Thank the forum gods for having an auto save feature and restoration feature for posts or this whole thing would've been lost.
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Right off the bat I've got to say they really should've had an extra pre-League episode to sort out festivities and reunions, there was way too much going on here. Delete that Clemont episode from existence (or the earlier Litleo/Quilladin ones) and BAM there's your episode. That said I could say the same for the Master Class to be a bit better... alright get rid of all three of those fillers I mentioned. Bleh.
I mean, ok, you have Takeru(?) with his Furfrou who didn't get their badges in time and want to prove themselves to the participants. Great. But don't be ridiculous and battle him while he's going for his League match. Good lord. I'd tell the bloke to **** off if I was Ash, but that's maybe because thinking about this scenario got me triggered. It was nice afterwards with it making Ash look mature and all and taking the request to win the League for him, but was it really necessary? In this episode of all things? I appreciate the more story-oriented direction of this episode/League went/is going. Some interesting tidbits like this trainer, Alain and Sycamore, etc.
Oh by the way, I did see a comment about why not use Greninja vs Takeru, it should be noted be was throwing a Poke Ball the first time they met, whether that was Greninja is unclear obviously.
So I'm no Japanese speaker but I felt it was pretty clear that Tierno said Serena was the (Kalos) Queen in his eyes, or something to that degree. Come on... I saw that coming from a mile away. Tierno's smooth, lol. Serena's swift dodge of the love heart was class.
Also loved the way she was getting Ash all organised and basically told him what to do, her man isn't going to miss this League because of some random bloke. Bet she wishes she was backstage with him so he wasn't late.
The battles, rushed, yes. You can justify with the sheer and well documented power that Alain's MC-X and Ash-Greninja have, but it still detracts from the battles as a whole. I mean, it's cool to see Ash 3-0 someone (presumably) with such dominance, and Greninja ascending into a higher being is awesome because I get moist seeing a Greninja wreck house anyway (forget I said that O.O). But I almost feel like we could see extended battles if they moved festivities into last episode, had Alain vs Trevor as the ending shot, and smashed through the battles in this episode. They could easily have R64 and R32 in this episode if they did that, in my opinion. Also chopping out Takeru to put in the pre-League part. MC-X sweep was obvious as it was the first match-up against MC-Y and he was battling Trevor.
Don't ever use damage calcs or base stat distributions to justify something. It's the anime, that stuff is almost irrelevant. As far as that battle was concerned a very strong MC-X used a weather boosted powerful beam attack which landed a direct hit on its opponent. It's how we look at Cut as a sword (now kunai) attack rather than a 50 base power trash Normal type HM that no one genuinely wants to use.
Summing up, while the episode had positives in it's own right there were noticeable negatives which, in the end, made it feel rushed and detracted from the episode. Definitely would've helped if all pre-League stuff was done before the episode: Ash vs Takeru, and actually getting a genuine conversation between Alain and Sycamore, which might still happen later. I feel like the next episode won't be as rushed, but I get the feeling we'll see the very end of the R32, a little bit of R16, then the marquee battles of Ash vs Astrid and Tierno vs Sawyer. Which still seems like a bit, but I have faith.
