The Retelling of Pokémon Colosseum:

"My retake on the game Pokemon Colosseum, with all things 'explained' and in the form of a comedy. Why DID Wes blow up Team Snagem's base? How would people really react if you stole their Pokemon? What's with Miror B's hair anyway? Read to find out!"

Genre: Fanfiction, comedy

*Note: This story can be read on fanfiction.net.

(SGmijumaru)

This is a weird one for me. Having to read a fanfiction like this – and write an honest review about it – is one of the weirdest and somehow challenging things I've ever had to do. I never thought it would be so difficult to write down a few opinions on something Pokémon related, but here I am, scratching my head at how to even start.

Why is it so difficult? Well, as a massive Pokémon fan who has made it his mission to follow the franchise in every form possible, I'm one of the somewhat limited number of people who has properly played the Gamecube Pokémon games all the way through, post-game and all, and not just dumped them with negativity due to their unusual mechanics with shadow Pokémon. My opinion on Colosseum in particular is a very mixed one, and this is a fan fiction that causes me to have to go back to that opinion, recalling my experiences with the game and weighing them alongside this retelling.

Pokémon Colosseum is one of the most unique Pokémon games in existence, in its gameplay, world, and storyline, and "The Retelling of Pokémon Colosseum" manages to capture that in all its essence. But with the power that writing has over video games, it is able to expand on all of that to a whole new level, which really shows off the author's creativity. What takes up a few minutes in game is brought to life by character thoughts, action, and vivid detail, making the story quite an exciting read even if you've played the game to death.

But what made this truly difficult? The fact that this story isn't just a retelling, that's what. It's a retelling and a recreation of the game's story, almost completely changing its genre to comedy, of all things. Granted, Pokémon Colosseum pulls off some pretty comedic tropes on its own already, but this author takes those to a whole new level almost all the way through the fanfic, cleverly adding in more amongst it all. In my honest opinion, this is the story's strongest point: its humour is solid.

Normally, comedy in writing is a heavily subjective trial which writers often avoid completely, save for one or two jokes, due to the fact that it is just so insanely difficult to pull off successfully to a large audience. This is one fanfiction that completely bypasses the difficulties of that trial, catering to virtually every type of humour someone reading a Pokémon fanfic could find funny. Character stupidity and slapstick, unusual obsessions, quirky characters and their Pokémon, pop culture references, poking fun at Pokémon logic, and of course, Pokémon Colosseum in general; it's all there. If you don't find something that causes you to at least smile or crack a snicker somewhere in this story, then I am fully convinced that you are reading it on the wrong day. I'm one of those people that is pretty difficult to impress with humour found on the internet, and yet, even I found myself physically face-palming at the brilliance of some of the laughs.

That's not to say the humour is absolutely perfect, just that it's there, it's good, and you should find yourself giggling quite a bit all throughout. For how serious the original game takes itself, there are some points where the humorous tricks just don't work, and it feels overbearing or even somewhat forced. My example of this is the section around the battle with Ein. Due to Ein's vicious actions and blunt character represented in this story, I found it hard to accept any of the attempted humour, especially when you're imagining the chaos ensuing during the scenes before and after.

It's good that the story's humour keeps going, but it also didn't seem to know when to stop, at that. It's only a matter of time before you get tired of seeing tropes like Wes' Yanma playing its hyperactive role or Tom's drunken antics. At that, the character Tom was especially a bronze stick in the gold mine that personally annoyed me. And, to make matters worse for me, he has two completely incomprehensible chapters dedicated to him, neither of which had any significance that I could see, and admittedly skipped over after a good attempt at reading them. It's one of the few peeves I have with the story. Having an entire chapter of unreadable storytelling from a drunken character might seem like a funny idea on paper, but in actuality, it's just a painful thing to try to read for any reader, which just comes off as a poor prank from the author. As long as it has no bearing on the story, it has no reason to exist in the story – even when it comes to comedy writing.

