I could care less about the battles, no matter how cool anyone claims them to be. Sure, back when I was still in middle school, I greatly enjoyed the battles, however, as I grew-up, my tastes began to differ. Now the one thing I'm mostly looking for is character development and rapid advancement of the journey's progress. This is the reason I still continue to watch and hunt down episodes pertaining to the first and second seasons, because the characters had a whole lot more depth and feel than the third season on.
Right now, I depict Ash as having very little unique personailty attributes, unlike in the first season, where his persona was identifiable as a cocky little 'Action Hero' kid who thinks he's the best of the best and is a little dull on the inside; Certainly a character that can be identified and I could safely say even be related to. Now he's been turned into a triple-toned piece of fodder for battles and discovery of new (and now overly-redundant/abundant) types of Pokemon.
Brock used to be my second favorite character, and in technicality, he still is. His chick-magnet attitude was hilarious. I used to joke about him and Johnny Bravo finding common ground. Neither of them could seem to get a girl no matter how hard they put their mind into it (Assuming one existed to begin with). His motherly attitude towards Ash along with being the Action Hero's wise and valued mentor, his passion to become a succesful Pokemon breeder, and, though it still exists and is still acknowledged today, his akward upbringing brought him into the spotlight as a ture survivior and father figure. Now that the ADVGEN has come along, two of those attributes have been nearly eliminated, and the rest have been dimmed down to mere flickers. Now he just sort of sits there as scenery. Max has taken over Brock's job of informing the twerps of additional details pertaining to Pokemon they run across, and overtime, Brock's obession with women has died down from it's original hilarity. No fun there from our favorite Pokemon breeder.
Don't even get me started on May...End of argument there.
Now, onto the best character to ever grace the program of Pokemon: Misty. I could go as far to say I truly do love her. When she was first introduced as the firey red-head that we've (or it feels like just I and a few others. Chairman Kaga comes to mind...) come to know and love, I hadn't seen a character on television who was so rebellious in emotion. As I grew, I grew to love her and her temper, her passion, and her personal rivalrous rebellion against her sisters. She could be the nicest girl in the world one minute, and then a fire-cracker the next. Unpredictable, she was ferocius, and would express her anger with her fists when she wanted to, which was more often than not, and she usually took it out on Ash, which was quite satisfing at times. It wasn't until much later, about two years ago, I finally found a character similar to her in a totally unrelated subject matter, which contributed to my love of Misty even more. I continued to watch the show, and she grew on me more and more... ... ...until Togepi. That stupid little thing ruined her. Talk about an upset on my part. She stopped showing emotion altogether, it seemed, unless Togepi disappeared, then she'd turn into a helpless concerned mother how had to have Ash go and rescue the god-forsaken egg from some type of unreasonable, unsubstantiated peril. I guess the writers must have run out of ideas with her. Maybe they should have handed them over to some Misty fanatics like myself. We'd turn the whole show into a (pardon the contradiction of words, it's the only way I can explain it) real psuedo-soap opera, I'm sure, with Misty as the main and in some cases, only character concentrated on. I truly do hope that she will return, of course, and now that she's without Togepi, my hopes have risen slighty for a revival of a true, substantial character. however, my doubts are low of a return at all, and therefore, I'm done with this show. I'd gladly just watch my season one tapes rather than pointless new episodes from my standpoint.
I think I've gotten my point across as to why I think the way I do. Take this into consideration, and then contradict me. I'm more than willing to debate.
