Tag: quality

The Charisma of an Anime: Why Pinkie Doesn’t Always Need “Quality”

Why do we like certain Anime? Is it the quality of the animation?! The depth of the story, the characters? I have noticed that quite often I can’t follow the opinion of the crowd. I very much dislike anime like Sword Art Online, Code Geass, Attack on Titan, Death Note and am less enthralled by My Hero Academia and Re: Zero than most. I think all of them are good series in their own way, I also like a lot of anime the public doesn’t think is very good! Mostly childhood classics.. but is that just Nostalgia or is it something else?

<Disclaimer>
This is my personal opinion throughout, even if I decribe them as factual that is only because this is the truth in MY head for me as a person if you prefer to think of it another way, you are not wrong for doing so, nor am I for feeling this way. Multiple opinions can exist and for each and every one of us our opinion is true please respect each others opinions in the comments as well
<End of Disclaimer>

Charisma over Quality?!

If you have read my favourite anime A-Z challenge you know that I do not necessarily favor the BEST anime. I have always preferred the one that speaks to me the most. Sometimes it can be a really low quality anime. I prefer Cardfight Vanguard over Clannad or Code Geass. Now I dislike Geas so that is not saying much..but I still recognise the quality of the latter. It is a good show! It just has no appeal to me! I do think the writing style is pretty bad too.. but I can’t really say I think Cardfight does story better. However Vanguard feels much less pretentious to me. Where Geass aims high and in my opinion strikes out due to some plot events feeling incredibly forced. The card battle anime basically aims to be a commercial. Within their respective parameters I feel the trashier anime of the two exceeds my expectations of what a show like that should be, while Geass to me fumbles in being that high stakes political war game. It doesn’t fail badly but enough for me to be dissapointed.

Each time I tell this a picture of him crying shows up! Such a crybaby!

Compare it to two passengers on a plane. Code Geass is the hot woman sitting next to you and Cardfight Vanguard is a plain mousey looking woman with a baby. You expect the baby to cry and have a hell of a journey, but it is surprisingly quiet. Even though it is still a baby and doesn’t offer much in terms of conversation .. you still think… WOW that was such a sweet child.  Meanwhile the Hot woman next to you yawns and despite being nearly perfect in every way she has one blacked snaggletooth in her mouth. It’s just one tooth and you can probably get over it, yet you can not help but think about that one element that is wrong with it. It’s NOT that I would not date Rotten-Snaggletooth if the rest is good enough don’t get me wrong but as for a general impression one is much more likely to talk about that thing that was not in line with your expectations than the things that are. You could pretend to be the one that would not do that.. but as humans I think we are kind of rigged to spot that one off element.

Every anime has an innate charm. Which can be anything. Sometimes you see this really is a passion project of it’s makers. Like for example the sort of anime Oban Star Racer.  There is this effort in it to present itself well, people clearly wanted to make this, and even if it is not perfect that anime has an amazing vibe to me. You can see the intent to make something unique and something they cared about. Big companies never talk about that in their reviews its just visuals, story sound and usually some fourth metric.Lots of stuff in Dragon Ball isn’t that well written but there is a charm in the way Toriyama forgets things, in the way he cheats things. You see the humanity behind the creator in the series if you pay attention.  You see that through its flaws. 

I might be the Guilty Pleasure Random Girl of Anime?! Oban was Great though!

As such I find Dragon Ball  a much more human product than say My Hero Academia which to me feels much more “mechanically” constructed. It feels as if Dragon Ball really is a story Toriyama wanted to tell versus my MHA being a story that was made because people want to see it. The Mangaka’s most of us know by name aren’t know because of their amazing work.. They are often named with their quirks. Toriyama forgets, Araki has this weird thing with dogs, Miuara put some people on a boat for a few years to play with Idol-Girl-Games. It brings humanity to the manga and anime medium.  This also explains my draw towards the weirder shows it is a story  a person  really wanted to tell. Then take Geass again for example where Mecha’s were added to the story to make it cooler, while not a thing in the early manga and you can see that the anime is not a passion product of one person. It is that vision of a person of a person, shifted by a marketing department and maybe a think-tank on how to sell it to the public. While it has all it’s flaws polished out.. it lost a bit of personality or charisma if you will.

