BettyNewbie

Great... just great... looks like I'm probably going to have to wait until Easter before I get the chance to watch the episode.

Although... I find it odd that they restrict it to nine episodes, considering that Pokémon TV, correct me if I'm mistaken, is owned by the Pokémon Company, meaning they don't even need to worry about copyright issues.


Yeah, let's hope so, I've already waited long enough as it is for Misty to come back and resume her goal. And besides, I'm pretty sure they would have hinted at Gen 8 by now if they were going to release it in 2018 (Metroid Prime 4 got teased at this year's E3, and that's not due until 2018 at the absolute earliest, and it's even indicated it might not even be out that year), and since we know we're close to the end of Alola as it is, they definitely need to kill time somehow.

Yeah, I do, especially when most of that stuff I really need to take care of anyways.

BTW, the Pokémon TV thing only seems to show Episodes 19-28 on Sun and Moon's section. Is it usually like that (only showing nine episodes available to play, I mean)? Only asking because my Computer's driver's currently inactive, so my display's a bit magnified right now, so I have no idea whether that's the result of my computer or if the site's always like that.

From what I can gather, while Crystal may not have had particularly impressive sales, it was nonetheless well-received, while based on what you said, USUM was a critical bomb, at least on Amazon Japan.

Favorited the link to the episodes. All I have to do now is wait for Alola, Kanto to be up, then I'll just sit back and watch. I'm in high gear right now, though: Medical Insurance, getting mom her birthday and Christmas presents, working on my own cliffsnotes for the first chapter of Animal Farm, possibly getting some DOA5LR DLC that dealt with Ultimate wear, and all of that has to be done by November 28 before the new event. I'll definitely make sure to watch it on Saturday if given the opportunity. But if the episode's not up by November 28, I don't think I'll be able to watch it until December 12, since, assuming my suspicions are accurate, I'll probably be spending the two weeks between those two dates really going all out for the event trying to get the gold nameplate (I want to make sure anything that might detract from getting the nameplate is fully taken care of, and keep anything but those that are absolutely mandatory like Church, Think Tank, lunch with Dad, Dad's birthday, or my life coach out of the way). However, if it isn't a Gold Snake Nameplate event, I probably can make the effort to watch both episodes before the event is over.

And as far as USUM, I'm beginning to suspect that this will be the Metroid Other M of Pokémon (Metroid: Other M had ended up being a colossal sales and critical disaster, being the lowest-selling game of its day, at least of non-Remakes, and did worse than even Metroid II. It did so badly that Nintendo actually contacted its customers and asked how it screwed up and why they didn't like it. And while they probably could survive Japan not doing well marketwise for Metroid, it was a bomb outside Japan, which is where the money is at for Metroid. Since Pokémon's popularity in Japan's very high, them doing badly in the Japanese market regarding the games is definitely going to impact them as badly as Metroid Other M did.).

Apparently, it sold 1.2 million physical copies within the first three days in Japan. That's .7 million short of the amount Sun and Moon sold during that exact time frame. I can't compare the amount sold for the other games, but I'd suspect it's going to do poorly compared to at the very least S&M.

BTW, any suggestions on where I can watch "Alola, Kanto" when it airs two days from now? Since I don't have Disney XD or Disney Channel due to not having cable, I can't exactly watch it on the TV.

Only one way to find out, and that's to check the sales figures for USUM, and compare them to prior Pokémon sales.

If it is a failure, we can probably expect either the anime to be cancelled, or otherwise undergo radical changes to compensate.

Sorry, got sidetracked arguing with someone last night and didn't get a chance to reply. Will do it tonight at work.

Oh, whoops! Yeah, I'm ok, sorry! I got a lot of PMs about moderation stuff and lost the notification for yours and forgot to go back and reply to it. Will do either tonight or tomorrow xx

Yeah, and what's ironic is that the Dark Knight Trilogy actually attempted to have Batman keep his one rule of not killing (though then again, Batman Begins shows that doesn't necessarily mean he needs to save the villain).

I didn't necessarily have too much of a problem with Man of Steel (I can sort of understand why Superman had to kill Zod, since it was either that or let him kill innocent bystanders, though the city being destroyed definitely wouldn't have looked good for Superman.). But yeah, Batman vs. Superman definitely was some very nasty business, where Batman seems to have a loose definition of the no killing rule at the very least (I know Arkham Knight has similar problems with some of the weaponry onboard the new batmobile and the cars, but at least that game justified it by implying that Batman added it in via influence from the Joker blood in his veins and thus wasn't necessarily in character for him even in universe), and let's not get into Superman, or how they depicted Luthor as being more like the Joker than... well, Luthor. Yes, he's definitely gotten his hands dirty with crime in the past, but even Luthor at his worst would not go as far as the one in the film did. I guess him being a puppet of Darkseid is a bit of an excuse, but even there...


