>>54003618The AU movies are weird. They started off with a nostalgia trip with near scene-for-scene recreations of iconic moments like Bye Bye Butterfree, Ash's death and the Spearow scenes (oddly enough they didn't recreate TR meeting Ash at the Pokecenter, which established the reason why they've stalked Pikachu for so long) and then they veered far left and became a trilogy where Ash was barely the main character.
Minna no Monogatari was about everyone's story but Ash's. Everyone got their own mini-arc (gyaru overcoming her trauma, science guy learning to assert himself, liar learning to be honest) but Ash. Koko was a movie where Ash is Jane, and played second fiddle to Koko's Tarzan.
It's like they lured back KAAAAAAAAAANTO audience only to discard them after a quick fuck. Like no KAAAAAAAAAAAANTO fan is gonna care about the gyaru in some random city that isn't KAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANTO. Though I suppose it works if you're sick of Ash after how many years you slogged through his show. I don't know a single person who watched past the original break-up.
Even the DBS epilogue arguably ended the same way.
Story-wise. M20 is okay for comfort food, just leave an odd taste since some scenes were taken, slapped down and removed of the original context. All I could feel while watching Bye Bye Butterfree 2 was remember how much better it worked in the original- where we had over 10 episodes to know the Mon not to mention the fact it was Ash's first catch. I barely knew the Caterpie in this movie since they speed-rush'd his evo.
M21 had some decent story arcs, but a poor final act. I could never quite shake off the fact that Yajima didn't want to write Ash anymore, and didn't want him to be there, but was forced to keep him.
M23 was probably the best movie with the Minimal Ash approach- though that could be because I'm biased towards the Tarzan story.