Coming off the heels of one of the most controversial seasons of Pokémon yet, Pokémon 2019 later titled Journeys continued off the trend of Sun & Moons with an updated character design for Ash while keeping the same more rounded art style. Along with that it was revealed that this season wouldn't take place solely in Galar and that we'd be jumping around regions back and fourth, I suppose with how bad Sword & Shield were doing in 2019 everyone including myself was ok with this. Alola was fun but the island theme did get a bit tiring near the end and this was a great idea to mix things up. It also allowed for Journeys to have one of it's most appealing traits with having characters from the games who've never appeared in the anime before show up for the first time, multiple fan favorite characters, and Ash's own Pokémon returning for some episodes.
The Pokémon anime was taking more strides to make this new season feel unique and fresh and regardless of how I feel about the results I admire their effort to take big risks like this with the anime. So three years and 136 episodes later and I really enjoyed Journeys, it's another solid set of Pokémon episodes that I think almost anyone could enjoy. Majority of Journeys episodes are a mix of the episodic slice of life type episodes from Sun & Moon mixed in with Ash and Gou going to different regions and it's a really good mix, it allowed for more simpler laid back episodes to have more creativity to them now that we weren't stuck to Alola's islands. They even acknowledged Shiny Hunters which honestly still has me surprised now. Not to say that all of them hit it out of the park but a majority of these episodes are very enjoyable.
Ash himself is fairly interesting this season, since he's no longer stuck to one region his team could have damn near any Pokémon now. And while I'm not the biggest fan of his team having three Pokémon from Kanto I eventually grew to really like this new team of his. Gou at first annoyed many people including myself, he seemed to only exist to cater towards only Pokémon Go/Pokémon Let's Go fans and continuously caught Pokémon throughout the series with little to no effort made catching Pokémon feel very boring and dull. Though overtime when he finally had his main three set of Pokémon being the Galar starters, Gou's character really starts to pick up then. As much as I prefer Ash over Gou seeing his relationship grow with his Pokémon was very heartwarming and entertaining, I should probably point out that I may also have a giant bias towards feeling this way because Cinderace is my favorite Pokémon and I just want to see more of Cinderace.
Koharu was enjoyable off the bat and like with Gou her progression was just as good to watch, I do wish she didn't end up with an Eevee since we already have so many other main characters with one but I can't deny it's always interesting to see what trainers will evolve their Eevee into it. Starting off with the more story driven episodes, the Sword & Shield story with totally everyone's favorite villain Rose. And like in the game that story still sucked ass here, though I think that's more of Sword & Shield's fault for not coming up with a better story then it is Journeys fault for using the only material they had. If Galar had a better story in game then we would've had a much better story in the anime. Though the Pokémon anime did continue the trend of Sun & Moon of having the best story arcs in the anime with episode 111, even now this is still one of the best Journeys episodes and one of the best closures I've seen to a character arc, beautiful episode.
But getting into the main dish now, the Pokémon Masters Tournament. Instead of having Ash go through the eight Galar gyms he instead partakes in one worldwide tournament to determine who the best trainer is. Another great way to change things up while keeping it familiar enough for newcomers, but to jump ahead here why did Ash only fight two Galar gym leaders in this tournament? Out of the ten Galar gym leaders Ash only fought two Bea and Rahian, the others only show up for the more laid back fun episodes or in Piers case to support Marnie. You can be fine with that but to me that is nothing but a major downside, especially when they could've easily just made Ash fight eight or all ten of the gym leaders for the tournament only. I don't know about you but I don't want to see Ash fight generic trainer number 5000, I want to see Ash fight trainers I recognize from the games.
Still even with that disappointment lingering the build up to the Top 8 was overall pretty enjoyable, we got to see a ton of old faces come back and even saw Ash get handed a couple losses here and there. The episodes used for solely training Ash's Pokémon for a future fight were honestly always underwhelming, they felt too predictable even for Pokémon standards and sometimes the battle in the next episode wouldn't even be worth the wait. I definitely prefer when Pokémon would learn a new move in the heat of the battle, it feels more natural and surprising that way and we wouldn't have to sit through a twenty minute episode just to see one Pokémon learn one more. Though once we finally got to the Masters 8 I couldn't give less of a shit for the build up.
