Best pokespe manga

I personally think it’s emerald and DPP, emerald has a great plot and the protagonist has a great character development, DPP is technically the same but they just start hanging out like normal kids until they hear about team galactic and boom face literally the god of time and space and giratina
 

bdt2002

Pokémon Ranger: Guardian Signs superfan
is a Pre-Contributor
I haven't followed the manga as much as I have the games and the anime to a lesser extent, but from what I have heard, the general consensus is that the Adventures series peaked in quality during the first three generations and noticeably fell off after the fact. Moreso than the games they're based on, I do think these older generations of "PokéSpe" have more of a reason to come back to and share with newer fans, but maybe that's just my preference for good remakes such as HGSS and ORAS over their originals speaking.

I do wish some of the canon spin-offs would have gotten an Adventures adaptation, though. Out of the spin-off games we know to be at least connected to the core series games (the Colloseum series, Ranger series, and Legends if you consider that a series on its own), only the original Ranger game and Shadows of Almia have ever been mentioned in the Adventures canon at all, and even those were extremely short in length from what I know. The other games either have other manga adaptations that aren't related to this thread or don't have manga adaptations at all.
 
I haven't been keeping up since BW2, but the Yellow/GSC chapters are actually very climatic Kanto and Johto stories which is something their games kind of lack. They also have fantastic and unconventional antagonists in the form of the E4 and the Masked Man. I always felt like Emerald's ending was trying to replicate the same feeling but not really managing to.

My personal favourite is Yellow because of the protagonist alone, but I can see the argument for GSC because it just gives so much closure.
 
I have started reading the manga about a year ago (with small pauses between arcs)

I really liked the first two arcs, felt very climatic like DrrT said. Yellow was a very good addition for a manga original character, and GSC tying things up is just great, even though I somewhat dislike what happens in terms of villains at the end of GSC.

I also really liked the Hoenn stuff, although the ending is...questionable.
Emerald/Battle Zone was somewhat iffy at first but became good at the end, but it is still a bit weird.

I am currently reading DPP (still at the beginning) and not feeling it that much, but things could still change (it's still good)

In general I am very happy to have read it, while there are things I dislike these are still mostly great.
Teenage me would have loved all of it probably
 
emerald on top. best arc best character. rgby is also really fun and charming imo. ruby/sapphire is really good and really bad at the same time, gsc is fine but gold makes it annoying. its been too long since i read bw and dppt to judge them. xy is fun but too over the top imo, frlg and hgss are kinda bad, su/mo swsh and oras are all dogshit. sv is having a good start rn, hopefully it doesnt get worse lmao
 
It has been a while since I last read the completed chapters, so this will be highly based on my memories from when I last read them. I also tend to compare the manga to the story in the games, which influences my choices and opinions a fair bit.

My three favorites are the following:

G/S/C: The Johto story done right. The overall story is really interesting and engaging to follow (which can’t be said for the story in the Johto games). All three main characters are great, they are well written and each of them have a separate goal. I am especially fond of Silver, the manga does him so much justice after the games botched his whole character arc and development so hard. Team Rocket is an actual threat here, the Mask of Ice is a fantastic antagonist. The Gym Leaders as well as all the other major and minor characters are all great and memorable for the right reasons. The way the legendaries were implemented into the story was great too, with Suicune having a mini-arc of its own. The pacing is great as things happen fairly quickly, but never too fast. In the end, this was the Johto story I always dreamed of as a kid but that the games never gave me, and it is a good example of why I think Johto is at its best outside of the games.

R/S: The Hoenn story, but better than in the original Hoenn games. Another chapter with great pacing, an interesting story and memorable characters. I like how the relationship between Ruby and Sapphire develops during the story, and I am a big fan of the story arcs for some of the Pokémon (my top favorite is Feefee). Team Magma and Aqua were both well handled, the same goes for the legendaries, the Gym Leaders and the other important characters. Just a great chapter on the whole.

B/W: While the others are basically the game story but better, this is mostly just the game story retold in manga form. The B/W story was great as it is, there was no need to change much. This was very well done, both the story, the characters, the pacing and everything else. It is also memorable because this was the first chapter of the manga that I read, I usually like to start from the beginning when I get into something new, but I made an exception here since I was pretty tired of Kanto/Gen 1 at the time (this was in 2016) while I love Unova/Gen 5.

As for the others, I think several of them are good. FR/LG, Emerald, Platinum and X/Y are really great, they are my runner-ups. R/B was a nice start for the series, but a bit unstructured and incohesive. I think D/P had a solid story, but the pacing was very off. Yellow is one of my least favorites since I think Yellow and Lance as characters clash pretty hard in a bad way.

As for HG/SS, B2/W2, OR/AS, S/M/US/UM and S/S, I have only read through them once each, so I can’t really form an opinion on them. I will have to re-read them in the future to see how I feel about them. There’s also the ScaVio chapter, but it is still ongoing so I can’t speak for it yet (it has been pretty good so far, though). I have been meaning to read up on it now that there is an English fan-translation (don’t think I’m allowed to link, but it is on Mangadex), guess I should get it done soon...
 

Karxrida

Death to the Undying Savage
is a Community Contributor Alumnus
Haven't read the manga in years and dropped off before getting to Gen 5 (also skipped around I think?), but I remember liking the Sinnoh arc the most. The camaraderie of the main trio really strengthens the whole thing.

I actually really dislike Mask of Ice as an antagonist. He feels too invincible at points (and in contrived ways) and his motivation for being evil is kind of garbage. Combine that with the writing's attempt to make him sympathetic after showing all the awful things he did ruins him for me and taints the entire GSC arc.
 

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