Animated Atrocities: In the Shadow of Zekrom!

Show: Pokemon
Episode: 660
Year: 2010/2011

Writer(s): Atsuhiro Tomidoka (Screenplay)
Director(s): Assisstant: Masaru Koyama, Kunihiko Yuyama / Animation: Izumi Shimura, Mizuho Tajima


Who's that Pokemon? A better question is, what the fuck happened to Pokemon!? The 5th Generation of Pokemon, Black and White, is one of the most controversial in the series history due to it not having you able to catch previous generations of Pokemon at the start of the game, making them exclusive to the post-league or through transfers. A lot of people also weren't too keen on the starter selection and their stats being very bad; then there's everything with Team Plasma and N but I'm not digging into that. Right now I'm focusing on what is the WORST of the Pokemon anime series in its entire history! This won't be the only atrocity I do for it either. I absolutely despise Best Wishes and everything it did. If anyone could suggest episodes of atrocites for me to do for it moreso I'd be happy to oblige.


First and foremost like every region intro Pikachu is drained of ALL THE EXPERIENCE he gained in Sinnoh right off the bat thanks to Zekrom being a fucking asshole and no thanks to Team Rocket intervening. Ah yes, Team Rocket,  in this series they decided after almost 15 years to finally make them more actively threatening and serious in their pursuit of, whatever it is Team Rocket does by compeletly draining them of their funny and positive quirks. Making them mindlessly serious zombie robots as a result. You CANNOT pull a complete 180 personality change on characters who have been in a show for over a decade AND HAVE IT LAST for years! Team Rocket's Trio have always been comic relief and butt monkeys even in the beginning, so to have them become competent and serious is out of character in every possible reality.


Or more realistically Team Rocket stole Ash's competence because in this show he's a FUCKING MORON! This series attempted to appeal to those of us who grew up with The Indigo League and make Ash more of a novice to make him more relatable to the kids, this doesn't work because not long ago we saw him beat a DARKRAI! Even if you hate the battle with him and Tobias that still happened! And he's beaten other Legendaries as well. This series wants to pretend none of those accomplishments ever happened and that Ash has always been a stupid noob, and they do this by having Zekrom fry his brain! Anywho ONCE AGAIN Pikachu suffered a magnetic overload and loses the power to do electric attacks temporarily. This is gonna be very problematic in this episode.


This pariticular episode is the very definition of contrived. Everything here happens for no reason, and literally everything is pulled out of someone's ass! Apparently Pikachu has an electric flu but Juniper didn't find anything wrong with him. Even after the Shudo era the writers knew whenever Pikachu gets an electric overcharge that he must have flu-like symptoms, we don't get that here just to build suspense!


Then we meet Trip, fuck me, TRIP! This kid is supposed to be the Unova equivalent of Paul, the guy who has had the same experience level as Ash going through every region and is a total asshole. This kid is a fresh trainer who just got a Snivy from the good professor and he challenges this kid from "the boonies" as he calls Kanto to a battle. This kid is everyone who dares trash the previous gens just because they're classics! He challenges Ash to a battle and even though this Snivy is brand new it somehow knows Leaf Storm! Pikachu should be able to defeat a Snivy even without electric attacks, but nope! Gotta make Ash look incompetent! So it gets Oneshot! Fan-fucking-tastic! I hate this series already.


So Zekrom decides to be a trollish prick and give Pikachu back his power AFTER the battle! This was purely done to force a reset on Ash and Pikachu, and despite what people claim they've never been reset untill now. If you must weaken a character for the plot, you have to have it make some sort of sense! Take the Genie from Aladdin: people say that after he was freed he lost a lot of his PHENOMINAL COSMIC POWER in the Sequels and TV series because he no longer has his itty bitty living space. This makes perfect sense in context. Zekrom draining Pikachu is merely done to force tension, and he never gets mentioned again in the series at all. He's a: BIG LIPPED ALLIGATOR MOMENT! And the funny thing is, All Dogs Go to Heaven was able to use theirs for the plot CORRECTLY!


Doing a proper reboot is something very hard to pull off, but I have seen it done well before in other series; the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles had reboots in 2003 and 2012 that are leagues superior to the 1987 cartoon as one such example. Then there's My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic compared to the rest of its kin. However when you're using the same characters we've come to know and love and bastardized their personalities beyond what they were at the start of ther series proper, you've gone too far! And the show just keeps getting worse from here on out and doesn't pick up untill XY with some exceptions. Again if you have any other Atrocities you want me to do on Best Wishes let me know.


Cringe-Inducing Audio: 0
Cringe-Inducing Visuals: 0
Lackluster Writing: 9
Annoyance: 10
Disturbing Content: 0
Unnecessary Cruelty: 5
Rancid Morality: 0
Low Production Values: 2
Unfortunate Implications: 5
Character Derailment: 10

Final Score: 41/100


Pokemon is owned by Nintendo, Gamefreak, Viz Entertainment, Pokemon USA and TAJ Productions.

Animated Atrocities is from

Regulas314