…because Pokémon was not intended to be a show or movie. Red and Green came out as video games in 1995. It was not until 1997, two years later, when the anime was first introduced to Japan. Pokémon was, is, and will continue to be primarily a video game franchise. If you enjoy the anime more than the games, that’s totally fine, but don’t expect GF to consider a secondary asset the most important.
like literally every Pokémon game barring G/S/C
*myriads of old Pokémon, with some Gen 1 creatures being reimagined into fresh and unique designs
or yknow
those R/B/Y games which were rereleased for the 3DS
the things that literally got Pokémon its start
Personally, I felt Pokémon had a great anniversary. I’ve been drifting away from Pokémon for a while now, but this anniversary has brought me back. The legendary events happening every month kept me on my toes, forcing me to focus. I’ve had a blast playing my Sun version, which is more than I can say for the previous gen.
While its true that the series is more related to games, they never really celebrated them in particular…Looking at what we got in regards to the anniversary in terms of games;
Pokemon Sun & Moon
A great game, but not so much for celebrating the 20th anniversary. Clearly designed more for the Nintendo Switch, with a lot of aspects made for them being more related to introducing new Pokemon than celebrating old. The closest we get to acknowledging the fanbase’s history being the inclusion of Red & Blue as rivals coupled, hinting towards Ash Ketchum being canon in the games and with Pikachu’s with varying hats. Many fans were hoping for more, particularly in the after-story of the game where they had hoped to at least battle more older trainers or rivals. These seem more like afterthoughts given they didnt affect the main story at all.
Pokemon Go
A great idea that was essentially misused playing on Nostalgia to earn money Which is designed more so to encourage activity and cash-in on the Pokemon franchise, given its basically a skin swap of a pre-existing game. It admittedly will eventually be more of a celebration of all of Pokemon when all the newer generations are introduced (its just introduced Pokemon for the second gen)
Re-releases of R/B/Y
This is a great idea both to celebrate the series and as a business perspective. Though R/B/Y are available online on gameboy ports that fans have worked tirelessly on for years, you can play most if not all Pokemon games online nowadays and introducing R/B/Y for a console that will become out-dated next year seems like an odd choice.
So out of all their choices in terms of ‘celebrating the games’ they basically had a rushed release of a game clearly designed for 2017 release, a rip-off of another game and ports of older games to a soon to be retired console that were already available to people who own a computer…
As a sidenote they also have the card game, which is basically reprinting the first generation of Pokemon in better looking cards, but thats about it.
Once again, as you so rightly pointed out, a majority of games have already done this so it doesnt make Sun/Moon special - and honestly Sun/Moon should be special. It had better graphics and it was the 20th anniversary game that according to the advertising was meant to bring everything together… instead it kind of just lightly touched on refrences or bring in a random well know character or two.
This is an interesting step, the reimaginings are interesting and a nice way of showing how Pokemon has evolved overtime along with giving variants of older Pokemon. Its nice in that regard, but was limited to a handful of G1.
Releasing legendaries from the movies/anime every month was the only thing it truely did that felt like it was celebrating the brand as a whole.
The debate was never whether Sun/Moon are absolutely fantastic. Its more in regards to celebrating the brand as a whole. They can be great games, you can think that if you’d like, i’m not stopping you and i enjoyed certain aspects of them. If they were a regular release then i’d be more acceptant of them.
Except none of them really felt like they were celebrating the brand as a whole, and i expected more effort to acknowledge and celebrate what had came before - an aspect i expect will more than likely occur with the Sun/Moon sequel/port/whatever for the Nintendo Switch and Pokemon; I Choose You
Meanwhile Digimon did this with games, posters, movies, anime… everything that it is it celebrated - and it put more effort into some of them than Pokemon did on others (Specifically referring to the mess that is Pokemon Go). Digimon brought in every character including fan favourites and it gave us six movies, of which they are still ongoing.
I still disagree. The fact that in the game, the building of a Pokemon league is a crucial plotpoint. Even in the end the player becomes the champion and has a theme reminiscent to the iconic theme of the series. Also, several characters come back for the battle tree, like Red and Cynthia.
I was sure i already mentioned the small selection of returning characters for the battle tree… either way the battle tree as a concept is great but the execution could have been a million times better.
