Pokemon: Indigo League (1997-99): Season Review

It might be embarrassing for me to admit it, but when the first season of the Pokémon anime was made available to stream on Netflix, I started to binge-watch the show. That’s because when I was younger, I was a big fan of the Pokémon franchise. I owned a lot of the video games, including some of the main handheld games like ‘Pokémon: Yellow’ and ‘Pokémon: Silver’ as well as a few of the spin-off games for home consoles like ‘Pokémon: Stadium’ and ‘Pokémon Snap’. But you see, this has been a franchise that I started to grow out of as I got older and one of the main reasons why I did was because the franchise continuously expanded with new worlds and new Pokémon species that were introduced with almost every new main game in the series; in other words, the series was basically starting to be a bit overcomplicated. Right now, there are about 719 kinds of Pokémon in this franchise split across six separate regions of the world of Pokémon… and I’m sorry but once you go past the Johto era of the series, that’s where it loses me. In that sense, I guess you can call me an ‘old-timer’ when it comes to the series because my favorite Pokémon games were the ones before the Hoenn era and being that I was born in 1995 that means that I was there when the series first made its debut here in the U.S (just a year later in 1996). So yes, I prefer the original Pokémon to their newer brethren. Now for the record, I still like playing the video games from time to time, but I guess at this point I’m more of a casual fan of the series. But even with that said, today I’ll be looking at the first season of the Pokémon anime, more commonly known as ‘Pokémon: Indigo League’.

(Note: This first season consists of 82 episodes, starting with ‘I Choose You, Pikachu’ and ending with ‘Friends to the End’. There are additional episodes of the following season that are currently streaming on Netflix, but for now I’ll stick to the first 82 episodes.)

In a world that is full of creatures known as Pokémon, 10-year old Ash Ketchum dreams of becoming the world’s greatest Pokémon Trainer. However, on the day that he is set to leave home (and for the record yes, most Pokémon trainers are supposed to leave home at that age… that’s how it works in this franchise) to go out on his Pokémon journey across the Kanto region, he ends up oversleeping and as a result, all of the regular Starter Pokémon that the local Professor, Professor Oak, provides to new trainers have already been taken. So instead, Ash ends up with a Pikachu as his first Pokémon. At first, the two have a difficult time getting along but soon they become inseparable as they travel across Kanto battling trainers, dealing with the criminal Team Rocket trio of Jessie, James, and Meowth, and coming across new Pokémon as Ash yearns to acquire eight badges from the local Pokémon Gyms in order for him to enter the Pokémon League Tournament. Along the way, Ash and Pikachu befriend two of the region’s Gym Trainers who end up joining him on his journey; Brock, the Gym Leader in Pewter City who looks to become the world’s best Pokémon breeder, and Misty, the Cerulean City Gym Leader who joins Ash on his journey after an incident in which Ash and Pikachu accidentally destroyed her bike when they borrowed it.

Folks, let’s be honest… this show is kind of stupid. I mean, even when I was a kid, I think I remember that even back then I thought that the show was a bit too goofy at times. Looking at it now, it’s kind of even goofier than I remembered. This show can be very corny at times, with a lot of bad Pokémon-related puns being said in almost every episode. Heck, some of these puns were even used in some of the episode titles (e.g. ‘Lights, Camera, Quack-tion’… get it?). Plus, this show is full of odd moments, whether it’s due to an animation error or just an act of pure stupidity committed by one of the characters (I’ll be covering these moments in more detail in the second part of this review). But probably the biggest problem with the show is that it is very, very repetitive. I mean pretty much every episode has the same general plot-points; Ash and friends come across a new Pokémon, which is usually accompanied by its Trainer, and they befriend this new ‘Trainer of the Week’ as they learn more about the ‘Pokémon of the Week’. Then, Team Rocket comes in attempting to kidnap Pikachu (after reciting their motto of course which they do… every… single… time!), or sometimes the ‘Pokémon of the Week’. Ash and his friends then defeat them, and they blast off into the sunset and the episode ends with the group continuing on their journey ‘having learned a new lesson about the world Pokémon’; rinse, wash, repeat. Really, I’m just amazed at how long they were able to stretch out this series, which now stands at more than 800 episodes, and yet have pretty much every episode play out the exact same way. It’s so repetitive that I don’t even feel like the characters mature at all during the show, and that’s not including the fact that they’re seemingly staying the same age a la ‘The Simpsons’.