When this image dropped it was nothing but pure hype, arguable the character who gave Ash his most infamous loss along side six other champions. This is a Pokémon fans dream and it was finally becoming a reality, so many fights that felt like it would never happen could finally happen now. Ash vs Alan rematch where he doesn't get robbed this time, Ash vs Champion Iris in an all out battle, and the one Pokémon even hyped up themselves with a trailer Ash vs Cynthia. This was going to be huge for the Pokémon anime and despite how I feel overall about it, I cannot deny that it was but this is also where I'm going to become very negative on Journeys as a whole. To put it bluntly majority of the battles this season were complete dog shit, I feel as if they were given the most basic thought on how the fight would go out and they just weren't very fun to watch. We rarely got those unique moments where Ash pulls out a wild trick from no where, and the animation quality for most of the fights were very underwhelming of course with some exceptions. And I feel this is at it's worse with Ash vs Cynthia, the one they went out of their way to make a trailer for. I'm still a bit salty with how underwhelming that battle came out to be, it had it's moments but it could've and should've been so much better then what we got.
And these unsatisfying battles kept on happening even throughout Top 8, only a small handful of them I could pick out and say they were above average. Maybe I had my expectations too high or have been spoiled from better anime fights but I wanted to be more excited for these battles, I didn't feel this way with Sun & Moon. I only started to feel underwhelmed with Sun & Moon's battles when the Pokémon League started. Thankfully though like Sun & Moon Journeys really saved itself with it's grand final battle, Ash vs Leon. Specifically the final episode to that fight 132, it's no secret the internet exploded that day when that episode aired and even though I was spoiled on the winner it never mattered once as the fight and animation quality was nothing short of the best the series had to offer. A perfect way to end off the Masters 8 and Ash's character, though for some reason Gou in the final episode still roots for Ash to become a Pokémon Master? Hasn't he achieved that by defeating Leon? What the fuck even is a Pokémon Master at this point...
Whether or not the show considers him a Pokémon Master will be found out before the Scarlet & Violet anime comes out. I hope that with the Scarlet & Violet anime we get higher quality and more memorable battles, and my second biggest complaint with Journeys we actually stick to one region this time. This may seem a bit weird since I said earlier above that I overall liked this change up and I still do, but not when we almost completely ignore at the time the new region. This is a "hot take" but I absolutely adore Sword & Shield, it's the most fun I've had with a Pokémon game since I was a kid, even with how much the story sucks I would confidently put it in my top three Pokémon games alongside Platinum and Black & White 2.
So I was and am even now still very upset that we never got to see all the new characters and Pokémon from Sword & Shield in Journeys. I have definitely lost a bit of that frustration now but when Journeys first started any episode where they weren't in Galar I was just upset they weren't in Galar, I really just wanted to see Ash interact with all the new Pokémon and characters from Galar. The Pokémon anime has made me appreciate Pokémon and characters who I thought nothing of before and I was really looking forward to experiencing that again with Journeys. Not to say I never did but it definitely wasn't as much as I feel it should've been. I apologize in advance if I'm misremembering and get the wrong information here but important characters from Sword & Shield like Bede, Milo, Nessa, Kabu, Gordie, Melony, Mustard, Klara, Avery, Peony, and Peonia never show up.
It's thankfully not as bad with the Galar Pokémon but a majority of them are downgraded to just being in the background or having very minor roles in episodes, we never saw Kubfu, any of the Crown Tundra Pokémon besides the Galarian Slowking and the new Regi's. I'm not expecting every single new Pokémon to have an episode dedicated to it, but I would've appreciated more of an effort to show off the new Pokémon that we were still learning about at the time. But I feel they really fumbled with not having half of the gym leaders in the anime to me that is another Major downside, Bede could've been the new Gary and could've been a huge asshole to Ash. The Gallade trainer Rinto who ash lost to once was cool, but I feel Bede could've fit his role so much better. I also haven't brought up much of Gou's whole story in searching for Mew as to be perfectly honest with you, I kinda don't care much for it. It never really fully interested me, I cared more for the Koharu episodes then the Gou ones.
Gou was there just so I could see Cinderace. Besides the lack of Galar and battles being underwhelming, those are my only major issues with Pokémon Journeys, overall this was a very solid season and any other issues I'd have with it would I'd consider them to be minor. We got to see a bunch of familiar faces, a ton of great comedic episodic episodes, the conclusions to Lillie's search for her Father, along with Ash finally achieving his dream of becoming a Pokémon Master and the start of the end to his story that's been going on since 1997.
Now can someone please hold my hand through making an Anilist submission?? I tried making a Cinderace one two years ago and messed up but I think if I do it right it should go fine now... hopefully.
Edit: Used to be a 8/10 but I'm lowering it to a 7, why? Because Horizons is cooking