Pokémon sun and moon is the newest installment in the Pokémon anime franchise. Before starting , I just want to point out that I have only watched the anime up until the second generation and the same goes for the game. The reason why I stopped watching Pokémon is that as I grew older , I started to feel that Pokémon has no value as an anime other than the nostalgia factor. I rewatched the first generation anime and if you remove the nostalgia factor , I did not enjoy the experience at all. As for why I dropped the game , well I just got bored with them. So , when sun and moon came out , I dismissed it as another installment in the long running saga of boring Pokémon shows , but I recently heard from a lot of people that this season has a more slice of life feel to it. This made me want to watch the anime as firstly , I like slice of lives and secondly , I thought that it might be a nice change from the original boring style of story telling where Ash and his friends travel for ages and fight people on the way with team rocket appearing in every episode just for the sake of it. And to be honest, the show did feel a bit refreshing and enjoyable.
The animations were pretty well executed for the most part , of course there were scenes where I felt that they could have been better , but they were never as bad as to break my immersion. And at some points they were also really impressive and blew me away. The character designs are another strong point of the anime ( except the design of Ash ) , all the characters have a unique look and personality , this allows them to be distinguishable and not feel like just a Misty or Brock replacement. But , as I mentioned above. Ash's design just felt very weird for some reason , I would have preferred his facial expressions to be a bit sharper , if that makes any sense. And the thing that I absolutely hate is Ash's voice , it's not unbearable but it's certainly not likable and very annoying. Maybe I find it annoying as I watched all the previous Pokémon series in dub and it's difficult for me to transition but I don't think I will ever enjoy this voice of Ash.
Now , the main reason I liked sun and moon is due to its slice of life , adventure type storytelling. In the previous seasons , time and again we see Ash travelling with a new set of people than what were present in the season before and along the way he fights with numerous Pokémon (almost one every episode) and then team rocket comes around and do their pointless stuff. But , this time they have scraped that endless travel formula and introduced a Pokémon school where we see Ash going everyday and learning new things about Pokémon . A good amount of the series is focussed on a few islands so their is not that much pointless travelling and team rocket also appears in only some episodes and not all of them which makes them a lot more bearable. This change of style felt really refreshing and allowed me to return back to the Pokémon franchise.
Another thing that I would like to point out are the designs of the Pokémon , all of them are really well done. We see tons of new Pokémon left and right and some of them were really interesting like a Mimikyu that team rocket has. Mimikyu ( I hope I am spelling him right ) is a fairy , ghost type Pokémon which absolutely hates Pikachus , this adds a new dimension to the Pokémon and makes him a lot more hostile as whenever he sees a Pikachu , he goes in for the kill. The series also surprisingly has emotionally charged scenes as well which I really appreciate. But , remember that at the end of the day , this is a kids show , so there might be stuff that will look stupid to an adult watching the show but atleast sun and moon is not as stupid as the first couple of seasons.
Moving to my only complain with the show and some people might hate me for it , I think Ash should have been replaced with a new protagonist. Now , before you start sending me death threats , hear me out. This season feels a lot more refreshing due to a change in style but still Ash , for some reason feels out of place , I mentioned before that I did not like his character design and voice acting but after watching a few more episodes , I realised that a new protagonist with a different personality to what Ash has , mixed in with the other uniquely designed side characters would have worked really well for the new season. I mean , we have seen so much of Ash over the past 20 some years that I feel a new protagonist would have created a greater chance for future character development of himself and the characters around him , as right now we know everything about Ash and nothing about the other characters. This creates a lot of disparity in the characters and makes the development of the side characters difficult as , there is no way they can get enough development to catch up with Ash , whose character has been growing for the past 20 years. This pushes the enjoyable side characters into Ash's shadow and they are never able to come out of it therefore , I feel that a new protagonist would have been better for the series.
Still , overall the series is pretty enjoyable and I recommend everyone to give this one a go , who knows , this might after all be the series that pulls you back into the world of Pokémon.
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