Gotta Catch 'Em All

Fist off, I'd just like to say that I adore how I said I'd continue this blogging thing, and then the first thing I did was abandon ship. Oh me.

What'll I do now:

Well, for the past week or so I've managed to keep myself occupied. And by "occupied" I mean, I read 365 chapters of the pokemon adventures manga. I'd have read them all, but for the life of me, I cannot fine a translated copy of 366. I don't know exactly when I started this mission, but damn did I enjoy it. I'm well aware of the fact that I could be ridiculed into oblivion for this, but hell if I care.

The manga follows 13 main characters (the characters mirror the main games(for those of you sensing a number discrepancy pokemon green version was released in Japan only alongside pokemon red version and blue was the third edition while yellow was an additional version. The Japanese version of Blue was the formula for Red and Blue everywhere else, and yellow functioned as the third wheel.) and they're all well done. Compared to the anime at least. The manga, on a whole, is much more enjoyable than the anime. The characters are better done (sorry Ash but I'll choose Red every time now), the themes are better, the pokemon are more badass, and the evil gangs are actually a threat. It's infinitely cooler, especially for me, 'cause apparently the manga world is closest to what Satoshi Tajiri (creator of pokemon) had in mind when he created the world. Shit blows up, legendary pokemon wreak havoc, and people and pokemon die. It's badassery.

Overall I've determined my favorite characters in the series from this. Before actually reading the manga my favorite character was automatically Gold. I'd read up a bit on the characters and seen artwork and stuff and basing my favorites off of that Gold came out on top (It doesn't hurt that Gold has always been my favorite of the game entries either, and the character design from that is still my favorite.) But now Gold has been moved down to a still respectable second place. I now have a ridiculous love for Ruby.

Which is mildly ironic. Ruby/Sapphire were my least favorite of the games. Probably because of the time frame in which they were released. I was in jr. high/high school when they first came out and not as willing to admit my all encompassing love for pokemon due to peer pressure. Since then I've given the 3rd gen more of a chance (I played through most of the game (Sapphire version I believe) when they first came out). Last year I played through a significant portion of Emerald version and I don't hate it nearly as much.

But back on topic. Ruby is undeniably my favorite character from the series. He goes against the archtype. He's superficial, a bit flamboyant, and entirely obsessed with Pokemon Contests (the more 'girly' aspect of the pokemon universe). I loved him from the moment he was introduced. In his first appearance he tries to subdue wild pokemon by asking them to join his team because they looked "cool" when that inevitably failed, he tried to subdue them with cool looking, but battle worthless moves. He ended up having to run away as they chased him. Of course, his character grows over the course of the series, and you learn more things about him, and through it all I enjoyed his growth more than that of any of the other characters.

As I type this I've been trying to come up with a list of my favorite characters from the series, but it's been hard. I've got the top three filled out, but ranking the rest has been hard.
1. Ruby
2. Gold
3. Diamond
4. ???

No luck with the remainder of the list. Maybe listing them all will help.
Red
Blue
Green
Yellow
Gold
Silver
Crystal
Ruby
Sapphire
Emerald
Diamond
Pearl
Platinum

Listing isn't helping. Maybe tiers.
Ruby. Gold. Diamond.
Blue. Red. Green.
Crystal. Platinum. Yellow.
Pearl. Sapphire. Silver. Emerald.

That'll work. I can tier them. Though that doesn't really mean much either. Outside the first tier, it's not very set.

In the long run, I don't know why I'm trying to rank my favorites. I hardly ever bother to rank things. Outside of the top three it doesn't really matter. But I just had this compulsion to try to rank them. God only knows why. But I had it. And I failed miserably. But I'm ok with that. Maybe that means it wasn't really that important in the first place. Dunno, dun care. I'm going to go play Batman now. Ray's inspired me.

Quote of the Day:

"The future will be better tomorrow."
- Dan Quayle