Personally, never really saw interest in PLL, barely even knew about it until you brought it up. And quite frankly, I never had any encounters with statutory rapist teachers at all, don't even remember any being in my schools (and during my college years, I had a really rough time, so if they had teachers who engaged in statutory rape, I definitely would have remembered it). It may be "realistic", but it certainly wasn't common.


Yeah, agreed. They'd really want to avoid ticking off the Japanese fanbase, especially when that's ultimately where the lions share of their revenue comes in (as Pokémon's a bit more popular in Japan than overseas). Now, if Pokémon, say, had Sonic's level of popularity outside Japan, they might be able to afford distributing the anime to Western countries before Japan, but in this case, they definitely need to please the Japanese base, certainly not royally tick them off (I'm actually wondering if Misty and Brock's return had something to do with the complaints against their being cut in Movie 20, since I heard that there was similar outrage on their twitter account regarding that).

Yeah. I mean, I can understand, say, making edits due to time constraints and/or trying to be family friendly. But making edits specifically to push an agenda? That's unacceptable regardless of which political spectrum you adhere to.



Agreed. And funny you should mention that first bit, considering that I stumbled upon a blog yesterday that actually addressed that issue to some extent, dealing with comics such as DC, Marvel, and Archie, as well as TV adaptations therein:

http://fourcolormedmon.blogspot.com/2017/01/more-on-how-supergirl-and-archie-tv.html

Granted, the guy's closer to being right-wing, so you might not necessarily agree with everything he says. But he does ultimately have a point in that a lot of the agendas they're pushing in their stories many times aren't even appropriate for children, let alone families which are the intended audience for those shows he's mentioning, and comics for that matter (for instance, was it truly necessary to turn Archie Comics' Riverdale from a wholesome 1950s-era storyline into a murder mystery? Or to turn Miss Grundy into a cougar? And don't get me started on how they outright scoff at classical values and treat them with disrespect. Such behavior may have even cost them their license to the Sonic comics made by them.). Plus also the fact that they are sacrificing genuine high-quality writing in the process.


They'd better not. Ignoring for one minute that this is going to be the first time Alola's ever going to have a league (which would make Ash losing look even WORSE than any of the prior instances before), there's also the fact that the XY writers got into deep trouble after the Kalos league stuff where they were swamped on Twitter with complaints from both sides of the Pacific Ocean over the Kalos league results. It says a lot when even the Japanese fanbase was outraged with how they had Ash lose, and I really doubt they'd want to significantly tick off that fanbase again.

Yeah, no kidding. Not to mention, I'm not even sure the average Japanese person would know who Michael Moore is, since he generally doesn't do documentaries relating to Japan. And quite frankly, ignoring his politics completely, I kinda find it rich that the writers would actually use as the basis as their movie hero [ie, the hero of the film who ISN'T Ash and his friends] a guy who has a reputation for heavily editing and falsifying his documentaries to push his point of view, manipulative editing in other words, some of which was extremely obviously done (and for the record, even if he was pushing right-wing view points, I'd STILL be harsh on him for that, so my complaint against him has absolutely nothing to do with my politics. If he's going to do documentaries, I fully expect him to be up front and honest, NO edits.).


Yeah, no kidding. And that's ignoring that such a practice is completely ignoring the show's target audience being children, not to mention families. And that it makes them look even WORSE due to the fact that said girls are explicitly 10 year olds, which creates a lot of negative implications.


To be fair, even Johto still had some degree of character development especially on Misty's end, like that Marill episode, or that episode where Misty had skill with a tambourine, or even the Seaking fishing competition. But yeah, agreed with you there. They really should have retired all of them when the had the chance (though that being said, they definitely should have them actually complete their goals before retiring them). Well, at least with Alola, we may get a chance at Ash actually winning a league this time around, so we probably won't have to wait for much longer.

Okay, fine by me. And I probably wouldn't have mentioned the political elements of the Zoroark movie in the first place if GameFreak itself didn't make it blatant. Couldn't they just TRY to keep that movie's story politically neutral at the very least (certainly not mention any real-world inspirations for Karl or anything like that)? Is it TOO much to ask?


Yeah, agreed there. Heck, even a whole alliance thing might have worked if it was closer to, say, the Xindi from Enterprise or something (which was actually something I came up with in one of my Pokémon Crew stories).


