Pokemon Origins

Last Friday I made a very poor life decision. I sat down and watched all four episodes of Pokemon Origin, and now I've sank myself back into the pit of Pokemon-obsessed nerdiness that overwhelms all reason and completely eats one's consciousness, because that is what happens with me and Pokemon. Oh, and also I just stared playing Pokemon X, so that Soul Eater summary thing is going to have to wait a bit longer >___<

Pokemon Origins, if you are not familiar with it, is a short TV special that follows the plotline of the Gen I games almost exactly. Of course, it's made mercifully short by virtue of skipping over the vast majority of the game. It only really covers the very beginning, Lavender Town, Viridian Gym, the championship battle and Mewtwo. Pokemon is not a game known for particularly enthralling plotlines, and there already exists a painfully long-running anime of episodic stories, so this works out for the better. And they did a nice job with the plotlines that they chose to include.

CUBONE'S MOTHER T______T

Red is a special kind of dumbass, the kind you, the human player, are supposed to be when you are a 10 year old dicking around on a Pokemon game the very first time (tries to catch trainer Pokemon, doesn't know shit about type effectiveness, BUYS A MAGIKARP) It's all meant to reflect your new player experiences and hit all of the nostalgia feelings, but I am pretty even 10 year old me knew why it's a bad idea to use fire against water.

Brock is wearing a shirt, so these are definitely FR/LG character designs.  Shouldn't Charmander have Metal Claw by now?

SERIOUSLY, REMEMBER THIS???? ALSJDFHASJFDHLASD

While we're talking about characters, Green is the wonderful kind of jerkass rival that the game series has been severely lacking since Gen III onwards. Seriously, what an asshole. I miss the asshole rivals. Nowadays everyone is your friend. Aggressively your friend, even. Regularly beating in friendly faces just isn't the same. Though to be fair I don't remember the games being this gay either.

Nope, this definitely wasn't there before. ??????

The Pokemon battles themselves are seriously well done. The first battle with Green was 70% Tackle and Scratch and it still looked pretty cool!

Although Squirtle should NOT know Bite this early on though >__<

And yes, I have my issues about some of the writing for the battles (Charizard pulls way to many last minute reversals against Pokemon that he is super weak to, and at one point in time Team Rocket manages to kill a Marowak with what looks like an electric baton. Just... no.) But for the most part, its just super enjoyable to watch, since they animated it so fluidly that it lacks the stiffness you'd normally expect from something adapted from super old turn based game.

How to beat Brock back before Metal Claw came out.

Megahorn! :D Giovanni knows how to cover his weaknesses.

I can't figure out what this move is supposed to be, but it looks cool anyway. Charizard doesn't have much in the way of Fighting-type moves so ?????

And I guess I can't make this blog post without mentioning how the ending is tacking and basically just one huge promotion for Pokemon XY, but who wasn't expecting that?

Meh, not a huge fan of any of the mega evolutions, but :\

I am probably severely biased here due to my fondness of Pokemon and the extreme nostalgia trip this show took me on, but I'd say it's well worth a watch. Besides, it's only four episodes long! There are worse ways to spend your time (like watching Diabolik Lovers, KATHRYN)

(Now if only we could have a Pokemon Special anime adaptation? It never will happen but one can dream, right?)