#there’s like 141 episodes for Kalos

[crystalelemental]

When you come back to watch the Pokemon anime as an adult after watching as a kid, the thing they don’t warn you about is that you will grow increasingly annoyed at Team Rocket’s very existence, and all the positive memory of them comes from like three episodes while the episode-to-episode bullshit gets forgotten. But it is real, and it is constant, and I think I hate them now.

[otnesse]

@pepsi-al Making a separate post regarding your and Mattress's exchange about Pokemon ratings, since I can't reblog the latter directly:

pepsi-al: themattress: Here are the regular ratings averages for the Pokeani shows following the OS (all you need to know about that is that it was perpetual highs in Kanto, Orange Islands and early Johto, and then the biggest rating drop in the franchise happened during the rest of Johto.) AG: 1 - 35 (Series Premiere — May’s First Contest) = 9.0 36 - 80 (Musuem Theft — May’s Fourth Contest) = 8.0 / 7.0 81 - 131 (Resumed Fillers — Hoenn League) = 6.0 132 - 192 (Battle Frontier) = 6.0 / 5.0 DP: 1 - 85 (Series Premiere — Ash vs. Crasher Wake) = 7.0 86 - 141 (Summer School arc — Meeting Palmer) = 6.0 / 5.0 142 - 152 (Evil Togepi — Team Galactic Finale) = 7.0 153 - 170 (Resumed Fillers — Meeting Bertha) = 6.0 171 - 191 (Dawn gets Togekiss — Series Finale) = 5.0 BW: 1 - 60 (Series Premiere — Milos Island) = 6.0 / 5.0 61 - 82 (Ash vs. Clay — Pokewood Studios) = 4.0 83 - 108 (Ash vs. Roxie — Unova League) = 6.0 / 5.0 109 - 122 (Episode N) = 4.0 123 - 142 (Decalore Adventures) = 3.0 XY: 1- 44 (Series Premiere — Ash vs. Korrina) = 5.0 45 - 66 (Serena Gets a Goal — Return to Lumiose City) = 4.0 67 - 122 (Ash vs. Clemont — Ash vs. Wulfric) = 3.0 123 - 141 (Kalos League — Series Finale) = 2.0 Basically, DP and BW were successful, AG and XY less so. Coincidentally (or not), Gens IV and V were more popular than Gens III and VI. Maybe Gen VII’s popularity will reflect on the ratings for the SM anime…but if it’s popular and the show still bombs, that’ll be interesting. And I saw someone on YouTube just now literally try to point this fact out about XYZ specifically. In the replies he got, there was nothing but reality denial and blind accusations of “hatred”. I just can’t with this fandom, sometimes… As I have said before and will say again, ratings doesn’t necessarily reflect quality or opinion, they reflect interest. I found a chart about it and drew lines for the baseline ratings that would be expected for each series (which is basically a million less that the previous series.) For the most part, the Original Series was well above the line, sinking under only toward the end of Johto but rising back up for the Johto League. Like I noted above, AG remained above water for around 80 episodes before sinking, only having a temporary rise to expected numbers during the Hoenn League before promptly dropping when Battle Frontier, viewed as a “filler” arc, started. DP sagged following the Summer School arc, rose back up around the time of HeartGold/SoulSilver’s release, but then fell again around the time of the Grand Festival and never recovered ‘til the end. BW did just fine for all of its 2010 and 2011 run, but then fell in 2012 until the Black 2/White 2-inspired “Season 2″ rebrand brought the numbers up again….until the Unova League, after which there was a freefall. XY held steady for its first half, then dropped like a stone in its second half. SM, as it turns out, is the most stable the anime’s ever been ratings-wise, the numbers rising to the line then back under over and over again like the tides of the ocean (appropriate!), with the main drop happening in the final year with the change in timeslot and the advent of streaming services providing an alternative way of watching the show. While the series known internationally as Journeys…..yeah, let’s just say there’s a pretty good reason we seem to be looking the end in the face right now. But like I said, ratings reflect interest, not quality. I personally found the second half of XY, especially XY&Z, to be drastically better than the first half, but that doesn’t matter since the target audience in Japan got burned out by the first half that their interest in the whole show dropped completely. That SM never had a comparable plummet speaks volumes about which style the kids preferred, so the producers embracing that style for Journeys makes sense.

Looking over those ratings, it's pretty clear that if anything, the biggest and most prolonged drop in ratings actually happened in AG, not Johto (even Johto at least tended to stay above the line even if it's undoubtedly less than Orange Islands or Kanto especially). Really acts as a bit of vindication to me that this proves the audience did NOT like Hidaka's decision to axe Misty, ultimately. Sure, AG started off strong, but it ended up tanking quickly, and not due to the fad dying out either. And it being turned into Contest hour at Ash's expense certainly didn't seem to help either, nor the rather cheap wins against Gym Leaders. DP for all its faults at least found a way to stabilize the ratings somewhat, and BW, even though I personally found Ash's character reduction to being an idiot distasteful, at least did overall well ratings wise until the league (which is obviously due to Ash losing his rank).

So, no, Johto, for all its faults, didn't nearly kill the show, and AG most certainly didn't save the show. Quite the opposite, the mishandling of AG if anything is what helped KILL the show ultimately. Sun and Moon, even though I really disagreed with the decision to go all Emperor's New School on it, at least did better by actually trying to do better quality for the most part, not to mention actually have Ash WIN an in-game league and, heck, even bring back Misty and Brock to fix one of the biggest glaring problems with the show (namely, the mishandling of gym leaders).

The AG-stans really need to look at the ratings better, because this definitely doesn't look at all like AG even saved the show at all and if anything is more likely to have driven the show's audience away in a massive number, ultimately leading to Ash being replaced after one mistake too many. You would think they'd learn their lesson after Orange Islands that replacing one of your leads would not work in the long run, but alas... Sure, maybe keeping Misty wouldn't have guaranteed that the ratings would go back to Kanto or Orange Islands level, but at least it would have had AG having its ratings be above the line rather than consistently below it, barely meeting it at best.