Subject: Well, it wasn't always as it is now.
Author:
Posted on: 2013-03-31 21:34:00 UTC
Season one was okay, season two, eh, worked too. But it just went downhill. And I'm sure there's other ways to keep kids interested. Like having him, finally, win a damn league and getting him out of the show. Like the games did.
Being a Pokemon fan, I want to raise this question to any other Pokemaniac PPCers: What is your opinion on Ash? To be more precise, I think that Ash is borderline Stu. I recently saw today's episode of the anime, and the plot contrivances that have gone on in the series are baffling. (Obviously, if you have not kept up woth the series, SPOILERS AHEAD!)
*In Ash's first battle in the Unova League (Ash vs. Trip), it seems all but certain that Pikachu was going to lose. Then Ash magically pulls a victory out of nowhere!
*In today's episode (Ash vs. Stephan), during the first match, Krookodile manages to survive despite having been hit quite a few times by that Liepard. Unless I am mistaken, a match like that would have been a draw in any other anime (though with the antagonist falling first, of course).
And let's not forget that in general, Ash gets through the series with unevolved Pokémon, and using strategies that any battler would laugh at! And he still manages to beat every Gym Leader and at least make it at least few rounds into the regional league!
So what do you think? Is Ash just a horrible trainer with strings of dumb luck, or is he a Canon Stu?
So, from what I've been reading so far, it seems that I'm not the only one to think that Ash has some Stuish tendencies, with the main argument otherwise is that this is a kids' show and the protagonist must never fail.
With the Unova region, I did notice somewhat of an improvement in the series: Team Rocket finally looked like the evil organization that they were originally supposed to be (as opposed to the bumbling buffoons that we were treated to on a daily basis in Sinnoh), and there was more of a subplot as opposed to "Ash solves the Problem of the Week" every episode. If the creators could just figure out how to make compelling battles without Stuifying Ash and his Pokemon, then the problem of going over children's heads would not be much of a problem. However, I must admit that with all the plot contrivances that have been invoked over the years, it looks like Ash is a borderline Canon Stu.
Back when I actually watched the show, I thought he was learning and had a bit of luck toward the beginning. I saw his complete and utter disregard for what was coming out of his mouth as his flaw. Plus, Pikiachu would be at a fairly high level right now....as long as Ash wasn't battling a ground, would it matter? I can't remember...
Maybe he's a Stu, but I see it as more of a trying to keep kids interested thing. What I notice is as soon as his companions change (besides Brock), his entire character development is wiped and he goes back to being ignorant, yet still winning matches because technically those things still happened and he still has high level pokemon.
So, erm....I guess the short answer is I don't know.
It got progressively worse after the first two seasons, which were decent. For those, you could pretend that it was just dumb luck. But after that, it got pretty ridiculous. He seems incapable of failing, which is obviously a pretty generic Stu trait.
On the other hand, this is technically a children's show, and kids are not going to be interested in a protagonist who loses all the time. I have a personal belief that this is also the reason why they continue to change his companions after every few seasons.
It's odd, because every few seasons (usually when his companions change) his character development goes back to the very beginning of the series and then starts over, but he continues to win matches due to his high-level Pokémon.
As a side note, the first three or four victories he won were just pity victories, which is not as implausible as a beginning trainer.
So in the end, yes, he is borderline Stu, but not totally Stu. At least, not yet.
Season one was okay, season two, eh, worked too. But it just went downhill. And I'm sure there's other ways to keep kids interested. Like having him, finally, win a damn league and getting him out of the show. Like the games did.
I stopped following Pokémon a while ago, mostly because the show just got eh. He's not a good trainer, and friendship can only get you that far. And yet, despite that, he's shown as the awesome problem-solver of all. I'm trying to think of an episode where it wasn't him who solved the problem of the week, but I can't.
And to Nue Houjuu: Just because it's a kids show, that doesn't mean that he should be the way he is. I'm not saying that the show should adhere strictly to the game mechanics, though, since they're just that: gameplay. I still wish he was a more balanced protagonist.
It's typical in a kid's show for the protagonist to be able to solve a wide variety of problems, but Ash is pathologically incapable of failing, even when a problem falls completely outside the range of what he could conceivably do. If he encounters a problem that determination, friendship, and deus ex machina can't get him through, the writers try to cover up that there was ever a problem. This is particularly bad since he, due to writing laziness and Aura of Smooth, is able to cure the psychological problems of every single Pokémon he meets without any effort whatsoever, especially fire-types.
