The Ash's Coma Theory Fucking Sucks and Here's Why
so. this FUCKING theory. good god it’s so bad. i lived in blissful ignorance of it’s true horrors for a while, until a youtuber i watch uploaded a video of them reading it and mocking the shit out of it. i have not lived in peace since. this goddamn theory is so bad and i may not be the first person to talk shit about it but good god i’m gonna go all the fuckin way.
now, a disclaimer: i have not been in a coma, i do not know precisely how these things work, but some of the things here you really don’t need that kind of knowledge to know it’s bullshit. so, with that out of the way, let’s begin on the magical little journey that is this theory, point by point. this is gonna be a long one so buckle up.
so. right off the bat there is an issue. the author brings up how the first episode is pretty different from the rest of the series. while i haven’t seen the first episode or most of OS in general, it seems first episodes are just Like That. for example, here’s a post on differences in kirby right back at ya’s first episode.
after this, the theory states that medication caused team rocket to become “less menacing”. the thing is that this only applies to the trio of jessie, james, and meowth. team rocket as an organization is MUCH more competent in the anime than in the games, even before gen 5, which i believe this story was written before.
now, something that’s REALLY important in talking about this theory is that the author seems to know less about comas than even i do. to put it simply, comas aren’t these fucking. big journeys where you have to overcome your insecurities n shit and grow as a person. infact i think that’s the premise of infinity train actually.
the next few paragraphs aren’t really noteworthy, and then we get to the reason i put a cw for sexualization of minors. the author just straight up starts talking about how brock “represents ash’s sexual frustrations” and like. just fucking no. ash is 10 there is no excuse for this, this is just fucking disgusting. this comes up again in a later paragraph where the author says that charmander represents ash’s sex drive. once again, FUCKING YIKES. this is an issue i have not seen brought up anywhere and like. good fucking god.
once again, some more paragraphs go by without anything too noteworthy, and then author makes a MASSIVE misjudgement of the rocket trio’s dynamic, implying that jessie is just tricking james into doing the evil stuff or whatever the fuck they’re on about. honestly i’m kinda neutral about the trio so i don’t have too much to say on this, but for those who ARE fans of them, go ahead and dunk on this part of the theory yourself. also the author calls team rocket a corporation which is not true, but that’s the least of our problems here.
later, the author talks about mentions and such of real world animals and how they stop coming into play later in the series. this is a similar situation to my first point. in gen 1, it wasn’t really figured out if it took place in our world or it’s own universe, hence mentions of south america and such. later on, they decided it was it’s own universe, so these mentions stopped to the point of lt surge no longer being referred to as american in let’s go.
the last parts of the story don’t really have anything big to go over, other than what i presume is the author’s proposal for an edgy pokemon reboot.
EDIT: a friend of mine has brought up that when you're in a coma, you don't get regular dreams, the only things you'd get are night terrors n shit. so if ash was in a coma the series would actually be a lot darker, the complete opposite of what the author is trying to say.
finally, some minor things that aren’t really big enough to get their own paragraph:
- the author says that ash doesn’t travel by bike because he has a fear of them after the incident. in reality, he probably doesn’t travel by bike because it’s fucking burnt to a crisp.
- the author states that the coma theory “explains the worldwide socialism, as he thought up a safe system of government that would run smoothly and keep the world going, allowing his adventures to work like they do”. this implies that ash invented socialism which i just think is really funny.
- one piece of evidence given for brock being ash’s sexuality is that he keeps coming back. this is really funny if this story was infact written before gen 5 as i believe it was, even if brock did make some appearances after he left.
- the author refers to dawn as a “super female” which is one of the two funniest moments in this entire goddamn story in my opinion.
- the other funniest moment is “mewtwo is a new form of treatment” which is just really funny out of context
- the author mentions gym leaders representing primary parts of ash’s personality, and then never explains this.
- the elite four are mentioned despite the league in the anime being in the form of a tournament rather than battling the elite four and champion.
so yeah. this theory fucking sucks and my thoughts on it are kind of a mix of laughing at how bad it is and being fucking disgusted by a certain couple of points. here’s the link if you wanna give it a read.