that disappointed me was that Citron's the cook. I was hoping that since Citron is the nerd, it'd force Serena to fill up that slot, which would knock it out of the regular trend of "older secondary male companions are always the cook". Serena fills that role every now and then, but I think that's just inconsistency with writers....or I just remember something that didn't actually happen (I'm not talking about sweets). Unrelated, but enjoy! Dear lord my heart stopped when I saw that. Last edited by big bad birtha; 06-23-2014 at 02:05 PM. |
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06-23-2014, 05:27 PM | #30 |
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Started watching this, have watched the first two episodes (and the mega bonus episode which is far ahead of that).
Actually a fan of the opening theme. Also, as someone who hasn't watched the series seriously since DPPt and has never watched the original Japanese (only the dub), wow Ash is actually a ten-year-old when did this happen. Like, sure he really should be older by now, but I don't care as much because it actually seems like Ash is actually depicted as a ten-year-old now. In previous series, notably Advance and DPPt, he was portrayed as a more experienced trainer and his companion was the newbie of the group, almost serving as his apprentice (moreso in Advance, arguably). But this is the first time where I've watched the anime and everyone actually seems to be the age they are. Ash even throws a temper tantrum in the first episode, alongside a few other examples of his rashness. Part of this is just his personality, but still. He's a badass kid who rushes off to save a pokemon with little care for his own safety, yes, but he's a kid all the same. The same goes for the other characters, from the impossibility to keep Eurika down, Citron's nerdy know-how but inability to do anything else, to Serena's preteen frustrations. Also, the battle scenes are gorgeous. Nor is Ash particularly unintelligent. 'Power reset' can be screamed as much as people like, but the Ash of today bears no comparison with who he once was. And the animators must be paid a complement- They manage to make moves as mundane as Sand Attack or Pin Missile look relevant and powerful, a huge improvement on the "special names for ordinary actions" we had back in the days of the first anime, where most attacks were pretty much interchangable with eachother. It's a nice and enjoyable change, and I'm going to be continuing watching (if I can ever remember to download episodes). |
06-23-2014, 10:11 PM | #31 |
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XY032: Spoiler: show If you don't watch the Pokémon anime anymore and you don't plan to ever again, you should definitely check out this post. It's quite long, and I'm not asking you to read all of it. But trust me on this much: expand the spoiler box and scroll down until you see the animated gif. Then, if you're interested to learn the story behind that, scroll back up and start reading. (And don't miss the many hyperlinks either! Lots of pictures embedded in the text that'll be vital for you to see if you've not watched the episode yourself.)
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06-24-2014, 02:04 AM | #33 |
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Are you disappointed because you know about it first-hand from the (mostly Sinnoh) days when it actually showed up in the anime? Or are you disappointed because you read about it (possibly for the first time) in my post and it sounded like something you would've wanted to see them keep?
Spoiler: show
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06-30-2014, 09:12 PM | #35 |
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06-30-2014, 11:24 PM | #36 |
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In other news, I've updated the second post in the thread to include links to our posts regarding Episodes 001 thru 010. I didn't realize that my first post about XY here was after watching Episode 007. But it makes sense. I didn't regularly post about my Pokémon viewing here in the past because any time I did post about it it would usually go ignored. But when bbb and Doppel decided to investigate Best Wishes, that motivated me to start posting more often about Pokémon; and then when they picked up XY following my post for XY007, that really motivated me to start posting about it weekly, as we can see from the post history in the Suggestion Box (and now from the links provided in the second post of this thread as well).
While the following posts had little or nothing to do with specific episodes, I thought it would be wrong of me not to provide links to them here for easy viewing. I didn't want to include them in the second post though since I would prefer to keep that post dedicated to XY episode discussion, so I'll include the links here instead. Enjoy! Discussion about LucarioPK Fansubs: Talon87, kaisap112 A visit from PocketMonsters: Sunain, Talon87, Sunain, Talon87, Adamant, Char, Talon87, TSS_Killer, big bad birtha, Doppleganger, TSS_Killer, Talon87, TSS_Killer, Doppleganger, Talon87 Tip: for easiest viewing, just click the first link and then scroll down. The subsequent posts tend to appear one after another with few interruptions. ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ Before, I provided a list of my top three recommended episodes from XY011 thru XY030. Now that I've reminded myself about what Episodes XY001 thru XY009 were, what are my recommendations from those episodes? And what would be my top three picks for the series so far overall? Tastes vary, but for me the XY series enjoyed a very strong start. I absolutely loved Serena and she was an exciting delight throughout XY001, XY002, her minor appearances in XY003, 004, and 005, and then of course in XY006 and XY007. I enjoyed the series premiere more than I enjoyed Hoenn's, Sinnoh's, or Unova's series premieres. Ash's gym battle against Viola was (dare I say it) one of the best gym battles I've ever seen. (Certainly one of the best animated, holy cow.) Viola herself was a delight. (There's a reason fans were happy to see her again in XY020!) All in all, there were a lot of little things in most of the episodes which entertained me. But that stated, even early XY suffered from a few fillers. Sadly, the two first captures of the series following the premiere -- XY003's Fletchling and XY004's Dedenne -- were not only boring affairs in and of themselves but gave us Pokémon who have proven to be devoid of personality. And while I enjoyed the Furfrou episode (XY008) more at the time than I'd probably care to admit, it was a sign of fillers yet to come. So, when I look back on the first ten episodes, if I had to recommend three episodes the three I would pick would be ...
