This was a great watch (and thanks for the shoutout)!! You're pretty spot on with us trying to capture the feeling and fun of the game rather than strategy and mechanics. We felt it'd be more entertaining and an easier entry level for kids who've never played the game before. The scripts DID initially have a little more of that but they were looooong and at the time we were given a 7 minute limit per episode (i was surprised when the episodes aired and they were about 10 minutes each). While the strategy was cool, we were losing the characters in a lot of time consuming, explain-y dialogue and opted to focus on just making the characters fun. We as the board team ended up doing a lot of rewrites and cutting as we boarded which was up our alley since most of us came from board driven backgrounds! I like to think if we had a longer series run and not just 4 episodes with 7 minute runtimes, we'd get more into the complexities and strategies that are a part of the game, and a fun part at that! A long running tcg anime would be so sick 😭
Thank you so much for your input! We youtube folk try our best but it's hard to speculate without real feedback from the actual team. It used to be we could get that from DVD extras dang it 😆. Be sure to come back for my thoughts on episode 3, I have way more positive thoughts on that one 👍
@@OfficialSuede Oh for sure! It's really helpful to hear this kind of feedback from people without crew background info because, ultimately, this is the final product and what comes through to the audience. We get so in it on our end that it's hard to see it objectively/outside of the context and parameters we're working in. I'm just happy people are watching and able to take something away from it! I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the next ep!
Honestly, the part where the rival girl says that she is undefeated and thus people just want to see her lose is something I've thought about it before. It's a very common trope to have the rookie underdog face the undefeated champion in the finals, everyone loves an underdog but you never think that by that same logic everyone just wants to see the champion fall. It gives motivation to the champion, they are defending their title and they wouldn't want to give the satisfaction to the people who are rooting against them. But it must really suck that you really are giving it your all in your craft only for most of the audience to be excited at the idea of your failure.
Or if they lose they get "sent to the stars". Or they play it on motorcycles. Or it turns out half the cast were secretly reincarnated aliens. Or they endlessly play up "your princess is in another castle" across the multiverse. Or they play exclusively in a VR MMO to stave off a robot apocalypse. Or the matches are conducted via giant robots in space.
Suede, I’ll happily explain how Celestine trapped Ava. The card she played was called Panic Mask. If a pokemon is below a certain HP, this card can be played to keep them from attacking. So if not for Spoink, Ava would’ve had no choice but to surrender because she couldn’t do anything.
I'd love it if some story had the villain spring a hero's supposed weakness on them only for the hero to neither be shocked at the insight or fervently deny it or launch into a speech about how it's really a strength but just look nonplussed and go "Dude, that's not even slightly right...
It's not quite what you're asking for, as it's an actual thing rather than an internal weakness, but I'm reminded of a old card game a ime where the rival's big move was "Look! I've invited the teacher that thinks you're wasting your life! Let the shame flow through you!" And then the protag is like "... Dude, my teacher is super supportive. They just don't want me screwing around in class"
Pikachu side is heads, Pokéball side is tails. It's always been that way with Pokémon, even outside the tcg like with Pokémon Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum's Coin Flip app for the Poketch.
I remember that even during the height of Pokémania in the U.S. our town outside of St. Louis only ever got local tournaments for the T.C.G. in the rec-room at our county library. The Internet has greatly increased our capacity to get people to show up to things.
it will forever weird me out that Pikachu sounds like a Japanese lady in a setting where every other creature sounds like a Soundchip, at the very least i would love if they had found a middle ground. Maybe had the actors from the anime try to imitate the in-game sounds
2:02 Jeez even the old Toys R Us in a certain three-city radius of my childhood home in Ventura County had Pokemon TCG tournaments (as well as comic stores that stocked trading card game cards and tabletop game figures like Warhammer and Heroclix) and now I live in LA, just a couple hours away from Little Tokyo.
As someone who hasn't collected or played the card game in almost 20 years, the one thing in the episode that made me go "I want that!" was the big Oddish plushie.
My favorite audiovisual media depicting a card game is The Gamers: Hands of Fate. It's clearly inspired by games like MtG, and the movie does get into enough mechanics to follow the games they show more of. After all, one of the big stakes of the tournament is that if the bad guys win, they're going to remove one of the win conditions. Note: if anyone was to watch this, I suggest the festival cut instead of the full one. It's a tighter version of the story and cuts out a subplot that only people who've seen the previous film are looking for.