The Classics

It is no secret that I really like Dragon Ball and all it’s series. I love Digimon, Yu-Gi-Oh and even Beyblade and Medabots. I like Zoids New Century, Yu Yu Hakusho, heck I had a lot of fun with Shaman King as well.  While plenty of us love at least one show in this list, much less would put them in their favourite list. They are too silly. they have too simple plotlines or haven’t aged well. Yet if we take a look over the internet.. millions of people are still talking about the Yu-Gi-Oh anime, analysing Dragon Ball or doing Sailor Moon fan content. Now there are a few newer big anime who get this too..but it’s still on a smaller scale. Re Zero and My Hero being the most noticeable exceptions. Yet there is a difference. My Hero is less quirky then those old shows.. no pun intended. Back in the early days there was much more ambiguity on how a power worked, less was explained about the world.

Plus Ultra! You don’t need Magazines to understand HIS power!

 Did you know for example that it took until Dragon Ball Z Kakarot to explain why the King of Central City is a dog?! Why do there live animal people?!  Techniques were forgotten, more loopholes to get around problems were needed.. and then the fans came together and tried to find explanations to it.  To this day people still try to polish the mistakes out of Dragon Ball with weird theories! We do that to certain games or western series as well. Is it all due to nostalgia?! No! That would blind us to a lot of their mistakes but we are aware of them! We just have grown to love them DESPITE these flaws. The modern modus operandi however seems to really nitpick the shows that we love and even go as far as drop them and shun them for having one character that portrays a gender or race in a less than adequate way.
It’s easier for me as well.. because I don’t feel like I am demeaning Horikoshi’s work when I say My Hero is something I think makes a few wrong choices… it’s more sterile. 

Modern anime have so many benefits that it makes them objectively better. They have the internet  to easily look up what happened before, they have fans point out a flaw so it can be retconned immediately. Yet because this happened in anime.. and media in general for that matter feels much more like a team effort. It does no longer feel like it came from the pen of a single man or woman. Teams are often very big and we get a joined effort that is always increasing in quality!  I really think anime is getting consistently better over time. At least objectively! Stories make more sense, animation has less and less flaws.. (at least in a situation where corporate doesn’t force people to use cheaper studios..but cheaping out is a whole other problem) but because of it. .that airplane is more and more filled with “generic” people. With a whole team monitoring who gets on board you get less weirdo’s. So no tranquil baby and no Snaggletooth woman. Maybe a woman with a slightly loose tooth and a baby that cries at a less annoying pitch..but they now fulfill much more their intended roles.. everything is as it should be .. but does it really have to be?!

While it might seem like a critique on big names only it is not.  Isekai Cheat Magician, Do You Love Your Mom and Her Two Hit Multi Target Attack and Uzaki Chan wants to hang out are for me deeply flawed products. But their main gripe is the same. They are boring and generic.  They lack a passion. They are made for the audience as such if they offer you what you seek they can still be a hit with people. Yet once they stop providing that they die out quickly.  Dragon Ball Z and One Piece might have tricks in them for cash and to sell more figurines but they are also MORE than just that. Märchen Mädchen that I watched recently was also more. It’s not just what fans one.. it’s a love letter to classic stories but also an awareness on how poorly they aged. The author was in there.. somewhere!

I don’t understand why this screenshot is so popular! But Welcome new viewers!

You will always remember your first kiss. You will always remember your first anime. What defines a classic to you is also up to your age. To some Naruto is a classic.To me.. it is a transition period. For everyone that golden point will shift. Too many people much younger than me Naruto may already be that cheesey flawed product that Dragon Ball was to me. Something they love despite what they see as flaws.. as Anime become objectively better and better and more mainstream accessible.. much more tools are being used, sales are being measured so precisely, polls on the internet, fan magazines whatever.. no matter when you start anime, in a few years that gateway of yours will show some cracks and you will learn to appreciate them I think. 

