Sesame Street is a far more important and intelligent show than any era of
Pocket Monsters could ever dream of being (
https://www.newsweek.com/how-sesame-street-changed-world-80067), just saying. And to suggest that it didn't or doesn't deal with heavy topics just shows how little you know about it. Here's an example of
Sesame Street tackling death (one of its most famous episodes), and it does so with far more nuance than
Pocket Monsters ever addressed everything:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gxlj4Tk83xQ. It's not even a fair comparison either, because the aims of
Sesame Street and
Pocket Monsters are entirely different.
I don't care about what age group the OS was aimed at or what topics it addresses, I care about quality. And, quality-wise, the OS - and
Pocket Monsters in general - is nothing special, especially when compared to other children's shows that manage to be enjoyable for adults (btw, I can't think of a lot adults back when the OS was airing who truly enjoyed the series and though it was anything more than a stupid fad). Here are five, just off the top of my head:
Gravity Falls,
Batman: TAS (excepting the brief time it aired in primetime),
SpongeBob SquarePants, (Seasons 1-3, the first movie),
Avatar: the Last Airbender,
Steven Universe. These are considered children's shows, they're also far better than the OS. Granted, not exactly fair comparisons but neither is trying to compare the OS to ****ing
Barney and Friends.
But again, your nostalgia goggles are thick and you lack the self-awareness to realize that. To be "blinded by nostalgia" has nothing to do with how recently you viewed the series. It's a mindset. A mindset that prevents you from properly evaluating the pros and cons of what you enjoy because you've never gotten past the way it impacted you as a child. The most rabid OS fans (or fans of any long-running series, for that matter) can rarely point to anything tangible about what makes it better than other series. Instead it's all about things like "genuine emotion", "it was funnier", "I just
feel", "it had heart", etc. Things that can't be argued because they depend on the subjective feelings of the person watching it, rather than honest critical evaluation. That's what it means to be blinded by nostalgia.
I mean, when you refuse to watch future series out of spite because the writers didn't cater to your demands to bring back a certain OS character there's no other explanation other than being blinded by nostalgia. And that wouldn't even be so bad, except you seem to have made it a mission to ruin every other discussion on here so that everyone else sees it too.
Quit making idiotic comparisons (nihilism? Really? Because I recognize the OS really isn't that good?) and learn to properly evaluate your favorite shows.
Those examples you've listed are actually considered to be family shows, not children shows (not to mention in regards to B:TAS or the DCAU in general, technically, I'm not even sure if it was actually geared towards kids or even families, more like teens. At least, that's what Bruce Timm indicated). There's a world of difference between the two, as family shows are actually geared to people of all ages while children shows are geared to... well, very young kids. Also, I actually WATCHED Sesame Street when I was younger (heck, I even preferred it over Barney and Friends, which I only really watched because a friend of mine liked it). Though, fine, Sesame Street did cover death. That's one out of five (Maybe two out of five, if we count Arthur and the episode where DW's pigeon died). We've still got three-four more examples to be cited. And let me tell you, even Sesame Street did NOT deal with being trapped in a shipwreck, nearly starving out at sea, either owner or parental abandonment, existential angst, and all of that, while Pokémon DID cover all of those things and more (if anything, the deep existentialist views in the first movie was the reason why they actually had to dial it back for the second movie). I might as well state that I thought SpongeBob Squarepants was very poor in quality.
And I do properly evaluate shows. I know that even the OS has some flaws. For instance, Ash cheaply losing the Indigo League due to Team Rocket kidnapping him. Also how half of Ash's badges didn't even have him actually WIN against the Gym Leader. Plus Ash releasing Pokémon and not following up with any promises to actually meet them again (exempting Primeape, although only because Ash DIDN'T promise anything about that, not in the Japanese version at least). Heck, Beauty and the Beach itself would qualify as a flaw as well, especially when it seemed really out of place for a family show. That shows I CAN properly evaluate the show, know what flaws it had and what flaws it didn't have. Despite its flaws however, and the fact that I CAN acknowledge its flaws proves I'm NOT being nostalgic at all, it was STILL better than the series after it. Even you can't deny that.
And BTW, it's not an idiotic comparison, really, because you're basically claiming that Pokémon was never good at all, that all seasons were no different than the other in terms of mediocrity, which is definitely not an apt statement at all and falls closer to nihilism. Nihilism is the belief that nothing really matters, that there's no real difference or worth to anything. So regarding Pokémon, yes, you are DEFINITELY a nihilist.
And I'm definitely not "nostalgic" about the series. In fact, I have a near-eidetic memory, and being "nostalgic" basically implies that I'm not even remembering the series as well as I should, and I in fact DO remember the series very well (the ones I've seen anyway), down to the tiniest details. And I'd say this even if I outright hated the original series. And to prove that I'm self-aware enough to know what nostalgia means, I'll even state WHAT I'm nostalgic about: Disney's Beauty and the Beast, Belle in particular, because I honestly wish I could like Belle again and trust her, long for a day that I was back in childhood where I looked up to her, rather than feeling a huge amount of distrust towards Belle thanks to horrific College professors who think just because they have a degree in teaching, they can push any leftist agenda of their choosing (and some commentary and design notes from Linda Woolverton and the staff don't help either), not to mention connecting the French Revolution to Beauty and the Beast's timeline and being disturbed by the resulting implication that Belle, assuming she doesn't die from the Jacobins, joins them due to her bookworm nature resulting in her buying into Rousseau and the other Philosophes' "logic". So yes, I DO have enough self-awareness to know WHEN I am nostalgic, and I'll tell you that my saying the original series was good was DEFINITELY not out of nostalgia.
