Pokemon Adventures: Ruby & Sapphire, Vol. 16

ポケットモンスターSPECIAL #16

by Hidenori Kusaka, Satoshi Yamamoto (Illustrations)

Adventures inspired by the best-selling Pokémon video games! All your favorite Pokémon game characters jump out of the screen into the pages of this action-packed manga!

Ruby and Sapphire go their separate ways to achieve their dreams in just eighty days! But their paths keep crossing... While Ruby seeks a beautiful new Pokémon in Dewford Town to help him win Pokémon Contests, he runs into Sapphire who is challenging the local Gym Leader to improve her Pokémon battle skills. Together, our intrepid Trainers attempt to deliver an important letter. What does it say, and who is the mysterious recipient...?

Plus, can Ruby and Sapphire prevent evil Team Magma from stealing a strange new technology?!

Reads R to L (Japanese Style) for all ages.

Genres: Manga, Fantasy, Comics, Adventure, Graphic Novels, Fiction, Graphic Novels Comics

208 pages, Paperback

First published October 28, 2003

About the author

Created the Pokemon Adventures series.

Also made a Pokemon Rangers/ Almia manga. It is based on the game Pokemon Rangers, Shadows of Almia

Also known as : 日下秀憲

Reviews

[Selena Pigoni · Rating 2 out of 5]

"You know what would make this manga even better? Shoehorning in some game mechanics!" ...said no one ever.

This volume was a struggle. The original stories of Red, Blue, Yellow, and Green blended the video game stories and Pokedex stuff well enough that it didn't feel like you were either reading a wikipedia article or reading a bad copy of the game mechanics. Ruby and Sapphire seems to be struggling with that a lot.

The battles are fine until they start shoving in abilities and feel the need to explain them and to show the Pokedex entries in, which happens a lot. So much so that it slows battles down immensely. Add to that the game mechanic info dumps about the new berry names, what they taste like, the Pokeblock mini game, and Pokemon personalities and their favorite tastes, and the story just stops. It doesn't flow like the original Adventures and Gold & Silver and opts for a frustrating start-and-stop method.

Yeah, I get that contests are a new thing. I get the "ingenious" use of new Pokemon abilities need to be explained in painful detail because they weren't technically a thing before Ruby & Sapphire (though previous stories seemed to use them without calling them such). Berries have actual names now and tastes and stuff. I get it. There's a lot of new mechanics in these games.

You know what else? The first 14 volumes didn't feel the need to hold our hand and explain to us how Pokemon battles worked either. The original Pokemon Adventures was a tie-in the the Pokemon universe that expected you'd be familiar with the universe already, even in the Gold & Silver story arcs.

Maybe it's because Ruby & Sapphire so far are totally independent from the other Adventures and they think new people are joining in starting with these volumes or maybe it's because Ruby & Sapphire weren't nearly as big a phenomena as the originals and so Kusaka-sensei expected people to not know anything about this new stuff. I can't say why these are treating us like we have the mental capacity of a 6 year old with the patience of a saint, but I can say this isn't really working for me.

Admittedly, part of it is too that I never really liked Ruby & Sapphire as games.

I'll give this story arc one more volume to see if it gets better now that most of the new game mechanics have been explained, but if morale doesn't improve, I'll just jump ahead to the Fire Red Leaf Green section. I assume that it will have nothing to do with this one, just like this one doesn't seem to have anything to do with those before.

I hate to be so hard on R&S, but after the bar was set so high in the original batch, this just doesn't compare.

[Chelsea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meh. Once again, the Pokemon Adventures is proving to be disappointing. Like they try to cram in so much but yet so little actually happens. The inclusion of the Pokedex entries looked bad in the frames of the manga with too small text to comfortably read and overall were unnecessary. Things happened in this volume but none of it felt impactful. We were also introduced to Team Magma on top of Ruby and Sapphire's contest over who's gonna win more badges/ribbons first.

[ris rice · Rating 5 out of 5]

ruby is so funny to me

[Fernando Medeiros santos · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quaaaaase nota dois, mas todas as partes da Saphire salvam a história.

Evoluções um pouco forçadas demais para os pokemons dos protagonistas. Talvez a intenção do autor seja deixar os dois sempre nivelados e não favorecer nenhum, mas pow… vamos ser um pouco mais criativos? Que tal?

[Gavin · Rating 3 out of 5]

this book is a graphic novel is about third-generation Pokemon games, (Ruby and Sapphire). It represents the story within the games with a funny and action-filled story. I recommend this book to people who like video games and graphic novels.

[Sakura · Rating 4 out of 5]

This volume was quite fun, I found myself really enjoying it! I adore Ruby’s personality and character- and Sapphire is also well-written. I’ll never not find it funny that she looks just like May, but acts nothing like her, haha- but anyway! Let’s get on track and talk about the events of this volume.

In this one, they started setting up the villains much more clearly. We get to see Team Aqua and Magma, and how they run- the two groups are pretty much complete opposites! I’ve never played the games, but because of only seeing the anime, I never cared much about either group. I can’t say this series has changed my mind just yet, as I still find them kind of boring. Team Magma is definitely a little more fun though, since they are a bit more wild and kind of just do whatever.

