>>44978867Pokemon is a good series, it's just also one with arguably the greatest waste of potential.
Pokemon could be so much more. And I mean this for the entire franchise not just the game.
Game Freak is obviously tired of making Pokemon games. I completely get it, they've been making them for nearly 25 years and Pokemon is the sole reason why Game Freak is even relevant. But they won't let anyone else make the mainline games because Nintendo can and would use that against them to seize full control of the IP, and no company is stupid enough to reliquinsh a billion dollar IP.
The anime is simply a glorified advertisement and is treated as such. Like there's Digimon and YuGiOh, also glorified advertisements, but their anime have always kicked the ever living shit out of Pokemon's anime in terms of quality. Why is the Pokemon anime so milquetoast?
The manga is an absolute shitshow after Emerald arc and suffers the most from the continuous cog-turning that the IP is, considering that it's mainly just one guy doing it. He can't keep up anymore, considering it took 10 years for BW2 arc to get a mediocre ending.
Merchandising is a pain to get outside of Japan. If you want decent quality merch, you need a forwarding proxy and you can easily spend thousands if you're not careful (some prices are absurd, like $500 for a Mareep plush? I don't care that it's 4 feet. It should cost $250 at most). Pokemon is a global franchise so how come Japan is the only country that consistently gets quality merch? Never had this issue with other popular Japanese IPs.