It creates a much stronger love for anime for me at least than a series that just is good. Would I use the visuals, music and story metrics to measure what I think about all the anime I watch? I would be much more positive about most anime At least if I compare it to the quality I need, not so much if I compare everything to the 10/10/10’s out there. Yet to me they often  lack the charisma Sailor Moon has. When I hear that poor quality transformation music I become genuinely happy. Even the quiet shrill sounding opening song bestows me with so much more emotions. Even though the Soundtrack of MHA is vastly superior to Moon’s.. the highs I can reach with Moon are much higher than with the more recent anime. I do love  You Say Run a lot and rock out to it, but I like it because it IS good. I am not sure if the Sailor Moon transformation song IS good..but I love it for it’s personality! That retro vibe, the over usage, I don’t like it because it is good. I like it because it is the Sailor Moon transformation theme. Somehow that love feels purer to me.Less earned maybe.. but that makes it more intoxicating.

Even as a Duth girl THIS is my drug!

It’s all relative

This is a weird kind of love, though as it has zero base in objectivity. There are people like me who love Dragon Ball.. but I can’t tell a random anime fan I love Dragon Ball and expect to be understood. When you love something despite of its flaws you really need someone who loves it as well to get that. Goku’s Japanese voice actor for example gets a lot of flack from the Dub loving people.  “He sounds like a kid that is so stupid”. No he does not sound LIKE anything, he sounds like Japanese Goku.. that is the voice of Goku. I find Japanese Goku to be more versatile than Sean Schemmel. Still, Sean Schemmel is also the voice of Goku. There is nothing wrong with him…well that might be pushing it.. there is nothing wrong with his voice acting. However, to explain why Goku works in Japanese..  you gotta like Goku in japanese ..because it is one of those things. My love for the Digimon universe is much the same. The new show really does show me how poorly the first run did on storytelling.. but it doesn’t make me love it less. It just makes me glad I now get a good story in addition to that and makes me enjoy both even more. Yet to understand that.. you really have to love Digimon like me. 

I can safely walk up to someone and say “You Go Run goes with everything” and a random animefan probably will go heck yeah! If I walk up to a random guy or gal at a convention and tell them I genuinely love Digimon, they have a much bigger chance to be weirded out. It is because all guides on blogging or journalism tell us to be objective. To write objective reviews. It made us believe anime can objectively be bad. It made us afraid to love something that isn’t well reviewed. It allows us to unify behind a single vision or at least with confidence step up to someone and say! Hey the visuals for this anime are stellar! Yet in the process we lose something.. the ineffable part of loving something. When I fall in love with a girl it is never because she has pretty eyes or a nice rack. It’s not because she has a great personality either because otherwise I would fall in love with all of my friends and most of you too! It’s not because of her voice or clothing choice either.. It is that hidden factor , something unspeakable, something that can not be put into words. It can only be stated. It can only be understood by peers who fell for that girl before.

Awww crabcakes! Okay bring forth the evil exes! *Cracks Knuckles*

Let’s say that girl I fall in love with is an anime… Let’s say she is also on the plane I used earlier, because why not! I see her much more in the past. If she is Digimon she might tell me some weird stories or maybe she is built a bit awkwardly.  If she is Dragon Ball , she might not be the prettiest and has a bit of a weird voice.The girl is out in the open though.. not hiding displaying her flaw for me to see and acknowledge.  If she is a modern anime…she is wearing the make-up that got the best rating.. We now know what tests best. She is a pretty smooth talker because she saw a youtube video on how to talk to strangers. As we now know so much more about properly fleshing out dialogue and there are bigger teams who proof read stuff. She wears the most popular clothes as found on review sites. All in all in her modern form the girl is a lot more marketable and she will find someone who will like her , heck it still could be me.  Yet I have to look much deeper to see her true self beyond that stuff everyone wants. I will like her faster because she is wearing a pretty as heck mask that I can deeply enjoy! However it would take me much longer to fall in love, because for that I have to see behind the mask. I am not saying it doesn’t happen but it will take me longer to fall in love.

 So my plane experience has shifted. From an uncomfy ride with one or two people who rock my world I now found myself in a plane full of pretty and acceptable people..I have a much more pleasant flight but by the time I take off next season I will have forgotten most of the pretty people… while that girl I saw 20 years ago is still haunting my  mind. She had her quirks.. but she wasn’t there for me.. she was there for her! That is a charisma I like to see in everything I love. If we only judge and measure objectively at one time that experience might fade away. For now it’s fine.. in general it’s as simple as switching over to a smaller airline and taking some risks. Just remember that if you review something it’s okay to look at quality.. but look at the charisma sometimes. It might not be as useful to the people reading your review but I do think it would be healthy in the long run!

