Ash's unevolved pokemon

[lillypills]

So what's every ones take on ash's unevolved pokemon ? (obviously pikachu doesn't count , unforunitly ) to be honest bulbasaur was my favourite pokemon when i was a kid and he did decide not too evolve but what about his gible , oshawott , snivy , squirtle , buizel , totodille,
scraggy and corphish i mean he wants to be a pokemon master , you see don't see cynthia or lance with any unevolved pokemon . If any of Ash's pokemon were to stay at their first stage i'd want them to only be bulbasaur , snivy and corphish .

[Lady Vulpix]

I've long since stopped trying to make sense of the Pokemon anime, and especially of Ash's mind. It's been clear that something's wrong inside his head ever since he promised his Pidgeot to come back for him once he returned from the Orange Islands, and he never did. Ever since then he's been abandoning his Pokemon for no apparent reason, yet he pretends to care for them and calls them his friends. Pikachu, sure, but everyone else seems to be just a toy which he loves while the novelty lasts and then discards without a second thought.

[Blademaster]

You know, for kids!

[CaptainJigglypuff]

I think Gible should remain unevolved only for the humorous outcome whenever it tries to use Draco Meteor. It would be interesting to see it come back and actually learn from Axew how to use it though since Axew had a used to have a similar outcome with Dragon Rage.

[Lady Vulpix]

You know, for kids!

I would love to know how kids can benefit from any of this. All I see is a poor plot. Of course, you could argue that most kids under 6 years old care very little about the plot and only want to see colorful creatures moving around, in which case the Pokemon anime provides that in large quantities. But any child over 6 years old would be likely to get bored or start asking questions like the ones presented on this thread.

[Mystic_clown]

He was referencing Nostalgia Critic.

But yeah, seriously Ash? His Buttefree was the only pokemon release that made sense. Every other release or give away he just handed them off without a second though. Sure, some other characters have done this, but for them there was some reasoning behind it. Heck, when Jesse and James gave up their Arbok and Wheezing, it was so they could protect their kind, not just a simple "Run along boy, you're free now." His release of Charizard was by far the worst.

As for Ash's unevolved pokemon, yeah, Ash has some messed up priorities, but are his pokemon. His Pikachu downright refuses to evolve for some pretentious reason. Do you know how much more powerful he'd be, and more useful as a Raichu? Such wasted potential.

[CaptainJigglypuff]

I was thinking about what I mentioned earlier about how Gibble could return and the issues it has everytime it tries to use Draco Meteor. I think it would be pretty funny if it not only always hit Piplup but also Oshawatt as well. Especially if Oshawatt used its scalchop to defelct it only to have the move boomerang its way back to it!

[mr_pikachu]

I also count myself in the crowd that thinks that Ash leaving behind his Pokemon (and other things -- see: GS ball) is worse than the lack of evolutions. But really, it comes down to the same issue: at this point, the anime writers think that they're cycling fans every few years rather than maintaining longterm fans who grew up with Kanto. We remember when Ash battled in the Indigo tournament with first-stage Pokemon like Bulbasaur, Squirtle, and Pikachu, but I'd bet the writers think most of their viewers don't remember that at all. So that little trick is new to most of their audience, supposedly... and they keep pulling it repeatedly to keep Ash from becoming a Pokemon master, and to easily keep the series going. How can he be expected to take down a title when he's the only trainer in the tournament using stage one battlers?

Likewise, we've talked about Ash's... flexible intelligence level many times before. In the span of a few episodes, he'll go from (Spoiler:) taking down two legendaries in the Sinnoh semifinals to forgetting that Electric attacks don't work on Ground Pokemon. Or something like that, anyway. After Johto, the writers just became enamored with hitting the reset button on Ash's journey every time he went to a new region, so he couldn't keep getting stronger and climbing the ladder among trainers. Granted, he's (Spoiler:) placed higher in each league championship he's entered since the Orange Islands, but who knows how long even that brand of progress will last?

In any case, the whole issue comes back to the writers hitting the reset button for new viewers with each new league challenge. Much like the old "If you haven't seen it, it's new to you" slogan, if you don't know that Ash ever had a Butterfree, it doesn't exist. And if you don't know that Ash once used a Krabby in a championship tournament, then the cavalcade of unevolved Pokemon he keeps through an entire story arc represents a new and innovative idea.