>>44859318The Anime really was at least better back then when it seemed like it wasn't going to be stuck forever in an endless cycle, but even then, it still had its flaws in regards to the badges not being won fairly, but it was more creative and innocent-feeling.
It just never ended. It just never reached any sort of closure at the end of the day. It kinda became the very franchise zombie Takeshi Shudo feared it would end up being: sad, but money rules over all.
As for the English dub, I find it incredibly sad to hear that the current team has actually gotten worse than they were, even when they first debuted on the scene with that terrible Mastermind Special (if you recall how bad that was, it was really bad apart from, ironically the music not being tampered with- I still remember "Knock his block off" from Kayzie Rogers' Ash and that was hilariously bad).
You'd think after more than a decade on the Series we'd have seen some actual improvement, especially since the bar was not exactly super high-- but in many ways, the TPCI dub is now stuck in the 90s with censorship and script changes to this day.
So in other words, there's no reason to watch it anymore when you combine this with the subpar voice acting (they've been on the show longer than the old team, so how is it still this bad), excessive music replacements (Goldfarb goes way overboard, even for this show, it's crazy how much they replace nowadays), and the boring opening themes (they sound so dull, I think the last XY dub OP and the DP Rap are probably the worst of the worst in general but no recent theme is remotely enthusiastic or has any real tone anymore). It's just a lifeless product being churned out for profits, and nothing more.
I do wonder how long it'll last on Netflix, given the last ratings for the dub were a meager 127,000 (0.3) on Disney XD before Sun & Moon got canned (for reference, in the BW days the dub had 1.5 million viewers, and in the OS-DP days 2.5-5 million), tbqh.