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SAT the 22nd - Pokemon Manga Book Club - Part 5 [D/P/P] + Imgur! (Patreon)

Published:
2024-06-04 09:52:36
Edited:
2024-06-22 03:32:51
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

REMINDER THIS IS TOMORROW, SATURDAY THE 22ndt AT 4PM EST/1PM PSTLIVE REACTION BEST-OF IMGUR

I want you guys to know that the imgur broke TWICE and crashed the upload order and I had to make this three frickin' times. Some of the Yellow/GSC images are still out of order, but hopefully it's still mostly legible!

I'm experimenting with updating the Imgur as we go this time rather than saving it for the end. Let me know if you guys like this better because it's honestly more work, but I'm willing to do it if it makes being a book club member more fun.

Our next meeting will be on JUNE 15th at 4PM EST/1PM PST. The reading assignment is Volumes 30-40, which includes all of the Diamond/Pearl and Platinum arcs.

Hopefully we're past the worst of it now. See you guys at the next reading!

Files

Jello's Pokemon Adventure Book Club! Volumes 30 - 40 (Patreon Stream)

If you are seeing this you are on the patreon! THANKS! Jello's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/jelloapocalypse Aloha does other stuff on this channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Stabbyness

Comments

Benedict Ide

Wait, the chapter titles weren't in the scans? Did someone just make those up for the official translation? Is THAT why they're written by just, naming a pokemon that appears somewhere in the chapter regardless of whether it had anything to do with the story? I'm still not over "Really Raikou and Entirely Entei" or "As Luck Would Have It, Kirlia". (These are hilarious but I don't mind waiting, if imgur's going to be a pain in the ass and waste time you could be using on other stuff.)

Benedict Ide

I don't know if this came up in book club or not, but with Raid On the City Knock out Evil Tusks- "I'd kill to know what the fuck this was in Japanese"-- I looked up the raws! That's just what it was! It was in English! They made it be an English acronym of the English word "rocket"! Giovanni canonically one of those guys who gets a tattoo in a language he doesn't speak using Google Translate and it comes out ridiculous.

LittieScorp

Ah, looking through these reminded me of the early RGB chapters. I miss that artstyle

Act One

I prefer the Imgur at the end, since it feels like a reward for completing a big series. However, in this case, I can understand trying to scrape any bit of enjoyment together after FRLG/Emerald.

JelloApocalypse

Yeah I figured it had to be this. The acronym is so bad in English that even the worst translator would've come up with SOMETHING else.

JelloApocalypse

Honestly at first I was excited for the new artist because I do think Mato's page layouts are remarkably bad, but looking back now I think overall I like her work better. She's just better at expressing character.

PurpleIsDebeste

so what fanslation are people using for this, because i DO NOT want to read 10 volumes of diamond and pearl refusing to be funny

PurpleIsDebeste

Damn, I tried downloading some old browsers to see if I could open the mazosi gems but my power went out so I don’t think the universe wants the gems to be uncovered :(

Act One

R.I.P. Jello. Got put in the sick dimension; now Aloha has to do a Battle Frontier arc.

