Anonymous asks:

The more recent Pokemon games imply that Gym Leaders adjust their strength and difficulty based on the challenger so that its not a complete stomp in either direction what are your thoughts on this?

That it’s really the only way the Gym system can make any damn sense.

Think about it; not all trainers start their journeys in Pallet Town (or New Bark Town, or wherever), and not all of them will follow the same routes as we do through their home regions – not least because our routes are often determined by unusual temporary obstacles; if that Sudowudo hadn’t been standing in that exact spot, it would have made perfect sense for a trainer starting in Violet City to earn their second badge in Ecruteak City.  Gym Leaders are supposed to be educators as much as they are obstacles; they want trainers to learn stuff, not get curb stomped three weeks into their journeys, give up, and go home.

Anonymous asks:

Do you think there’s any relationship between Pokémon like the Magnemite line, the Beldum line, and the Klink line? If so, what might that be?

The ‘mechanical’ Pokémon, that is?  Honestly I think it’s impossible to say, although Magearna might shed some light on all of that, once we learn more about her.  Voltorb are supposed to have appeared suddenly around the time of the invention of mass-produced Pokéballs, and Professor Juniper discovers that Klink appeared in Chargestone Cave about a hundred years ago, so I wouldn’t rule out their creation having something to do with human influence.  I doubt they were deliberately made by humans, because they mostly seem to be thought of as mysterious Pokémon and no one seems to know exactly where they came from, but they might be the result of human activity in much the same way as Grimer (i.e. the waste products of human technology, stimulated by “X-rays from the moon”).

Anonymous asks:

Even though I believe on your argument on the whole Beartic x Dragonite question, I don’t really think that the thing about levels is possible. Principaly because the levels don’t seem to make a very big influence on the anime. One example is one of the starting episodes of the Unova series where Pikachu loses to Trip’s Snivy. (His name’s Trip right? Right) The Snivy was recently catched and I can’t really believe Pikachu would be something lower than 50 and it surely didn’t just “reset”

I agree with you in principle, but that’s a bad example.  The whole context of that battle is that Pikachu’s just had his powers drained by Zekrom.  He is operating at vastly diminished capacity compared to practically every other time we ever see him fight, and the games offer us no guidelines on how to simulate that.

Anonymous asks:

What do you think of Detective Pikachu for 3ds?

…I am so confused.

It’s actually kinda neat in a lot of ways, though.  Like, if I have this straight, the deal with the kid is that he and the Pikachu can understand each other for reasons that are currently mysterious, and as a result they can work as a team to operate just as effectively among humans and among Pokémon.  That puts them in a very unique position that could be exploited in all kinds of ways by a shrewd and discreet investigator.  And that is a really interesting premise; it’s just a shame this is a fairly low-budget game and won’t have the space or the ambition to explore it fully.

…and yes, I have signed the change.org petition to get Nintendo of America to hire Danny de Vito as the English language voice actor for Detective Pikachu.

Update: No Danny de Vito ='(

Anime Time: Episodes 66 and 67

The Evolution Solution – The Pi-Kahuna

Professor Oak did you really just spend all morning making this crappy Powerpoint of a Slowbro with question marks all over it?
Professor Oak did you really just spend all morning making this crappy Powerpoint of a Slowbro with question marks all over it?

These two episodes cover a brief (?) excursion to tropical Seafoam Island, where Delia and a group of her friends from Pallet Town are enjoying a relaxing holiday (it’s a very different place from the Seafoam Islands in the games).  Misty and Brock are both invited to join their group, but Ash – who is theoretically supposed to be training for the Pokémon League – is left behind, until he manages to con Professor Oak into giving him an excuse to go anyway.  The Evolution Solution, upon watching it again, is not as interesting an episode as I had hoped it would be, and The Pi-Kahuna has themes that are pretty standard for the Pokémon anime.  However, the former gives me an excuse to ramble at length about Shellder and Slowbro, while the latter… let’s just say its themes are open to creative reinterpretation.  Anyway – without further ado, let’s jump right in.

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Anonymous asks:

I really dislike the anime, but principally because MANY of the battles are completely inaccurate. This gets to my frustration point principally on the Unova series. I don’t remember exactly, But i THINK it was on chapter 752 that happened the biggest bullshit I’ve ever seen. (The start of the Junior cup) First of all, a Serperior beats a Darmanitan with a single solar beam (This isn’t the worst part) but THEN Iris’s dragonite just survives two ice beams from a Beartic! What do you think?

Okay, so, I think “inaccurate” is an interesting choice of words here, because it implies that battles in the anime are supposed to be a representation of something else, and that we can judge them by the closeness of that representation.  Presumably you think they’re supposed to be representations of battles in the games, which I don’t believe is now the case or ever has been; I think the games and anime both represent, in different ways, the same abstract fantasy.  Really, it makes just as much sense to say that the games are “inaccurate” for failing to allow for the level of tactical variety or the influence of individual personality and relationships that we see in the anime.  Furthermore if this is the “biggest bullshit you’ve ever seen” then clearly you haven’t watched Solid as a Solrock; personally I expect bullshit of a much higher calibre from the Pokémon anime.  But let’s run some of these numbers.

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