Well, it's that time of month again. The time when I, Cure Ariel, chart graph and list the many intricacies Traveling of the true never ending story that is Pokemon. Just in Summer 2006 in Japan, the Pokemon anime has reached it's 9th Movie. You know what came and went in the last 8 movies? That's right, the highly anticipated and probably too-hyped-for-it's-own-good "Pokemon Ranger & The Temple of The Sea" movie ,. Man. Was. It...Really not that good! In fact, I dare say it was quite possibly the pokemon movie of the franchise to date.

Yes, even worse than the Genesect movie where Red Genesect and New Mewtwo won't stop fighting until the end of the movie. At least it had characters and motives I actually cared about.

Even worse than the Zoroark movie where Zorua needs to find his mom, Zoroark while Ash and his friends deal with the most obnoxious, unintimidating, waste of time of a villain named Kodai when they could easily just kick Ash and his friends ass and walk away at any time. At least it was fun.

Heck, even most non-canon arcs had better story structure, characters, and action than the "Pokemon Ranger & The Temple of The Sea" movie.

As you can probably guess, this has lingered on me for some time now, so for my sake and the sake of this series, I am going to break down this arc and see what exactly went wrong here, and pinpoint what elements are really to blame. This is Cure Ariel's:

My Top 5 reasons why "Pokemon Ranger & The Temple of The Sea" flopped

5. The Animation:

Okay, so here's one that doesn't come at any fault of the original author. In fact, one of the saving graces of the "Pokemon Ranger & The Temple of The Sea movie in the manga form was that Makoto Mizobuchi. artwork and compositions were (as usual) top quality and incredibly detailed. He truly made Fishman Island look like a wonderfully rich and vibrant place that I wanted to see explored. Unfortunately, much of his rich detail did not translate to the anime at all. Most of the environment shots of "Pokemon Ranger & The Temple of The Sea" seem very empty. There was hardly any variation in the tone and shading, and most of the colors look, for lack of a better word "watered down." Sorry, the "well, they are under water so maybe that was the point," excuse is not going to fly.

While I will be getting into the fights a bit later in my list, it is worth noting now that much of the action was kinda let down in the anime as well. A perfect example is this one scene when...

Judy and Kyle are absent in the manga,

During May's dream sequence, it is implied that May is naked while in the water while there is obviously no question in the film that she is wearing clothes,

And After his submarine is destroyed, The Phantom threatens to take May hostage and wields a pillar as a weapon, instead of failing to hold the pillar up and being crushed.

I understand that The first chapter appeared in a mini-volume that was bundled with the May 2006 issue of CoroCoro. This volume, titled ポケモンレンジャーと蒼海の王子マナフィ最強コミックBOOK Pokémon Ranger and the Prince of the Sea: Manaphy Strongest Comic Book, also included supplemental information about the movie of the same name (which was upcoming at the time) and the newly-released Pokémon Ranger video game. The full story was later published in a collected volume.

Like I said before, in this particular element, Makoto is not to blame at all. As for the rest of these reasons on the list well...

4. Pacing:

The "Pokemon Ranger & The Temple of The Sea" movie only lasted for 105 minutes, making it The longest Pokemon movie made to date. I also heard that They're some American kid fans out there who actually watched this movie , and the last 20 minutes of them watching a movie are like, "Is the movie done yet?".

And When I saw "Gabu, Dabu, and Sabu", Ship's Shipmates,My opinions on them are like "Seriously, what was the point of introducing you guys?".

The three of them were Ship's shipmates on his ship, the Blue Lagoon. When Ship wanted to go on an expedition to Samiya, they wanted to go along, but Ship only took along his family, Jackie, and Manaphy. Whenever they returned, however, the shipmates were waiting for the Blue Lagoon to return when it arrived back in town.

I bet The Rest of The Pokemon movies have less than 105 minutes runtime than this movie,

Of course most of this could be forgiven so long is the action is at least good, right?

Yeah about that...

3. Fights:

The fights between Captain Phantom and Jackie are boring, Ash and his friends do nothing but act like cowards protecting Manaphy (especially May, who acts like an unfunny and uncute ripoff of Misty in this movie.) throughout the movie.

Apparently, you can't kill my boredom either.

like I said, After his submarine is destroyed, The Phantom threatens to take May hostage and wields a pillar as a weapon, instead of failing to hold the pillar up and being crushed.

Also, May in the pillar acts so weak and useless.

Still, none of this even matters if we don't even know why we're fighting these guys in the first place.

2. Villain's Plan/Motive:

Captain Phantom is all about all he wants was Manaphy and The Sea Crown from Samiya in order to become "King of the Sea", but then Ash became the "Actual King Of The Sea" after becoming the glowy thingy.

He's also an unfunny ripoff to Jack Sparrow from "Pirates of The Carribean" movie series from Disney.

Just think of the potential we could have had with this arc.

And yet, the lack of an intimidating villain with a genuinely threatening plan is not even the worst of it. Oh no. That honor belongs to none other than..

1. "The Prince of The Sea" (AKA) Manaphy:

Where do we even begin? Rounding out the list of reasons why Fishman Island is the worst arc of the series to date is Manaphy, AKA The Prince of the Sea, and by far the absolute worst character Ken Sugimori has ever created. She is credited as the cutest legendary pokemon in the entire world. No, really. It's even said that itmakes Jirachi look cute in comparison.

Yes, because when I think of the the cutest legendary pokemon in the world, the first thing that comes to mind is some easily frightened, fragile, Seafaring Pokemon who spends 90% of her screen-time throwing tantrums over May's absence. Yeah, that's certainly attractive.

What else has Manaphy got going for it? Well, it spent almost the entire movie being imprinted to May (Which is much worse than Misty and Togepi..).

Despite possessing an ability called "Heart Swap" that makes it probably one of the most powerful and unique Legendary Pokemonin the series, it has spent no time at all trying to tame/control this ability of Manaphy and is constantly having to be rescued and protected during almost the entire movie, even after the main battle is over. Oh, and did I mention? it is single handely responsible for letting Phantom get away with his hostile takeover of Samiya.

I bet Manaphy is the only Legendary pokemon who can Breed into a Phione, and switch perspectives of Pokemon and humans, and is fully aware of Captain Phantom, Ash, and May, plus Samiya.

For almost the entire movie, Manaphy failed, miserably, at this one task, and yet is rewarded for her failures.

the cutest legendary pokemon in the entire world, my ass.

Thank you all for sticking through such a long winded rant. Next time, I promise tone it down a bit. Tell you who the real cutest legendary pokemon in the world are. Until then, I'm Cure Ariel, and they just made the list.

The End.