>>56271024Probably the way Ash futzed about through the first season. I get that he was supposed to be a newbie, but keep in-mind they didn't go into it knowing they'd be adapting a bunch of regions. He really should've gotten all or at least a solid majority of his badges legitimately.
I stopped being so harsh with it when I realized that it wasn't really supposed to be the shounen battle series that I wanted it to be as a kid. It's really more like Doraemon or Detective Conan, so the general lack of progress was to be expected. By those standards, Pokemon actually does pretty well with character development and internal consistency. One thing I do think is kind of lame is how, at least in the seasons I watched, Ash wasn't exactly the active participant that I would've wanted him to be in a lot of the bigger "evil team" plots, and I remember a lot of them resolving kind of anticlimactically. I mean, could he really not have beaten Giovanni in a battle at some point in the series?
PokeSpe more than gave me my fill of Pokemon battle shounen, though, so I can't really be too mad at the Ashnime. Ultimately it's a pretty solid show for actual babies that seems to start throwing older fans the occasional bone later on.
>>56271399This is true, too. The show had a lot of personality in those earlier seasons, particularly Indigo League, that seems to disappear as Pokemon became more of a juggernaut franchise.