Out of the 13 characters that are apparently in the battle tree, i believe less than half are returning characters, several are completely unrecogniseable unless you played the recent games, and only two of them are from the original games. The battle tree could have been a massive opportunity to celebrate every game or every movie similar to the legendary giveaways - we could have had Brock, Misty, Team Rocket.
It was nice that a very small group of characters returned, but it should and could have easily been larger - especially considering a few of these characters dont even have the teams they had in previous games. Are people really happy with Colress as a member of the battle tree instead of a more well known important character?
##are you honestly telling me that you feel less than seven returning characters is a good way to celebrate 20 years of Pokemon?
Its effectively the ‘Bionicle Stars’ of Pokemon… except Nintendo could have easily added more characters…
I’m saying that you’re completely ignoring the fact that the game overall celebrates Pokemon. Not just the battletree. The Pokemon league, Alolan variants, returning theme songs, return to the roots of having a stronger story, and even creating new features for a definitive Pokemon experience.
Sun and Moon as an entirety is a celebration of what makes these games great and fixes the not-so-great, like removing HMs.
I’m a relatively new fan, but even I can recognize this Scar. It’s not about being humongous celebration, it’s a celebration of the series by giving us a near-flawless game fans have wanted. And we appreciate the effort put into the game.
Maybe because you are a relatively new fan you didnt play the older games… however this statement is unintentionally hilarious to anyone who has.
Every aspect you mentioned here is in older Pokemon games except for the Alolan variants I am not ignoring the repeated tropes and aspects that have been in almost every game of Pokemon
As for the ‘new features for a definitive play exprience’ - the main new feature they added is completely unused by everyone, which is effectively the option to take pictures of Pokemon. Something used in a few trials and nowhere else. The other main feature is the battle plaza, something either not used by many, or an example of how few people are actually playing/brought the game as per the global mission proves;
You can view the failure as either a sign of few people using the battle plaza OR few buying the game OR few playing the game. However you view it, it shows Pokemon Sun & Moon is not a near-flawless game. Especially given the previous games had more engagement than this from aspects such as the GTS, Wonder Trade or other competitions.
You enjoyed the game, i get that.
Except its the duty of Nintendo as a business to provide a good game, otherwise they simply wont sell as well. Getting a good game is not a ‘celebration of the series’ its a basic requirement in order to sell the game.
Sun/Moon had the fastest amount of pre-orders primarily due to its media promoting the idea that it was going to be a culmination of everything that came before it. A humongous celebration of the 20th anniversary.
“It all comes together in Pokemon Sun & Pokemon Moon”
Trailers that showed off generation 1 Pokemon with new forms
Getting to ride a charizard (people expected a gimmick similar to the Ruby & Saphire remakes).
Everything about Sun/Moon implied it would make a large effort to feel like a celebration, instead it was a good game as with every other Pokemon game… and ended up selling as well as every other Pokemon game. Many of the pre-orders ended up being cancelled though and the game definitely didnt perform as well as Nintendo originally hoped.
Alright I’m a big Digimon fan I have seen every season adventure, adventure 02, tamers, Frontier, data squad, and xross. Haven’t seen the latest version of the series and probably won’t either. But I’m going to weigh in and defend Pokémons 20th anniversary.
Let’s see Digimons 15th anniversary is great no questions for certain people, you mentioned earlier Scar that Digimon had movies, posters, etc. Yes they did all of that which you could experience if you live in Japan. If you lived in Japan you could have gone to live events with other fans. While fans outside of Japan got none of that, all we got was small news about what happened. They got movie premieres for all movies, while the U.S. got one movie premiere which didn’t do so well, one year after the first movie aired. While yes you can watch the movies on day of release outside of Japan you have to watch it on Crunchyroll and have a paid subscription, or wait a week and watch it for free.
But what about the merchandise the special edition digivices and figures, and collectible. You know the cool things you want to buy because they’re anniversary editions well Japan gets that. You can get it too but you have to import it and who has the money for that.
Really the 15th anniversary of Digimon is great to celebrate if you live in Japan because they get more and have access to more things. But they isolated the fanbase in other countries with just giving us subtitled releases and not merchandise.
Pokémon go a game that brought fans together even if it was for a little time. It brought people who were fans of Pokémon back and created new ones as well. There are videos of people who never met becoming friends through this game and that’s amazing. Digimons 15th anniversary hasn’t even done that we got a port of a ps vita game for PS4 (cyber sleuth) cool i guess. Oh wait we’re also getting another port of a vita game (world next order) really like make an original game. You said Pokémon ported over games so did Digimon.
