>>33633757that's what I've always loved about the manga.
I haven't re-read it in a while, but these are things that happen.
>people start turning on Red because he's too weird and keep running him out of town>something Red something cloning, something deoxys >Red disappears, turns out he was frozen in a cave somewhere>one of the elite 4 is actually a villain who... wants to destroy the world? because his pokemon died horribly.>large group of the main cast get turned into statues, leaving Gold in extreme emotional stress as the only one left to try and save them>Silver had been kidnapped as a little kid>EVERYONE DIES. Literally everyone relevant dies, leaving Ruby to not only experience watching his father die, but to then reset time and save the world>Hilda get's fucking traumatized by N>Hilbert gets turned into a rockThat's not counting all the times that all the characters get the absolute shit beat out of them.
honestly my memory is kind of blotty, and I never read Emerald or got that far in Black and White, but shit, yeah. The manga has always been dark. That's the appeal.
But if blood doesn't matter, than even the anime is pretty dark, if you focus on just how many times Ash has almost died, or watched somebody else almost die OH! And, without hesitation, offer himself to die. Like in movie... whatever- the ranger movie, the underwater temple is fucking sinking, they're thousands of feet under the ocean, and he and May come to the leftover pod- Ash doesn't even fucking hesitate, he just helps May into the thing, sets Pikachu in next to her and then locks the door and runs off. This poor kid. He's completely broken at this point.
I can not express how much I love it 