Yeah. Heck, they could have easily had her suffering Queen Brahne's fate from Final Fantasy IX, which made her very villainous and only regretting her vile actions on her deathbed. They could have done that, settled with the whole villain's dead thing.


I'll take your advice then. Besides, need to make sure they don't screw up and not have Misty return despite the hint given when she left that she'll return for Alola, or screwing her goal over again.


No kidding. Not to mention they're the reason Misty got removed. Apparently, Takeshi Shudo had to choose between Team Rocket and Misty regarding who to remove from the main cast, and since Team Rocket were his favorite characters, Misty got the axe. Honestly, keeping them around was a mistake. They were good in Kanto, heck, even Orange Island and Johto to some extent, at least they were actually depicted as a threat from time to time. With Hoenn, however, they came across as nuisances and annoyances, and were downright pathetic, not to mention had zero real reason to even BE in Hoenn in the first place anyways, what with Team Magma and Team Aqua being around. Heck, in Movie 20, they barely even encounter Ash and co. at all, and seemed to REALLY get the Endor treatment big time regarding wild Pokémon.

Yeah, no kidding. I mean, at least in the Anime if Giovanni had members of the other villain teams under his thumb, it would be somewhat justified since it's implied that Team Rocket may have taken over some of the regions shortly after those villainous teams, and may have absorbed the remaining criminal syndicate members (who aren't the team bosses anyway, those guys should stay out of the whole thing.).


So, let me get this straight, they pulled a 2014 Maleficent on her? Well, okay, maybe not that serious, since even in S&M, Lusamine did have some redeemable traits such as actually caring for her daughter, while Maleficent in the 1959 version was completely irredeemable (and would have been listed as a complete monster if it weren't for that quite frankly stupid rule that mandated that we see her results of her crimes if not see her do horrific crimes on screen. Personally, I think she more than deserves to be listed as such. And honestly, I hated what Woolverton did to Maleficent since there was zero point turning her into a Darth Vader figure. She was closer to Emperor Palpatine as portrayed in Star Wars if anyone in terms of how vile she was. She was NEVER the type to be redeemable, and I'd even go as far as to say she's more evil and irredeemable than Judge Claude Frollo. At least Frollo actually took in Quasimodo, even if it WAS to save his own soul, that's still a redeemable aspect to his character, far more than what Maleficent got.).


Yeah, agreed. And quite frankly, unlike with Dawn, we actually CAN see how she developed.


That reminds me, I really should get those VC games in the future, now that I might be able to drop the boycott against Pokémon in the future thanks to their bringing Misty back. And yeah, good point there.


Fully agreed, and besides, I definitely think it's about high time that Team Rocket gets taken down for the count. They've been around for far too long and without any true advancements in their goal barring JJM's antics and maybe conquering parts of the Pokémon World.


Yeah, I forgot about that.


Maybe also result in Team Rocket's shut down once and for all as well.


Well, I don't necessarily mind Lucario, but I will mention that I'm not fond of Zoaroak's film (let's just say it delved too much into left-wing issues for me, not helping matters is that one of the protagonists, Karl, was explicitly based on a certain controversial documentarist). And if that third Lucario-type has a role in the new movie, AND it repeats the same plot themes of the Zoaroak movie, I don't CARE if Misty's in it or not, I'm STILL not seeing it.

Yeah, no kidding, and while I don't mind Giovanni himself making a reappearance, it seems unusual for him to recruit the other bad guys. I mean, Maxie and Archie buried the hatchet and decided against pursuing remaking the world, Ghetsis had a nervous breakdown and likely heart attack, and Lysandre... well, he's either going to have a heck of a time stuck underneath rubble without dying, or he's dead by this point. Probably the only one who MIGHT aid Giovanni would be Cyrus, and even with him, that's largely dependent on whether you consider Diamond and Pearl canon or Platinum canon (if the former, there's a chance, while with the latter... well, let's just say that Cyrus, even if he could leave Giratina's realm, had absolutely no interest leaving that realm in that version). Plus, he doesn't strike me as the type of guy to make alliances with other syndicates.


Yeah, that's definitely good, and hopefully with their impending return, they'll actually HAVE Misty resume her goal.


Well, if he does make a reappearance, let's hope its a good one. Same goes for Iris, who I must admit really got ignored in Kalos. She deserves a return big time. Would really work in actually developing her character, showing how she improved. I certainly have more of an interest with her than May, Dawn, or Serena regarding returns (only one who ranks higher is Misty).


