The more recent theme songs are ruining the anime

This is, to me at least, the biggest factor in why I'm liking the anime a lot less more recently.

The theme songs to the shows were all about victory and trying your best to win and become a master. The singers had this cocky "cool guy" voice, and the songs themselves were always high-energy, catchy tunes that really got you pumped for the episode. Songs like the original theme, and even Master Quest and Advanced Battle all conveyed Ash's determination to be the greatest trainer out there. Sure, the songs also mentioned things like friendship, but it was done in a way that wasn't overly sappy. As much as people hate on 4kids, they did this right.

After Nintendo took over though, starting with Diamond and Pearl, the whole theme of the show seemed to change. D/P is actually the smallest offender here, because while the style of the theme changed from rock to an awful rap, it still kept the same message of becoming the best. Still, the music style change really did take away from the energy and fun of the song. Galactic Battles, Sinnoh League Victors and Battle Dimension are pretty much the same in this regard.

Black and White is where it starts to get really bad. There is a massive style change to country-ish music, and the songs are made completely about friendship. Some lyrics in the latest two theme songs even say that winning or losing doesn't matter, which completely subverts everything they were trying to get across with the older themes. Not only are the songs boring and lacking in energy, but they also take away every bit of that feeling of determination and hard work. Instead they're just like "Eh, whatever".

I actually feel that this change in the song style is affecting how people see the character of Ash. There weren't many complaints about him earlier on in the series, because the songs always made you kinda want to root for him in his adventures. Now nobody cares because these songs are gone.

And that sucks.

I 3/4 agree with you.

The theme certainly is...less than on par and people have definitely been changing their opinions of Ash, but I don't think the two are related. A fair amount of people aren't down with his B/W design (notably the new style of his eyes) and even more people have started to notice that he makes battle decisions that go against common sense.

"Ruining" might be too strong of a word for this, but the theme isn't contributing as much as it could be.

I honestly agree. But "ruin" is an overstatement. Making it look bad, that's correct. I used to remember hearing Advanced, Advanced Battle, Advanced Challenge, DP, Battle Dimensions, Sinnoh League Victors etc. and were too awesome. The recent ones (Black and White ugh) are bad. Like you said, a "cool guy" implementation was an important feature in making the song awesome. And I kind of miss them.

I actually stopeed watching the anime for this reason. I remember the days when the anime was good... I used to watch Hoenn, but then Sinnoh came. Stuff's gone downhill since then.

the only theme i like is the japanese episode N theme song.

While ruin is too harsh of a word the themes have certainly gone down since the days of DP's first theme song, the peak for me in terms of theme were...well I liked all pre DP themes but Advance stood out for me.

A theme song is a theme song, but I wouldn't go as far as saying it's what's ruining the anime. I would agree with someone who says the anime isn't as good as it used to be, but that isn't the fault of the theme song but the writers.

Unfortunately, the theme songs we've had for the English dub of Black and White really haven't been that great. That being said, the most recent theme song for "Adventures in Unova" isn't as bad as the previous two. It isn't as edgy as the older themes, but it goes back to the focus of Ash's journey rather than the friendships.