Benedict Ide

I'm not going to be able to make the new time for the book club this week, so I'll just put my thoughts (as of the end of D/P, haven't started Platinum) down here: This was, hands down, the most fun I've had with the Pokémon manga so far. Dia, Pearl, and Platinum have such a fun dynamic, with the absurd bodyguard misunderstanding and Platinum trying to pretend to be dignified and not find them hilarious. It's a comedy of errors, and the central bit is how well things go for them despite how much of a disaster it by all rights *should* be. They're just some dumb kids on a silly adventure! It's so much more tolerable when they're not trying to build up their main characters as Important Destiny Heroes! It even makes the evil team subplot enjoyable, almost! Team Galactic *also* getting confused by the bodyguard mixup and sending goons after the *actual bodyguards* was hilarious, and I like that their only interest in them is "hey, this girl's rich, I bet we can get ransom money", and manage to keep fucking that up because Pearl and Dia keep bumbling their way into actually being good bodyguards. It's just Fun! And it manages to stay Fun for a decently long time! But. It sure does take a dip once it starts asking you to take it seriously. Obviously the Evil Team Wants Legendary Pokémon story has to take over and shove everything enjoyable out of the way. Like... god, Cyrus is such a scribble of a villain. I can't detect any thought process behind the writing of his actions. He just sort of... shows up to Be Antagonistic in ways that make zero sense internally. That whole scene where they fight him in Celestic Town- what was he even doing there? They have a mural that just has three crude drawings of some legendaries on it, and it's so important that no one's allowed to look at it, but also there's literally no way inside and he had to blast in, but he couldn't blast in himself and needed to trick Cynthia's Garchomp into doing it, and now that he's seen the mural he inexplicably knows a bunch of facts about the legendary pokemon??? (Incidentally, Dia *kinda* gets a good scene of standing up for himself to Pearl there, but... did they have to pick a time where Pearl was objectively in the right? Who cares about Cyrus's camera?! It's not important! Team Galactic obviously already knows all the legendary pokémon lore they need to know for their evil plan! There was no reason to fight him there!) It also takes kind of a dive when they split the main crew up to go to the different lakes- that character dynamic was the strongest thing it had going for it, and they just throw that out so they can do, what, a training arc? Who cares? And it's actively nonsensical that they'd split up for this, immediately after having this whole heart-to-heart about her accepting them as her bodyguards. I don't normally scrutinize the "the only one who can stop the villain is this random twelve-year-old" stuff in Pokémon, but when it's being used as a contrivance to split the party when there are grown adults who should be helping somehow... it's bad. (And *obviously* it's all pointless, because they're not going to stop the evil plan! If they actually stopped the evil plan to capture the legendary pokémon, then they wouldn't get to spend like twenty chapters fighting the legendary pokémon instead of doing anything interesting! We can't have that. No, we need to split up the party so they can *fail* to stop the evil plan. Wait, you stopped the evil plan? TRICK! It didn't matter! Luckily the bad guys had a second extra macguffin lying around just in case!) The finale is all just... noise. Here's all the bad guys! Here's all the gym leaders! Here's all the legendary pokémon! And a bunch of special effects! Look out- it's The Dimension™! Oh no! We put all the things from the game here in one place, so you're definitely invested now, right?? Like... no. I was invested when these kids were on a road trip to climb a mountain for fun, and telling stupid jokes and having hilarious misunderstandings. They crumpled that up and threw that in the garbage can! It's depressing how predictably things go to shit with this writer. Miscellaneous notes and extra thoughts: - you know what this could use is a B-plot where the real bodyguards keep accidentally winning comedy competitions - oh the unowns spell out "friend"! that's cute - "I DESIRE THEM TO EXPERIENCE ABSOLUTE TERROR" ahahaha okay man - wait how do ember and hidden power counter hiveminds. what's the logic there - love team galactic's Beam That Puts You In The Dimension™, which works on everything except sunglasses for some reason - Dia and Pearl should've totally started wearing those bodyguard sunglasses. they'd look so dumb. it'd be great. - they keep just straight-up tracing floor plans from the game when they draw the gyms. that really what you wanna do with your artistic freedom? - i've noticed pearl and dia get to have all these little arcs about bonding with their pokémon, while platinum just keeps Getting Pokémon offscreen as an afterthought - did we really need someone named Doctor Footstep to be a major character? - holy shit, why is someone named Captain Eldritch not a major character?

Ziggy

Looks like the Patreon Stream is currently public

PurpleIsDebeste

captain eldritch is in the games, he part of some sidequest (i think its a darkrai mystery event or something? idk)

