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A Battle Festival Exploding With Life! VS Mega Lucario!! (1114)

Lord Starfish

Fond of owls
Battle was... okay, I guess. Though we once again see the entirely accidental effects of the hiatus here, as, waiting for nearly three months for this, obviously we would have wanted a lot more than we got.
You know, actually I must amend this statement. The first few rounds were "okay", but once Mega Lucario entered the picture the rest of the battle was actually really solid.
 

mehmeh1

Not thinking twice!
See Ash now if you’d had caught a Haunter back in Gen 1 Bone Rush wouldn’t have hurt it back then
Abilities didn't exist back then tho
 
D

Deleted member 384931

Guest
Tbh this didnt feel like an episode that took place in a region like Kalos. I had the same vibe with the Sinnoh episodes. The battle was alright, ML looked weak if I am honest. And Gengar is a prankster, not a battler in my book. This episode felt flat. They take too much time introducing stuff and have to rush the battles in the last 10 episodes. Where is the time a fight could take a whole episode?
 

Soniman

Break the Limit
Gonna wait till the episode is subbed to watch but the very lukewarm reception is rather disappointing. Guess I'll temper me expectation
 

AuraChannelerChris

Easygoing Luxray.
Huh... The episode wasn't really something to write home about. Gengar sucked, but Dragonite utterly screwed Korrina's whole team. She isn't the **** but just ****.

Sorry, girl, but all the training in the world and your fancy power-up with its own power-up theme are no match against Ash's fresh Barney dragon.

Lucario: Behold my aura.

Riolu: Wow! Are you gonna use it in the battle?

Lucario: lol no y

Oh, dear god. This little tyke couldn't have picked a worse role model.
Acording to the last words of Corni at the end, maybe her will come back in the future.
Every single character that has to leave says this.
 
Last edited:

Deitylight

Legendary Trainer
Dragonite's strength is a little obscene considering it was caught not to long ago and this is the very first trainer battle it has participated in. Even Gengar has arguably more trainer battle experience than Dragonite but I guess you could argue that its raw strength made up for whatever shortcoming it may have had.
 
Whew, so I came into the episode with relatively normal expectations and I left totally disheartened...

Never believed that the Mega Ring people were so flippantly throwing around would actually come to fruition so I had no problem with that. It was annoying there was no mention of other Kalos characters to the best of my knowledge since no subs, but that was really not much of a problem, rather just a little disappointing.

No, the problem I had with this episode was what I was afraid of. A mostly flat battle with subpar animation and really hacky writing.

First talking aesthetics and animation. Really, I was incredibly disappointed in this. Seriously, is this the best they can do these days? The battle had next to no pace, its action was mostly slow and boring, and there was a for the most part, there was a total lack of frenetic energy. It was like watching an Alola battle and not even a particularly good one, which there was few in the first place. The animation in the battle barely had any oomph to it. It didn’t sell anything.

There were some good cuts at the beginning of ML vs Dragonite where it looked to pretty energetic before it mostly collapsed at the end. Let’s not even talk about how pathetic Gengar vs Mienshao was.

I rewatched the ML vs Pikachu gym match after seeing that mostly contemptible display of a battle and laughed at the stark difference. I really can’t believe I was expecting a series that had consistently let me down to somehow rocket back up and match what was one of the best XY battles.

To summarize, disappointing and mostly terrible.

Now on the writing side of the episode and battle.

Of course, I don’t know Japanese, so it’ll be a little hard, but whatever. The best parts were the Ash and Korrina moments as well as Riolu and Lucario/Korrina moments.

As of the writing in the battle itself...

I expect Dragonite to ascend and replace Snorlax/Incineroar on Ash’s best team if this is how busted he is with next to no training.

Seriously, he takes several hits from Meinshao and a high-jump kick and wins with next to zero help from Gengar. Sure, that’s pretty reasonable. But then, this is the part that I really hoped wouldn’t happen.

It somehow 1v1ed ML.

ML was the same Pokémon that took Pikachu to the brink with Pikachu at literally full health iirc in XY and Korrina hadn’t exactly mastered it. And I’m supposed to somehow believe Dragonite is so inherently busted that it can 1v1 it. And it’s not even that I have a problem with that actually happening, bar it being done it a totally lazy fashion with terrible writing as it happened here. As I said in the episode preview discussion, if the battle can sell ML vs Dragonite with Dragonite winning in a way that makes sense, I would barely have any problem with it.

But no, it really didn’t do that. Again, I don’t know Japanese so I’ll rewatch it, but Dragonite’s tornado/counter shield(?) strategy didn’t sell it at all. Dragonite took some damage from the Aura Sphere and a barrage of attacks from Power-Up punch and in return it threw some rocks at ML and then basically one-shot it with Dragon Claw...

This is like top-tier writing here. A Dragonite with next to no training and very few feats of strength defeated ML. Again, I’m expected this level of utter obscenity in power level to sustain itself and end up with Dragonite joining Ash’s strongest team as hackMon TM.

