The Worst Vocal Recast In Animé History, choppy art stylization, selective-focus on its Gen. IV over pre-established lore, and structurally-messy ep construction plague D/P adventures ~passable *only* by an epic-scale Galactic legends arc and new infusion of passion/energy by the best female protagonist [et. al] of PKMN: Dawn. 6.2/10.

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Plot Synopsis: The continuing adventures of Ash Ketchum and Pikachu, and his best friend Brock. The two meet a new coordinator named Dawn, who travels with them through Sinnoh and enters Pokemon Contests. The Animé Counterpart to the Pokémon Diamond & Pearl Video Games.

*Possible Spoilers Ahead*

Best Episodes: 1. The Needs Of The Three, 2. Following A Maiden Voyage, 3. Losing Its Lustrous, 4. Steeling Peace Of Mind, 5. Pillars Of Friendship, 6. Saving The World From Ruins, 7. Our Cup Runneth Over, 8. Top-Down Training, 9. When Pokémon Worlds Collide, 10. Coming Full-Festival Circle!, 11. Flint Sparks The Fire!, 12. Malice In Wonderland, 13. Battling A Thaw In Relations, 14. Sleepless In Pre-Battle, 15. Dawn Of A New Era!, 16. Two Degrees Of Separation!, 17. A Meteoric Rise To Excellence!, 18. Getting The Pre-Contest Titters, 19. Double Team Turnover!, 20. Barry’s Busting Out All Over, 21. The Grass-Type Is Always Greener!, 22. Ghoul Daze!, 23. Pokémon Ranger & The Kidnapped Riolu, 24. A Secret Sphere Of Influence, 25. Angry Combeenation

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Official CLC Review

Anipoké [The Pokémon Animé] was in Critical HP mode in the mid-2000’s. Nintendo x GameFreak were churning out comprehensive masterpiece creature-fueled adventures on every level – Gens. I-IV being the Golden Era Of Pocket Monsters & Amongst The Greatest Video Games Of All-Time. A love-letter to previous generations w. bold new evolutions of the mythology/overworld for new demographics, D/P adventured through a beautiful new Hokkaidö-inspired mountain-crux region in Sinnoh w. the best 2D visual aestheticization of PKMN, diverse orchestration, magic new pre/post evos of old ‘mons, the #2 best starters of the series, clean NDS technical proficiency, feature calibrations plus – though in ~complacency – advancements (e.g. Contests, Poketch, Battle Mechanization, Underground, Gender Differences), & avant-garde storyline contrastively juxtaposing themes of church-like religion allegory with science-fiction galaxy x time x creation physics by complex ’50’s retro-futuristic cyberpunk antagonists, epic scale/ambition aggrandization, & all-time great legendaries.

This was just around the time that the franchise was beginning to regain its popularity in the marketplace – irrefutably well-deserved by the production team behind its virtual line-up. Then, you had The Pokémon Animé. Coming off its worst season [a reign one-upped 4x+ in every season of The Hoenn Adventures], the G3 animé was a comprehensive mess from the über-cliché nasily-grating presence of Max to a lazy 95%-filler machine-gun of 200+ episodes for a 20-ep plot to the infamous vocal-recast we (& the fandom) crowned the worst in the history of TV & Animé. Though we fully sympathized with and nary understood the games’ declining circulation due to their quality of craftsmanship, we had no qualms of rationalization why the animé was dying – it had been in a tailspin ever since The Orange Islands with no lifejackets or emergency landings in sight. Still, being perptual optimists, we had faith [especially after playing Diamond, Pearl, & Platinum) that it would re-energize and fix the animé. We were – tragically – wrong… well, sort of.

The Worst Vocal Recast In Animé History, choppy art stylization, selective-focus on its Gen. IV over pre-established lore, and structurally-messy ep construction plague D/P adventures ~passable *only* by an epic-scale Galactic legends arc and new infusion of passion/energy by the best female protagonist [et. al] of PKMN: Dawn. The Gen. IV Animé begins extremely strong with perhaps the best 5-6 episode run since Indigo League. This is comprehensively due to the infusion of new passion and energy by the Greatest Female Protagonist In The History Of Pokémon: Dawn. Of course, we’ve gone in-depth on why we love *everything* about her design of JPN representation & unapologetic girliness certain to hit every core demographic she’s designed for – but the animé praisably lifts her and three-dimensionalizes her from the games into a bubbly protagonist for the ages. Indeed, she bursts with the life, design-parallels, & unmistakeable starpower of early-Ash: clearly evoked in every way by the early season ep’s taking us [literally] back to the beginning without even a sighting of any past canon for multiple episodes to remix and remind us through experience of everything that made us first fall in love with Satoshi back in ’96.

