Thread: What was your favourite Opening episode to a new series and why?

I closed the other thread because it was accidentally somehow posted without a Poll.

Kanto League(Orange Islands included)
Johto League
Advanced Generation
Diamond and Pearl
Black and White

What was your favourite opening episode out of those?

I see you took my advice to list just the first eps of every gen, instead of every English Season titles... good, but now my post is gone too XD
Well, as I said in the deleted thread, to me, NOTHING will ever top the very first ep - it's what started it all, it had some good funny scenes, I liked how Pika acted at first and how Ash earned its trust...
Second place would go to the DP first ep - for the freshness of a whole ep without Ash till the very end... and of course I'd love that ep as a Dawn and Pip fan
Johto, AG and BW all had nice first eps too, but not as good as these two...

AG and OS are definitely my favorite openers to date.

How well did OS open with! I mean, seriously, that was a fantastic episode to open with and show you exactly what Pokemon was going to be about - a boy and his Pikachu and their trials and tribulations together. Just gorgeous and wonderful and lsdfjklsjkfs. The effect of that episode just lingers with you, like, forever.

AG also opened beautifully. The cliffhanger the previous episode had left it on and the actual belief that Pikachu was going to explode/die (admit it, you were afraid too when you first saw it). And I really, really enjoyed Haruka's introduction because her character was so... Interesting. And refreshing, even though she didn't get a flashy introduction story and her introduction was that of a background character. She felt like such a deconstruction from Kasumi and Takeshi and definitely Hikari/Iris/Dent even though Haruka preceded them. It was clear from the get-go that this girl would need lots of character development, and when you go back and watch this episode having known Haruka's story, this episode becomes much more meaningful to me. The bond between Satoshi and Pikachu comes back too. This episode had a real effect on me emotionally.

Man, reading this thread really does bring nostalgia!

I adored the opening episode to AG. They really aced Haruka's personality, we really got to see a lot of her (first impressions = biggg), and there were a lot of interesting responses to different things coming from her alone (three starters being unavailable, helping Satoshi, having her bike fried, etc) in said episode; when she got a water gun to the face stuck out most for me. :P Satoshi and her bonded very well off the bat and I really loved how lively even the professor was shown to be. Gotta admit too, like Aestivate said, that whole issue of Pikachu exploding made me worried as a kid that it actually would happen.

This episode felt like it used all of its twenty or so minutes well. Arguably the most touching scene in that opening was when Pikachu woke up after its rest towards the end, with Haruka looking at the two through the creak in the door. You can see Haruka, despite disliking Pokemon at first, started to actually like them just the tiniest bit after seeing Satoshi and Pikachu and meeting her new Achamo.

All in all, this episode did very well at mixing up comedy and tension.

DP1 was fairly interesting....but that was before we realized Dawn's personality was going to remain exactly the same as that for her entire run. In other words it was more impressive in 2006 than it is now in 2011.

You know, back when Dawn seemed like she was an exciting and fresh character and everyone liked Piplup? My how the fandom opinion changed.

Dp mainly because it felt fresh and the way it introduced the characters over a few episodes was very well done in my opinion.

I don't think for me it's possible to look at DP as one opening episode. It's just the way it was done in how they linked the first few episodes together. I have trouble splitting the first few episode as a result and see them more as parts.

Though I loved the first DP episode because it was different.

Little did I know back then that the show was going to visit alot of concepts I would eventually enjoy. However the overall feel indicated a very different approach and was probably the big reason I was intrigued to continue watching. I love the series overall due to the emotinal trials the show focused on in later episodes but I would never have gained an interest in this different approach if it weren't for those few episodes.

I think season 1 kanto first episode was good aswell though. Nice start to the series.

The OS episode. I had no idea what Pokemon was, so it was all very new to me. I was just as naive as Ash in that respect.

And goddamn, Ash protecting Pikachu from those Spearow.

OS: Whole PikachuXSatoshi dynamics and cliffhanger scene at the end.
DP: Freshness and originality that they did attempt with a heroine-focused episode.

DP for the fresh start with Dawn.