So all in all, totally farcical episode. It managed to disappoint my relatively normal expectations for the episode and displayed an utter lack of good writing that really has been the through line of this series and was very lackluster on the animation front as well.
 

mehmeh1

Not thinking twice!
Whew, so I came into the episode with relatively normal expectations and I left totally disheartened...

Never believed that the Mega Ring people were so flippantly throwing around would actually come to fruition so I had no problem with that. It was annoying there was no mention of other Kalos characters to the best of my knowledge since no subs, but that was really not much of a problem, rather just a little disappointing.

No, the problem I had with this episode was what I was afraid of. A mostly flat battle with subpar animation and really hacky writing.

First talking aesthetics and animation. Really, I was incredibly disappointed in this. Seriously, is this the best they can do these days? The battle had next to no pace, its action was mostly slow and boring, and there was a for the most part, there was a total lack of frenetic energy. It was like watching an Alola battle and not even a particularly good one, which there was few in the first place. The animation in the battle barely had any oomph to it. It didn’t sell anything.

There were some good cuts at the beginning of ML vs Dragonite where it looked to pretty energetic before it mostly collapsed at the end. Let’s not even talk about how pathetic Gengar vs Mienshao was.

I rewatched the ML vs Pikachu gym match after seeing that mostly contemptible display of a battle and laughed at the stark difference. I really can’t believe I was expecting a series that had consistently let me down to somehow rocket back up and match what was one of the best XY battles.

To summarize, disappointing and mostly terrible.

Now on the writing side of the episode and battle.

Of course, I don’t know Japanese, so it’ll be a little hard, but whatever. The best parts were the Ash and Korrina moments as well as Riolu and Lucario/Korrina moments.

As of the writing in the battle itself...

I expect Dragonite to ascend and replace Snorlax/Incineroar on Ash’s best team if this is how busted he is with next to no training.

Seriously, he takes several hits from Meinshao and a high-jump kick and wins with next to zero help from Gengar. Sure, that’s pretty reasonable. But then, this is the part that I really hoped wouldn’t happen.

It somehow 1v1ed ML.

ML was the same Pokémon that took Pikachu to the brink with Pikachu at literally full health iirc in XY and Korrina hadn’t exactly mastered it. And I’m supposed to somehow believe Dragonite is so inherently busted that it can 1v1 it. And it’s not even that I have a problem with that actually happening, bar it being done it a totally lazy fashion with terrible writing as it happened here. As I said in the episode preview discussion, if the battle can sell ML vs Dragonite with Dragonite winning in a way that makes sense, I would barely have any problem with it.

But no, it really didn’t do that. Again, I don’t know Japanese so I’ll rewatch it, but Dragonite’s tornado/counter shield(?) strategy didn’t sell it at all. Dragonite took some damage from the Aura Sphere and a barrage of attacks from Power-Up punch and in return it threw some rocks at ML and then basically one-shot it with Dragon Claw...

This is like top-tier writing here. A Dragonite with next to no training and very few feats of strength defeated ML. Again, I’m expected this level of utter obscenity in power level to sustain itself and end up with Dragonite joining Ash’s strongest team as hackMon TM.

So all in all, totally farcical episode. It managed to disappoint my relatively normal expectations for the episode and displayed an utter lack of good writing that really has been the through line of this series and was very lackluster on the animation front as well.
It's the Naganadel case all over again (well, slightly better due to the Golurk raid, but still). Though I actually did like the choreogaphy, as I'm a huge fanboy of using the battlefield
 

AuraChannelerChris

Easygoing Luxray.
Whew, so I came into the episode with relatively normal expectations and I left totally disheartened...

Never believed that the Mega Ring people were so flippantly throwing around would actually come to fruition so I had no problem with that. It was annoying there was no mention of other Kalos characters to the best of my knowledge since no subs, but that was really not much of a problem, rather just a little disappointing.

No, the problem I had with this episode was what I was afraid of. A mostly flat battle with subpar animation and really hacky writing.

First talking aesthetics and animation. Really, I was incredibly disappointed in this. Seriously, is this the best they can do these days? The battle had next to no pace, its action was mostly slow and boring, and there was a for the most part, there was a total lack of frenetic energy. It was like watching an Alola battle and not even a particularly good one, which there was few in the first place. The animation in the battle barely had any oomph to it. It didn’t sell anything.

There were some good cuts at the beginning of ML vs Dragonite where it looked to pretty energetic before it mostly collapsed at the end. Let’s not even talk about how pathetic Gengar vs Mienshao was.

I rewatched the ML vs Pikachu gym match after seeing that mostly contemptible display of a battle and laughed at the stark difference. I really can’t believe I was expecting a series that had consistently let me down to somehow rocket back up and match what was one of the best XY battles.

To summarize, disappointing and mostly terrible.

Now on the writing side of the episode and battle.

Of course, I don’t know Japanese, so it’ll be a little hard, but whatever. The best parts were the Ash and Korrina moments as well as Riolu and Lucario/Korrina moments.

As of the writing in the battle itself...

