as much as i would say "wth with this ending", since the gmaes had direct sequel, this is much better than what FRLG did. there, there was no reason to finish it with cliffhanger in sake to make emerald an arc of it's own, but black2white2 at least have a story that i hope would be adapted well in sake of continuing the story.
on the other hand i kinda disappointed from the fact that this arc had to end like this, it definitely not the end i expecting for, and as much as i think it is better than FRLG ending, i do not think this was good ending.
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so now that this arc ended, i really wanted to say this - this arc was quite amazing, it really feels that the pokemon manga took quite a long time from RS to return to what it used to be. FRLG, as much as i love it's final battle, was a mess. Emerald was a mess of original story in sake of reunion character. DPe was a tame down everything epic that was before, Pl was a mess of legendaris. HGSS tried the same thing emerald did, only in more FRLG way, which was a success in a way. 20 volumes of content that, as much as interesting they were, was clearly a downhill.
and then came BW, which did something that even the earlier arcs didn't - it was special as much it wasn't special. to explain this, there's need to understand that, most of the arc stories after RGB, though based on the progression of the game, mostly are original story. yeah, they are based on the events and the ideas of the game, but most of them took a lot of creativity in order to make a story the games never attempted to make. BW on the other hand, adapted the exact same story the game attempted to make, which ended up being similar a lot to the RGB arc. this comparison cannot be understated, both arcs does change stuff to make it more interesting, and added battles that weren't in the game (zapdos-moltres-articuno combination in RGB, the weather unova trio in BW), there's too much similarities between both adaptions to ignore.
the thing that BW does different though, is presenting white. at first white is feeling as out of context in term of pokemom. show business agent? how the hell we got with that? but that's actually what made the whole scenario interesting. it's not just black being more "detective" like trainer, but his chemistry with white is what makes them maybe the complex couple in the series. i still think that ruby and sapphire are somewhat better, but that's because they are fitting to each other. black and white are unique, because they are so different from each other, that despite being different, they are still good couple.
and that's maybe where i think the arc took a little too much step down. white became serious about being pokemon trainer, that made them left apart. alright, okay, but in the end they got back together, right? and yet, its feels as the writer wanted to move on, rather than play the strengths of their story, which what made them so good when traveling together. and if that's not all, despite white took a little detour of her own development, she didn't showed anything serious as a battling pokemon trainer.
it's also coming down to the fact that although N was perfectly adapted to the manga, he himself never felt as a huge threat, as i felt pryce or archie, but that may be because the scale of N plan / battle wasn't as much as theirs (better than lance though. cyrus in DP is pale compare to lance). and gehstis never felt as threat, period. but that may be because he played the main villain of the story in about a chapter.
all this not making this arc less good than i think it is. BW surely returns to the roots of RGB/GSC/RS, but as much i would like to compare BW to them, the end felt shorter than theirs. it's not complain though, i actually think it's for the best, more than what we had would be too much dragging. as the most, i still think that RS has more stake at the end of it, and RGB laid the roots for anything that comes after it, so as much i love this arc, i think it's fair to put it this way in my ranking:
RGB = RS > GSC = BW > Y = HGSS > FRLG > DPePl > E |