The Unova series is really awful about this. One episode is basically "Oh, hey Tepig! You've been abandoned by your Trainer, just like every other fire starter I've ever met, but with the added condition that you've been alone, forced into a life of desperation, and expecting your Trainer to return for what may have been months? Here, come with me, and everything will be all better. You'll literally forget that you ever had any sort of problem three episodes from now!" You know, despite the fact that Charmander/Charizard's character was interesting due to the way it reacted to a very similar problem even seasons after Ash found it, and Charmander wasn't even suffering visible abandonment issues when it had been found. The Tepig was emotionally scarred by its original trainer tying it up and practically starving it to keep it from following him, and Ash just takes Tepig in and it drops any repercussions that it might have due to an objectively horrible past.
That's Ash's main Canon Stu trait for me, aside from the one mentioned before where he wins battles with no effort and horrible strategies. Whenever he's directly involved, logical responses to anything, even responses that could make interesting subplots or provide distinguishing experiences for characters, go out the window.
That, and the fact that he was "the chosen one" for two separate prophecies and one secret organization in three completely unlinked regions, but that's peanuts to the bad psychology and the total affronts to logic he creates.
My animeverse memory must be a bit off: I remember the whole "chosen one" thing in Pokemon the Movie 2000, but I forget the other two. Could you please refresh my memory?
The most recent "chosen one" nonsense occurs in the Black-Victini and Reshiram or White-Victini and Zekrom movie(the creators never said which is canonical, so they are assumed to both be by most sources, which is stupid because they contradict each other's backstories), where he allies himself with Reshiram/Zekrom for what amounts to "pursuing the best truth" or the "best ideals", respectively (because that's never a Mary Sue trait), and leads the legendary that he befriends to go beat down on the other one, who was pursuing the "wrong" path. This is despite the fact that in the episodes, he had already attuned to Zekrom, which means that in Black-Victini and Reshiram, he was not only usurping the role of the player character, but also attuning to both legendary dragons of Unova, which is specifically said to be impossible. That's why the storyline needed two heroes! The dragons' divine portfolios and personalities are too different to be contained in one individual, whether that be human or Pokémon! It is a core component of the Unova legend!
...
Okay, I'm going to go cool down for a minute before I tell you the last one, because it is a doozy and I want a clear head when talking to you about it. I have trouble with continuity damage. Rage trouble.
...
I'm okay now.
Ash was also the "chosen one" in the Lucario and the Mystery of Mew movie, where his real Stuish tendencies come out. Here we go...
He was the only surviving descendant of a secret organization called the Aura Guardians, and thus the only one capable of using their Lost Technology to look through time, summon a time-sealed Lucario, and heal a gigantic tree-like lifeform of its undescribed ailment. Also, when he was in the presence of that time-Lucario, he could shoot balls of life-force at things, because he was part Aura Guardian. Yes, that's all the explanation the movie gives for him gaining and then losing the power to summon orbs of spontaneous destruction.
The tree-thing was not a Pokémon, in case you were wondering. It was a gigantic rock-covered creature made of crystal and the technology of an anime-exclusive ancient civilization, and it kept gigantic shape-shifting blobs that typically took the form of Kabutops or Omastar inside its body to serve as a biological security system.
Lucario and the Mystery of Mew was messed up, is basically what I'm saying here. I'd link a picture of those blob-nasties, but I can't get Google to show me any. I must be using the wrong search terms.
Basically, there is no doubt in my mind that Ash is a massive blight on the canon. When one movie has enough Stu-traits to merit a kill and a second has enough to send the unprepared reaching for a flamethrower, he deserves to be purged.
You went into a little more detail than I needed, but that's OK. However, about the Unova movie, I do not understand part of your rage, since (going by what's been out in the US; I do not know if you're somehow following the Japanese release, which is a few episodes ahead of us) Ash only saw Zekrom; he was not established as the Hero of Ideals, so both movies can serve as canon (remember that in gamesverse, Black and White serve as alternate canons).
I have seen Lucario and the Mystery of Mew, and I do not think that Ash was a descendant of the Aura Guardians; he just happened to have a similar Aura to Sir Aaron, the original trainer of the eponymous Lucario, which allowed him to (try to) make the Ultimate Sacrifice in the end. Either way, I would not classify that as so Stuish that, were Ash not a canon, he'd necessitate a sporking.
N is already the Hero of Truth there, due to Ghetsis forcibly attuning him to Reshiram in a process that was never fully described, and they're making it pretty blatant that Ash is going to be the Hero of Ideals, partially because Zekrom was giving him "special attention", and partially because Ash has to stick his head into absolutely everything.