I expect Dragonite to ascend and replace Snorlax/Incineroar on Ash’s best team if this is how busted he is with next to no training.

Seriously, he takes several hits from Meinshao and a high-jump kick and wins with next to zero help from Gengar. Sure, that’s pretty reasonable. But then, this is the part that I really hoped wouldn’t happen.

It somehow 1v1ed ML.

ML was the same Pokémon that took Pikachu to the brink with Pikachu at literally full health iirc in XY and Korrina hadn’t exactly mastered it. And I’m supposed to somehow believe Dragonite is so inherently busted that it can 1v1 it. And it’s not even that I have a problem with that actually happening, bar it being done it a totally lazy fashion with terrible writing as it happened here. As I said in the episode preview discussion, if the battle can sell ML vs Dragonite with Dragonite winning in a way that makes sense, I would barely have any problem with it.

But no, it really didn’t do that. Again, I don’t know Japanese so I’ll rewatch it, but Dragonite’s tornado/counter shield(?) strategy didn’t sell it at all. Dragonite took some damage from the Aura Sphere and a barrage of attacks from Power-Up punch and in return it threw some rocks at ML and then basically one-shot it with Dragon Claw...

This is like top-tier writing here. A Dragonite with next to no training and very few feats of strength defeated ML. Again, I’m expected this level of utter obscenity in power level to sustain itself and end up with Dragonite joining Ash’s strongest team as hackMon TM.

So all in all, totally farcical episode. It managed to disappoint my relatively normal expectations for the episode and displayed an utter lack of good writing that really has been the through line of this series and was very lackluster on the animation front as well.
It was a Lucario shoving episode, except the shoved Lucario ended up as a corpse in the throat.
 
It's the Naganadel case all over again (well, slightly better due to the Golurk raid, but still). Though I actually did like the choreogaphy, as I'm a huge fanboy of using the battlefield

Animation wise, as I said, there were some good cuts at the beginning of ML vs Dragonite before I thought it collapsed. Wish it could have sustained that at least.
 

CMButch

Kanto is love. Kanto is life.
Decent episode but : a) battle could've been a bit better and b) Gengar should've won against Mienshao and then lose to Base Lucario.
 

Joltik-Kid

Careful? Where's the fun in that?
2 v 2 battles are never really that interesting unless they're the focus of the entire episode.... we all knew that would not be the case here. There's always hit and miss episodes with every series, Pokemon being no exception, in fact usually having a lot of miss episodes. Can't really say this was one of them... maybe the miss is the imbalance between Dragonite and Gengar, but Ghost Boi has actually been used and seen more often than D-nite despite being captured later. Riolu being impressed with its evolved form is nothing new to this series, most of Ash's Pokemon look at their evolved forms in aww, whether they ultimately evolve or not.
Mega Ring speculation was ill-advised and Greninja speculation was irrelevant, just being in Kalos wasn't the focus of this episode, rather Korrina reappearing was. Not to mention Froakie wasn't even used in that gym battle anyway.
 

U.N. Owen

In Brightest Day, In Blackest Night ...
Does this confirm that Gengar's ability is Cursed Body? Bone rush would have had no effect if it was Levitate.
 

AuraChannelerChris

Easygoing Luxray.
Let's be real here. Ash is never losing a battle until maybe during the top ranks, but by then it will be done cheaply by containing a loss and then a win in the same episode unless it's one of the top cheese characters like Raihan. This was the perfect episode for him to get a loss, but alas, Korrina just keeps being disappointing as a character.
Korrina was ranked 1001 in this tournament? Wow, gym leaders ain't nothing.
We just saw why. Ha ha.
 

Red and Blue

Well-Known Member
Let's be real here. Ash is never losing a battle until maybe during the top ranks, but by then it will be done cheaply by containing a loss and then a win in the same episode unless it's one of the top cheese characters like Raihan. This was the perfect episode for him to get a loss, but alas, Korrina just keeps being disappointing as a character.

We just saw why. Ha ha.
He will probably have his first loss against his rival in the PWC
 

Almighty Zard

He has returned.
Ash fought this thing before, so it's not that surprising to me that he was able to beat it in a 1 v 1 scenario.

kind of reminds me of how Pikachu soloed Misty's Mega Gyarados after fighting one previously (Lysandre's)it took his whole team, along with Alain's Mega Zard X and Malva's Mega Houndoom to drop that one. I got the same vibe here, especially since it doesn't look like Korrina's changed out any of her Lucario's moves.

The more times a person faces something the better equipped you are mentally to handle it, and trainers are half the battle, last time he fought this thing it took both Fletchlinder and Pikachu to take it out, this time he knew what was coming...complete with a **** eating grin when he saw her mega evolve it.

of course Dragonite did use Dragon Dance a few times so it's Dragon Claw scoring the ko made perfect sense, besides we all know how durable the dragonite lines are especially in the anime.

To me the only disappointing thing of the episode was finding out Hyper Beam was Dragonite's 4th attack, I was fine with everything else.
 
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