Favorite Pokémon, Best Generation?

Ah Pokémon, the multimedia franchise that took over the world in the late 90s and is still going strong to this very day. Sure the video games may have dropped in quality in recent years, or rather, up until recently with games like Legends Z-A and Pokopia showing that they can still pull people in, but the franchise is still very much going strong. with this being the 30th anniversary for the franchise, its painfully clear that Pokémon isn't going anywhere anytime soon. After all, not counting the games, the TCG is still a huge deal (for better and for worse), and the anime, while no longer focusing on Ash Ketcham as the long running protagonist, its still going in some pretty unique directions. So with all of that said, I figured I'd celebrate the 30th anniversary by talking about some of my favorite Pokémon, as well as what I personally consider to be the best generation of the games and why.

So I wanted about start with my favorite Pokémon since my reasons for why they're my favorite aren't deep in the slightest, and therefore I'd kind of struggle to talk about them outside of the basic reasons. That being said, they are Braxien, the entire Sprigatito evolution line, Sylveon, Zeroroa, Lucario, and Ninetales. now in terms of why these are my favorite, in the case of Braxien and Ninetales, is pretty similar reasons; they're both fox-themed fire types and foxes happen to by my favorite animals, with fire being my favorite element. For the Sprigatito line, its because they're cats, which also happens to be my second favorite animal, and I really like the magician theming it has. in the case of Zeroroa, Lucario, and Sylveon, it honestly doesn't go any deeper than them just having some of my favorite designs for a Pokémon in the franchise.

Now with that out of the way, I wanna talk about what I personally think is the best generation, and why. So this is of course is very subjective, especially everyone has a different opinion on what the best gen is. Though for me, I honestly think that Gen 5, also known as Black and White, is the best generation. Serving as somewhat of a soft reboot for the series, generation 5 was the most ambitious the mainline games had gotten with its storytelling, with its actually being a bit darker in tone. Yes, Pokémon has always had dark undertones ever since the beginning, but gen 5 was the first time, in the mainline series, that they actually leaned into it, giving it a slightly more mature tone than we were used to at the time. Pokémon wouldn't really lean this hard into darker, more mature storytelling again until the release of Legends Arceus, where they arguably leaned even harder into it, talking about the possibility of humans being killed by wild Pokémon. 

This generation also made the interesting choice to only use brand new Pokémon, at least for Black and White part one. Which at the time was a pretty controversial choice, but nowadays is looked back on as kind of a bold choice to make. There was a lot of "firsts" and "lasts" that were a part of this generation that definitely make this gen stand out from the others, as this not only was this the first gen to limit the Pokedex, but this was also the last sprite based game before the franchise started its transition to 3D.

Anyway that's pretty much all I've got on this topic. Given the recent success of Pokopia, as well as the current excitement behind the upcoming gen 10, I'm pretty excited to see where this franchise goes next. Thanks for reading and happy 30th anniversary, Pokémon!