But if you asked me to include all the episodes which I've seen so far (which would mean that we include XY031, 032, and 033 now as well), then I think I'd definitely need to make room for XY032 somewhere in there. Must-see TV for anyone who's ever enjoyed watching the Pokémon anime. And while 030, 031, and 033 independently may not make my personal cut for top three, they're all contributors to the excellence of the current story arc.
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07-12-2014, 01:37 PM | #37 |
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I've gotten really bored of Serena because as of 40 episodes in she has absolutely no purpose but to bring back a shipping subplot that was killed off with Misty a decade ago. I fear Serena will never get a real goal and she'll just try to be Ash's love interest all saga until she leaves.
As of now Serena has has the least memorable first 40 episodes of any female companion. It's hard to imagine at this time in past sagas May and Dawn were already being properly developed and had established goals and battles. The writers aren't fooling anyone. Serena's crush on Ash will be dropped at the end of the generation and we've seen it happen with Misty a decade ago. If you guys want to see the, "girly female trainer who learns from Ash" done right, they already did it with May and Dawn. It's hard to get into Serena when they did her character better two times over. |
07-18-2014, 11:44 AM | #38 |
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07-18-2014, 11:50 AM | #39 |
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So Talon, how much does the actual animated battles play a role for you in enjoying the Pokemon episodes?
For me, it seems like if I have any inkling of how the fight will end, it's not exciting. There's no tension knowing that the cosmic forces of the universe have a predetermined winner. There's a bit of crossover in this with HxH and Jojo, with both authors unwilling to let convention hold back the result of an eventful fight.
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07-18-2014, 12:17 PM | #40 | |
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Other times a battle is about seeing a solid fight. It helps to not know the outcome, but sometimes you can still have a good sense of what the outcome will be yet enjoy the fight. This has overlap with what I said above, but here the focus is less on "OMG GRAPHIX!" and more on "OMG MARTIAL ARTS!" I'd liken it to wanting to watch a Bruce Lee fight sequence. You knew with most of Lee's fights that he was going to emerge the victor. Even if he suffered temporary setbacks, he was Bruce Lee. He never lost. But you still want to watch those fights because you want to bear witness to the amazing feats of the human body he was able to pull off. The jumps. The flips. The kicks. The punches. Some good examples of this category would, I guess, be most gym battles where you suspect that Ash is going to win on his first try yet the sneak peek has revealed that the gym leader uses a Pokémon with a special trait. For example, the sneak peek for Ash's battle against Roxie revealed that she leads off with a Koffing that moves and behaves like no Koffing we'd ever seen before. This excited people going into the episode, and then when you actually watch the episode you're like "OH MY GOD THIS KOFFING IS AMAZING! O_O" Similar, I suppose, is when you go back and re-watch a beloved gym battle from back in the day. The ones that really stick with you are the ones that aren't ruined by the fact that you now know the outcome. Many battles can become dull once you know how they play out, but the truly great ones are the ones where amazing stuff happens that is still entertaining to watch on subsequent viewings. Ash's first match against Blaine? Phenomenal cliff hanger that's still great to watch the lead-up to even though you know how it ends now. Ash's first match against Sabrina? Amazing battle because of the nostalgia&anxiety it evokes from when you watched it the first time. Pikachu using Thunder for the first time? (And the way Ash orders it? And the way it's animated?) So frickin' epic. And then the way Kadabra morphs it into a dragon and has it chase after Pikachu who is fleeing for his life from it? That camera shot is something seared into our brains. But I guess to actually answer your question ... I suppose that the battles don't matter as much to me as a) the journey that leads us to them and b) other, non-battle destinations. Like ... with XY, if you look at the episodes I say that I have enjoyed the most (and, more specifically, what it was about them that I enjoyed so much), you'll find that most of them weren't big on battles. I rate Ash's match against Viola pretty highly (because man if that wasn't beautifully animated), but his battle against Grant -- while entertaining -- doesn't even place on my Top 3 lists that I wrote for either XY overall or for XY Episodes 12 thru 30. If you read my posts, you'll find that I agree that not knowing a battle's outcome is a big, big help for the entertainment factor for most battles. One of the things that's regrettable about our fandom and the times we live in is that it is far too easy to get spoiled about the schedule for the show. Finding out that the episode following a gym battle is a light-hearted filler episode kills any chance you might have had at being excited over whether Ash was going to win or lose. And it's the same problem for the other scenario too: finding out that Episode 702 is him still fighting the gym can rob you of excitement as you now know that Episode 701, in which Ash begins his gym challenge and which you have yet to see, is going to either end in his defeat or else in a now-expected cliffhanger. So unfortunately, it can be tough for gym battles to be exciting anymore. The ones that are have to make heavy use of spectacle, be it stunning animation, remarkable properties of the Pokémon or its attacks, or both. Indeed, some of the most memorable combat moments for me in Unova were ones that featured some sort of spectacle:
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07-18-2014, 12:29 PM | #41 |
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It's interesting to me because "not knowing the outcome" is really a one-time thing, the first time you see it. If you rewatch the fight, as you kind of hinted on, if the fight really teeters on that one unknown feature it might be severely depreciated during the next go around. So, I'd think that a fight has to have some interested alternative features that give it replay value to the point that the appreciation would be like a replay on the first view. Something like Archer v. Berserker or the Bruce Lee fights you mentioned. There's enough information out there so that people know about a highly probable outcome, but the actual fight itself has enough to hold interest.