It's been a while since I saw Lucario and the Mystery of Mew, so I could have misremembered whether Ash's ability to use Aura Guardian technology meant he was a descendant or not. However, if he had a similar enough aura to one of the Aura Guardians to summon the Lucario and use everything that they could, and he wasn't related to them in some way, that might be even more Stuish than the alternative.
At least if he was their descendant, his powers could be some sort of genetic throwback, but the chances of a random kid becoming Lugia's chosen one and just happening to have dormant Aura Guardian energies is much lower than him just manifesting a recessive trait. And when him having that recessive trait at all is Stuish, that's saying something.
Anyway, like darklordaakmal said, I couldn't spork him in any case. He's Protected.
And I agree with what you said in one of the other posts about the show getting better as a whole in Unova. Ash is still a Stu, but he's putting his Stuish power to decent use some of the time, the villains aren't the sort of people who just fall down when he shows up any more, and he's finally got a character to serve as the guy we look at and say "Well, I guess he could be worse. He could be that guy."
"That guy" being Cilan. Cilan's not Stuish, but one of the reasons I stopped watching the American version is that I got so tired of hearing him say things like "Boy! That Flamethrower is adding a new spicy ingredient to this battle's recipe! As a battling connoisseur, I approve!" I'm not sure whether the writers/dubbers are trying to set him up as the most obnoxious companion in the show's history, or if they're just oblivious. Since none of the other characters ever get to the end of their tolerance with him, I'm pretty sure it's the latter.
That, or they really are trying to make Ash seem more watchable by comparison. If they are, it's working.
Ash Ketchum is part of Pokemon canon, therefore none of us can kill him. It's like PPC's stand on Eragon.
It doesn't hurt to dream, though, does it? Just hating a character won't kill him, and I am allowed to hate in whichever way I like. It just so happens that I hate him by fantasizing that one of his oh-so-speshul legendary buddies catches him in the range of its signature attack and kills him, or some such. It's like how people always just hope Eragon will just fall off of his dragon or face the consequences of his actions.
... is that Ash, for NO REASON WHATSOEVER, goes back to "incompetent kid" as soon as he steps into a new region.
For examples, towards the end of Sinnoh, Ash manages to use his fairly regular pokemons to great effect against rare ones thanks to his unconventional strategies. He's the only one to actually manage to knock out Tobias' Darkray This guy has six Pokemons, like Ash and al the others. We only see two, as everyone who isn't Ash gets curbstomped by Darkray alone and Ash barely manages to defeat it with all of his six pokemons, only to be finished off by Tobias' second one, another rare uber-powerful one. Yeah, sure. (Seriously, I kinda want to put a Gary-Stu-wanted-dead-not-alive warrant on that guy.)
Clearly there's something wrong in all of this.
Then Unima starts, and Ash is so incompetent and obnoxious that I facepalmed after watching the first couple of episodes. Where the hell went all of his character development?
Not to mention that poor Pikachu got himself nerfed again. Although I kinda understand that - by the end of the first arc that cute yellow mouse was able to go against a Dragonite and lose by a very little margin. (If I recall correctly, Dragonite fainted just a couple seconds after Pikachu)
Eeeyeh... I didn't mean a generalization for all kids' shows, I meant because it's targeted at a demographic consisting of mostly kids that like to idealize people. So what better way than to idealize said protagonist? Of course, there are better ways than doing so, instead of Stu-ifying him but yeah, creators are creators, can't say much about that. Plus the original seasons had 'The Power of Friendship' theme for the most part, so I guess Status Quo is God in this case.
Well, it is is a children's franchise, isn't it?
If the shows were to be realistic, Ash would most definitely be losing left and right, because once he learns the best way to tackle and opponent (and mostly because the Type efficiencies in Pokemon are in a scissors-paper-stone system) the battles are going to get predictable. Very predictable. And we all know what happens when a kids' cartoon gets predictable - the company loses money because no one wants to watch it anymore! The horror!
Unevolved Pokemon are usually there for the cute factor. I think in the first generation of the anime he carried around at least one fully-evolved Pokemon, but in the subsequent generations his Pokemon hardly seemed to evolve. Granted, Pikachu refused to evolve, but the rest who technically should have evolved via leveling hardly do either.
Actually, about Liepard... I find that it's attacks in-game (referring to BW 1 and 2) are pretty weak, so a Krookodile should be able to withstand some hits. Given that both are Dark-type as well, Type resistances should come into play. I think if anyone else were to do this they would most certainly change their active Pokemon instead of just waiting out the potentially long battle. Normal attacks against Rock, Dark attacks against Dark. Whooo, yeah. I think I'm going to just mash the 'A' key while doing the dishes.