While the main characters themselves are likable enough that you do want to follow them on their journey, they’re not the most ‘developed’ characters in the world and quite frankly each member of the main trio has their own unique major flaw. Ash may be an optimistic kid who doesn’t want to quit, but most of the time he does come off as a bit too headstrong and at times a little arrogant, acting before he thinks things through. Misty can be very sweet, but is easily prone to getting angry, especially at Ash. Brock probably is the most mature of the three, but he’s also notably always trying to hit on nearly every girl they come across; usually one of the many Nurse Joys and Officer Jennys that inhabit every town… though I will say that this is actually one of my favorite parts of the whole series because I just find it funny how Brock is always trying just a bit too hard to try and score with a girl. As for the Team Rocket trio of Jessie, James, and Meowth… boy, where do we begin with those three? I mean, they’ve been in nearly every episode since Episode 2, ‘Pokémon Emergency’, and yet continuously fail in their many, many attempts to capture Pikachu. They’ve even used some shock-proof equipment which you think they would use all the time… but no, there have been some instances where they use this kind of equipment but then they don’t use it the following episode(s) and even then sometimes this equipment ends up backfiring on them. I mean after all this time you’d think they would’ve learned from their mistakes (or quite possibly have given up after failing so many times) but NOPE!!!

So despite all that I’ve just said, why then do I still like this show even though I feel that it’s incredibly repetitive. Well, even with that in mind I still found the show to be pretty entertaining. For one thing, the show actually has a bit of an advantage over the video games because the Pokémon battles are more engaging in the anime than they are in the actual games themselves, especially when considering what the video games themselves were like at the time the show first aired. Because you see, in the old days, the battles in the video games were much more static as it was really just the two Pokémon staying in a single position facing each other and just attacking their opponents from that position without moving whatsoever… which let’s be honest kind of gets boring after a while. That’s not the case with the battles in the anime; the Pokémon move around much more which I do find to be much more exciting as they really do a better job of pulling you into the action on-screen. Plus, nowadays I really get a kick out of all of the cornier/stupid elements of the show, whether it’s Brock’s repeated attempts at trying to woo girls or Team Rocket’s inability to give up their sort of hopeless mission of capturing Pikachu. I mean, this show is just silly and it at least seems like the creators of the show aren’t trying to take things so seriously. So overall, ‘Pokémon’ is just a fun little show that may not be the smartest cartoon out there but it is still fairly enjoyable to watch and nowadays its first season can definitely serve as a key piece of nostalgia for anyone who grew up with the series like I did.

Rating: If mostly for Entertainment Value: 3.5/5

Check back Tomorrow for Part 2 in which I look at some of the strangest moments in the anime.

Video Game Review: Sly Cooper PS2 Trilogy

In the video game industry, a key aspect of debate that has been going on for years is the ‘console war’ between all of the major video game consoles released onto the market, like when the SNES faced off against the Sega Genesis or the PlayStation went up against the Nintendo 64. Nowadays, it’s between three consoles; the Wii U, the PlayStation 4, and the Xbox One. And I’m just going to come out and say it… I think that this whole ‘console war’ thing is really stupid and quite honestly rather pointless. So what if someone gets one of the three major consoles and it’s not the most popular one? Like what if they bought a Wii U but everyone else got a PS4 or an Xbox One? If they like it, then the more power to them. In my case, I’m a big Nintendo fan even though the company, while still playing a key part in the video game market, is now sort of in the back of the pack behind Sony and Microsoft. The Nintendo 64 was the first video game console I ever owned and most of my favorite video games of all time came from, you guessed it, Nintendo. I don’t own a Wii U at this time, but I’m considering possibly getting one in the future. For the record though, I have ventured out and bought a few non-Nintendo consoles over the years and probably the one that I’ve used the most aside from all Nintendo consoles was the PlayStation 2, which is currently the best-selling video game console of all time with over 155 million units sold since it was first released in 2000.

During its run, the PS2 (and basically Sony for that matter) may not have really had a definitive mascot like Mario with Nintendo or Master Chief from Halo for Xbox, but there were a lot of pretty good franchises released during the PS2 era, including series such as ‘Jak and Daxter’, ‘Ratchet and Clank’, and ‘Kingdom Hearts’. However, my personal favorite Sony franchise would have to be one that apparently wasn’t as successful as those franchises, but is still a really good series; the ‘Sly Cooper’ franchise, which was originally developed by Sucker Punch Productions before they moved on to the ‘Infamous’ franchise (Sanzaru Games took over after that, beginning with the PS3 re-mastered re-release of the original three games and then releasing the fourth main game in the series). Not only that, but there’s actually a full-length animated movie in the works slated for a 2016 release. But for now, we’ll be looking at the first three Sly Cooper games, all of which were released for the PlayStation 2; ‘Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus’, ‘Sly 2: Band of Thieves’, and ‘Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves’. I don’t own a PS3 at this time so this won’t include the most recent entry in the series, ‘Sly 4: Thieves in Time’ though I hope that one day I can finally play that one.

