As a Headscratchers subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
- The Anime series in general has always been a big Headscratcher for me. Don't get me wrong, it's a great anime, but it seems to waste all the potential of a serious Slice of Life Mon anime Monster Rancher games originally had. Just think about for a second or two. We are talking about an anime that could have plenty (and justified) tournaments, existential dilemmas, speculation about the Power of Friendship, Wangst and drama about Monsters death and Monster abuse, peer pressure, fame pressure, world traveling and exploration and even more things! Then why did they decide that the right way to go was doing a Meta-series, where one guy has to save the digital-world?
- YMMV. I think if they'd made it like the games it would've been different, sure, but it'd lose some of what made it unique. There WAS angst, existential dilemmas, and drama about Monster abuse and death; the second season even ended with the heroic characters sacrificing themselves. And when they did adapt the tournaments in the third season, making it more like the games, the results were mixed.
- Why do the trials in the Drill mode of DS not seem to be connected at all with the attributes they are supposed to be raising? In the forest, the monster gets stronger by... jumping on branches (swimming does make sense, though)? In the beach, your monsters raise Int by... smashing watermelons with its head? In the woods, Ski is raised by... swimming and jumping? In the ruins, Def is raised by... pushing walls, opening chests, and crossing gaps? Only the alps make sense, since I guess jumping out of the way of giant snowballs and running upslope would raise the Spd. But why didn't they create some more fitting trials for everything else?
- What kind of demonic fiend programmed the monster AI for the Errantry in DS? I clicked in a spot, it went to a completely different direction half the time. I clicked 50 times IN THE SAME SPOT, it ignored me. The monster is almost dying out of exhaustion, so you'd expect it to almost automatically go back home right? Well, tell that to my Pancho. I spent at least 10 minutes trying to get it back home from the Woods with its health literally depleted, and it kept on wandering back and forth from the way out. This makes no sense, how much must you not care to do such a shoddy work of AI?!
- Why does Genki call the game "Monster Battle"? It's an anime of the game and they can't even use the name?
- Possible it was the name of the tournament, or the name of the game he was dreaming about.
- The anime had a lot of Bland Name Products. The PlayStation clone is called "U", the game disc Genki gets is called "Monster 200X", "Mecto" instead of "Temco"... If this anime was advertising a game series why couldn't they use the actual names?
- Because there are laws against that kind of thing. Someone involved with the production of the Yu-Gi-Oh dub once said that they had to edit the in-show cards not just to remove the Japanese text but also to make them look less like the real cards kids could go out and buy. You can't just straight-up advertise real-world products in a kids' show (at least not in America).
- How did Genki walk around in the Monster Rancher world with his rollerblades? He walked around on ice, sand, etc. HE CLIMBED LADDERS in rollerblades. This hurt my head when I was a child and I never watched the show because of it. It's silly, but WHY!?
- This was actually addressed in episode 2 where he tried to rollerblade up hills and across deserts. Holly had to get him regular shoes, which were worn throughout the series alongside the 'blades.
- If you see the entire series, you'll notice that Genki can do a lot of stunts like backflipping, flying kicks, and high jumps, so why wouldn't he be able to rollerblade anywhere?
- Here's something I've been asking myself since I watched the beginning and end of seasons: how did no one in the real world seem concerned that Genki was missing? He has a mother, he left home without telling, then he came back to the real world and no signs of anyone looking for him, and then he was back in his normal life like nothing happened.
- Season 3 says he was only gone for three hours in his world before he came back.
- He still woke up in an alley outside. Note that he was last seen by his mom three hours ago before he entered his room. (He does say he got into trouble from his mom for "losing" his backpack and in-line skates, at least.)
- For that matter, some of his books, a baseball bat, and most notably his U console with the Monster 200X disc also got warped in with him, yet after returning he says his room was exactly as he left it (such that he tried to reenter the MR world by playing his disc again, to no avail). The original Japanese version shows that he bought a retail copy of Monster 200X (his advance copy vanished when he summoned Mocchi).
- Season 3 says he was only gone for three hours in his world before he came back.
- Where did Genki get a wig of Holly's hairstyle?
- In episode 22, the dart aimed at Tiger clearly missed and hit a tree, even after Holly pushed him out of the way. So how did she still get poisoned?
