>>38289956>Why did Pokémon RéBURST fail?Anyone who complains about the anime being mindless shounen clearly hasn't read this manga. You have all the tropes, here: The idiot hero looking for their missing parent, said hero is inexplicably chosen by a legendary power (Zekrom), the edgy rival/antagonist who has their opposite (Reshiram) and intends to purge all life because reasons, the mysterious girl who's saved by and then follows the hero, the "bad" girl dressing like a stripper the hero wins over, the tournament arc, the impractical costumes, "training fixes everything," and more, all played perfectly straight without a hint of creativity or wit. It's like someone threw every shounen trope they knew of in a blender, but forgot to add "personality." The main character Ryouga is flat as a board, the main girl is utterly useless, the sole character to undergo any development does so in the most predictable manner possible, the five main characters never develop an actual relationship, the plot goes nowhere until the series is clearly getting cancelled, and the worldbuilding doesn't exist.
It's rather obvious it wasn't initially meant to have Pokemon - the mangaka mentions that he'd spent years trying to put the story together, when Black/White were only out for a few months. On the rare occasions Pokemon actually do appear, the only ones shown are from Gen 5. Mitsuhisa Tamura couldn't come up with his own monster designs, but the story would have flowed at least a little better had he done. It also wouldn't be hampered by the constant, nagging feeling of "that's not how it works." They hopped onto the Pokemon bandwagon so that they wouldn't have to be creative, or really think.