Taking place in a world fully inhabited by anthropomorphic creatures, the series focuses on the titular Sly Cooper, a raccoon whose family, the Cooper clan, is known for being world-famous master thieves. Each member of the family has passed down their techniques to each new generation through a book known as the ‘Thievius Raccoonus’. But before Sly is able to inherit the book, a gang of criminals known as the ‘Fiendish Five’ kill Sly’s father and steal the book. Sly ends up at an orphanage but while there, he meets his future partners in crime, tech genius Bentley the Turtle and muscle-man Murray the Hippo. Years later, they team up and travel the world, while also trying to avoid the law (primarily inspector Carmelita Fox, Sly’s nemesis/love interest), in order to stop the Fiendish Five so that Sly can take back his inheritance. In ‘Sly 2’ (don’t worry, I won’t spoil anything major from these games), Sly and the gang deal with another gang, the Klaww Gang, who have stolen some extremely valuable parts that could spell trouble if they’re put back together. Finally, in ‘Sly 3’, Sly, Bentley, and Murray round up a team of ‘specialists’ in order to help Sly get into the ‘Cooper Vault’, which contains his family’s entire fortune.

One of the things that I find really interesting about this series is that each game’s engine was built by improving on the engine from its predecessor. In short, each game got better as the series went on. Now while I’m basically saying that ‘Sly 2’ and ‘Sly 3’ were the best games in this trilogy, I’m not saying that the first ‘Sly Cooper’ game was bad; far from it in fact. It was a very enjoyable platforming game with solid controls and plenty of fun stealth elements thrown in. However, there are certain aspects about the game that were rather frustrating, with the most notable being that it operated on a ‘one-hit’ system. If Sly was hit just once, you’d lose a life and would have to start over either from the beginning of the level or a checkpoint (if you’ve reached one). You could find ‘lucky charms’ throughout the level (represented by horseshoes), which would give you extra hit points but at the most you could only get hit three times and that’s it. Some other problems included a bit too much repetition in certain areas and some missions that were… well, I won’t say ‘hard’ but they could get rather frustrating and in most cases that’s because of the whole one-hit problem that I mentioned earlier.

Thankfully, the two sequels removed the ‘one-hit’ system and instead gave the player a full life bar, which was definitely a welcome change. The hub worlds in both sequels were also much more expansive and offered a lot more chances for exploration whereas in the first game there wasn’t much to explore within the game’s hub worlds. But probably the best new change made with these games was that they offered much more variety in regards to the gameplay. You see, the first ‘Sly’ game had about only 3-4 mission types (not counting boss fights); stealth missions, driving missions, shooting missions, and one hacking mission. All of Sly’s stealth missions had the exact same objective; get to the end of the level and find a key that you use to unlock more of the hub world and ultimately to get to the boss and the other missions had you collecting keys as well. ‘Sly 2’ and ‘Sly 3’ offered much more variety in regards to the missions, referred to in these two games as ‘jobs’. Not only did you get more interesting missions to do, but you could also play as Bentley and Murray whereas in the first game you only got to play as them for brief moments in racing and hacking missions.

Overall, I think my personal favorite game of the three would have to be ‘Sly 3’, which might be because this was the first one of this series that I played even though I completed the other two games first. Also, I had to actually buy another copy of the game (along with another copy of ‘Sly 2’ for that matter) because both games had this odd problem where the game ‘froze’ but not in the usual case of a game freezing. The game still ran but the dialogue wasn’t progressing forward (It's kind of hard to explain, and unfortunately I can't provide a link to a video of this problem at the time I'm writing this). Anyway, back to ‘Sly 3’; the game had the best variety out of all of these three games in both the unique line-up of villains (no gang association this time) and the fact that in this game, Sly and the gang recruit a few new members into the game as well. Heck, they even team up with some of their enemies from previous games in the series. Of course, as it was common throughout the trilogy, each game featured some excellent writing/voice acting (though in the case of the latter, for some reason Carmelita was voiced by three different actresses in these games… and none of them even had the same accent), a full cast of memorable characters, and were just really fun to play.

So those were the first 3 Sly Cooper games, and out of all of the PS2 games that I’ve played over the years, these three games are definitely amongst my favorites. All 3 of the games had solid controls and fun stealth gameplay although I mostly prefer the second and third games due to the more frustrating elements of the first Sly Cooper. Again, I’m not saying that game was bad but it’s just that I wish that they had done something better than just having the whole game operate on a ‘one-hit’ health system, which really got annoying in certain areas. Thankfully, ‘Sly 2’ and ‘Sly 3’ got rid of that system. So now, it looks like this series is running again with ‘Sly 4’ for the PS3, which continued the series after the third one seemingly ended the story though had a bit of a cliffhanger at the end of the game. I’m interested in seeing where this series goes now and as for that movie coming out in two years, I’m hoping for the best. After all, video games and movies haven’t always worked well together but who knows? Maybe this could break that unlucky streak of video game movies… but only time will tell.