But enough about the humour, let's talk more about the actual story. As a standalone retelling of Pokémon Colosseum, it actually holds its own even outside of its comedy achievements. As is promised in the author's note at the beginning, it actually addresses some of Colosseum's nonsensical plot holes, whilst also adding in some neat, new, original characters that fit into the plot as if they were part of the original game. All of the characters have been fleshed out with their unique traits emphasized, brief backstories established, and precious character development as well, so if you haven't played the original game all the way through, you probably won't even be able to tell which characters have been made up for this fanfic. Their dialogue and characteristics are just that well established and portrayed all the way through the book. Praise goes to the original game for creations such as Miror B, Gonzap, and many more, but that praise is now shared with this author for breathing new life into such original Pokémon characters.

Even when it comes to the Pokémon used by the trainers, which oh so lovingly have their dialogue translated into brackets, their characters add so much colour to the serious scenes that they ended up being my favourite feature of this retelling. Never before did I consider a dopey Umbreon to be a good idea, but here I am proven wrong, with said Umbreon becoming my favourite character due to his silly remarks and loveable attitude. Every Pokémon in the story is just as unique as the characters with quirks, just like Umbreon. From a Plusle obsessed with potatoes, to a Makuhita that wants to punch everything it sees, and even a female Wobbuffet that only seems to care about applying lipstick and makeup to itself, the Pokémon are something that really stand out as special.

However, this grand feature once again misses out on being perfect, and this time, the imperfection is quite damaging to the quality of the fanfic. As a personal opinion, Wes' Espeon is far too powerful. Many of the conflicts in battles and objectives in the story are solved by Espeon, which sadly nullifies the chances of any other Pokémon really shining. It was an unavoidable flaw from the moment it made its way into the planning that made up this story; giving a Pokémon the ability to control minds spoiled any sort of difficulty that could come up. It simply stopped many scenes from being as interesting as they could have been and prevented the development of the other Pokémon characters from being as believable as it needed to be.

The battles were especially noticeable as a negative point. Earlier on in the story, battles are almost non-existent even when they're happening due to the fact that humour takes over the entire battle, as well as it being implied that Wes, who is a teenager in this fanfic, is some kind of veteran trainer who has no trouble in battles. Later on as the battles get tougher, they start to flourish with the eventfulness and flair that this fanfic boasts, only to get so much of this inventiveness that the battles simply become overwhelming. Interesting quirks occur in the biggest battles, complete with detailed descriptions and unusual but acceptable representations of attacks (secret power is a physical contact move, but its appearance in this story matches its electric-like long distance animation in Colosseum, so I'll let that slide), but it all becomes too much very quickly. Everything that happens in a battle is detailed, and I mean virtually everything, from a banana peel getting slipped on, to Umbreon using secret power for the hundredth time.

It's at its worst when the battles descend into chaotic brawls made up of over five trainers using three plus Pokémon each. The idea is fine for the story, given the setting of Pokémon Colosseum. But here, with every last attack, action, result of damage, and dialogue from Pokémon and trainer fully detailed, we end up experiencing the chaos of such a disorganized battle first hand. These battles become such a garbled mess of complex wording and imagination that they actually become tiresome and boring scenes that are impossible to follow or properly visualize. To make matters worse, you can really see where these battles tired out the author as well – the conclusions or what occurs after these battles is often very rushed and unsatisfying. This wouldn't be such an issue if it wasn't for the fact that every single one of the big "boss" battles that occurs in this story is like this.

Thankfully, the story doesn't descend to this level when it's dealing with other scenarios. Pokémon Colosseum's unique world of an arid region filled with rogues and lawbreakers is fully explored, brought to new light by the well portrayed characters experiencing it. There's a tendency to follow the original game a little too closely here, but otherwise, there are skits of leisure, character introductions and explanations, all done when it feels like they're required. When it comes to sections where the plot slows down, the only thing I really had a problem with is how distracted the story seemed at times – in an author's note in chapter 13, the author even admits that a lot of it is filler content. Filler simply isn't acceptable when it comes to story writing. Once again, as long as it has no bearing on the story, it has no reason to exist in the story.

The + and – section, where I highlight the good or bad that just won't fit into this review!

+ I adored Umbreon and Espeon's brotherly bond in this story and honestly wanted more dialogue between them.

+ The humour is truly one of a kind here. You will find something to giggle at, I promise you.

+ Miror B's portrayal is practically perfect.

+ The corrections made to Pokémon Colosseum's plot holes were very well implemented.

