Quoted By:
It disappoints me to say this, but I'm done with the Pokemon anime.
>OKAY ASHFAGGO-
Shut the fuck up. I wanted that jobber gone more than anyone else, but Horizons is demonstrably worse than Journeys in so many ways that it hurts.
Pokemon has an obligation to entertain the audience. The slow-burn of Horizons is tiresome. It feels like a never ending build up to a 'big epic story' that isn't going to happen. We have two protags, Dot, five adults, eight villains, mysteries, and a strict adherence to continuity. In the midst of all this, many episodes come and go without anything particularly entertaining happening. I'm not getting any singular exciting moments in each episode, just shit ALMOST happening.
Liko and Roy keep getting put up against things that they can't overcome, and its a race between Friede, Captain Pikachu, and the fucking pendant to see which will bail them out first. I no longer care at all what happens to them because they have no agency or stakes. It's a fucking BORE. Liko doesn't train, her cat only knows one move that she commands to do 'sharp' and 'strong' versions of, and she never fights when it matters because she always gets rescued.
The anime has also seemingly abandoned comedy, which is a shame as I always looked forward to a couple silly moments in every episode. It was never gut-bustingly hilarious shit but it was always pleasantly humorous, and SM and JN leveled up the Pokemon antics to be genuinely fucking funny at times. Now there's so much plot and so many characters to juggle that doing something funny would be a waste of time, why bother being entertaining when you can keep the fucking serialization going?
The animation has also taken a massive hit, and you can see this when you watch without subs. SM and JN had a LOT more character acting in dialogue scenes, where Horizons often has characters standing in place flapping for 8-10 seconds without any secondary movement. It's just.. it's fucking dead bros. I'm bored. I quit.