Ratings:

Sly 1: 4/5

Sly 2: 5/5!

Sly 3: 5/5!

 

 

Wreck-it Ralph (2012) review

 

Disney's latest animated feature, Wreck-it Ralph, is a film that is tailor-made for a certain crowd, and I am of course referring to the gamer crowd. It's a good thing too because since the 90's, gamers have never really gotten a great film based off one of their favorite video games. So, Disney goes for a mix between Toy Story and Who Framed Roger Rabbit by going for an original story that pays homage to games new and old of every genre, from the first-person shooters like Halo and Call of Duty to the kid-friendly games like Mario Kart to the old-school arcade classics like Donkey Kong and Pac-Man. Needless to say, this movie surely delivers on creating a unique universe and it can appeal to all audiences, even those who are not part of the gamer crowd. The end result is one of the best animated films of the year, if not the best.

The film follows the titular Wreck-it Ralph (John C. Reilly), the villain of a 'Donkey Kong' like arcade game, Fix it Felix Jr. Having been in the same role for thirty years, Ralph yearns to be the good guy for once like the hero of his game, Fix it Felix (Jack McBrayer), who is respected by the characters of Fix it Felix Jr., while Ralph is always shunned for just being 'the bad guy who wrecks the building'. Hoping to change his reputation, Ralph leaves the comforts of his game behind and heads out to explore new games, including the first-person shooter 'Hero's Duty' and the candy-coated racer 'Sugar Rush'. While there, he befriends Vanellope von Schweetz (Sarah Silverman), a glitchy character who, like Ralph, is shunned by her fellow characters and the two of them strive to turn their luck around. However, Ralph's antics spell trouble for not only the world of Fix it Felix Jr., but the entire arcade as well.

Sure, Wreck-it Ralph's plot is your basic tale of a main character trying to find his place in the world, but the way Disney handles it here is unlike anything we have ever seen before. This is not just some film where certain video game icons show up for brief cameos, though of course there are plenty in this film. You become immersed in this universe as you learn the ins and outs of what it's like for video game characters in an arcade. They travel to other games each night when the arcade closes by way of a 'Game Central Station', which takes them to their respected games through each game's power cord. All of the bad guys regularly meet up in the home of the ghosts from Pac-Man for a support group. Of course, we also have some great references to both old-school and modern games that I don't even want to talk about here because they are so good that I recommend that you see them for yourself.

So how does this movie appeal to any non-gamer, you ask? Well, this is a Disney film so of course it has a great message behind it of appreciating yourself for who you are. The animation is terrific as the filmmakers utilize the many genres of games, old and new, to their advantage. There are cool homages to old-school games and we see the contrast between old and new. Of course, the whole world of Sugar Rush features some great eye candy. The voice acting is also very solid, as John C. Reilly does a great job in the role of Ralph, making him very likable even if he's the villain. Sarah Silverman's character admittedly first comes off as rather annoying, but as the film went on, this wasn't as big of an issue. We also have great turns from Jack McBrayer as the truly 'good guy' Felix and Jane Lynch as the tough-as-nails commander of 'Hero's Duty'.

Probably my only real complaint of the movie is that it could have done just a little more when it came to exploring this gaming universe. For the majority of the film, we are mainly confined to three worlds; Fix-it Felix Jr., Hero's Duty, and Sugar Rush. Once Ralph enters the land of Sugar Rush, that's where he remains until the end of the film. Now I understand why they stay in this land, because the character of Vanellope is a glitch and she cannot leave her game because of it. For the record, I'm not saying that this is an entirely bad thing because it does give the animation an opportunity to shine. But considering the massive potential that this film presents through the universe it creates, it feels like the filmmakers could have done just a little bit more to take this film to the next level (no pun intended). Still, what they have done here is nothing short of incredible.

That is why I feel this film has vast amounts of material that could very much result in a franchise. I want to see them explore this universe even further. Maybe we can see what it is like for any of the characters from home console or handheld video games. Maybe we can actually see some more famous licensed characters like Mario and Luigi or Link. Still, for what we got here, Wreck-it Ralph is one of the most entertaining films of the year, as well as one of the year's best animated films. Like any great Disney film, it's one that anybody can enjoy, even if you aren't a gamer. Of course if you are one, this is a must-see that truly does the gaming community justice.

 

Rating: 4.5/5