Pokemon Journeys: Masters 8 Tournament

My View on Journeys and How I'll Fix It

This is not part of my story. It's just a random chapter for me to express my opinion about Pokemon Journeys as a whole. It is also a response to a question in Q&A, about how I will rewrite Pokemon Journeys. I am writing this chapter by the end of September 2022, when Ash defeated Cynthia and proceeded to have a final battle against Leon to become the world's strongest Pokemon Battler.

I respect the Pokemon anime development team: pulling out a 3-year long project is never easy, it requires a lot of planning, execution, animation, promotion, and all sorts of stuff. Ever since the pandemic, the world has entered into a new normal, change is the only constant now. I know the team has been facing a lot of adversaries during these times of change, so I understand the drop in the qualities of the recent episodes, and I do not hate the team. If I lead the team to create Journeys, maybe I would have done a worse job than what we get now. But as an audience, I still wish to give some (potentially useful and) potentially constructive opinions. They are just my take on how to make Journeys better. Feel free to like or dislike my ideas in the comment section.

I can't say I hate Journeys after the recent issues. But I will say that it is the most overrated series in my eyes.

The existence of this question about rewriting Journeys is very understandable. The recent Masters 8 Tournament is a huge letdown to most of us Pokemon anime fans. My ratings for the battles in the Masters 8 Tournament have been quite low, and many fans are disappointed that the greatest tournament in the anime's history would be so poorly executed. In my conversations board, I wrote about these Masters 8 episodes and gave them my ratings as below. Feel free to check those out in the conversations board:
Ep. 115 Leon vs Alain: 2/10
Ep. 116 Lance vs Diantha: 7/10
Ep. 117 Cynthia vs Iris: 6/10
Ep. 118 Ash vs Steven: 6/10* (revised from 9/10, I have overrated that episode, it's not that exciting if we compare this to previous leagues...)
Ep. 122 Diantha vs Leon: 2/10
Ep. 123-125 Ash vs Cynthia: 7/10, 10/10, 9/10
Why is it only Ash vs Cynthia is good? This is the world's biggest tournament! It should have topped every single league in the past! And hey, what's the deal with Leon? Is this how you write an undefeated character? No! Why aren't all these matches 6v6? Those who have watched the episode will know what I mean.

If you haven't watched the Masters 8 Tournament battles, don't watch it. You have a high chance to be disappointed. Go back and watch the Alola League, the Kalos League, and the Sinnoh League. I mean it.

Some background information, Pokemon Journeys is a Pokemon anime series that started back in November 2019, and it's planned to end by November 2022. It has a direction for main characters Ash and Goh to travel over different regions like Galar and other previous regions, so it's different from the previous series of traveling within one region in one series. Forever 10-year-old Ash has a goal to defeat the World Monarch Leon, and Goh has a goal to join Project Mew and catch all pokemon to reach Mew. Ash takes part in the World Coronation Series to up his rank to become a Masters 8 member, so that he can eventually defeat Leon in the Masters 8 Tournament, which functions similarly to previous leagues in the previous series, just that the participants this time are all top trainers in the world/champions of different regions.

To make things short, Pokemon Journeys failed in expectation management. Because a series that started badly and ended fine (Best Wishes) is a bit better than a series that started great but ended really badly (Journeys). A good series should have an ending that is on par with, if not better than, how it started. The audience wants to see improvements over the course of the series, not a downgrade. So with a limited budget, they should save some money for the opening bangers for promotion purposes, some money for the small climax in the middle of the series, and most of the budget for the ending climax. The Masters 8 Tournament is described as the finest tournament in the world, so all the matches here should be amazing and detailed 6v6 battles because these are where the budget should be saved. Journeys started amazingly in my eyes, but it turned out to be quite the mess by the end. And another thing, the previews for the episodes are usually very hype-inducing, but the episodes ended up disappointing us fans. Apparently, the hype department and the animation department did not communicate very well...