+ The shadowfication process, or at least what was shown of it, was an incredible scene on its own.

- After doing so well avoiding the cliché, Wes and Rui are shipped for no reason at all. This is starting to become a pet peeve of mine, seeing such poor and needless examples of romance in Pokémon fanfics...

- The whole mind control thing was very over the top, in my opinion.

- The ending chapters were incredibly disappointing and felt rushed.

- Forcing Tom into later chapters, as well as including large quantities of filler, often spoiled the delicate flow.

- The formatting, spelling, and grammar need some work. It is generally good, but throughout the book, there is misplaced punctuation and misspelled words frequently enough to be noticed. Reading through a few times to make edits before posting will deal with these.

- Point of view switches were often very poorly executed and unclear, as well as happening far too often.

OVERALL SCORE: 6.5/10

As a retelling of Pokémon Colosseum and a fanfiction of its own, it is something quite special and worth reading, especially if you've played the original game. But sadly, its unique qualities get tripped up by novice author mistakes. These kinds of errors come up too often for the story to be considered excellent. By all means I recommend it, but with its length and mistakes, only start if you're prepared to sit through all of it. It's a long one.

(d_s_t_e )

The Retelling of Pokémon Colosseum is just what it claims to be: a fanfic that follows the basic plotline of the Pokémon Colosseum video game. It attempts to do so in a comedic fashion, which led me to believe that it was going to attempt to satirize the original. In the end, I don't think it succeeds in being a very good satire, but perhaps it wasn't actually trying to be?

I'll start by mentioning that I have played Pokémon Colosseum, but, firstly, I never managed to complete the game (I think I got to the final location but didn't play to the end of the story), and, secondly, it was years ago. I did some extra research on the game only after I finished reading this fanfic. Simply from my previous experience of having played the game, however, I was able to tell from the start that there were many similarities in plot and character. In fact, I was unable to pick out anything that truly stood out as being different from the plot of the video game (minor points excluded) until about halfway through the book. After research, I can confirm that there is a lot that is borrowed here.

That fact alone is, in my opinion, good in some ways and bad in others. I'll start with some of the good, which is that it seemed as though the author found some good inspiration in the source material. In some places he successfully pokes fun at a lot of ridiculous video game logic found in the source game, such as the fact that main sidekick Rui is always just kind of hanging around with main character Wes and has completely forgotten that she was supposed to be going on a visit to her grandparents before the kidnapping that Wes saved her from. The author also pokes some fun at character names and appearances and strange NPC dialogue, all of which makes good use of the source material for satiric purposes. This is exactly what I had expected to find, and they are all techniques that I enjoyed seeing put to good use.

Another point in favor of the borrowed material is that this fanfic, at times, appears to be almost a celebration of certain aspects of the game. Many aspects of the book would have an entirely different feel if they were based around original characters, including my favorite character of the fanfic Miror B. I definitely remembered him from the video game, but it seemed like the author of this piece just fell in love with how ridiculous and quirky he is and managed to spread that through the pages. The chapter in which Wes battles Miror B starts off with an author's note encouraging the reader to look up and play the actual battle music for this character from the video game, and, while I'm usually not a fan of playing music while reading chapters, I actually did find that I enjoyed it quite a bit. I would never have played that music without the fanfic having prompted me to do so, and I probably would have just thought it to be an odd piece of music even if I had stumbled across it without the context of the fanfic. Really, then, the fanfic and the source material were working in tandem in an interesting way.

Unfortunately, I think the similarities in plot might have contributed to the way I started to feel bored with the story. Everything was familiar and kind of predictable for me, and I'm just not the sort of person who enjoys reading or watching the same thing twice unless it is of exceptionally good quality. I didn't think the plot of the game was all that stellar to begin with, and, overall, I thought that this story didn't add enough depth to it. The characters were all pretty simple and mostly fit into specific and predictable roles. Many had only one defining character trait, like the Yanma that loves coffee or the police deputy who fails at everything through stupidity. Even one of the characters who was, as far as I could tell, original, and appeared in a significant chunk of the story, was only really known for being perpetually drunk.

