Pokemon Adventures 2
Posted: August 19, 2010 Filed under: Pokemon Adventures Leave a comment »Hidenori Kusaki / MATO – Viz – 2009 – 35+ volumes
More light fun, with Red venturing deeper through the Kanto region, catching more Pokemon, battling Team Rocket a little more, running into trainer Green the thief, and encountering the legendary three birds, as well as Mewtwo and Mew. Next volume: a showdown with Team Rocket!
Yeah, this ran in… what, fifth grader magazine? It’s a very simple story. But I still enjoy it immensely. Each chapter usually features several new pokemon, even in Red’s team, so we’re saved watching Red zap Pidgeys with his Pikachu over and over again in each chapter (a trap the games fall into). And the plot moves very quickly, with a couple chapters spent on each story arc, then moving on to the next thing. Playing the game also helps the enjoyment of this series, though I don’t think it’s a necessary thing, since the adaptation is pretty loose, fast, and easy to follow. At least as far as I can tell. At one time, I’m pretty sure I thought the same thing about the X movie.
I think another thing that makes this a better adaptation than most is that there’s a lot of fun to be had in Pokemon. Unlike a regular RPG adaptation, where you meet the side characters and they stay in your party, Ash’s pokemon party constantly changes, which is a feature of the game. That they don’t really have personalities is a blessing, since we can’t get worn out on them, and it also helps that pokemon themselves are the usual RPG fodder, since you get to see if Ash wants to add them to his party, and they aren’t completely faceless like some slime. It also helps that the original games had characters that came in and out of the story, like Blue and Team Rocket, and that defeating neither isn’t the real goal. The goal is, of course, to be the best, like any good shonen hero. And the ambiguous goal at the end is not a weakness, as it would be in any other series. It’s kind of interesting in the context of a children’s series.
I like it. Of course, I’m leveling up a Jynx with my other hand right now, so my opinion may not be totally objective.