The magic of their similarities goes even further – a perilous [Pidgey/Ariados], personality-clashed introduction ep to their starter-icon for the ages. Dawn’s Piplup is just indescribably adorable – as well as brave, mischievous, self-assured, and unlucky [ala Draco Meteor] for a fizzy combination that marks every bit as iconic a protagonist-pet as Pikachu. Not to mention: she’s given a fantastic team of heavy-hitters amongst the best Pokémon Gen. IV has to offer like Togekiss, Ambipom, Mamoswine, etc. Dawn, Piplup, & Co. traverse Sinnoh with phenomenal friendship/arc-building rife with strong characterization as Dawn is developed from a shy girl unsure of herself and doubting whether to quit her dream of becoming a top coordinator to a finalist in the Grand Festival whom lost only by a sliver fraction of a percent at the last second. She’s easily a good enough character to be a protagonist on her own series – and she’s only bolstered by the return of the trinity in Ash & girl-lusting Brock (both given great rosters of new ‘mons; Ash gets more badass team members and fully-evolved starters to fix past gripes in Torterra, Infernape, Gliscor, etc. & Brock gets baby PKMN fitting his aspirations for breeding as well as a synergistically-creepy Croagunk whose poison jabbed fantasy-interruption is a funny recurring joke each ep).

The dynamic [bisected by a gracefully-unchanging Team Rocket roster] gives heavy OG Kanto Animé vibes, and – even though we still would’ve liked to see Ash, Dawn, & Barry as the trio, especially by how spot-on they nail him as a character-cameo later on in the season) the excision of Max makes it all the while better… even if the same voice problems plague the canvas sonically. We cannot even put into words how comprehensively we hate *every* vocal performance from this new ensemble [except Ikiru’s Dawn, whose voice matches perfectly and gets a break by not having a 10x better predecessor to compare it to] – it’s wrong-feeling, damn near unwatchable by acting quality standards, & heavily insulting to the fandom as yet another indication of how little anipoké & the translation team cared about the fanbase. Sigh. We also have misc. problems with characterization and writing of legacy characters. Ash [in addition to continuity flaws in how a must-be Lvl. 100+ OP Pikachu loses to a Gym 1 Geodude] loses far too much to leaden the underdog angle into pity & head-scratching loserdom given his experience level (though we do sympathize with the paradox he can’t just win everything easily for good entertainment value).

The new Team Rocket motto is laughably-cringeworthy/awful: asking about heard voices with no semblance of cohesion or rhythm as Jessie mutters bizarre & destructive misandrist lines like ‘it takes finesse: something a member of the male persuasion doesn’t have’ and manic superiority-complexed bossing around her friends like slaves. The new additions to Rocket are also mixed: with every fantastic choice like Mime Jr. whose mischievous parisien kid melds perfectly with a villain & badass Yanmega counterbalanced by a monstrosity like the goofy lowbrow nonsense of one of D/P’s worst designs Carnivine, & there’s far less meta than previous seasons. That’s not even including – besides many of the other new characters being ~forgettable like Nando & Zoë – the new character we comprehensively *hate*: Paul. Clearly, he was meant to be a stand-in for G/S/C’s Rival ‘???’ from the game series: a character whom wasn’t even that compelling back then, being just a red-haired edgebro of rage, god-complex, toxic masculinity, and abuse for his ‘mons. Paul takes everything bad about that character and amplifies it 10x – extending the excruciation across multiple episodes and seasons in stark tonal clash/inconsistency to the otherwise dumbed-down/juvenile tone of the animé G2-on.