Heck even in Airplanes they get THAT seat

I really hope I have not offended you guys or that you think I am super shallow now! In the end we all like what we like! If you came here for objective reviews , I might have shot myself in the foot! Because you will not be getting those! I am just a pink avatar, telling you what I personally like and what I don’t like! Speaking of what I like! I would really appreciate it if you support my Kofi by clicking on the link below! Or if you can’t spare or want to part with the money leave a comment below! I really appreciate you all in every way you support this blog! So while I might not approve of your favourite anime! I approve of all of you!

Pinkie’s Personal Rules For Blogging

Hello again sweet Island Guests, it’s Wednesday again so it’s time for another post on Pinkie’s grey-matter. Stuff that is in my mind. Last week we did something a bit whimsical so this week we are a bit more serious. My blogging anniversary is drawing near. So I started to think on what I have learned. There is a lot more to blogging than one may think and if you have a mind as weird as mine you might have to place some rules that work for you! Today I share some of mine, some sensical some .. less so.

I have this weird issue with favouring one of my own posts. Blog Tags where I have to pick my favourite. I feel it’s unfair to my other posts.. they might cry that I favor one over them. I know they probably do not have any sentience.. but who knows! I put some love into all of them so maybe on some level they are like my babies. This is also why I haven’t participated in the JCS in ages. I felt so conflicted on what to contribute! Something smart, something funny, something cute.Also by labeling it the best the other posts might feel less. I also feel that favouring a post for this is like leading a lamb to the slaughter. Some of you have seen so much more anime and have so much more insight in cultural stuff that anything I throw against it would be deemed.. worst in the showcase.. and I don’t want my posts to suffer through that! I hate putting my post in any form of list. If it would be the least liked on the line up ..it could feel like me in gym class.

It also saves me from a lot of stress. I could pick a post with the most votes and nominate that.. but let’s be honest here.. we are all in the same community here. If a post gets 30 likes you’ve probably all already seen it so than there would not be much reason for me to make my other posts feel like they are worth less to me. Of course it’s not only my post sentience that concerns me about this matter. It’s the community as well. Favoring of any kind only leads to polarization. If I pick Blog A as my favorite and show you.. while you favor B I only succeed in proving how different we are. I do not need to prove how similar we are.. because mostly care about the same things. If you are reading this.. there is a big chance you at least like either gaming or anime or movies even.  There already is common ground. Let’s focus on that. What post I favor is also based on my mindset and not constant. 

How I see my blogs If I break my rule!

Topics become more relevant or can become stupid in a heartbeat. It’s too much pressure. I never want to enforce my preference upon others as it stifles one’s uniqueness and can also put us needlessly apart. So no JCS for me, No final part of the Mystery Blogger award where you select 2 of your best post and no Top 5 of my favorite posts.  If someone thinks one of my posts is very special that is great.. but I do not want to ever enforce it upon them. Should it ever turn out to be that in some reality/plane beyond our own our posts get sentience trough our love and effort than I am sure all my posts are happy they aren’t the favored as well and everyone can smile and be happy.

I am not saying this is actually true but I feel we have much more control over reality than we realise. A chair isn’t a  chair because it has for legs and a sitting surface for a single person with some back support. It’s because we choose to acknowledge it as a chair. The word that happens to be chosen. If I see it as a stool with back support..  I aint that much more wrong.  Happy thoughts create positives energies. That’s why we have concepts like Karma.. but thats also why the people who are depressed keep getting negative stuff happen to them. So if I truly vividly imagine my posts asking me not to take favorites because the top 5 knows they would never make that!  Maybe I am picking up some actual energy and making it a thought!

I will my utmost to provide a safe haven for everyone. Everyone is welcome as long as they themselves also accept that everyone is truly welcome on my blog. I mean do make a normie joke every now and again.. but let’s be honest sometimes we can make a joke about our friends as well. While I do believe in causes and can support them, I will never do so in the capacity of this blog. I mean I am very much about equality for everyone and in that sense OWLS can be scene as political but that’s not how I view it. Will I blog to inspire you to be yourself.. yes.., will I ban you if you are racist or a bigot in my comments yes.