PurpleIsDebeste

so i was gonna wait until book club to give my thoughts but i ended up getting so full with thoughts that i yelled about it to a friend who isnt even reading pokespe so i think i need to get some stuff out of my system: So let me say i am not entirely against the idea of splitting the 3 main characters up for the lakes arc. i get wanting to raise the stakes in the lategame by separating your strong protags. plus theres 3 lakes, 3 legendaries, 3.... well 2 galactic admins that have been properly setup and also jupiter is there now and thats 3 (and 5 total but shhh we're only setting up charon for the platinum arc) (honestly jupiter should just be sird but thats a whole different rant). Plus it introduces some new dynamics i love like the whatever-stupid-name-candace-came-up-with trio and the bicycle guy being important so i'm theoretically down for splitting the protags up! (sidenote (one of many): for a while i thought they were leading up to a big reveal that the bike shop owner rick radshaw was a twist villain and i was LIVING. that didnt happen but it was a fun thought, i would have mcfuckin lost it!) the problem is that 65% of the arc is spent on like.... being detectives and investigation stuff? like thats all pearl does. but then when they meet the admins they all just go "HERE IS WHAT OUR PLAN IS MWAHAHAHA!!!" and then the rest of the arc is training and maneuvering to save the legendaries and... they all fail. so like. that was a waste of my time! And i get that in the video games you have to fail to save the legendaries so Galactic can make a red chain to summon Dialkia, and you need that to happen because legendaries sell. but like. you're a writer. rewrite a new way for their plans to go so that the heroes can have a satisfying accomplishment and it'll feel like their actions have consequences. i'll do it for you, i have rewrite that i'm gonna put at the bottom of this comment! This is honestly kind of emblematic of a bigger problem in pokespe's writing. cus like. remember when ruby and sapphire tried to stop archie and maxies plan? and they failed? and then we had to read 3 boring volumes of kyogre nonsense that sucked? and remember when they tried to stop the masked man and failed so much that he succeeded at all the immoral parts of his plan and they only stopped him at the end when they had no reason to anymore because him saving the lapras didnt hurt them at all? and remember in emerald when they did a bunch of investigation and battle tower climbing to try to stop guile from getting jirachi, and they failed, and we had to deal with a stupid natural disaster kyogre when a high-speed chase to try to catch jirachii before him would have been an infinitely more compelling sequence because the writer erroneously thought making the villain as strong as possible to raise the stakes to their max would make for more fun writing? DP (hate that acronym) has a leg up in that the legendary showdown at the end is actually fun, because its fucking short (and the time powers were scary, and it ends on some intrigue, and it actually killed the villain and cyrus' stupid leaking eyeliner design is magnificent etc etc), but the problem is that the writer wanted to have his cake and eat it too**. he wanted the fun lakes arc AND the dialkia arc and he ended up with an unfun lakes arc because of it. **i dont think that was actually his goal, i think he just wanted to copy the games as closely as possible, but that was a bad decision and he shouldn't have done it! EDIT: HAHA WHOOPS ALMOST FORGOT MY BIGGEST ISSUE WITH THE LAKES ARC! so like. the nets are shaped like the letter b. and they show the top part of the b, the rope part holding the whole net up, split fully in half. and i was happy because they commited to dia actually halting the villain's plans and making the arc matter. and then mars says "oh thank god he only cut a small bit of the net off" which. is worrying. but maybe shes just wrong cus the razor leaves are in her way. she wasn’t. they just. want you to forget that panel. they just do fucking historical revisionism?!?!? all to steal my happiness away from me and i HATE it. also, if he did cut a bit of the net, cant uxie escape the net once its in the airship? cus they showed that its being kept in a large room it could fly out into? oh but maybe its a self reparing net, fine, so uhhh if dia is literally like 10 feet away from uxie in the same room on this airship for at least a 30 minute flight why doesn't he free it there? hate it. hate hate hate it SO fucking much. so yeah. thats my take on the lakes arc. its real bad! but at least it transitioned nicely into a really fun HQ infiltration arc that arguably actually mattered, so the flow was only mostly ruined! and no, the fact that dia being on the airship let him infiltrate the base doesnt mean this arc mattered, there were millions of ways he could have ended up there and setting up a 1.5 volume long arc just for that is a bad one! i've decided to include my rewrite in the reply for comment-pacing reasons so uh. brb

PurpleIsDebeste

its funny seeing someone mad at cyrus' writing (you're 1000% right btw) because he's my least fav character in any pokemon game in the og. he's not as aggregious as other villains but hes so boring, hes such white bread. and i ADORE pokemon adventures cyrus, with his pointy ass design and scary shadows/bags around his eyes that you later find out is stupid eyeliner when he cries big stupid black tears, and he uses magnezone and FUCKIN PROBOPASS, a non-threatening pokemon no one cares about but its funny but like. also, yeah its a magnet pokemon, thats a cool pair of pokemon to give him, its a neat theme connected to his plan! hes such a comedy of errors its great. As for the mural scene... i think i have to disagree. i mean you're correct he didnt need cynthia's garchomp, that was stupid and i literally think he only did it to show off. but the mural? it had writing around it in "pokemon ancient language that only important npcs can read", it makes sense he would get info from that. and as for pearl being objectively in the right in that scene.... WHAT? what are you talking about? like first of all, even if pearl was right, dia's safety is his own business and pearl has no right to be bossing him around or physically grabbing him away, its a big problem in their dynamic to the point that i was actually getting mad at pearl and resolving it was very clever and important. and also, dia is right! its an incredibly kind and selfless thing to risk harm to stop this evil carnival man and it definitely makes sense that cyrus would need a photo of that info to remember it. i mean he didnt, the photo changed nothing, but dia had no way of knowing that and it was for sure the correct call to try to destroy the camera. the real thing i found dumb in that scene is how long they spent playing keepaway with magnets, like dia you dont need the photo for yourself, smash that thing against some rocks! (also at least platinum got her pokemon from characters she had relationships with, meanwhile pearl caught 3 pokemon he has no history with in a single chapter and used each one once. i mean i like him getting a floatzel to match paka, but someone getting a carnivine was right there!)