I guess then, that's probably the biggest reason I haven't been able to hold onto Pokemon since Geewun. The battles should be the key attraction of Pokemon because everything else unique to an anime presentation is left deliberately stunted. I remember when I first played Red/Blue, almost two years after I got into Pokemon, there was an amazing sense of liberation from Ash's dunderhead adventure and being able to steamroll the AI kind of reaffirmed the long-promised ego trip. Everyone talks about how they would be better trainers than Ash, and I finally got to be that but ultimately ruined a lot of the fight appreciation I had for the anime.
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07-18-2014, 12:54 PM | #42 |
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Any story about fighters on a journey is going to be hindered greatly by plot armor. Pokémon is no exception. If you took trainers out of the equation, making the story about a ragtag team of traveling animals; and if you made it so that setbacks were, while perhaps infrequent, not rare; and if you made it so that these setbacks covered the full gamut up to and including loss of life; and if you had the story reach its terminus at the end of each generational cycle, with a brand new team of heroes and villains showing up each cycle; then I think you would have an exciting story on your hands.
Producers of children's television programs are too afraid of making stories like this though. Children already have a hard enough time losing one friend in a two-hour film. Asking them to accept the loss or permanent injury of multiple friends on a regular basis is something most studios are not willing to risk. Too much backlash from parents, and (legitimately) too much risk that you hurt the marketability of the product because it becomes unpopular with its target demographic. Like, which would you rather make if you were in it for the money? A children's television series that is critically acclaimed and watched by 25,000 adults and 5,000 children? Or one which is panned for being derivative and safe but which sees 125,000 children tuning in weekly? At the end of the day, children's television isn't written for the 0.1% of audience members who are above the age of 18. So expecting it to conform to the standards of adult fiction is unrealistic.
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07-19-2014, 12:47 AM | #43 |
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Talon, I've been wondering... how much do you actually keep up with the various spoilers given by magazines and the like for upcoming episodes? Sometimes you appear to be aware of what's coming up, while other times you seem surprised by things we've known for months.
(also, XY34 is one of my least favorite episodes in the entire series as a whole. Ugh) |
07-19-2014, 01:25 AM | #44 | |
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AK2 loves spoilers. Anything you guys know about the anime, he'll find out within hours of you guys. When I have also been spoiled on something, then we'll discuss it together. But when I haven't, he tends to avoid giving it away, framing our discussions as though he were only as knowledgeable about future events as I am. Though sometimes he'll slip up or he'll just be too eager to share something exciting, and I'll learn from him something that I didn't previously know. Rarely, though more this year than in previous years, I'll be spoiled about an upcoming event in the anime by someone here on UPN. I don't like knowing the titles of upcoming episodes weeks in advance. It gives away too much about the story's pacing and direction. Between A, B, and C, I'd rather go with C:
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07-19-2014, 09:20 AM | #45 |
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I agree with a lot of what you said. I tend to dislike this kind of pseudo-philosophical lecturing in general, it usually coming with a bunch of clunky and hard-to-interpret dialogue that doesn't make half as much sense as the writers thought it would. In this particular instance, they also do such a painfully terrible job showing Corni and Lucario overcoming their issue; there was no real difference between what didn't really work last episode and what worked this episode, and they didn't even properly convey what was supposed to be different this time around. Also, it was overly slow-paced, which isn't good when the plot is barely managing to make sense at all and isn't really about anything that's particularly entertaining to watch. It just felt like a failed attempt to be deep. I can't imagine the target audience for the series not being bored out of their skulls from this.
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07-23-2014, 06:32 PM | #47 |
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Been busy; XY035 is seen but post is stuck in the pipeline. Also saw the recent 2-minute thing with Watanabe Mayu. Was reminded by it to go looking for the film's theme song. And what do you know? It's out! Chorus at 1m10s. To be honest, the chorus is the only part I really enjoy a lot. ^_^; Part of it is probably the power of association (having heard that specific bit numerous times already in the anime's movie promotional segments) and part of it is probably just the fact that that really is the only good part of the song. ^^;; (Perhaps that's why they've pushed that specific portion again and again? Because they knew the rest of the song was forgettable?)
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07-23-2014, 11:16 PM | #48 |
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I think the entire thing is good. This is actually the first time in quite a while I've liked the theme song so much I bought the single.
Last time was movie 12, with Shokotan's Kokoro no antena. |
07-24-2014, 12:34 PM | #49 |
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