It was fun when Ruby was trapped on the boat. He really is kind of a jerk, but I feel like he’s already experiencing a bit of character development. It’s fun to see! I also loved it when our two main characters were reunited, and the implications of Sapphire’s crush on Ruby. Ohhhh~ will they be a ship?? I really hope so haha, we hardly get to see any romance in Pokemon.

All in all, this was a fun book! I’ll look forward to the next one.

(This book contains fantasy violence, with some scratches. It’s all in black and white, and I can’t tell for sure, but there might sometimes be mild blood. It’s really hard to tell though, so I doubt that’s much of a concern for you. I would give it an age rating of all-ages!)

[Jessi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is so random and actually spans across the whole series so far, but I've noticed most of the support characters are named these entirely forgettable names, like Fred, Sara, John, Carrie... Those aren't even actual names from the books (I don't think) but they totally could be. Haha. Hey, Sapphire, deliver this to Steven. He's the only Steven in Hoenn, don't worry. I doubt this is the case, but it would be so hilarious if the names are the same in the Japanese version.

Sapphire is absolutely friends with Ruby. She's all like, "Oh no, he's trapped in the cave! Gotta save him!" and then tries to say they're not friends. Ha! No one's buying that!

Plusle and Minum are so so cute and mischievous. I'm glad they didn't get split up between Ruby and Sapphire permanently though. They have to be together and free!

And this volume introduces Team Magma. Yay! It'll be really interesting how Team Magma and Team Aqua's story lines will intersect from here.

[Santiago Bueno · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un muy buen segundo tomo. Me gustó mucho como empezaron a introducir la trama de los equipos magma y aqua. La presentación "oficial" de ambos lideres y las diferencias entre los dos equipos. Ruby y Sapphire estuvieron muy bien, sobretodo mientras estaban juntos. Su dinámica es muy divertida. Si creo que la trama cuando estan separados beneficia mas a Sapphire, ya que esta al final de este tomo ya tiene dos medallas y Ruby ni siquiera pudo presentarse a un concurso todavía. Me hubiese gustado ver un poco mas de los concursos, que es un aspecto mas novedoso de esta saga. Igualmente tengo uchas ganas de ver como sigue esta historia, creo que pueden mejorar bastante el manejo de la trama de los equipos magma y aqua con respecto a su contraparte en los juegos.

[Angel Guerrero · Rating 3 out of 5]

Me agrada el rumbo en algunas cuestiones, en otras no tanto, siento que el dibujo resulta muy caótico y con espacios muy pequeños para descifrar que es lo que ocurre. Me agrada que tenga esta dinámica de opuestos como rivales y amigos a la vez, solo que en este caso siento muy desigual la competencia.

Los antagonistas se han mostrado como intrigantes pero no despiertan tanto interés al menos, se sientan las bases de lo que puede ser su gran plan. No estaría mal un enfoque más en historias de Pokémon que en reciclar la narrativa con los mismos personajes en distintos lugares y un distinto grupo antagónico.

[Conor Clancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Still leagues above the original runs for me.

[Raphael Souza · Rating 5 out of 5]

Um dos melhores volumes.

[Eevee]

bro how do you read it

[Chrystal · Rating 5 out of 5]

ya i read this late at night bc addicting

[Tommy · Rating 4 out of 5]

So much progress in so little time! I cant wait to read the next book!

[Luru · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars

[baillie ★ · Rating 3 out of 5]

actual rating: 3.5

[Flowergirl · Rating 5 out of 5]

This wasn't as fun as the last, but still very enjoyable. We did get to see a familiar face briefly, it was rather hilarious. I really liked Steven and am excited to see more of him in the future.

[Hedi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me: the world is a dark and cruel place
Also me: omg Steven Stone 🥰

[Bradley · Rating 2 out of 5]

This felt too long and not as engaging as the first volume. It was a loooooot of setup with very little payoff, which made me nervous because I felt like we were just going to skim over a lot of the contests and... yeah we skimmed :'(

[Miguel Vega · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this chapter. This is the first manga I have read in 2018 (I am re-reading this series until the new volume comes out) and I am just trash for Pokemon still. This follows Ruby & Sapphire who each make a pact with one-another to come out as Champions of their respective interests---battles and Contests. However, their journey in this chapter is interrupted as they fight Team Magma.

I love both of the main characters, they are different from the previous main characters and the evil team(s) seem much more of a threat than Team Rocket ever did. Some cheesy moments (such as Steven saying he needs allies to defeat two evils to an eleven-year old he just met) but good overall.

[jb · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a cute manga. Okay, first you have to get over the fact that the character Ruby is actually a boy. But apart from that, it was pretty awesome. Not only was it adventurous, but the artwork was also manageable. Nice, no?

Yep, this is a pretty awsome manga. It seems to be infinite... there's like 40 volumes or something now.

[Karli · Rating 3 out of 5]

Better than the last volume, but still not quite 4 stars. Still enjoying how the elements of the games are incorporated into these books.

[Minerva · Rating 4 out of 5]

**** 4 stars ****

[André · Rating 4 out of 5]

A história está começando a se desenvolver legal

[Divya Parajuli]

think you