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Thursday, July 11, 2013

Smash 4 Characters' TV Shows Tier List

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - The entire point is that I won't keep this updated.

So as you all may have seen (or maybe no one did, judging by the view count) in KoopaTV's special July 4th article, I've watched a lot of Super Mario Brothers Super Show episodes, since all of those screenshots were made by yours truly. I've actually watched all of the shows that the currently confirmed Super Smash Bros. 4 characters have had. So why not rank them? Smash 4 provides a unique opportunity because I haven't watched all of the F-Zero anime episodes (because most of them are Japanese only) or any of the many Sonic shows. Smash 4 fits what I've watched PERFECTLY.

Only actual shows that were on TV count. ...And not any "animation specials", so sorry Mega Man: Upon a Star and the Kid Icarus: Uprising shorts. No films either (that's to the Animal Crossing movie). ...And Mega Man is only classic Mega Man, so none of those non-classic-based shows, either. There are still some shows I've missed but I hope no one cares about (King Koopa's Kool Kartoons — you can't find any episodes on the Internet!)

So I'll rate them as follows:

  1. Pokémon Diamond and Pearl (Pikachu)
  2. Kirby: Right Back At Ya! (Kirby)
  3. Pokémon Advanced Generation (Pikachu)
  4. Mega Man (Mega Man)
  5. Super Mario Brothers Super Show (Mario, Bowser)
  6. Pokémon Best Wishes (Pikachu)
  7. Super Mario World (Mario, Bowser)
  8. Pokémon Original series (Pikachu)
  9. The Legend of Zelda (Link)
  10. The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 (Mario, Bowser)
  11. Donkey Kong Country (Donkey Kong)
  12. Captain N: The Game Master (Pit, Mega Man)
Not represented: Fox McCloud, Samus Aran, Wii Fit Trainer, Villager.

So some of you might find my choices objectionable. Let's break it down, briefly. (I want the opportunity to discuss any of the above in-depth in their own articles!)

It better be brief, or Pharaoh Man might punch me.

The Pokémon shows are rated that way based on the fact that the entirety of Johto is heavily weighing down the Kanto half of the original series. Johto was just non-stop fillers, and by the time Ash got to the end at the Johto League, he didn't evolve any of his Johto team. At all. Except for Bayleef. They all had pretty much no development over the course of the show. And what enabled the writers to get away with that?

Charizard and Snorlax. I resent them both. Mostly Charizard.

Meanwhile, in Sinnoh and Hoenn Ash relied on his own Pokémon from that region. And he actually developed them. He TRAINED them. His Sinnoh team is probably his strongest team he's had so far.

There is a relatively large preference gap between Kirby: Right Back At Ya! and the Hoenn season, though. The largest in the list. The big difference between Sinnoh and Hoenn is that Sinnoh had almost no fillers, and handled rivals well. Hoenn had no rivals. Johto didn't, either.

Well, Hoenn did have rivals. Just not for Ash.

Meanwhile, Best Wishes suffers from too many rivals. And filler tournaments. And padding. And Team Rocket sucking and losing all personality.

I don't want to hear the "BUT THEY'RE COMPETENT THAT SEASON". By competent, you mean "needlessly convoluted". In other seasons, Team Rocket executed big things simply and wonderfully. They pretty much had back-to-back episodes early on in Sinnoh where, in the episode Starly evolved, they blocked off this entire cannon with a giant net to capture a ton of Flying Pokémon. Then in Oreburgh, they stole the entire fossil resurrecting machine. Pretty competent compared to using the Underground Railroads in Nimbasa City to capture a ton of Pokémon from the Pokémon Center and leaving them unguarded in their own rail cart.

Still better than Johto.

So the reason Super Mario Bros. 3 has their show ranked so low? Waaay too much "Real World" crap. The "Real World" was in half the damn episodes! They established in the Super Show that the connection between the world those plumbers found themselves in and the "Real World" was severed already. When did warp pipes from Koopa Kastle to Brooklyn spawn? Stupid, especially because of just how much more material they had to work with thanks to Super Mario Bros. 3 compared to just Super Mario Bros. + Super Mario Bros. 2. Super Mario World benefits retroactively from Memetic Mutation, which is good for it since, as you might be able to tell from its paltry 13 episodes, it didn't have that much new material to work with.

Really, the key for a good TV show based on a videogame franchise is how much more connected and enthused you feel about that franchise's characters. The Pokémon, Kirby, and Mega Man shows did this rather well. A lot of Pokémon I like are because of their appearances in the anime. Kirby: Right Back At Ya! made Kirby look even MORE adorable. Mega Man took very good advantage of its Robot Master Of The Day format and focused on making that robot to be a badass, most notably Pharaoh Man. Meanwhile, incompetent goons Guts Man and Cut Man were made to be quite endearing. The only thing it was missing was music inspired by the games, which was a massively missed opportunity. Kirby: Right Back At Ya! cheated and got to have its music actually later become the soundtrack of a game, being Kirby Air Ride. Well done.

"PUYO!"

King Dad was also out to be both genre-savvy and competent, since he basically outwitted and outsmarted the mustachioed meatball and his pals every single episode. This was only in the Super Show, because after that he was portrayed quite passively. (Don't blame me for that!)

I'd rather have Koopa Troopa in a fedora than the Koopalings. ...Unless we could combine the two concepts...

Donkey Kong Country and Captain N: The Game Master were just weird and I don't want to go into them. As for The Legend of Zelda?

Well excuuuuuuuuse me, princess!


Nearly all of Ludwig's drawings on Miiverse feature Kirby (because he's easy to draw), and a speech bubble with Kirby exclaiming "PUYO!" This characterization came right from the anime! In fact, the Kirby anime is probably why Ludwig calls himself a Kirby fan at all! So check out the Kirby Super Star and Kirby's Adventure communities on Miiverse to see what Ludwig is up to. Again, Ludwig took all of the screenshots in this article himself.

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