PurpleIsDebeste

so. rewrites. i'm absolutely fine with most of the plans failing, you only need to save 1 legendary for it to not feel like a waste of damn time. you can keep platinum and pearl's melodramatic arcs where they catch a regigas in the only well-foreshadowed twist since johto and pearl is comforted by wake for some reason even though earlier in the story platinum had a really close connection to him but i guess he's a peal associated character now, thats fine (can you tell i have thoughts about literally everything in this story and will never get to share even half of them?) Dia is the natural choice to make succeed since he basically does already and then they walk it back to maintain the status quo. theres a couple ways this could go. personally i would prefer "him and uxie fall 20000 feet into the lake and uxie saves him from drowning" but if you need a better excuse for him to go to galactic hq you can make him save uxie once he's on the ship. actually my favourite solution would be doing what they do to peach in the super mario bros 3 episode "7 continents for 7 koopas" where he escapes into the water and then galactic brings out a huge stupid vacuum/snorkel device from the airship to suck them back into the ship, but then dia hides with uxie and they go "aww damn we mustnt have gotten uxie, what a shame!" and Dia stays on the ship. and mars gets told off but hopefully isnt too broken up about it cus i really like her cheerful demeanor. oh also this is a small thing but give pearl a carnivine. but wait, doesn't this change team galactic's plan?? so in my ideal world we would do a full departure from the games where the red chain doesn't exist (btw why is it red?? not their colour schemes) and the lake spirits meeting just creates a lot of energy which cyrus is hoping to use to create a new universe. when they escape he just goes from plan F to plan G (of 2348337 plans) and summons dialga and palkia some different way. but we've already established that this writer is a hack who cant do anything not already present in the games (thats unfair he was better early on, but clearly the editors have him in a death grip) so lets try something a little closer to the games that also lets us keep the fun HQ arc so with only 2 lake spirits cyrus can still make the red chain but itll be slower and they wont have the strength for all 2 so after making 2 red chains azelf and mesprit will die (wow good job dia, this blood is on your hands idiot). the protag trio release the LA Lakers after the first one, so they save the spirits lives, but Charon copies the crystals on a molecular level to forge a second one. That way you still get to keep the lakes, hq and spear pillar arcs, but all of them actually matter. Saving the spirits lives means cyrus being able to make a second one without them feels less like the hq arc never mattered (which it already did cus the pokedex arc but yknow more stuff is always good) because even if they didnt stop him making the red chain they saved the lakers lives. and the lakes arc mattered because if dia hadnt saved uxie they would have been able to make the red chains too quickly and none of the 3 would be saved. Edit: this works better if creating 2 red chains would kill them even with all 3 lake guardians there so pretend I said that. also if dia has uxie the whole series then they dont need to add regigigas to his party in platinum hastily despite it absolutely being Lady's pokemon, because he'll already have 6! (i know you dont want her to have that in the battle frontier for balance reasons but you can just say they released it, its a hulking legendary mass that moves continents, its makes sense they'd want to leave it free. i havent finished platinum so maybe regigas will do something important but just say it came back to the trainers it likes, its not dia's pokemon at all and im sick of this stolen valor i feel like theres something else im forgetting but i dont remember it so uh. EDIT: Fuck I remembered it okay. So. It’s a small thing but the team galactic admins revealing their plans is bad because pearl spends so long investigating. In my rewrite, I’m fine with Mars and [jupiter but like she’s well written this time] revealing that and being very classic villains, since Dia and Plati need to know this stuff and they haven’t investigated (or just give them cell phones and have pearl tell them. Actually giving le trio phones and letting them talk would fix this arc so much, let’s do that). But it would be very funny and fix my problems if instead of Saturn telling Pearl his plan, he went “mwahaha I’m the smart egotistical one, you think I’ll tell you my plan? Too bad you’re wrong I’m not an idiot!” And then pearl went “I’ve Been Investigating This Whole Time I know your plan already!” And told saturns plan back to him. That would just. Fix a lot of problems I have with this arc. Okay that’s it edit over I’m sorry this is even longer now thats my rewrite! thanks for reading it, especially if you also read my other comment, these are both insanely long and frankly these are all-lowercase for stylistic and laziness reasons but its a nightmare to read and even i struggle rereading these. so i really appreciate you taking the time to read or even skim it! goodnight!

