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Pokemon Anime Surprises!

Yes, this is a shameless attempt at making up for the fact that I missed the awesome movie thread ;_;

Anyway, this thread is all about moments in the anime that surprised you. Specifically about the stuff you thought would suck but was awesome or conversely, the stuff you thought would be awesome but was a huge let down.

As far as stuff that surprised me by being awesome: The Diamond and Pearl season as a whole. After being completely traumatized by Hoenn, I was ready to write off the anime for good...but then DP started being surprisingly good in a lot of places. I hated Paul at first but I soon became part of his misaimed fandom because he provided such a good foil to Ash and his heart of the cards battling style. As much as I didn't like Dawn, I loved watching any episodes where she had character development--particularly when she had to rebuild her self-esteem after losing those contest battles.

Aaaand the stuff that surprised me by sucking: The Kyogre/Groudon event from Hoenn. Good grief, so many missed opportunities. I don't recall the storyline being all that great and they didn't involve Rayquaza at all. The worst part which I realized in hindsight was that this could have been an excellent opportunity to showcase Steven Stone and Wallace and instead we got Lance <<

tl;dr, but that's it for me for now.
 
The biggest surprise would probably be the whole revamp of the anime since the end of Johto. I disliked the majority of the Johto saga for the same reasons many did, the terrible filler episodes, the zero character development, Misty becoming dull and useless, dropping of the GS ball, Ash's poorly handled Johto team. I was fully expecting every saga to be the same, and the writers never to make any changes to the show.

AG was a very nice change of pace, while having some failures of its own, (like as mentioned, the Groudon/Kyorge episodes), really improved the battles, character development and pacing of the series. The Contests were a great addition to the show at the time, and I loved how much Ash had improved as a trainer with better pokemon and more experience. I am pretty certain that had AG not been different than Johto, I would have likely dropped the anime over a decade ago. I also think AG had some of the funniest episodes of the series, like "The Bicker, the Better," the Claydol ep and many more.

DP again, was mostly very good, with its only failures being Brock (he arguably should have never been in DP to begin with), the long pacing, and the somewhat rushed conclusion. The Hunter J and Galactic episodes were brilliant, and Ash had his best developed team of the show. The DP trio was probably the most boring group dynamics of the whole show with very little memorable character interaction, but the episodes made up for it I guess.

Sadly, BW seems like a step down from past sagas, but there are some things I like. Cilan is fun and I like some of the rivals this saga, but eh, the lack of Plasma disappoints me.

Overall I still like the anime, even if some characters were handled horribly over time, (both Misty and Brock say hi), and some characters were never good to begin with, (Trip, Kenny come to mind), and Ash himself is reset every saga, but what else is new.
 
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