What do you miss most about the old Pokémon? The old shows, where everything had a meaning and nothing seemed too far out of reach?

I know I miss all the meaningful messages the shows had in them, how never to give up on your dream no matter how hard or far away it seemed and to never give up on friends, to stand beside them and not just run away because it got too tough or sad. I miss how Team rocket would show up in just about every episode and would mess up everything, on for the kids to triumph over them.    Now, with all the new ones, it just showing them travelling or getting the next gym badge, so Ash can compete in the region’s League.

In the older versions, it wasn’t so much getting to the league as it was just meeting new friends and having new experiences with those friends. That’s what I miss the most I suppose. I can count a dozen friends Ash made in the olden days that held some kind of meaning and would teach both him and us something we never knew before-like believing in ourselves or trusting others- but I can’t count the same amount now, with that same reasoning. There is still that aspect but it doesn’t hit as hard as it once would.   

Sure, he has friends in the new shows but they don’t have the same meaning as they did with, say, that one bug samurai trainer or that spoilt school girl with her cubone. And they only showed up in an episode apiece.

The old shows also made you cry. Like Pikachu’s Goodbye or the one where Butterfree left-they made you actually want to and normally did, cry.

Not even the saddest episode of the newest ones could make me feel a shred of despair when I watched them.   They no longer have that grip, that hold on me that the old ones still have on me, the ones that made me laugh and cry with them and which made me watch them almost religiously each time they were on. Now I couldn’t even tell you what channel they were on or what time.

The Pokémon are still there, and so is Ash and Pikachu. But what happened to Misty? The hot-headed red head gym leader, who trained water Pokémon and cherished them above all else? Who had three older siblings who were super models? What happened to Brock? The perve who had slits for eyes, and was the Pewter city gym leader with no mother or father and a dozen little brothers and sisters to play nanny for?

Both are gone, never to return again except perhaps at the fifty year reunion at your old school.  True, Misty left much earlier than Brock who stuck with Ash until Unova but the bitter sadness that befell the nostalgic hope that was in my heart for an reunion between friends was nearly too much when I heard Brock would not return and just become a memory in everyone’s mind.

I can recall every single meeting between Ash and his Rival Gary. You never see him any more either, having become a professor like his Grandfather, Samuel Oak. I can recall having watched him grow from an obnoxious ten year old to a mature teenager with a changing but firm goal in mind. Becoming a respectable person in his own right, with a little help from his grandfather’s name.

Even Misty, the Gym Leader whose bike Pikachu decided would look good roasted, had succeeded in becoming a successful Gym leader in his absence and her sisters, to which she had hoped to strive for.

I can even go as far to claim that once Ash left the others girls-May from Hoenn and Dawn from Sinnoh-they too succeeded in their dreams, shortly after separating from Ash and Brock.   

And where has all this left Ash? It has left him the Peter Pan of the Pokemon World with no family history past a wayward father and something of a ditzy, overbearing mother. His only claim to fame is that it took him nearly half a dozen pitiful attempts before he became close to claiming victory. Before he nearly claimed the champion ship in Sinnoh, the closet he got was the top eight and even then, everyone seemed to have no recollection of his winnings.

It’s truly sad. Really, it is. Perhaps now, Brock can glean his dream from the endless nights he once spent following a seemingly never maturing Ash and his electric rat. It seems to have worked for every other person Ash came into contact with though, so it has to work for Brock right?

Honestly, though I can’t say I hate the new seasons or games of Pokemon, which I still religiously buy and play, they certainly no longer have that particular ‘spark’ that draws me in after the end of the Johto Arc. I can with confidence I no longer care for the show, and will no longer watch it past the Kanto and Johto Arcs that I have on my computer and where the majority of my favourite Pokémon and episodes reside in.  Many people, I know, will tell me to stop being prejudice against the new seasons and tell me they still hold the same meanings as the Kanto and Johto Arcs. But my opinion is my own, as is yours. I have attempted to watch all the new seasons but as said previously, they no longer hold that spark that drew me in and made me love pokemon as they once did. I still love pokemon. It was a big part of my life and it will always have that special place in my heart no other show can replace.

But to me, it is no longer that show I’d sit down religiosity for and rattle off every single characters name for my mother when she asked and scowl at her whenever she got a name wrong.

It no longer has that ‘spark’.