The Pokemon XY anime is actually pretty good???

[Persona]

I’ve watched a few episodes off and on of the Pokemon tv show since the original, mainly seeing the episodes during the Diamond/Pearl/Platinum era because it was on before I went to work, and didn’t really enjoy it because it felt terribly low budget. I remember one gym battle had a Blastoise that never stopped spinning because it was easier to animate a spinning shell than to draw a fucking Blastoise.

Anyway, I saw that XY is on Netflix and decided to watch and YOOO WHAT HAPPENED, THE SHOW IS ACTUALLY ENTERTAINING AGAIN!

Here’s a fat Pika

The XY series follows Ash as he is flown into France by his French sugar mama Alexa, a reporter lady who’s totally riding his dick. As the series goes on, pretty much every side character wants to ride Ash’s dick, including an inventor kid who’s catch phrase is literally, “THE FUTURE IS NOW,” and a hottie who’s been lusting after Ash since they were babies.

This lady won’t shut up about Ash even though she’s like 20 years older. She also talks some mad shit when she notices this other girl is paying attention to Ash. She stalks Ash throughout the series and flew him to France in the first place.

Team Rocket also happens to be in France, and this time they have mind control braces that cause Pokos to go nuts. This causes the first problem in the series where they put a brace on the French Pokemon Professor’s Garchomp, making it go nuts and destroy Paris with Hyper Beams. Eventually it climbs the Eiffel Tower and Ash chases after it to try and calm it down before the Police have to kill it.

Eventually Ash is able to talk sense into it long enough for Pikachu and friends to bust the brace off and everything ends happily. While Ash is on TV, Serena, daughter of a famous Rhyhorn racer, notices Ash and recognizes him. This causes her to start her own Pokemon journey to catch up to him and see if Ash remembers her.

He doesn’t.

I was surprised the show actually has nice production values and the animation wasn’t garbage anymore. I’m guessing a new animation studio is in charge because the quality is actually nice now. It’s more obvious than ever that Ash is actually 10 years old with the way the shots are laid out in the city and he looks tiny as hell. It’s also entertainingly paced in a way that’s similar to the original series, and all the new characters bounce off each other in an organic way. That organic way being that they all want Ash’s dick, but it works.

Also so many dramatic poses what the heck. Ash does like flips and shit when giving commands now.

More screenshots:

Anyway, if y’all have some time and want to watch some Pokemon, I’d recommend XY. It’s way better than every other series I’ve seen since the original, and I’ve tried watching through all the other series that were on Netflix. Give it a shot.

[Ymer]

I’ll take this recommendation to heart and tune in if it’s ever on Cartoon Network here. Well, if the Swedish dub is decent at least.

Have any of the recentish Pokemon movies been any good? I feel like that would be a slightly more digestible way to get my AniPoke fill.

[loki]

@Ymer

Have any of the recentish Pokemon movies been any good? I feel like that would be a slightly more digestible way to get my AniPoke fill.

it’s not really recent any more, but i remember movie 8 starting with a big ancient battle between armies of pokemon that was pretty cool.

[sleepysmiles]

Whoa those screencaps don’t just look like the original series redrawn in obnoxious bright computer colors

I mean they still kind of look like that, but you can tell they have a new animation director.

Maybe they’ve hit the point where grown up fans of the old show are working on it (because holy shit it’s been around for like 20 years now)

[ArOne]

Did Ash ever pay misty back for her bike? It always feel weird not seeing her the girl companion. Then again its weird Ash is still ten for something thats been going for longer than ten years.

[creep]

ash prolly has some Franklin Richards eternal youth deal with a god pokemon

didn’t team rocket retire at som pont

[tacotaskforce]

Persona I want to see your PR video.

I want to see everyone’s PR video.

[Persona]

This is my old PR Video - I have a better outfit and hair style now.

I forgot about the outfit/appearance customization and how fun that was. XY is a pretty great game.

[tacotaskforce]

Guys there is a pokemon direct video on friday and it is 5 minutes long and that is basically the exact right length you’d want if you were going to announce a new mainline pokemon game and maybe throw in a note at the end to still be excited for that silly geocaching thing too maybe i dunno cellphones am i right people

[Persona]

POKEMON PLATINUM REMAKE LET’S GO

lol yeah right, it’s gonna be another mystery dungeon or some other kinda spinoff no one cares about.

I wonder if they’re ever gonna make Z? I could go for a Z or a new title right about now.

[tacotaskforce]

Word on the bullshit street of schoolchildren playing telephone is it’s Red/Green 2.

