[LockonStratos]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Matrixbeast

Make Gary a relevant figure. Have Ash lose to him instead of Ash 2, I mean New Ash, I mean...Ritchie.
I get the point of why Ash lost to Ritchie (It was to show that he's kind of a bad trainer), but it made Gary kind of irrelevant to even appear during the league.

Honestly, there are 8 "Important bits" in the anime, those being the gyms (Well...7, since the final gym was just another Team Rocket fight). I just don't know how they'll show them off.
If anything, I desperately pray they don't pull an Origins and go "Oh yeah, he beat them, too" and move on.

Well... I think making Gary lose in the preliminary rounds was a good thing. It's a deliberate anti-climax, subverting the audiences expectations. Everyone expected those two to fight, including the characters themselves, so when Gary gets knocked out early on it generates a moment of "Why am I doing this anymore?" That's an opportunity for character study and growth, see who they are when you take away one of their primary motivations. Of course, being a 90's kids show, obviously you couldn't go anywhere too special with it, but I personally think that anti-climax of an ending actually worked for the first season. It was something different for the time, not having the hero win in the end. Sure, Pokémon being what it is turned into a cliché quickly, but I still think that it's part of why the first season is special besides being first.

On the gyms... you could skip Fuchsia and Celadon and lose nothing to be perfectly honest. It's kind of how they were in the original show, being basically checkbox episodes. Possibly replace them with Bye Bye Butterfree or Pikachu's Goodbye, those I think are more important...

You know, much like my relationship with Star Wars, I always forget how much of a fan I am of the Indigo League until I start talking about it, as I'm remembering all these episodes from it.