Yet I will never make my blogs about politics.  There is a lot going on in the world and I do have opinions.. yet that is something for the person behind the keyboard.. not for the person you see. No matter who you are, where you live or what you believe.. you are here because we have something in common. Let that be the thing that unites us, not whether you vote red or blue, left or right. I have 0 people from my own country that follow me now that Raist has been  gone. My real life friends don’t read my blog so my issues with such matters aren’t very relatable.This in a way goes the other way around as well. While I sympathise with your emotions wherever you come from.. as your blogging friend, I can never truly get the insight you have in your nations issues, I do not feel I get enough information to form an objective view. Simply because the world.. now basically consist out of nothing but extremes.

I do not believe in a Binary world, with only absolutes, 1’s or 0’s  believe in a multi coloured world and I rather take the role of someone who listens to you when you had a rough day and gives a shoulder pad, or offer you a lighthearted blog post to keep your mind of it than me picking up a torch with you.  While I care about you all very deeply, I might also care about Otto Otherside, or Elisabeth Elsewhere. You are always free to ask me for my views and opinions on a issue trough a twitter DM or by the contact page.. and I’ll answer genuinely.. because I also believe in being truthful, yet I do not think turning my blog into something that can polarise.. while I am clearly not an expert.  This also goes for lesser debates like Jamie vs Vic, Pewdiepie Yay or Nay, or is what I feel about Queerbaiting in anime.

My content is meant is to meet fellow geeks and no matter if you are on team Jamie or team Vic .. both sides can still have amazing people still. If we focus on what makes us different and profile ourselves to specifically we lack the chance to have awesome friends. From friends that I disagree with I might learn some new insights while from friends I agree with I can get a sense of validation. Both are important. The episode of Family Guy where Brian befriends Rush Limbaugh is a great example.. both gain insights from each other and at least had a fun experience out the whole thing. Why should we deny ourselves that. Personally I would not have even known who he was before that episode and even after I hardly know his agenda well enough to judge.

One may ask me the question if I do not believe in absolute wrong? Like some of the absolute madness that is going on in the world right now, one side has to be wrong right?! Yes.. but does that make everyone on said side wrong and should we push them all out ? No! I obviously have my opinions .. and if you know me a bit you can get a sense of where I stand. For the most of you reading this, I stand with you. I will simply just never blog or tweet about it. Maybe my blog is being read by one who doesn’t stand where I am right now.. but by not focusing on what makes us different maybe they can one day see what makes us the same. 

So many of you make so many great articles, some of you come up with the greatest blogging topics and it sometimes is very inviting to write my opinions about those opinions or chip in. Yet I made it a rule to not do that . At least not directly. I recently referenced an Irina post as something that shaped my vision as a blogger but that was months apart. Honestly I do not feel a strong enough blogger to add to another bloggers work. I have difficulty seeing myself as your peer. My writing is a lot sloppier.

I have a lot of trouble reading back my own texts to correct them . I have a very strong memory and when I read back my own posts.. I just see the post in my memory again as I intended to write it.  So my blogs have plenty of errors. I know this and  it makes me feel unworthy to even stand in your shadows. By stepping on your turf , I amplify that feeling for myself. I would feel like the shitty sequel.. the  Son of the Mask to your Mask. The Book of Shadows to your Blair Witch Project. Now does this that mean it actually rings true and I can never add anything to others blogs? No not at all. but the stress and the pressure makes it not fun to me .. so I never will use another’s blog article as my stepping stone.


The exception being of course a positive review of a series I would watch but then I just say you inspired me to watch it.. and write it as my own article still. This is also why I gave up on Collabs for a bit.. I did not feel like I am good enough for that yet and it feels as if I would use a bigger blogger or a better blogger as a springboard. Now I am not saying that is a bad thing I am just saying, I do not want to add pressure to live up to self imposed standards and meet other peoples standards. I decided to write for myself and find my own batch of followers. I am open up again for collabs but I am still rather afraid to reach out. So for now I am not putting myself under that pressure.

I do not want people to follow me because they like Megan, Scott or Irina, Foovay or whoever I want them to follow because they like me! Though now I still hope to collab in the future, I’d probably prefer to start with a one-off Colab to see how things will go for me. I feel I have to earn my chops on my own so I can’t just borrow a popular topic! Now in the recent past I had a few topics similar to what other people did but that is a coincidence. I am at the moment of writing about a week and a half ahead with about another week of blogging planned.  I just have a similar mindset as some of you.. I never want to imitate you!

