The first arc of Pokemon Adventures was pretty damn cool to me, taking this iconic world of Pokemon and putting quite the unique spin on things, delving deeper into worldbuilding and potential implications of having animals with intense supernatural powers living among humanity, along with generally taking a darker approach to it all without ever shedding its family friendly presentation. All of this worked despite the pacing being rather off, with 40 chapters being both dedicated to being more or less a summary of the Red and Blue games while also trying to incorporate its own narrative beats making things often end too fast or things to feel a bit scattershot and unfocused. Yellow fixes this problem however, by deciding to take on a narrative that's wholly unique to the manga and largely builds off concepts that have already been established in the first arc. This not only helps with making for something you don't feel like you can quite experience from another branch of the Pokemon franchise as a whole, but it also makes the narrative itself flow way smoother when the reader isn't sidetracked by something else needing to be explained or introduced. The arc has a very defined narrative flow as well, it always feels like there's a goal being worked towards with very real stakes involved that keep evolving over time, and with this being a bit longer than the first arc and with less time spent meandering, the overall scope ends up being far more engaging.

The new direction in which the writing is taken ends up crafting a lot of moments that further accentuate the darker aspects of the world as well, which I appreciate, considering it never comes close to reaching the territory of being edgy etc. and just feels like the right balance of high stakes to really make you go "oh wow". The most noteworthy element of the comes down to the fact that the antagonists in this threaten to and then actually do cause widespread chaos to the point where it's explicitly stated that people have been killed by them. Here's where the story ends up taking a bit of an interesting theme as well with this environmental angle that can have some neat parallels drawn between them and the character of N from the gen 5 pokemon games. Taking on this other angle of this universe, actually being another case of addressing the fact that these trainers essentially train animals to fight one another and use for their own benefit is the kind of idea that I think can be explored in a lot of different ways, with this case being special with the interesting way in which both the main protagonist and antagonist have the same powers to communicate with their pokemon, yet take the information they get from this in wildly different ways that shape their entire character. While Lance might not be morally grey in any sense, it's always interesting to be seeing a villain that thinks they're 100% correct in what they're doing and believe that they're the righteous one, especially one as committed as him, where there's no hint of underlying manipulation or more malicious intents, just pure hatred towards the environmental and ecological damage that humans have caused to the point of wanting to go to some extreme lengths to fix things.

Overall, this is a great 2nd arc that expands upon a lot of concepts introduced in the first part while also carving out a wholly unique approach and identity. It's becoming increasingly clear that fans of Pokemon should definitely check this out, because it takes such a wonderful series and then adds its own spin on it that makes it rise above being "Just another Pokemon story".