[Persona]

[sleepysmiles]

Wow i hope so

[ArOne]

Because I’ve got nothing better to do between filling out applications I’ve been giving this some of my time. The biggest draw of a pokemon cartoon or any other non game media is showing how the pokemon fit in as the animals of that world. So it’s cool seeing how Rhyhorns are acceptable racing animals to ride on despite being little rhinos covered in rock.

[Persona]

Yeah! They got it from the XY game which did a lot of that kinda worldbuilding. It’s a good time.

Also hurray for new Poko games!

[ArOne]

Still doing the whole Joys and Jennies are cousines thing I see. Can they at least get different hair styles so we can argue about which towns’ Joy and Jenny are the cutest? Can’t help but think there is some (possibly) well written fan fiction or creepy pasta about how they’re all clones by some agency that keep the preteen pokemon journey industry running for possibly nefarious purposes.

[BIGHEADMODE]

Aw man, so is the B&W anime basically set in New York, then? Oh man, isn’t there a hip industrial gentrification neighborhood in the games? I there an episode about that? That would be really fun to watch.

When the original Pokemon anime came out, I was in third grade, and Pokemon was the show we used as the cut-off for whether you were a baby or not. Apparently this is a common phenomenon–Daphny once said that it was Power Rangers for her age group. It also happened to air at 8AM, for some reason, meaning that I only got to watch the first ten minutes of it before I had to catch the bus. So, I never got to really enjoy the first pokemon cartoon.

I remember it as being pretty asinine but in a way that I would probably find comforting now and at the time found weirdly watchable.

Neat to hear that the newest incarnation is pretty good. Maybe I will watch some of it?

[BIGHEADMODE]

Oh man, new Poko games! That’s really fucking exciting for me as someone into the meta!

I wonder if they’ll tweak the type chart at all? Right now, Fairy is a bit too defensively infallible, Psychic is super weakened, and Ghost is pretty much only useful as a defensive dual typing. I don’t think we need another type, but we definitely need a balance tweak to address these issues. Grass is also a weirdly vulnerable typing, but I don’t know if that needs to be tweaked, as there seem to be a lot of viable Grass pokemon.

Also, no talk of the new pokemon that have already been revealed for Z?

Edit: Let me know if this stuff is considered a spoiler. I figure it’s all been announced and nobody is that precious about surprises in the poke games. I could be wrong, though!

http://www.pokemon.com/us/pokemon-news/a-new-mythical-pokemon-has-been-discovered/

Megearna looks like it could be awesome from a competitive perspective. I don’t really know the canon mythos about diancie, but it looks to be a steel-type diancie. If it’s Steel-Fairy type…whoa. That is possibly the best typing in the entire meta right now, and mega-diancie is already fast and strong as hell. A Steel-Fairy diancie would probably be slower, which might dampen its sweeping prowess, but still. Though I guess it all depends on whether it can go mega, which is what makes diancie so formidable.

I believe Volcanion was actually found in-cartridge before it was announced, so it’s actually playable on smogon right now. I messed around with it a little, but ultimately wasn’t that compelled, maybe because I’m not allowed to use it in my preferred format (can’t remember). Water/Fire typing sounds awesome, but it still leaves it vulnerable to Ground, Electric, and Rock with no immunities. So it’s not as cool as other conflicting typings like Fairy/Steel, Ghost/Dark, Water/Electric, and Flying/Ground, etc.

There’s also this whole mess here:

Apparently, in Z, zygarde will be this thing made of cells that are scattered over the region. They’ll graduallly coalesce into the super-duper zygarde. Sounds like it could be really cool in-game–maybe a series of repeate encounters or a scavenger hunt/collectathon. Supposedly, it will be the most powerful legendary yet, which…well, being over-powered is usually kind of boring from a competitive perspective.

Ash-Greninja is…y’know…probably just in the movie.

Here’s a pretty neat theory video on how the zygarde stuff is gonna play out that I think is probably pretty accurate.

And, finally, the eternal form of floette:

Apparently, this has some kind of plot significance? Like, it’s an immortal pokemon created by a guy or something? I dunno. Was it in one of the movies?

Anyway, like Volcanion it’s already secretly in X and Y. It’s basically an alternative to Florges (the evolved form) with some of Florges’ crazy Special Defense reallocated to Special Attack. It also has a unique move, which is the most powerful Fairy attack in the game (albeit with some recoil damage). Guessing this will be an in-game event pokemon in Z.

[BIGHEADMODE]

Just realized that this is in Cinephile, because anime.

Persona, does it make sense to make a Sun & Moon/Z hype thread in KOP or would it just be you talking to me with nothing for me to add, because I don’t actually play the cartridge games.

[Ymer]

We had two Pokemon podcasts in a row. I think there’s plenty of pokeloving to go around here for a thread.