3rd largest city? You're lucky. I grew up in a 3k population village. I had to drive to the next city to get the trading cards because the local shops only had the stickers.
It shows the energy of big events, that's something. I do agree if they're doing this post Yugioh and they're actually looking at strategies and interesting builds they should give some insight besides evolve your pokemon and hope for the best off the top. Protagonists are allowed some plot armor or a toolbox deck that can deal with any situation but is too inconsistent for competitive. Even then later players had more consistent strategies around fusion team ups or the newest summon type. The artstyle is still very nice but I'd also wish for a more expressive 2D storyboard version. Dunno if this will get reanimated by fans but glad the people behind it are having fun and could stick a few of those in their portfolio.
8:16 Ah, Elf Ball decks, Yeah, that isn't just a G/B thing either. You's be amazed how many times I have snuck out a win in Commander with only the second deck I made for the format. The fact that I don't overly rely in just one or two cards in the deck kind of helps. Also I have ways around the annoyance of most aristocrats decks with Tajuru Preserver.
I always felt the same way with a lot of these card games Heads/Tails coins. Some make sorta sense (Some kinda face on one side, and a logo on the other) Others... An Ankh and a Shield... Okay.
as someone with no care about the card game including zero explanation makes this mini series pointless I want to see why people play what about the gameplay is ingrossing
Reminds me of a show I watched called WIXOSS which similarly didnt advertise the card game AT ALL. It had the characters talking and the results of their duels were significant, but they explained nothing about any of the mechanics whatsoever. Selector Wixoss actually seemed like ANTI-Advertisement considering what the card game basically was (imagine if every duel was a shadow duel) . WIXOSS DIVA tried to have a little bit more of the game mechanics in there but still poorly explained, skipped turns, and it didnt understand how online games or streaming works at all so I couldnt stomach more than one episode of that. Im sure Nostalgia bait is big for this but yeah, if you want to bring in *new* people, then you arent gonna be very effective if they cant follow whats happening at all. Its just "I play a card and now I win"
10:34 hey there was actually a reason he used Pachirisu, and it was mainly because 1: regional dex format, and 2: Pachirisu was an electric type with Follow Me. He actually didn't have much attachment to Pachirisu if any when choosing Pachirisu. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-veQgZDiCLlg.htmlsi=PRtvo-9DqnNtWkNa This video by Golden Owl covers it perfectly. Also in general yeah you got it head on with the issues of the show. I actually haven't seen the final episode tho because of how much episode 3 just left me... Disappointed. Wondering what your thoughts'll ve on it
Least they're playing the game at all unlike TCG cartoons like Redakai and Kaijudo (both of which died after two seasons but in Redakai's case I know it's because of the expensive translucent plastic gimmick rather than poor advertising). And the game actually plays like the actual game, unlike Chaotic (which seemed to base the mechanics, card layouts and the Chaotic website seen in the show on earlier incarnations than what TCDigital ultimately launched with) or Bakugan after the first season (and even then ability cards worked differently).
A classic deck against modern power creeped cards? How do you survive more than three turns? I am sick of the "undefeated champ" trope in anime. Even the best players lose sometimes. You need to lose to know what weaknesses you need to refine.
I haven’t played a ton of Pokémon TCG, and I haven’t watched this series at all, but I feel what really sets it apart from Yu-Gi-Oh or MTG (not that we have any MTG shows, but I personally thinks it’s more fun to watch MTG tournaments than Pokémon tournaments), is that you don’t have any face down card or instant spells that can alter the outcome of a battle, and also that thing about only having one active monster at a time. That’s not to say you don’t have real strategies in Pokémon, but less interesting things might happen each turn, and really no interesting things happens once an attack is declared. Just by the nature of the game I feel it would be hard to make an interesting show where the actual play is in focus, but if they just live in the normal world and Pokémon aren’t real creatures, then what will the show do to make itself interesting?
Sorry for being that guy, but the subtitles at 6:12 attribute the “your overconfidence...” quote to ‘Anikin’. Incorrect spelling aside, it’s actually Luke that says it.
