#/it's such a travesty that i genuinely don't think these versions even apply anymore since they're so long ago and so retconned | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

fallershipping · 1 month

Text

The Absolute Atrocious Audacity... of Anipoke's version of the Hoenn Battle Frontier

The Battle Frontier was arguably the first time in a mainline game where we got introduced to Battle Facility Characters. For a while, we had the titular Battle Tower, but for the first time, we had a unique boss to get to.

Much alike to Gym Leaders, they give out "badges" to commemorate your victory; Hoenn's being Silver and Gold Symbols.

However, for the time, many casual players that didn't focus on Competitive Training missed out on these special characters almost entirely. At the very least, they'd see them in Player's Guides along with their Silver and Gold Pokemon Teams.

But especially during that time, most, if not all, knowledge of these characters came from the botched version of them in the Ash Ketchum Anime.

I say botched because it's an honest to goodness fact that man the writers of the anime made some wild decisions.

This will be focusing mostly on Anabel of course, but I've been doing some snooping around the original Battle Frontier and Emerald's in-game text.

I'll go over why Brandon was never supposed to be the "leader" of the Hoenn Frontier, why Anabel was wrongly mistaken as psychic, why the Battle Tower was the real head of the battle frontier, and etc.

1.Who is the leader of the Frontier Brains?

Short answer, no one as far as we know. Long answer is that there are a lot of NPCs that, while making note of all the unique facilities, the Battle Tower is ALWAYS a stand out amongst them all.

When asking a guide about the Battle Tower, you get this dialogue:

"... It is the gigantic tower considered to be the BATTLE FRONTIER's symbol."

A child right outside the Battle Tower itself claims:

"Wow! It's huge! The Battle Tower feels special. It's different from the others."

Also to note that when looking for the Exchange Service and Rankings Building, they will be pointed over as "Near the Battle Tower" .... Which also points to how important the Battle Tower is to the Frontier as a whole.

It's good to note that no other battle facility gets this kind of fanfare. The Tower is uniquely special in its iconography.

... Seeing how both the Adventures Manga and Ihara's Manga puts Anabel as the symbolic 'final boss' of the frontier... It's safe to say that she's at least part of the very foundation and centralized symbol of the Hoenn Battle Frontier.

2.Why was Brandon the leader in the anime?

Chauvinism Brandon is often referred to as Chief... By only his Pyramid employees, and mostly in the vein of his whole gimmick of the Pyramid being an Indiana Jones type of adventure. So Brandon is the Chief of the expedition team that you meet inside the facility itself.

Brandon is never pointed out as anything particularly special or more important than the other facility heads.

He's probably a dev favorite, or for some reason, Anabel wasn't "leader" material for the anime. You know, the brain of the Frontier's central icon and one who became a head Chief/Boss within Interpol many years later.

3.Why was Anabel written to have Psychic Powers?

Oh you're not going to believe this. But I found that there IS an NPC at the Battle Frontier that is Psychic and can read a Pokemon's mind.

AND IT WAS NEVER ANABEL.

There is a little girl that is often cited to appear a lot at Spencer's Battle Palace. Here's her dialogue:

"Ehehe! I can tell what POKÈMON are thinking! Please! Can I see your POKÈMON?" + "That's silly! An EGG is asleep! I can't talk to it!"

Supplementary NPC dialogue:

"How charming! That little lady claims she can understand POKÈMON!" Beyond this, Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald has an unfortunate Psychic Trainer generic NPC that looks like this:

So the anime writers might have put two and two together that someone who is mysterious and has purple hair MUST be a Psychic type specialist.

Otherwise, the only dialogue in relation to Anabel has absolutely zero implications that she is or was ever psychic to begin with. Which takes me to...

4.Did they change Anabel's personality?

YES.

AND IT'S BAD.

First of all, Lucy got it so much worse. NPCs describe her as a "Scary trainer," with a particular incident causing an NPC to retell their bad encounter with her:

"A while back, I met this older girl at the BATTLE PIKE. She had these eyes that were scary in a real ornery way. She got all furious: "Will you quit eating!" Then she whaled on me. It was a hair-raising kind of scary experience, sure enough."

Another NPC, one who deals in rumors, also titles her as the "Scary Trainer of the Battle Pike."

And she is scary! She doesn't hold back! She tells you firmly that she fought her way to her title, and she IS SUPER PISSED that some kid like you just beat her, telling you to just leave her sight already.

Ahem. IN THE ANIME, Lucy's anime counterpart is kinder and friendlier, probably because kids are watching. But all of her sharp edge is just kinda gone. What's worse, she is so commonly known for a gag in which she was the first woman to "reciprocate" Brock's affections.

For a gag. Because she just liked his close eyes look, as her anime counterpart collects squinty eyed Pokemon like Cyndaquil and Skitty.

Also, Brock is 15. Lucy is stated to be an adult woman in Masters, plus she's pretty tall. The anime is known to de-age characters sometimes but... Echk.

Onto Anabel... Oh sweet Anabel-- Just like Lucy, Anabel's edge was dulled into just being some generic sweet girl for her counterpart. As we know in the games, Anabel is not shy to telling you just how she feels about you; she is not impressed by the rumors she has heard of you, and even when you lose to her in the first battle, she will straight up call it 'disappointing.' She expected nothing and was still disappointed.