And for the record, Takeshi Shudo viewed it specifically as a family show, NOT a children's show, and plenty of others have demonstrated how it's not even close to being bad, including DBZFan. And I AM coming up with this objectively, without any emotion backing me (actually, even before the boycott, heck, even BEFORE I learned Misty was removed and the reasons why, I was afraid of even REWATCHING Pokémon because I thought people would call me a "baby" for watching it, same with Disney, all thanks to what Arthur often does with DW regarding Mary Moo Cow, and what he himself experienced when he watched Love Ducks, and it's a trauma I haven't exactly gotten over even WITH my rewatching the DVD sets for Kanto, my watching all five movies a few years back, AND my watching all of the Johto episodes [barely missing one episode only because of a long wait at Barnes and Noble for summer reading] during the marathon leading up to DP's premiere in the US. In other words, IF I were to go by it emotionally, I'd agree with you.).
And another thing, Star Trek was also a fad, yet look how it's doing. So no, its decrease in ratings and quality has absolutely nothing to do with it being a fad that ended. Also, even if it wins, say, a Nickelodeon Kid's Choice Award, that DOESN'T mean it's actually a kids show. Remember, Gotham, of all shows, won that award, even though it was clearly not even close to being suitable for kids or even families.
And I can cite actual, tangible elements to the original series that actually DO make it better than any of its succeeding shows. For instance, the Gym Leaders were actually TREATED as being difficult in a way that was to be expected, especially when Ash at the time was supposed to be a rookie trainer just starting out, and his Pokémon was starting out as well. In future shows, they generally make the Gym Leaders either seem no different from JJM in terms of skill level, maybe barely stronger but not by much (AG and even BW to some extent was especially guilty of this), or it makes Ash and Pikachu look very bad by comparison (DP and XY have this sort of problem). It also did NOT rely on level resets for any of the Pokémon Ash had on hand either, OR for Ash himself. And we also get an actual natural progression of how well Ash was doing, while with other series, they either just have Ash going through the region and barely mentioning his prior ranks, or basically treats one of his few accomplishments as a joke (like with Battle Frontier and how Ash lost to Gary despite the latter being retired from Pokémon training. Yes, you can cite Orange Islands as well, but at least there, one can reasonably assume that Gary underwent training with his Pokémon in anticipation of the Johto league.), and in the case of Best Wishes, they have him flunk a league without even showing anything to make up for it. Probably the closest any series has gotten to Original Series level was DP, and even then it didn't exactly work out too well (especially when more than a few times they treated Paul as just doing a different style of training when in actuality it was closer to his being abusive, little different from Damian from the original series. Gary did have similar mindsets to Paul regarding capturing Pokémon, true, but at least he actually CARED for his Pokémon rather than viewing them as tools (and please don't give me the whole "his own Pokémon would have turned against him if he was abusive" schtick, because I can assure you that Damian also had lots of Pokémon under his belt, and none of them actually turned against him either, not to mention technically one Pokémon DID turn against him, Infernape). Not to mention Paul being treated well and sometimes treating Ash as being in the wrong, if anything, actually violated a core message of Pokémon, which is that Pokémon are not supposed to be treated as simply tools.). I can also point out that in the original series, the characters HAD a reason for joining up with Ash for the saga or even travelling at all. Misty wanted to be a Water Pokémon Master to prove herself to her sisters and be more than in their shadow, and her reason for joining Ash, at least in terms of a pretense, had to deal with her bike being ruined. And Brock joined Ash in order to repay him to effectively allowing him to pursue his dreams. Even Tracey mainly joined up because of Professor Oak. They had more of a reason than the future main characters to be honest, and to some extent Brock in later series (especially DP, where the only reason he rejoined Ash was because the truck driver he was with turned out to have a significant other and was planning on just hitting the road with her). May, for instance, hated Pokémon, and as such had no REAL reason for even entering a Pokémon journey at all, let alone travelling with Ash. And Dawn, while she DID admittedly have a reason for actually going on a journey, didn't really have any real reason for travelling with Ash (though I suppose Ash letting her join to repay her for saving Pikachu would work...). And Iris and Dent didn't really have much reason to join Ash. They might have a reason for journeying in itself, but they really don't have a reason for joining Ash specifically. Clemont did at least initially have an excuse for travelling with Ash since his gym was taken over by a programmed-all-too-well Robot, but beyond that, he really didn't have a reason to continue even AFTER the problem was fixed. And Serena probably had even LESS of a good reason to travel than May. Oh, and they don't have Ash merely dumping his current team at Oak's lab to undergo a "fresh start" between regions, which basically conflicts with the bonding with your team message (in fact, of the original team, only Bulbasaur and Snorlax actually GOT placed in Oak's lab after Orange Islands. Squirtle rejoined the Squirtle Squad, and Charizard underwent training at Charcific Valley). Not to mention the individual Pokémon actually DID get a reason for being left behind beyond "hey, it's a new region, so why not." The closest we've gotten to Pokémon of Ash's that actually HAD a reason for leaving post-OS was his Aipom and his Goodra, and the latter was done so poorly most people are complaining about it.
