The last post I made was about ranking the Pokémon games from worst to best, so now I want to try and give an explanation for what the hell the problem is and what seems to be the reoccurring issue.
When I went though Generation 9 (Scarlet and Violet) something that bugged me immediately was how the game tried to get you to bond with Koraidon instead of Sprigatito, my real starter Pokémon.
The reason I point this out is because I feel this gets at the core of what my issues with the series are. See, they had the right idea with Generation 2 (Gold and Silver), I think, where the narrative was largely driven by the player's exploration of the world and each side story was it’s own self contained thing.
But then you get to Generation 4 (Diamond and Pearl) so now it's time to get *serious*, where a lot of the narrative is focused on evil teams and legendaries. BORING!!! But then you get to Generation 5 (Black and White) and it's even *more serious* which is about the ethics of Pokémon battling but also not really. BORING!!!
But then you get to X and Y... and here it feels like the series is truly mending itself! Which had pretty environments, fun villains, charming characters, you could even play dress-up, and much of the dialogue more or less could've just been ripped straight out of the animated series.
Now, it's here you're probably thinking "That's stupid! Don't you want Pokémon to be cool?" and it's like, no, absolutely not, fuck you. I think we've all come to the realization at this point that, say, Zack Snyder is a fucking meathead and should be avoided. Bad idea.
And I know this to be the case because the thing audiences connected with the most about Gen 9 was Nemona, Arven, and Penny. Nobody cared about Eternal Floette, and nobody cared about how Sada had been dead this whole time and is actually an evil time traveling robot, who wasn't 38 years old.
When trying to think and look back on “the best story Pokémon had ever told”, the example I would point to would be Pokémon 3: The Movie. Because you can disagree with me on whether Pokémon should be really cool or not, I don’t really care.
The point being is that it’s just about a little girl who misses her Mom and Dad.
If Pokémon wanted to be more of a story based game, it really should’ve been more focused on simply the characters and their own personal struggles, their emotions and their own motivations, not necessarily an all-encompassing grand stakes apocalypse.
Because it's Pokémon. It's for children. Calm the fuck down.