Having a different protagonist for each region won't have the same effect as having the same protagonist everywhere, and you do need said protagonist to somehow get around regions after exploring them more or less thoroughly. The formula here would be quite the same as the game: Enter region, beat Gym Leaders, Beat Team Whatever at Whatever they're doing, Meet a Legendary (Okay, so this mostly happens outside of anime now, in the movies instead), crush a few League people, then set sail for the next region. Like in the game itself, but do you see it getting old?
So, verdict. Yes, he is a bordeline Stu, but as I said above, this is a kids' show about a video game. If Ash really were to play as an experienced Trainer, it would get pretty boring quickly, so yeah.
Bleh. Anyway, high five, fellow PokeFan.
I think it is justified. I remembered an episode in the first season of Pokemon, where Ash had to release Butterfree since it is fully evolved and has to mate. I assume Ash subconsciously banned his Pokemon from doing the same. But Charizard may throw my hypothesis to the dumpster.
In fact, it was a pretty large part of Dawn's(from the Sinnoh series) character, at least in the episodes that I saw, that she could only control her Pokémon after certain criteria were met, most of those tying into gaining their trust. Seeing her work her hardest to get Mamoswine to trust her after its evolution changed its personality is a huuuuge contrast to the way the series treats Ash.
Pokémon essentially line up to be with Ash, to the extent that a Latias, a legendary Pokémon that is essentially the female form of that second über-powerful Pokémon Sergio Turbo mentioned, attempts to pursue a romantic relationship with him. If that doesn't brand him a Stu, especially when when stacked with the rest of his traits, I don't know what will.
As for the "preventing them from evolving" thing, Pikachu and Bulbasaur didn't evolve on purpose, but most of the rest could have done it if he ever bothered to train them. He never actually trains anything, despite announcing that he's a Pokémon Trainer almost as often as he announces his hometown, and he spreads that around like he's the sole member of its department of tourism. The closest we get to him training in any respect is when he tries to teach something a TM move(without ever getting his hands on a TM, mind you), and the trainee has trouble with it for two episodes before using it to bring down a Gym Leader. Just... uugh. Ash Ketchum. Ash Glaurunging Ketchum.
Or to put it more specifically, the Pokemon he gets in other regions?
Because somehow after each region, he places all the Pokemon he caught (somewhere, maybe with Prof. Oak) and goes to the new region with only Pikachu. So how would the new Pokemon know that Ash would release them upon final evolution?
If Pikachu doesn't tell them, that is. But then why would Pikachu tell them? To scare them into not evolving?
And also Charizard returns somewhere in the Unova arc, I think.
Which is why I didn't prescribe to my own assumptions. Charizard stayed with Ash for a long time, and Butterfree was released immediately. And I'm not even sure if evolution is voluntary, or a stage of life they must pass through.
Then again, it may be that Pikachu is the one doing most fights and voluntarily not try to evolve, and other Pokemons Ash had didn't fight enough to evolve(?). Again, Charizard is my hypothesis' bane.
I only watched two seasons by the way, when I was 11 to 12. So I may forgot a lot of things.
If so then Pikachu would be overleveled, and on times where Ash has to depend on his other Pokemon for stuff like Gym battles his underleveled Pokemon pull through too?
And as to evolution, I think it's more of a life stage for those who don't use stones. Basis would be that in the first season there was a girl who had this weak Paras and wanted it to evolve or something. Upon evolution the Parasect was considerable stronger, much like in-game evolution.
I... I think I'm reading into this too much?
And TvTropes be your only refuge. And yes, somehow underleveled Pokemons of Ash does manage to fight outside of their capabilities. Like cockfights where the cocks are pitted against cockfight-trained eagles.
Paras and Parasect are based on the Cordyceps fungi, which is a parasitic organism that controls the brains of insects. While the World One Cordyceps just marches an ant or beetle into a nest before bursting out of its head and spreading spores to infect the rest of the swarm, the fungus controlling Parasect is master of its entire body on a level akin to the fungus gaining sapience. Once it's at that stage, it starts producing spores. The fungus essentially hijacks the energy of evolution to assist in its own life cycle. It's fascinating, really, especially from a biological standpoint.
The girl from the first season wanted her Parasect to evolve to use a chemical in those spores for medicine, and the undeveloped fungus on her Paras wasn't mature enough to produce them. The Parasect was stronger once it evolved partially because it had increased to the "adult" stage of its life, but also because before then, its native mind and the fungus were vying for control over its body. When it became Parasect, the Paras's mind was completely subsumed, and thus the fungus was no longer forced to hold back. It could then use all of the power in Paras's body without fear of backlash from the now-destroyed consciousness of the body's original tenant.
Isn't science fun?