Let's breakdown why Johto was bad, and try to differ from Vernikova's posts, since she kinda took most of the main arguments I had:
-The team was thoroughly underdeveloped and overachieved at everything. Much like in the games, the Gym Leaders were far too weak, and the only one that provided an inch of difficulty had to be taken down by Kanto Pokemon, which brings me to the next point...
-The Kanto team overshadowed it. As much as I hate a contrived evolution, evolved Pokemon are simply more capable, and since there was only one evolution with his entire Johto team, it didn't help his Johto team make an impression. In fact, his most notably capable Johto Pokemon (until Phanpy evolved in the Battle Frontier), Heracross, was shafted in the tailend of the region because it had problems with one of Ash's Kanto Pokemon.
-Extremely contrived and non-canon plot points. Since the writers couldn't simply make Ash and co. appear out of thin air in Goldenrod to stop Team Rocket's takeover of the Johto media, they had to make another Team Rocket subplot somehow. In comes the Whirl Islands arc, which was a bit of a distraction with an arbitrary legendary and the return of an oft-forgotten character in Richie. Then there was the Whirl Cup, which, IMO, gave Totodile and Kingler (again, see my last point) time to shine, and it gave Misty something to do, something she severely lacked. Also, there was the Lake of Rage subplot, which was also poorly handled because Lance's anime debut overshadowed it because OMGDRAGONGUY.
-FILLER. Yes, Vern mentioned it earlier, but Johto had a lot of filler. And I don't care what any of you think; none of it was good. Half of Johto didn't even advance the plot, and the one plot point that was clear from even before Johto started got shafted in favor of more contrived plot points, and they arbitrarily made it into a movie so that we'd forgive them. I don't buy it. Anyway, there could've been much more character development / evolutions had 90% of Johto not been terrible, poorly-handled filler.
-Teasing the audience. Larvitar. That is all.
-A simple matter of fanboying the games. Face it, half of you only say Johto's decent because you love the games and you don't want anyone to say anything bad about them. The reason Johto failed in the anime was the same reason it failed in the games; it failed as a standalone region and needed to fall on Kanto to have any substance. By itself, it can't really do much, and is a weak, boring region. (With good music, I'll admit.)
-Brock and Misty were there? Really? I couldn't notice with how much they focused on Ash. Oh, but then Brock had three evolutions in Johto...right...that's three times more than Ash had...Can you smell the distraction? And Weedle, before you even get on my ass about this, all of Misty's pushed plot points that you've outlined are the writers' ideas to try and dodge the filler, get her to do something, and to try and make us remember she exists. The fact of the matter is, so much more could've been done with the both of them. They did a half-decent job with Misty (though...Politoed? Really?), but Brock's only redeeming factors were Foretress and Crobat.
-The sheer length of it. It got so boring, so fast, that I (and I'm sure I'm not the only one here) just wanted it to end after a while. He has his eighth badge, FFS; stop trying to force a tired plot point down our throats at the last minute. He's not going to catch that Larvitar. He's not getting his Lapras back. Just go to the League, lose, baww for two seconds and then MOVE ON. KTHNX.
-The lack of interesting character conflict. Gary was only seen at the very end of the Orange Islands, 2-3 episodes in the journey through Johto, then on his return in the Silver League Conference, where they battled and it could've just as easily happened in Kanto (albeit, the result would've been different, but it would've cemented Ash's goals. What conflict did his loss to Richie create? None; he saw him once -- maybe twice, if my memory is off -- and they were friendly towards one another.) because most of their Pokemon were Kanto Pokemon anyway. Ash had no other concrete rivals in Johto, and in Hoenn, the spotlight of character conflict was put on May, who had more rivals than Ash could ever hope to have. (The one-shot appearances by Harrison, Morrison and Tyson don't count. Don't give me that bullcrap.) At least Sinnoh fixed this by giving what's probably the most interesting conflict character thus far in Paul.
So don't try to tell me Johto was great. It was the worst season, by far, and it lasted for much longer than it needed to. And what did the extra time do to it? Nothing but give me and I'm sure many others a gigantic headache. It was easily the worst season in Pokemon. And if you don't like Contests, you're ignoring half of what makes Pokemon interesting to watch in the first place, for reasons of bravado or ignorance or whatever your deluded reasons are. They at least give someone other than Ash the spotlight for a second.
Yeah, Johto sucked. Sorry. It's true. :|
