Customer Reviews

Pokémon Adventures, Vol. 8

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This volume centers on Pokemon Gold and Silver. It is particularly appropriate given you can get the Pokemon SoulSilver Version and Pokemon HeartGold Version Nintendo DS games.

My son is addicted to this series which is quite plentiful in Japanese. We are really happy they are finally translating these for mass release. The stories are interesting and keep my son reading continuously. It's a great way to introduce a reluctant reader to reading - especially if they like to videogame as well and have played the Pokemon games.

This volume begins the Gold and Silver Arc of the Pokemon Adventures manga. In this volume, the only characters from the first seven volumes to make an appearance are Professor Oak and Bill. Instead, the focus is on two new characters: Gold and Silver. Gold is a boy who acts rashly and has a high opinion of his talents. Silver is a boy who appears to be a thief, and ends up becoming Gold's rival. Gold ends up in the middle of a theft taking place at Professor Elm's lab, and Gold takes one of Elm's Pokemon to help track down a Pokemon that was stolen from the lab. Several new Pokemon are also introduced in this volume, including Cyndaquil, Aipom, Teddiursa, Ursaring, Totodile, Unown, and Sunkern. Team Rocket also makes another appearance in this story arc.

The art style is the same was what appeared in the previous seven volumes of Pokemon Adventures. The new hero, Gold, also looks an awful lot like Red from the previous manga volumes; my older daughter tells me that these similarities in design come from the videogames. I found these design similarities between these two characters to be disconcerting when I was reading this volume, because I had to keep reminding myself that I was seeing Gold on the page and not Red. When it comes to the Pokemon battles in the volume, there weren't many "busy" panels; instead, Mato chose to utilize the Japanese "sound effects" characters to convey the action in the battles.

When it comes to the new elements in this volume, one thing that stood out rather quickly is that the names of all of Gold's Pokemon end with "bo": Aibo the Aipom, Exbo the Cyndaquil, Sunbo the Sunkern, and Polibo the Poliwag. Personally, I found this naming gimmick to be so cutesy as to be annoying; in fact, I found this to be a little more annoying than the cutesy gimmick of naming the main characters after colors. I found myself wishing that Gold has a little more originality when it came to naming his Pokemon. I hope the character development gets better in future volumes of this arc, because right now, I'm not quite as interested in this arc as I was in the earlier volumes of Pokemon Adventures. However, I would still recommend this volume of Pokemon Adventures if you have read and appreciated the previous seven volumes in the series.

Pokemon Adventures is rated "A," which means it is suitable for readers of all ages.

I wrote this review after reading a copy of this manga volume that my son checked out through the King County Library System.

Personally, I am ADDICTED to the pokemon Adventures series. Silver, Blue and Yellow are probably my all-time favorite characters. Although, I am not very impressed with the new protagonist, Gold. He just seems to be one of those annoying, self-absorbed Trainers that always seem to get on my nerves at some point in the story. The story line also doesn't seem to be as strong as it was in the last installment. Also, I am a bit disappointed with the more cartoony way the characters are drawn, but maybe that is just because I am more used to reading Shigekatsu Ihara's Pokemon Diamond and Pearl Adventure!, where the characters are drawn more realistically. But these reasons shouldn't stop anyone from reading this particular arc. Gold's rival, Silver, is a very interesting character. He's a character that you want to learn more about, despite the fact that he is the antagonist in the story. He appears only a few times in Volume 8, but his lack of appearance keeps you wondering, and therefore, reading on to find out about him. He mostly begins to have some development in the 9th volume. Over all, I am not as impressed with this arc than I was with the last one, but I certainly have hopes for it later on. Once they begin to introduce some of the first characters, I believe that the story will definitely pick up from there.