Benedict Ide

Fair enough re: Dia not knowing it didn't matter (and how fun Cyrus's evil pointy design is)- but I'm not buying that the mural had information he needed. He'd already invested a ton of money and effort into building a lake-evaporating bomb! Specifically just the one, because he knew that he only needed to detonate it in one lake to cause the legendary pokémon to have some kind of sympathetic reaction and all come out to get captured! They already had all the extremely specialized heavy machinery they needed to pull off their scheme, and were stealing windmills to charge it. None of the information he may or may not have acquired from that mural changed his plan in the least! It pretty transparently only exists to convey to the reader/player that the legendaries in question exist and that the main badguy is interested in them. But from the perspective of Cyrus himself, there's no reason whatsoever to be at this cave taking pictures of no new information in person. The main antagonist's motivation is an afterthought if they even think about it at all.

Defahn Jerry (edited)

Comment edits

2026-09-05 13:00 Isn't tomorrow the 22nd?
2024-06-21 20:36

Aloha

Yea, he meant to put the 22nd!!!! Days be hard

Bonnford

The funniest thing for me watching this is how you did not mention Charon AT ALL. Just goes to show how absolutely shitty this adaptation made him, seriously. Such a lame idea, oh here's the secret super mega boss behind the scenes uhhhh doesn't this make Cyrus so much more redeemable? And I just spent the whole time screaming "No!! Dude already was redeemable! You're actively HURTING his plot by implying the only reason we should give a shit is cos somebody else is worse!" And the weirdest fuckin thing is this happened TWICE! Another manga called Pokemon Diamond And Pearl Adventure (yes the names are so similar in the dub, yes I am annoyed forever). It had the exact same plot of Cyrus being more redeemable because Charon is the real bad guy. But somehow EVEN WORSE. Instead of just being a child murderer he's also an abuser who brainwashed Cyrus and The New Character into being child soldiers, and makes the grunts do suicide bombing. (So edge. Such mature.) The fact this baffles me so much is that absolutely none of this was in the games. What are the odds two separate authors both got the same dogshit idea? Charon in the games is an extremely minor character who only exists to joke about how he's the oldest member of the team yet sucks the most at everything. He never gets a single battle. He was defeated by a dude disguised as a rock, with a single karate chop. I actually kinda like the guy, he was my Big Favourite as a kid. He's like.. mildly funny, and his hair looks like a croissant, and the anime gave him the Eggman voice. He's decent enough and his only problem is not having any actual importance to the plot. So it's kinda funny this manga chose to make him the most important bitch that ever existed, that controls three entire legendaries, yet he comes off as even MORE of a loser than he was before. What an absolutely pointless plot! Oh also personal pet peeve, idk why they swapped his original personality into Saturn instead. Manga Charon doesn't even like money anymore?? Bro what is his motive then?? Why he even doing all this shit?? You may as well have just had a big piece of cardboard saying PLACEHOLDER VILLAIN So anyway in conclusion, wish they'd just kept him as a comic relief dude who gets like two chapters. You could easily have Giratina as the final villain instead!

Bonnford

Oh also Dia x Pearl x Platinum is the best team dynamic we've ever had in Pokespe. I loved how genuine their closeness felt, how they all have totally different dynamics with each other and nobody felt sidelined. And how much growth they had together!!! Even when the plot was having its brief bad moments I never stopped enjoying it cos these protagonists were so damn endearing! Whether as friends or as a poly ship I adore them forever and I'd love to see them return someday!

Bonnford

Great goddamn points, seriously every flaw here comes from this absurd need to stick close to the games, to the point of even redrawing its own damn plot twist panel (I'M SO SALTY ABOUT THAT TOO!!) And I just have no idea why they had to do it? So much about the series already departs from the games! Your changes here would be so much better holy shit

Bonnford

Cyrus's illogical back and forth is just cos He Does That In The Games. There's a constant clash between this new Cyrus that they wrote making actual decisions, and "aww shit we forgot to have Mural Smashing Scene uhhhh". In the games none of this stuff was intended as character development to begin with, it was just "we've gone three hours without Cyrus, time to make Cyrus do a random fuckin thing". And that's perfectly serviceable with a bunch of gameplay in between but when it's all happening rapid fire here it's just incomprehensible. And what a shame, cos when it got to his redemption at the end I felt it was actually better written than the games! Coulda cut all this shit and given more time to that.

Bonnford

Unfortunately there is no known fanslation that makes them funny either. There's like 25% properly translated jokes in each possible version and you gotta edit them together in your mind to pretend you're reading a comprehensible product.

Bonnford

Yep! In Japanese the majority of the titles are ONLY the name of the pokemon. And occasionally "the final battle" or "a dramatic decision" or whatever, for big plot stuff without any guys. Honestly I'm fine with the localizers changing it cos at least it's 5% less terrible than it already was.

Bonnford

Speaking of pokemon!