I feel Mato's art style is more appropriate for the battle-oriented world of Pocket Monsters SPECIAL than Satoshi's, which made the manga have more of a shojo feel in the later volumes. Personally, I prefer Mato's art style in the first 9 volumes over Satoshi Yamamoto's from Volume 10 onwards. It's much more intense and gritty than the anime ever could be. Just like in the RPGs, Pokémon live and die in the world of the manga as well as have organizations that take extreme actions to get what they want. Even the creator of Pokémon, Satoshi Tajiri, himself said that the manga most closely conveys the world of Pokémon he was aiming for. Story author Hidenori Kusaka did a marvelous job creating distinct personalities for each of the main characters and developing each story arc in a way that makes sense in the timeline of the RPGs. The playable characters of all the games star in the manga within several story arcs that correspond to each generational release of Pokémon RPGs.
Pocket Monsters SPECIAL (aka Pokémon Adventures) closely follows the story of the original role-playing games while also adding its own subplots.