The 20th anniversary of Pokémon has brought more fans together by making it accessible to others while Digimon has isolated fans outside of Japan. As a long time Digimon fan this makes me mad that a series I’ve invested to really hasn’t done anything great for its fans outside of Japan. Cool I can watch the movies but that’s it can’t get cool merch unless I import it. So compared to Digimons 15th anniversary celebration, Pokémons has been great and better just by bringing fans together and making a great experience overall.
This is primarily true, you are right that Digimon’s major celebration was in Japan given its popularity. If they had better distribution then the celebration would have been perfect, which is why i feel Pokemon’s could have been better given they had a worldwide coverage of releases and it could have been as grand as they were hyping.
Aspects such as the Pokemon Go Mewtwo event didnt happen
Ash appearing in Sun/Moon didnt happen
Hype around the Magearna movie revealing a secret that would change the Pokemon world… didnt happen
I dont mean to hate on the benefits of Pokemon Go, its just the core game is actually a rip-off of a previous game made by Niantic. Inc - a horror game based around zombies i believe.
Fun fact; This is primarily why you’ll find Pokestops in Church’s, Graveyards and other creepy or old areas.
It was more the community that made Pokemon Go worth it given Pokemon fans are generally shy and bringing them outdoors and putting them with other shy people, it kind of encouraged them to mingle and interact more.
Its a great idea in concept as i’ve said, but the company who made it didnt put too much effort into it originally until they realised how much it had the potential to make them after the great server crashing event that occured for several months into the games release and is still having issues nowadays.
Its more that if a series that was primarily Japan based had so much celebration - then why didnt Pokemon? A series that had almost a year worth of hype of it being the 20th anniversary that was supposed to culminate in a game that embraced everything that came before it, improved on what came before and generally provided refrences and nods to previous series.
A new game is nice and all, but if you spend a year hyping for said game with large events such as giveaways of rare Pokemon, a teaser about Ash Ketchum and Ash Greninja being in the game, Pikachu finally saying his name rather than his cry… as a fan dont you end up expecting it to be something that ties in more with the past.
Its ok to admit that as a 20th anniversary game it didnt really offer a lot that celebrated the previous games in the series - that doesnt make the game bad. I highly suspect that the version released in 2017 may actually fix some of these by having a larger battle tree, more involvement from older characters (Colress for example given his comments about staying in Alola) and other goodies like that.
Pokemon Generations, 12 episodes of game lore goodness
Ash and Serena sharing a steamy romantic kiss in the anime
Alolan Forms, celebrating past Pokemon in a new light
Sun and Moon, Pokemon games that have had the longest
development time out of every Pokemon game made by Gamefreak. As a result they’re the only Pokemon games to have a strong narrative along with interesting world design and pretty cool NPCs, and since they were willing to carry a heavy topic like abuse and shove it at the forefront, they get my vote as the best.
Several references to past gens in Sun and Moon (my favorite being nugget bridge)
The Battle Tree, which is infinitely better than the Battle Tower and the Battle Maison (still not quite as good as the Battle Frontier or World Championship though)
Pokemon GO, essentially bringing back that first gen feel for old fans who may have fallen off from the series.
The release of first gen TCG cards for old fans to collect
The re-release of RBY on the eShop. That’s a big one for many
It also shouldn’t. Unless you want to erase Trainer Red and Trainer Blue/Green from existence
The thing about Pokemon is that it ALWAYS remembers past games and past events. Especially in the most recent games, where they’re setting up a multiverse. It’d be different if this was a series where they just kind of forget the past games and past characters (like Digimon does, it’s why I stopped following the anime portion of the series. I like the games though, they’re pretty cool). The Pokemon Anime isn’t even the main draw of the series, the games are the canon lore as far as any Pokemon fan should be concerned. Of course, there is speculation that Ash is part of the Pokemon game universe, but as an actor on a TV show.
I’ve evaluated most of those prior, but here is a summary;
Every Event Pokemon; Great
Pokemon Generations; Great
Ash and Serena; Arguably not done because of the 20th anniversary, though nice to include and the final battle of the series brought together a bunch of other characters from the series.