Our biggest problem with the G4 Animé, synergisstically, is that it recycles past generations’ ‘mons and storylines to [pointlessly] slug across hundreds of episodes – the zion of how lazy and corporate-mandated the series had become. No one could ever answer the question of why exactly PKMN needed 200+ episodes/season from the Johto Journeys onward… and, at least then, it was fun to watch. Here (& in mid-to-late Hoenn), it’s become a chore of exhaustion even mega-diehard trainers find vexatious to skip through – and them failing the central promise of a new gen animé by putting spotlight back on old news we’ve already seen before like entire episodes dedicated to ‘mons like Aerodactyl, Bulbasaur, & Golduck.. again. That’s not to say there aren’t cool episodes or ones that focus and properly-eulogize Sinnoh ‘mons; though too few-and-far-between in an otherwise 50%+ skippable roster of filler episodes are many good ones. For example, the Vespiquen honeyland three-parter, Mismaguis black magic trickery Malice In Wonderland building each character a dream world to great comedic/horror effect, Poké-ranger Riolus, Dusknoir spirit world camp mystery, Rotom haunted mansion spoof, Gible Draco Meteor shenanigans, etc. In fact, the animé makes a brilliant decision to exponentially amplify the reference to the games – making Cynthia, The Elite Four, Barry, Gardenia, The Gym Leaders, Dawn, etc. major characters in the canvas all adequately-materialized… especially in conjunction with the big bads: Cyrus & Team Galactic.

We love love love the B-arc of the season – and we’re shocked 4K even allowed the cinematic epic potential of Sinnoh’s greatest legends and mythology to be played out in the animé instead of on box-office screens. The G4 Animé executes the legendary arc 50x better than Hoenn’s did [the best part and saving grace for this season passability-wise, along with Dawn] – and gives us insanely epic episodes amongst the series’ best-ever for legends from Cresselia/Darkrai to Phione to Regigigas in a kaiju showdown with alternative Regi’s to The Lake Guardians being hunted down by a mercenary bounty hunter to Dialga/Palkia being summoned by a fleshed-out (A+ for the fake-out wolf-in-sheep-clothing characterization angle for him) Cyrus at Spear Pillar. Holy sh*t. The legend episodes are markedly better animated and 10x more epic in watchability/entertainment-value, and definitely make it damn near impossible to fail the season totaliarian-wise if you’re even remotely a PKMN fan whom will be gushing afterwards. The animation is markedly improved over The G3 Animé’s, but incredibly choppy and mixed between ep’s: breathtaking flower vistas at Floaroma town in some, but blah city-builds feeling like high-school projects in others.

The episodes are also structurally weird until the back-half; they often begin with a fast-forward scene throwing us right into a random situation in the middle of the episode before rocking us back into a cringeworthy theme song (what has happened to PKMN’s themes? From the punk rock majesty of Indigo League to middle-school complexity lyrics and cookie-cutter pop) and then into the regular episode. It’s like the creators… have never watched a TV episode before, or the studios had to pull out every bizarre trick/gimmick they could think of to desperately hold on enough to save the animé [when the only real solution they needed to save time-and-money plus satisfy fans and increase audience engagement was to make it 10-20 even up to 50 episodes instead of 200). Sigh. Overall, The G4 Animé is not bad… but isn’t good either. The genius of its execution in legend arcs, synergism between gens and the animé/games with cameos from alpha-tier characters, & best PKMN protagonist of all-time in Dawn is equally counterbalanced by a TM Avalanche of flaws from vocal recast to skip-rate to length to structure to lazy ‘mon recycles.

Despite the vexing progressive deterioration, we’re at least happy the franchise at least survived the ’00’s crucible of waning popularity, and it ends very well with a nicely-executed Sinnoh League 10x heightening the syncopation with competitive battling mechanics/strategy, tying up loose ends like conquering Paul in what felt like a finale battle with epic closure in the character-driven Infernape arc, and Ash progressing far [finally! only losing to a ridiculously overpowered legendary cheat-code trainer Tobias (perhaps meant to poke fun at us in meta-gamer fashion by the fact we obviously use legends as soon as we catch them in the games and, obviously, they’re unfair against normal ‘mons or just as a plot device to make sure Ash loses so they can go to a new region and reset the animé for Unova, but still bizarre because he is the only trainer in the canon thus far (besides a brief glimpse of one in line at The Sinnoh League that has a Heatran) to privately wield not one… but TWO legendaries/mythicals in Darkrai and Latios (amongst a team the writers/directors of the animé later revealed was filled with all-legends for even more clear status as the strongest trainer in the entire pokéworld, yet is never seen again) Ash managed to both take down (the *only one to defeat Darkrai in the entire region of Sinnoh, including the championship so Ash was legitimately the best trainer in The Sinnoh League!*) to make us incredibly proud and respectful of how he handled impossible circumstances]. Oh, bonus points: all the feels when Piplup cries and the Sinnoh team splits up – plus a shocking development of Brock leaving the adventures to become a Dr., leaving a cliffhanger on what and who the fullly-new team around Ash will be. Maybe there will be a return to form (though we said that in Battle Frontier) in Gen. V. We’ll see.

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