Or in the case of Ghetsis, was arrested. And yeah, they probably should have an arc dealing Team Rocket (JUST Team Rocket, I should add), and by that I mean the organization as a whole. Let's face it, Ash hasn't exactly dealt with the organization as a whole (or ESPECIALLY Giovanni) much. Pretty much the only times they've directly encountered each other was the Mt. Quena incident and Best Wishes (and he outright lost to him in the latter). They should resolve that one, especially if they end up having Ash win Alola this time around.


I must admit, I think this is the first generation to actually include new Pokémon within a generation, and not simply wait until the next generation to introduce new Pokémon (actual new Pokémon I mean, not simply new forms of already present Pokémon up to that generation.). Though... isn't that game supposed to be released almost a week from now, or did that game somehow break the street date? Well, hopefully, they'll do something good with the next movie either way. I heard Mewtwo made an appearance in a teaser for the film after Movie 20 (and not just any Mewtwo, the original one that we all know and love, essentially Pokémon's equivalent of Shadow the Hedgehog before Shadow himself was even an idea.).

Thanks, I'm definitely going to need it, and not just because of the sheer difficulty of trying to reach those high ranks.


I hope you're right, because I just received word via Serebi.net's news cycle that they're most likely going to confront Lusamine on December 7 like in the game, and if they're going to go that fast with Lusamine, I suspect the Alola League will debut shortly thereafter, and since they haven't actually announced a new Generation yet, I'm getting a pretty big suspicion that they may end up pulling off the whole Rainbow Rocket thing just to fill time for the remainder of the saga, and that's IF they're going to go for a new generation in any case.


Yeah, agreed. And I hope it's very soon in the case of Misty and Brock's return. Again, they're going to be confronting Lusamine very soon right now based on the recent episode title announcements, which means the end for Alola may be near (though not necessarily Generation 7, since, well, they haven't actually announced Generation 8 yet. Must admit, it seems pretty unusual to wrap up Lusamine very soon right now. It's barely even entered fifty episodes. I think this is the shortest we've gotten through a region since, what? Kanto?).

Oh yeah, I play Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, and one thing I plan to take care of before I retire from the game for good is getting all the Venom Snake nameplates for 100% completion (or close to it, anyways). Unlike other Event FOB nameplates, which just require you to complete various FOB infiltrations with a defender present, you actually NEED to focus on the Event FOB directly to qualify for one of the nameplates. What that entails is getting into the top 10 of the Event Point rankings. Since they haven't done Bound Dragons this year, the only other event that kind of thing is available for is Skulls Attack, which by my estimates is going to occur on November 28. Did I mention that these events generally take two weeks before being switched with another event? Last year, I managed to get up to top 12, which, while close, still didn't meet the mark (though on the plus side, I at least have the Silver, Bronze, and normal nameplates of that set as a result, which mandate getting top 100, top 500, and top 1000 on the Event Point Ranking list, respectively). Skulls Attack needs a LOT of concentration to pull off, which would require me to put off all non-essential stuff to do. In other words, I won't be left with any time to watch Sun and Moon episode 43 if it airs during that time (and I definitely want to watch it). I don't really have plans to watch any of them live, though (nothing against them, but I'm not comfortable watching a live broadcast on the internet, especially not if I have to pause to take care of something).

And yeah, agreed with that last bit, both elements. Fortunately, Ash made them swear to come to Alola in the last episode they were in, so it's only a matter of time before they arrive. I'm even constantly checking Serebii.net as we speak so that when they announce Misty and Brock returning again, I'll be ready.

Eh, that's all right. Had some trouble thinking of a good reply myself to that post. But I definitely agree with all your points.

BTW, on November 25, we're getting the English dub of Episode 42, the episode where Misty returns. I'm certainly looking forward to that date. So far as Episode 43, we'll see regarding that (not that I don't want to watch it, but if what I suspect will happen on November 28 is accurate, I'm probably going to be busy with MGSV trying to get a gold Venom Snake nameplate for two whole weeks, so I won't be able to do anything on that front until December 12 at the earliest.

Thinking that the Ultra Recon duo (there's a pair per version) could be the final antagonists. My theory though is that they once worked for Lusamine as in SM it was mentioned that her husband (Mohn) explored the Ultra Space. Plus, their name doesn't sound like a typical team.
Of course, they could turn out to be the Ghetsis to her N...
At least each version has a female-male pair.

I've kinda been in a weird place mentally lately and thought I'd wait before trying to reply to a really long message. Sorry I didn't send a VM to explain.

It was pretty cool. Seems like they're going for a larger plot. I dare say larger than the extension that Pt gave to DP's story.

I agree, they all are past Brendan xD