Post by Firebrand on Jan 11, 2019 20:17:49 GMT
Interesting to have a fic focusing on Ash but without a Pikachu in sight. I guess I just have this preconceived notion of those two functioning as a unit, and it's hard for me to think about Ash going on a journey without his trusty partner. But then, I guess this is a pretty different Ash than the one we're used to.
I more or less tuned out of the pokemon anime right around when BW started, although I'm still vaguely aware of the general plot arcs. But I don't think that ignorance is going to affect my ability to understand this story, since this reboot AU is a pretty big departure from the Ash that the canon gives us, and the plot is pretty different too. At first I thought "Is this just going to be an OC with the same name?", but as I read on, it became clear that there were still some shades of Ash in there, both in terms of backstory and in temperament. As I recall, Ash's defining characteristic throughout the series (series plural, I guess) is that he has an uncanny ability to bond with just about any pokemon under the sun, and that's certainly on display here. I think a lot of the differences between canon!Ash and this Ash are that this Ash is just older. With a few more years under his belt, he's a bit more introspective and a little bit less of a brash, loudmouth ten year old. This puts him more in line with the more seasoned trainer I vaguely recall from the end of the DPPt anime.
But yeah, without his dynamic with Pikachu, Ash feels pretty different. I suppose Zeraora will be filling that role, so he'll have an electric companion with the kind of haughty attitude the canon version had in Charizard.
The first officer mentioning that Unova was known for its intense battles and unorthodox tactics piqued my interest, for sure. I love reading (and writing) creative action scenes, so I'm hoping to see some dynamic battles down the line, especially when Ash is packing the kind of power Zeraora can bring to the table.
There were a few times when I felt as though the scene changed rather abruptly and the fic felt like it was hurrying the plot along. It happens a few time whenever there was a time skip in the desert, and in a slightly different way when Juniper shows up. For the latter, it felt a little odd for this regional professor to breeze into Ash's room, exchange a couple lines of dialogue with her new field research assistant/student/ward(?) and then take off immediately. I can't help but feel like that scene might have worked better if she had sent the pokedex and x-transceiver to Ash as a package with a note, and then save Ash's formal meeting with her until later, making their meeting for the first time a slightly bigger moment.
As far as the time skips/scene changes in the desert go, I found myself struggling to keep track of how much time was passing. (Also, semi-related; Ash's four day hunger strike is one thing, but I don't remember him mentioning that he brought any water along. He is bumming around in the desert, after all) The scene change between meeting Ghetsis and confronting the Krookodile is a decent example of this, I'm really not sure if this is the same day, or a few days later, or whatever. And then the next time skip where he goes back to Zeraora with N and Mountebank in tow feels like it didn't actually need a time skip, and that could have been told in another summary paragraph to keep the unity of time.
Other than that, I think this is a pretty strong start!