I’ll just do me! Teehee!

One of the most important rules I enforce on myself is to keep writing something. Sometimes it’s not as funny as I want, sometimes it’s not very inspirational and some advice can be very boring. However at some point somehow my brain felt like any topic was a good idea to write about. If you start doubting that instinct you open a floodgate and you can easily get yourself writers blocks. This isn’t good enough?! Let’s scrap it! Yesterday’s post was funnier.. I should axe this one then. If I censor my thoughts based on what I think is good enough or not , I keep imposing myself with standards that creep up a little bit each time. I did this in the past and it leads into a spiral of putting up walls. The higher your standards grow the less fun writing becomes, the harder it becomes.

To me writing is something that should come natural. Sometimes I will write a dead post, sometimes I will write a good one.  Since writing is my hobby that need for everything to be good or amazing isn’t exactly there. It is nothing but a self imposed threshold that limits practicing that hobby.  Blogging should not be about how much likes you can get with a post. It’s about how much fun you had writing and editing. So nowadays I just write! I write something for a day and if it’s good , that is great.. if it’s a bit less.. I keep it and in case I write something better I just keep pushing the worse thing backward.. coming back to it to make it better later.

If I can’t do anything with the subject I will post it anyway. Something that I dislike might still really resonate with someone else, leading up to chances to meet new friends. Maybe someone will point out the flaws of such a post in a comment and I get feedback that helps me get better. At the very least it will help my consistency and SEO , whatever that stuff means. We are amateurs, not everything has to be good or sleek. Concept art  can sometime be worth something to and it’s worth to publish in it’s own right. A bad post in factuality does not really exist. Bad writing is mostly an opinion. For example I really do not like how Lord of the Rings is written at all. I vastly prefer James Clemens Wit’ch series. Most would disagree but how I feel is still a fact.

Perhaps you learn people don’t like that type of content.. perhaps people go crazy for it and you find you have been too hard on yourself.  To me killing of an essay a project is often a gateway to  cancel more, you add more pressure to yourself while gaining nothing. Sure killing something off is the way to a “save” face.. but do we need that as amateur bloggers? Isn’t the writing experience and the feedback way more important?  Isn’t keeping writing accessible more in your benefit? While writing like Tolkien might give you 10.000 followers, writing like James Clemens may give you 300 others. You do not know! You can’t know.

To me it is, I write because it clears my head, I get to relax, chuckle at my own jokes, give me back pads for my infinite wisdom and check on my own growth as an alien princess from planet k400.  I mean ..  growth as a human… my backspace button broke , so I can’t delete that.. but I meant to write human! I am definitely a human not the princess of K400’s Pynk-Eno kingdom. Forget you ever read that! Whoever I am.. I am someone who will not censor myself. I keep writing until someone makes me cry so hard I can’t take it anymore.. or until the day I die. Whichever comes first! Some like excellent grammar, others do not care about it that much and even find a deeper meaning in the Tales of Scrotie Mcboogerballs (google knew that name and corrected it for me..which makes a perfect case for standards)
Thank Arceus that I can write on my laptop and the blogosphere .. because otherwise my house would be filled with paper and mediocrity!  Now it’s just filled with pink pillows and plushies.

And I am definatly not an Alien!

So there you have it! A few of my blogging quirks and personal codes written out for you! So now you know where I come from! Now you know why my posts suck so much OR why you find them awesome! Now you also know why I don’t participate in showcases .. I am weird huh! So do you have some personal rules? What does work for you?! Let me know in the comments!

Top 5: Best Pokemon Trainers

Happy 30 July little monsters! No nothing really special about this day, though on this date Vanuatu got their independence so yay for them, but I just want to celebrate each day! Today it’s Tuesday so that means I am writing a brand new top 5 for you. Today we will discuss the the top 5 best Pokémon trainers in the world of Pokémon. Please note I am not necessarily referring to the strongest Pokémon Trainers. Tobias having  access to legendaries would easily make that list, however strong Pokémon do not make you a good trainer none of your partners do. With this list we consider a trainer’s capabilities and impact on their pokemon not their team.