I mention the original character because I might understand the simplicity of borrowed characters if the point is to satirize them for their simplicity. If the author was trying to point out a failure of complex characterization in the original game, it might actually be quite effective to exaggerate their simplicity still further for comedic effect. Unfortunately, it didn't feel like that to me. It felt as though the author was simply trying to make jokes in any way possible, which would explain the original character who is set up to be constantly laughed at.

This is the sort of thing that led me to believe that the fanfic is actually trying not to be a satire but to be a just plain comedy. Viewed through that lens, simplistic characters are not a problem at all, as long as they are utilized correctly for full comedic effect. After making this conclusion, I found myself operating under a different set of expectations for the fanfic, which really revolved around a single question: is it funny?

I think it is but perhaps not as much as it possibly could be. I'll start by saying that I did laugh quite a few times while reading it, definitely more than average for a fanfic. In terms of the pure number of times I laughed, it might beat out every book I've ever read on Wattpad with just one exception.

Unfortunately, I think this has a lot to do with the length of the book. In terms of laughs per word or per chapter, I don't think it performs as well as my previous statements would suggest. The book certainly made every effort to be comedic from start to finish, but I did not laugh at quite a lot of what were obviously supposed to be jokes. A lot of them fell flat with me because I anticipated the punch line, which comes partially from knowing what was about to happen in the story and partially from the characters being so simple that they tended to be involved with the same kind of joke over and over again. That could be a problem when there were large chunks of the story that were only present for comedic effect.

So, in the end, that's really the largest fault I find with it. Assuming that it was trying to be just a funny story as opposed to a satire or a serious book, which it does seem to be most closely, I felt as though it didn't keep itself fresh enough for the comedy to keep working continuously. If it were a satire, it would have needed to more obviously criticize its source. If it were a serious book, it should have had more complex characters, a much better motivation and drive for the main character, and a much faster pace.

Since it wasn't trying to be a serious book or a satire, I could give it a pass on all of these. I do think that it is possible for a book to succeed purely on comedy, apart from complex and motivated characters, a fast-paced and interesting plot, or any kind of real meaning. I do, however, think that it might be easier to succeed with these elements than without them. Monty Python might not have much going on in terms of character motivation (sure, they want to find the grail, but it doesn't seem that important to them), but it does function pretty successfully as satire targeted at Arthurian legends and the romanticization of Medieval times, among other things (witch hunts, anyone?). On the other hand, there are many comedic works that do have a main character with a strong motivating drive to carry the plot as a point of interest alongside the humorous elements. The addition of something like this would have alleviated my boredom even when the jokes weren't quite cutting it for me.

Everyone has a different taste in comedy, of course, and, based on the large number of references I saw to everything from the aforementioned Monty Python to internet memes, I suspect there may have been a large number of jokes that I didn't even get properly. If I saw so many from references I did recognize, I have to wonder how many were included referencing sources with which I am not familiar. I also find myself wondering how much of comedy has to do with the current mood of the person reading it, as well as their individual tastes and personality. Since I am, after all, just one person, I hope that the opinions of the other critics help to balance out my limited perspective.

I do think it's fair, though, to point out that I found Tom's dialogue to be basically unreadable. I think it was supposed to be funny? But it just became a part that I skipped over because I knew I wouldn't understand it anyway. I think almost any reader would have had the same experience in that regard.

One last note I would like to mention is that I found quite a few spelling errors scattered throughout the story, some of which were distracting to me. In quite a few cases, I suspected that the author actually did think the right words or phrases were being used, which is somewhat troubling. Other than that, I didn't notice too many issues other than comma errors.

Overall, I think this fanfic was alright, but it wasn't quite funny or fresh enough to fully retain my interest over nearly 200,000 words. I would give it a 5.5 for slightly above average for making me laugh a little and for having fewer than the usual amount of technical errors.

(Sheare)

Your first impressions were very poor. "The Retelling of Pokémon Colosseum" is literally the most uncreative title I have ever come across. I would have liked to see a deeper title to reveal a theme of sorts, and then include in the description "retelling of Pokémon Colosseum."

Content wise, I was bored. Extremely bored. If I didn't decide to give you a fair chance and read the entire book, I would have stopped at chapter five or something. I personally just hate retellings of Pokémon games, so that's a huge reason why I felt bored during the entirety of the book. Being that I never finished Pokémon Colosseum (which I should probably do), I can't judge most of the plot, but only the lack of creativity of retelling it.

