Summary
- Held items in Pokémon battles add complexity and unpredictability, making battles more interesting for viewers.
- The inclusion of items offers customization and creates new problems for protagonists to deal with, beyond typing or move effectiveness.
- Held items have appeared in various Pokémon manga, so there is no reason why they can't be included in the anime battles as well, offering new potential and excitement for fans.
Battles in the Pokémon anime often work on their own kind of logic, in order to make fights more interesting to viewers, but there's at least one mechanic from the games which the anime has traditionally ignored that could add a whole new dimension to Pokémon Battles: held items.
In the games, held items are items of various types (berries, armor, tools, etc.) that a Pokémon can hold when entering battle, which can have different effects. A Pokémon holding a berry, for example, will eat the berry when it needs to achieve the effect. Other items will affect a Pokémon's stats, force flying Pokémon to come into contact with the ground, enhance attacks, or even trigger Pokémon evolution. Held items have been seen in the anime, but usually only berries, or those items involved in Pokémon evolution, are shown. The only item really shown to be used commonly in battle in the anime, however, are Mega Stones.
Pokémon Battles Are More Complex With Items
Items add an element of unpredictability which can make battles more interesting. A Pokémon's held item usually isn't obvious (at least without an ability like Frisk), and as a result can come as a surprise when the Pokémon actually makes use of it. Certain items, like the damage-inducing Rocky Helmet, can force a player to change their strategy on the fly. It adds another layer of complexity to battling, something which players of the games love. Held items have also been a mainstay of the game series ever since the second generation of Pokémon games, but even after all this time, only rare factor into the anime.
The inclusion of items in the anime offers a few big benefits. One is that added complexity, which creates new problems for a protagonist to have to deal with other than typing or move effectiveness. Another is that it offers a degree of customization; two Pokémon battling it out with different items can be a radically different sort of battle than it would be without. An electric type like Pikachu using an Air Balloon, for example, loses its only weakness to Ground-type attacks. How would Ash, or even Liko or Roy, go about countering that? While it may risk making the battles too difficult for children to follow, it also offers a lot of new potential to make battles exciting.
Held items have made appearances in the various Pokémon manga before, so there's no real reason why they can't factor into anime battles as well. The benefits of their inclusion are many, while there doesn't really seem to be any downside, making it very perplexing as to how items haven't been more of a factor in the series to date. Hopefully, as Pokémon Horizons continues to progress, held items make a more significant impact than they did in the anime under Ash, and fans can finally get battles as complex as those enjoyed by fans of the games.
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