5. Ash Ketchum
In fairness , Ash is not a bad trainer, not anymore at least…well  not truely anyway.
Sort…off…maybe. It really depends on perspective. He would have been higher on this list if it wasn’t for the soft reset he has gotten after Kalos to be honest. Of course he would never be number one, because Ash never wins. What makes Ash a good trainer though, in my opinion much stronger than Gary, any other rivals he had or even Tobias is ts the fact that he doesn’t rely on power alone. Time and time again,  Ash has shown to be able to think outside the box. Ash is one of the few trainers, aside from maybe his companions at times that has shown he is able to think outside the box. He, not only his Pokémon influence their battle. His love for his team is always great, yet how he treats his team is ls also a reason why I’d consider him for bad trainers as well. His willingness to set pokemon free, is not necessarily a good thing. Maybe it’s even worse for those he just puts in Oaks garden. Poor Bulbasaur must be bored by now and miss it’s master. Yet Ash also managed to invent/obtain an (mega)evolution method of his own trough an intense bond with his Pokémon. Which he then abandons , but this doesn’t diminish the feat that Ash impact on his Pokémon literally allowed them to synchronize.. and become one to a certain point. Ash has shown an unwavering resolve to go ahead. No matter how many times he loses, he will not give up until he succeeds. He is loved by his Pokémon, and even developed a unique power.
He is however a horrible person, who does not honour his bonds, refuses to give up and in the process constantly gives up on his friends.

Ash has died 8 times! He lost more liives than Pokémon Leagues

4. Lillie
A bit of an odd choice, because Lillie is not a very accomplished trainer. She isn’t particularly smart, clever or even brave. Yet Lilie has one thing going for her that puts her above many of the trainers on  this list. Her reasons to become a trainer. Lillie’s journey is one of self improvement , to overcome herself rather than to overcome the world. She doesn’t want to beat the Pokémon League she wants to conquer herself. This in my eyes is an excellent motivation to become a trainer, she fights for herself and not in a selfish way. Her Pokémon will never be disposable tools for her, to feel the excitement of a new journey again. Her catches become friends who help her become a better person. Her goals are way more achievable, which is both rewarding for her and her partners. Lillie’s progress stays. Let’s compare it with Ash’s for a moment where his dream is to become a Pokémon master. If Ash gets a badge, it’s a nice moment because it’s one step closer to his goal, but as soon as he loses the league, the achievement of the badge is invalidated as in the end it did not get Ash his goal. This invalidation he even uses on his Pokémon. Greninja was great to attempt the league with… oh I lost.. well let’s try again. Goodbye my friend.
Lillie is nearly the exact opposite of that. When Lillie finally is able to touch Vulpix, that achievement will never be invalidated. Vulpix’s help and love, will forever have contributed to Lillie’s s goals. She gives her partners a significance and reward that no other trainer can. She will not impact the world, but she impacts everyone around her and it’s nice to see a trainer who knows that is good enough.

Lillie is very precious! But each time we hang she keeps telling me to get in the bag for some reason.

3. Alain
A man who recognised Ash as his superior in every way, ended up taking a higher spot then him? Why? Well it’s mostly because of the character Arc Alain was given in both the mega-evolution specials and the main series. Alain’s journey was all about the Mega Stones. Starting out as the assistant of Professor Sycamore, he gathered a lot of knowledge about pokemon themselves as well as mega-evolutions. His defeat at the hand of Lysandre for the raw mega-stone changed him though and showed him he needed to be stronger. Which at the time was true as well. Lysandre having made false promises to use the power of mega-evolution for the good of mankind, also gave Alain a much nobler reason to become strong then Ash. Alain wanted to improve the world, a goal that pushed him to his limits. He removed his close friend Mairin from his life in order to get the goal he needed. Again much like Ash, but Alain was more upfront and honest about it. He told her she would hold him back, not as nice as Ash does it but more sincere and fitting of his goals. Alain throughout his journey had much more to lose, like how Lysandre would take back his Mega-Stone if he did not win ten fights in a row. He is a trainer that has been pushed more and pushes his pokémon more. Yet that is not necessarily bad. Allain is the trainer he needs to be when he needs to be, he can adapt and make hard choices. Much more focussed than his rival as well. In the end Alain gets a redemption arc when he found out Lysandre’s trough goal, once more actively learning from it.. in comparison to how Ash is much more a passive learner. When Ash learns something, he just uses that knowledge. When Allain learns things he adapts himself as a trainer. Allowing him to be much more dynamic. Him giving up his mega-stone in the end and resetting like Ash does a lot, is not without reason like with Ash. He actually gives things up to become better as the trainer Alain is. In my eyes making him a perfect version of Ash. One that deserves to hold the championship position over the protagonist.