A majority of the book's dialogue was pointless bickering which didn't seem to have a clear purpose. Bickering to some extent provides interaction between characters to reveal their relationship, but when it's overused, it becomes stale.

As for actual writing, you're a fantastic writer. You manage to encapsulate several abstract ideas while maintaining a flow. Your writing wasn't at all choppy to me and was rather smooth to read, besides for some formatting pet peeves of mine.

Just to be nit pickynitpicky like I always am, you did several things that annoyed me. I felt like the Pokémon translations were quite cheesy.

You had very long thoughts from different characters going back and forth, which was weird and confusing. I would have just stuck to the thoughts of one character or none entirely.

I get annoyed when people use caps like "WHAT?!" because it seems so informal and unprofessional. There's literally this ins chapter three:

"HOW COULD YOU HAVE BEEN A SNAGGER? DIDN'T YOU STOP TO THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU WERE DOING TO THOSE POKEMON?"

It's very obnoxious and almost sticks out too much. It's almost like you don't trust your ability to convey such anger with regular writing and decided that caps would be the easy way out. Of course, I know it's used for comedic purposes for the most part, but it's a technique that reveals the limitation in one's ability to convey emotions through words. It's not like you used this once orf twice either;, or it was used a lot—an absurd amount of times.

I would also like to see more detail in your dialogue. A lot of the conversations were like:

"Hi."

"Hello."

"What's up?"

"Nothing."

I'm not criticizing the dialogue itself (the example above is just vague to prove my point).

There's no hand gestures being described or other body movements. Even a thought here or there could have been used. It isn't the dialogue itself, but the words or lack there ofthereof surrounding it.

Formatting! Some paragraphs are extremely long and make my eyes bleed. Again, I would like to point out the overuse of italics with Wes' and other characters' thoughts, which broke up the text a lot. Time skips aren't done like "2 hours later," which is definitely a plus. Some of the chapters could have been broken up because some had almost too many time skips.

Please don't use jokes or facts or information existing in the current world we live in. This is a huge pet peeve of mine. You reference one of the Star Wars movies in your fic...and it was weird and cringe-worthy.

Overall, great writing potential, poor idea to exercise that talent, and below adequate formatting made this a mediocre book.

5/10

(Blue___22 )

The book was one that was really enjoyable. There was a good, steady beginning with the Skarmory, transitioning into the whole scene with Wes and how he soon attacks the Snagem base. I should also note that I did like the roundabout way of the book's ending how we were speaking of a Skarmory again.

From there the book got rather hilarious, and, though it should be shortened by 10%, it was actually a rather light, enjoyable read. The people and Pokémon had spunk in the way that they were characterized. I also appreciated the changes and additions to the storyline,especially the explanation as to why Wes just outright randomly attacks the Snagem base.

There wasn't too much that I found too awkward in terms of fanfiction. To some all caps to express dramatics is not fully sophisticated, but in the context of what was going on it fit pretty well. You might also want to make Tom more coherent because drunk people do stupid stuff but can act just fine. So try to think of how you could incorporate that into his character to make him better. The human character thoughts being listed in italics is something you should change for sure. Weave the thoughts into the text instead of breaking up the flow of the story.

Something else I should note is the Pokémon speech translations. At first I was put off by that when I began reading, for the reasons stated above, but soon I actually began to like it a lot. I feel like I should note that the title is something that could potentially put people off if they want to read "original" stories. The thing about calling it a retelling is that it gives off the connotation that you copied it when you didn't. And that drives away readers because they know the story and don't want to experience it again, just in a text form. Try to think if you can create a new title and then weave the retelling part into your synopsis.

Otherwise I found it to be something very entertaining. Your synopsis is on point. Reading it was a unique experience that I'm glad I got to live through. And while it wasn't in my typical run of fanfiction, it was something that broke my preconceptions.

GRA rating scale: 6.5/10

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Credits:

Article written by: d_s_t_e

Reviews written by: SGmijumaru , d_s_t_e , blue___22 , Sheare

Special thanks to: bobandbill at fanfiction.net

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