Alolan forms; Great, though would have been nice having more
Sun/Moon development time; Arguably this is because of the Nintendo 3DS being terribad and Sun/Moon show signs of clearly being designed for the Nintendo Switch
Refrences; Alright, but mentioning something isnt particularly impressive
Battle Tree; Alright, works well in concept but feel it wasnt finished in time due to lacking a larger selection of characters
Pokemon Go; Alright, works well in concept but feel it wasnt finished in time due to the almost year long wait for working servers and none of the promised events in the first year
Re-done versions of the cards; Neat, but appeals to a very small segment of the fanbase
Re-release of RBY; Alright, except they are being re-released on a console that will be outdated next year. Hopefully they will work on the Nintendo Switch
Except Sun/Moon confirm his existence via Ash Greninja, Ash Pikachu wearing Ash’s Hat and the main character getting a letter from Ash.
Ash in the gameverse is canon and the anime is taking place before the events of the game as described by Lilly - who mentions how her mother works at Aether Paradise (referring to it as another mansion where Lilly used to live with her) and that her brother is elsewhere.
If anything the anime could even crossover with the games plot in some form, though i expect the plotline of a mother-daughter abusive relationship might be toned down considerably.
The multiverse has existed since the early games, primarily as a way of explaining trading/mystery gifts.
The Ultra Beasts were introduced as the ‘multiverse destroyers’, effectively a villain that would threaten all the multiverses. In most adaptations this would be the time for a multiverse crossover with characters from every game returning for one massive battle with the Ultra Beasts… however in Sun/Moon this only resulted in a few characters. As such i am hoping the Nintendo Switch game expands more on the concept and explains how much, if any, of Hoenn is still around after the Ultra Beasts effectively attacked it and potentially destroyed it.
No, they don’t. That was a demo, all of the events in it are clearly non-canon, right down to the region layout. Ash Greninja is no more canon than Spikey Ear Pikachu, which was given out specifically to coincide with Arceus and the Jewel of Life.
The anime ALWAYS loosely follows story elements from the games. Last time I checked, Ash didn’t catch Zygarde, Yveltal, and Xerneas in X and Y. You did. Last time I checked, Ash didn’t start out in Pallet town against an angsty spikey haired jerk, Red did. Last Time I checked, Ash never won the Indigo League, Red did. This isn’t up for debate. You can’t have Ash when you have Red and Blue, unless the anime is an anime in the games, and the Pikachu outside of the hotel is Ash’s Pikachu in the show. That would make sense, and it explains why kids are playing Pokemon games in the game world as well.
Even if we dismiss the demo, Ash Greninja can be transfered to the full game. His original Trainer is listed as ‘Ash’. Are we supposed to just ignore his transformation into ‘Ash Greninja’?
Ash’s Pikachu is also confirmed in the full game and is wildly expected to be given out in multiple events worldwide in 2017 (explaining his multiple hats). Are we supposed to just ignore Ash’s Pikachu, owned by Ash and wearing one of Ash’s hats?
There is doing things as a treat to fans, but at some point you have to consider Ash’s existence as canon, even if he’s in a different multiverse.
This… explains… so… much… you’re just liking things without completing the game/paying attention to it. Did you play the UB quest?
You just dismissed the factual core aspect of the Ultra Beasts and the in-game explanation for why several characters are in Alola…
Its an element of the game that characters are taken/fall through Ultra Beast portals. Several character’s entire backstory is based on this. Their backstory is tied with the destruction or attack on the places they came from, from which they have no memory of. There are several comments that shoot off from this referring to the place that characters came from being destroyed.
Mohn for example is Lusamine’s husband who examined a Ultra Beast wormhole and fell through it.
Sun/Moon was a reboot and we dont have any confirmation on how closely it will follow the story or how much it ties in. From what we are aware of so far, it appears that Lillie has an egg that presumably contains Cosmog - so this appears to be the backstory of how she was aware of it before Aether took it and forced her to break it out.
Hold it Scar. Sun and Moon was a reboot? No. No it really isn’t. The history of past games is referenced and several characters come back. That’s not much of a reboot.
I have been reading them but I thought you were referring to the games considering you called it Sun/Moon instead of Sun and Moon, or more simply, the anime.
I can understand that, but context is important also and i was responding to the anime explaining how Lillie having an egg that may contain Cosmog in the anime might not break the continuity of the game.
I’m not entirely sure what you mean by this. Do you mean the same multiverse?
E.g. the anime is canon but occurs in a seperate part of the multiverse so that any crossover like Ash Greninja or Ash Pikachu could be explained by dimension crossing such as travel through an Ultra Beast Portal?