Here's some NPC dialogue involving Anabel:

Ace Trainer: "Man! Oh man! I've never lost once before! But I got wiped out with no saving grace at all! And then I'm told I don't have any talent?! Man!" NPC next to Ace Trainer: "This guy ran into a horribly tough TRAINER while he was on the BATTLE TOWER challenge. Now look at him... You need to be cautious if you ever decide to go to the BATTLE TOWER."

Also, Anabel apparently is said that when she's using a fucking Snorlax, Alakazam, and Entei on you, she's trying to "measure up her opponent." When she's serious, she uses Raikou, Snorlax, and Latios.

SHE'S USING AN ENTEI TO MEASURE YOU UP BEFORE BRINGING OUT BIGGER GUNS???

... Anabel in the anime was a joke. Her counterpart was made a glorified psychic type gym leader with none of the very sharp personality she had before. Perhaps kids would have hated a girl who shot down Ash the moment he stepped into her tower. Honestly she could have given him the same treatment Nanu did MAAAAANY seasons later.

But no. Had to be sweet and kind. And had to have a Metagross that dies to a Tauros using Take Down and she also was given an Espeon to replace Snorlax? An Espeon which was just "girly version of Ash's Pikachu" because it had Zap Cannon, Iron Tail, and Quick Attack WHICH IS SUCH A BAD MOVEPOOL FOR ESPEON GOOD LORD.

And of course, the elephant in the room that this version of Anabel's only fucking thing that people remember is that she had a crush on Ash. Why? Because May was being rewritten to have a thing with Drew so Ash needed a "romance"(?) for some reason. Not like it even went anywhere or was ever needed? They had no romantic interactions and it was basically a last minute reveal that she gained feelings for him just out of nowhere. Ultimately, Anabel never came back, and this entire point was practically retconned or erased from existence as OTHER girls later down the line would fill the "romantic undertones" role for the season/series, each one making the former fucking meaningless.

Plus, Anabel and Lucy in Emerald are both referred to as "Older Girls", possibly a localization of "Oneesan", with Anabel being a bit taller than May and Brendan in Emerald, so her original appearance was most likely at the very least a teenager older than the protags? Not that it's TOO bad echk but... CHRIST. WHAT WAS THE POINT? WHY???

The only point for Lucy and Anabel to have pointless crushes and character changes to be appealing and sweet and kind is because "Boys only like girls who are cute and like them and aren't combative."

let's be fucking REAL HERE THIS IS ALSO WHY ANABEL WASN'T THE LEADER OF THE BRAINS and she never kept her original pokemon and ARGH. THAT ISN'T ANABEL THAT'S JUST A SKIN WALKER.

salt over im so angry good lord. People thought this was Anabel for YEARS. Can you believe it??

Whew this was a long one.

5.Why was the Hoenn Battle Frontier in Kanto?

Firered and Leafgreen promotion :'y Had to be made a Kanto thing to "mix the elements" of FRGL and Emerald. This was hilariously walked back on when Ash revisited the Frontier in Journeys... Now exactly in Hoenn and appearing exactly as it did in the games with none of the frontier brains actually appearing.

You can tell they totally have no regrets about doing it the other way. :))))

6.Why did Anipoke do so many changes?

Not out of malicious intent.

The pokemon anime was always primarily made for kids. It's going to have cheerful adventures, and I can see why perhaps Lucy shouldn't be a scary woman on screen or why an adult like Brandon would be easier to see as the "big leader" of the brains due to being an older man.

Lots of decisions were made with kids in mind... Anabel's competitive and strategic nature would never have been as showy as "heehoo Brandon has THREE LEGENDARIES that means he's the strongest!"

Due to mostly boys watching Pokemon.... Girls got a really bad hand. Girls were apparently written to be changed with each new game series and are probably most remembered by being love interests. This is why no one talks about Greta-- She didn't have a romance. She wasn't tugging at the growing mind's "maybe girls aren't so icky" brain cells, idk.

And frankly, the Battle Frontier would just be boring otherwise, I guess. It's very much an older kid/adult set of facilities for advanced players, and Ash Ketchum is not an advanced player.

He is the representation of the little casual kid who believes in the power of friendship. He's not going to use competitively viable Pokemon he's going to use his iconic starters that sometimes don't evolve because they're cute and have a lot of character as their smaller forms. He's not going to climb a tower of high level trainers nor understand what EVs and IVs are. Hell he usually loses championships because he needs to be moved to the next region to start anew all over again.

So... They wrote the Battle Frontier as just. A glorified Kanto Gym Challenge, as they have done. They looked at the characters and their Pokemon and wrote alternate versions of them all to fit a series that is very kid oriented.

Things needed to make sense for kids. Older adult guys are the leaders, girls get crushes on boys, and Pokemon isn't about competitive play but the power of friendship to overcome all odds.

And unfortunately, because so many players were young and didn't get competitive battling, that was the only thing Anabel and the Frontier Brains were known for. Not their original games; but the heavily revised versions made because they needed to fit a children's TV show.

#/VERGO'S LONG ASS RANT #/it's such a travesty that i genuinely don't think these versions even apply anymore since they're so long ago and so retconned #/they never really were brought up all that much ever again really #/And whenever someone says 'Masters Anabel should have an Espeon' this is why I fucking seeth lmao

17 notes · View notes