You might say that compared to Ash, Alain is a Mega Trainer.

2. Brock
Although being quite the oddball, Brock is one of the best Pokémon Trainers I know.
I would loved to put Cynthia on this list instead but I saw too little of her to judge her as a trainer. With Brock we once more see a trainer with a much more realistic fleshed out goal, of becoming a great Pokémon Breeder. His feeling trapped in being the Pewter Gym leader and having his brothers to take care of , felt like a good pay off to start his journey. Yet what makes Brock truly stand out is his knowledge of the world, brock truly understands pokemon. He can tell their nature by interacting with her, he can tell their abilities and their moves on the most subtle of nuances. This knowledge must come from a great passion for the subject. Brock loves all the monsters, more than anyone in the series does. Not only is he knowledgeable about trivia and facts, he has shown amazing empathy skills towards pokémon. “I think paras is trying to say that it’s scared’, “I think Corsola wants to come with you’. Brock throughout his appearances in the show has been shown to know what a pokémon is thinking. He can make the most amazing food which all pokémon like, once more showing his deep understanding of the creatures. Brock also inspires other trainers, makes them better as well. Ash would not be where he is today without the aid of Brock. He isn’t exactly the strongest of trainers out there and until Sun and Moon his accomplishments on the battlefield weren’t exactly noteworthy. Brock however is respected by everyone. Whether it is for his knowledge about the pokémon, his skill in judging matches, or the amazing food he makes, or first aid he can provide for pokémon, he knows the game very well. Him picking up Olivia and having an actual relationship certainly was nice to see after the overdone flirtation bit. Yet even in that he shows his greatness as a trainer. Because Brock knows there is more in the world than just being a trainer, and he is a better trainer for it.

Brock can out-trainer you with his eyes closed. That’s why he is the pan-ultimate trainer on this list.

1. James
The biggest loser in the entire series is my number one pick. I must have lost my marbles again. Yet there was never any doubt in  the world who I had to put on number one. James shares a lot of the qualities Brock has, being quite knowledgeable about the subject matter. In fact, one can argue that he fills the exact same role as Brock.. on the bad guys side.  Everytime we see an episode from Team Rocket’s perspective, James is the one with the answers. James isn’t even that bad at battling , he doesn’t really win but most of his fights aren’t that official either.  Whenever he does fight the ‘twerps’ one on one it’s oftenly a lot closer than you might think. Like Ash he has been capable of showing some battle awareness, though in his case usually dirty tricks, like Brock he is capable of understanding a lot of species of Pokémon and kind of like Lillie he mostly became a trainer to explore himself. He may not have chosen the right path, he chose that path because he felt trapped in his wealthy family. He renounced everything, so like Alain he was willing to make sacrifices that count, in order to change himself. It got him involved in a life of crime and dishonour but that is more a medium for change then something he inherently is. He shows care for Pokémon, which is also shown in his battling and even machine building style. Koffing never really attacked much, he rarely is trying to cause physical harm he is only trying to escape. The traps they make also rarely focus on taking a Pokémon out. They want to capture them healthily, without much pain. James shows qualities of all the ones earlier on this list, but just doesn’t do them as successfully. Yet whenever James catches or gets a Pokémon it loves him instantly. Pokemon see something in James and adore him. Give James an Eevee and it evolves into Sylveon the second he owns it. He can make pokemon evolve because how much they care for him and their desire to make him succeed. If James would give up on Team Rocket and thusly freeing himself from the narrative restrictions that had to be placed on him, his potential would be near infinite. A trainer whose Pokémon adore him, who can fight dirty/smart, who is blinded by ambition and who is knowledgeable about Pokémon in general. When given freedom this man would definitely be one of the worlds greatest.

Lose the life of crime James, and you’re reach can certainly be extended to the stars above!

Who is your favorite trainer? What makes a good trainer do you think?  If you had to make tea from a grass Pokémon which one would it be and why?
Leave a like, please subscribe if you haven’t already and most off all stay pink!

X