Are you a fan of books? Are you a fan of Pokémon? Well then, you've come to the right place! In this book club, we will devote every review purely to Pokémon fanfiction.
Includes:
- Articles on Pokémon Fanfiction
- Specific interviews with the autho...
"Ancienverse Book One. Once every seven years there was a tournament celebrating the bonds between people and Pokemon. Of course, Serena expected Ash to want to take part, but she had no idea the ways in which it would change their lives for good or ill. She was confident, however, that by the end of that week, something between herself and Ash would be different. Amourshipping."
Genre: Action, Romance
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In general, shipping stories are very dependent upon their characters. They're generally very character driven and rely almost entirely on the reader's emotional connection to the characters because if the reader doesn't care about the characters, every romantic step that the protagonists take together is underwhelming and the end result falls completely flat.
Of course, the vast majority of shipping stories use characters from the anime, characters that the reader is familiar with and characters that the reader already has an emotional connection to. What Love in the Time of Teamwork does so brilliantly is getting each character absolutely perfect. Reading this book is like watching an episode of the anime, and that is the first major hurdle in a book like this. I really can't emphasise enough how well this is done. Personalities, speech patterns, catchphrases, even mannerisms are just perfect, and it makes it so easy to get invested in the story. Only once did I ever stop and say to myself, "That's not Ash," and that was when he punched someone in the face, which was just an odd bit of actual physical violence to include. Other than this one instance, I have no complaints. It is genuinely impressive to see this done so well.
As I mentioned before, this makes it very easy for the reader to get invested. I'm excited to see how Ash and Serena's relationship develops because it doesn't feel like some fan's personal interpretation of Ash and Serena that I disagree with, it feels like Ash and Serena. I want to see them end up together because I care about them, and at the same time, I'm interested in how all the other characters interact. How will Serena deal with some of Ash's old female friends? Will Dawn and May disrupt Serena's attempts to get with Ash or will they end up helping? How will Brock and Clemont get along? Overall, it was a really good idea to bring together this many characters as it made for almost endless possibilities.
The whole book centres around a tournament, and whilst it's not the most original idea in the world, it is utilised very effectively. It allows for some big character moments, mostly around Serena, and it serves as a good catalyst to propel the romance forward. I really like how the tournament helps develop Serena as a person, helps her confidence to grow and that is why she ends up with Ash. The Serena at the end of the book is a better version of the Serena at the beginning, and I like to think that's why Ash started to notice her more and more. It could've been easy for our main characters not to change and for them to end up together anyway, but it's done much better than that and I'm glad the author went down this road.
As for the actual romance itself... it's quite slow. That's not necessarily a bad thing and might even be unavoidable given that the story stays very PG. It's quite hard to show a quick escalation of romance when the climax is a mere kiss. Again, there's nothing inherently wrong with that, it's just a limitation and it forces the book to be exciting in other ways, almost to pad the runtime in between the romantic moments. Don't get me wrong, I like the fact that there is something going on other than the romance, but I just feel like the romance parts are so few and far between that at times, it doesn't even feel like a shipping story. It also bugs me that Gary and Brock literally tell Ash that Serena is in love with him. That really forced things along, and I would've preferred to see where either Serena or Ash would've taken things on their own. After all, Ash had started to notice Serena anyway so why include this?
