Yes, the title is intentionally a play of words around Greninja's Signature Water Shuriken!
My last post was almost a week back and Sakib says I should live a little bit more! As the saying goes around in BDC, his wish is our command, So I did.
But my way of living is a bit different I guess. I have been watching the Pokemon XY Series for some time now. It's a 3 season long season...and today I went on and binge watched the final few episodes and just finished like 5 mins ago. After having some ridiculous discussion with Sakib, I think I better finish my post soon for two reasons.
- I will not be able to bring back the emotions I feel at this exact moment tomorrow, or ever.
- I have to watch Liverpool vs Real Madrid in about 1 hour, so I'm racing the clock.
Boy oh boy! Where do I start, I am not sure. I am truly very overwhelmed, and feel like I'm living back as a 7 year old kid!
First off, the XY series, aka the Kalos series is by far....and I mean million miles far the best Pokemon series ever. I don't think it will be a bold statement to say the writers will never be able to top what they have done with the Kalos series. And it didn't even feature Ash's Charizard. Fans always want to see a charizard cameo in every season and the writers had obliged on most seasons....but the 3 seasons of Kalos was different. The franchise broke off from a lot of the cliches it was known for.
Charizard was the undisputed favorite of almost every pokemon fan for 18 years. I'm sorry charizard, you have to share the throne now with Greninja!
After a season, it is easy to talk about the things not done right, but this is one of those rare occasions where there were more things done right than wrong. The only thing that is probably wrong with this season is, Pokemon should have ended with kalos. It's a very bold statement, but that's just how I feel at the moment. More on this later.
The first thing done right were the "side characters." While I'm an OG fan of Brock and Misty...and maybe Dawn too....but the characters of Serena, Clemont and Bonnie grew so much, that I had to use "" to denote them as side characters. Because sure, they may have started off as side characters....as every other side characters so far...any one remember where Tracy comes from? No? Don't even remember who Tracy is? Exactly.
While there are obvious similarities...Brock the first Gym leader Ash goes to and later goes on a journey with him....Clemont's Gym the first one Ash visits and later joins Ash on his journey. Serena the equivalent of Misty....Bonnie too seemingly started out as just a goofy character to inject some silliness into the show.
But that's about all the similarities we get. The way the characters developed through the season, they had to have separate goodbyes for every single one of them. Every single one of them went on to develop their own character arc and fans even today....after 4 years still ask what is Serena doing now? What is clemont and bonnie up to? Anyone ever wondered what Misty and Brock were up to after they left the show?
Clemont goes on to become a very powerful gym leader and advances his inventions very far and plays a vital role in the grand finale of the biggest war pokemon has seen. Serena goes on to become more than simply a love interest to one of the finest pokemon performers of the region. And bonnie, oh Bonnie! Seemed to have started out as just a 5 year old kid...ended up playing possibly the first winning move in the final war by getting through to Zygord.
No, I didn't mistype a pokemon battle as war. For the first time the series did something different than just regular battle, for the first time in the series they introduced a properly strong villain in Lysandre, the leader of team Flare.
There were a lot of things to love about Kalos series, too many to write up in one post. Of course Mega Evolution was the main attraction from the beginning and while everyone expected Ash to have a mega evolved pokemon too, the writers provided us with something even more phenomenal...the Ash-Greninja Bond Phenomenon! I have no words to explain this, you just have to watch it to experience the feels!
The current running series of Pokemon is called "They Journeys," and has introduced a different type of change called Gigantamax. After watching Mega evolution and Bond phenomenon with Greninja, Gigantamax couldn't seem lamer! You just take a pokemon, and make it maximum size.....like seriously! I don't even want to watch the series anymore.....despite Ash finally capturing some of the fan favourites Dragonite and Riolu which has evolved into Lukario. Who cares! Bring Greninja Back! Mega evolution and Bond Phenomenon will remain the pinnacle of extraordinary power!
I'll probably write more on the kalos series at some later time, but I'll finish off with what I feel has taken this series to a different level for me.
Heads up, heavy spoilers ahead!
The final war with Lysandre and Team Flare was just grand! The soundtracks throughout this series was marvellous, but they just topped everything during the final fight....every change in theme was perfectly timed and added to the vibe of the situation.
In a war you lose compatriots, you don't get the time to grieve....you fight on as the war continues. You grieve once it's all over...all that overwhelming emotions take over the essence of victory. The true growth of Clemont was seen midway through the fight, where he had to destroy Clembot for the greater good and then had to pull himself together because the fight was not over.
Something that I've always wanted to see is regathering of all the gym leaders of the regions Ash travels to at some point. But that never happened. And there's good reason for that. In most regions, the gym leaders wouldn't come close to being nearly as strong as the gym leaders of the Kalos region.
Bringing back all the Gym leaders of the region, along with the Kalos Champions Diantha and Alain and Hoen Champion Stevens...they gather the strongest team to defend the world against possibly the strongest threat. Sounds familiar? Yes, very avengeresque, only....it was done way before Avengers made the concept known to the general public.
In a way, I'm glad I watched Avengers Infinity war before watching the Pokemon kalos quest, because sure as hell after being overwhelmed by the Kalos series, Infinity war would have felt quite underwhelming. This is huge coming from me as I have tons of memories attached with Avengers.
If I have to draw a comparison, this is where the XYZ series failed to avengers. The Avengers Infinity war marked the end of an era....marked the end of some of our beloved characters because it was time, because their story ended perfectly.
And it was quite similar in the XYZ series too....they even had a separate goodbye episode....a proper goodbye episode after 19 years of the franchise!
Everything was poised perfectly...Ash's first battle we get to see in full in the Kalos region was against Clemont as mere strangers....His last battle was against Clemon, this time as a good old friend!
The final episode's "Who's that pokemon" was Pikacchu. Everything was designed with a goodbye vibe.
This could have been the perfect ending...but no they had to go on and introduce fucking gigantamax! Oh they did make Ash win the Alola League in between...but seriously....It should have been at kalos! Kalos is where Ash was really at his strongest....he had the team to take down any team...even Alain's Mega Charizard IMO...but oh well!
At this point all I want to see in the absolute finale of the pokemon series is for them to bring this team back for one final season...and yes, Greninja has to return!
