Genaller
Silver Soul
Hey everyone,
the following is a compilation of all of my arguments concerning Ash-Greninja’s “battle viability”. This topic has been heavily debated around here for roughly the past 1 and a 1/2 years and this thread is basically my way of finally getting closure on the matter. Note that I may update this post if I feel the need. This compilation will be divided into the following sections:
I: The Diantha’s (Mega) Gardevoir Feat
II: The Alain’s Mega Charizard X Feat
III: Other Notable Feats
IV: Additional Assertions
V: Refutations Of Supposed Counters
VI: Concluding Statement
Please let me know if I missed anything that should’ve been considered when assessing Ash-Greninja’s battle viability. Here are some short forms that you should be aware of before continuimg: A-G = Ash-Greninja, MC-X = Mega Charizard X, VA-G = Veil Ash-Greninja, MA-G = Mastered Ash-Greninja, MG = Mega Gardevoir, SB = Shadow Ball, MB = Moonblast, WS = Water Shuriken, TRio = Team Rocket trio of Jessie, James and Meowth, CBA = Champion Base Ace and EMA = E4 Mega Ace.
— Section I: The Diantha’s (Mega) Gardevoir Feat
1. Prior to starting his battle with Diantha in XYZ 25, Ash states “Greninja, in our last battle with Diantha, we got defeated even before Gardevoir mega evolved” while we see a clip of Gardevoir wrecking Pikachu after which he says “But we’ve gained a lot of experience since then”.
2. After Gardevoir dodges Greninja’s first attack, Clemont states “They really are amazing” and then Serena states “They can communicate via mere eye-contact!”. Gardevoir then dodges several more attacks after which Ash says “At this rate, this is going to end up like last time. Gardevoir is too fast; we can’t get a hold of it”. We then cut to a worried sweating Pikachu and then Serena says “I expected nothing less from Diantha” and Clemont says “Dealing damage to the Champion will not be that easy”. Ash also says “she predicts our every move” after Gardevoir dodges a flurry of Water Shuriken and then Greninja gets flung back hitting a tree from the mere shockwave of Moonblast. Since they have seen Diantha and Gardevoir perform before, the above statements wouldn’t be made if Diantha and Gardevoir were severely suppressing their capabilities (in particular Diantha’s eye-contact communication and Gardevoir’s evasion since those were the aspects that the statements were praising).
3. By (2.) Greninja being able to land a hit on Gardevoir is both an impressive feat on Ash’s part for coming up with using the steam from Water Shuriken as cover for a surprise Cut and on Greninja’s part for causing actual damage on Gardevoir indicated by her flinching and moaning. Furthermore (2.) provides support for all later mentioned A-G feats in this battle also being impressive.
4. After the initial Cut vs Shadow Ball clash between VA-G and Gardevoir, Gardevoir (via momentum) is pushed back while moaning after which Diantha states “Had that hit, we wouldn’t have stood a chance”. This indicates that VA-G was capable of dealing substantial damage on Gardevoir. Later on when VA-G goes in for a Cut Diantha for the first time visibly calls out “Dodge!” indicating a shift in how seriously she’s taking this battle. After VA-G is able to strike Gardevoir with Cut, Diantha visibly gasps in surprise and then Serena says “They caught up...” with Bonnie finishing “...to Gardevoir’s speed!”
5. Due to (4.) Diantha used ME because VA-G proved itself to be an opponent warranting its use and based on (1.) this narratively symbolizes Ash being good enough as a trainer for making a Champion resort to ME. Note that warranting ME needn’t mean that VA-G > Base Gardevoir, but it does mean that VA-G was sufficiently close to her in strength a.k.a there’s a cap on how much better than VA-G Base Gardevoir could have been. These conclusions are further enforced right after Gardevoir MEing by Ash saying “She finally mega evolved it!” and Serena stating “They’ve got Diantha and Gardevoir backed into a corner!”.
6. Mega Gardevoir is able to fully block VA-G’s Aerial Ace upon MEing, then MG again fully blocks another Aerial Ace with Reflect, but after Clemont says “I have never seen these waves before”, VA-G uses Cut (that may or may not have been augmented by Double Team) and the Reflect barrier collapses indicating that MG could not fully block this attack. This is particularly notable because Diantha would have no reason to deliberately hold back from a defensive standpoint and matter of fact trying hard from a defensive standpoint would go perfectly in-line with the premise of the battle. To make a comparison Cynthia’s Garchomp could effortlessly block Paul’s Torterra’s strongest attack without even using a move whereas Diantha’s Gardevoir in Mega form couldn’t fully block VA-G’s (Double Team augmented) Cut even with a move that too a move that is specifically designed to help a Pokémon block attacks.
7. After achieving MA-G, it launches the Water Shuriken on its back and MG responds by launching an especially strong Shadow Ball which is depicted as the fusion of several smaller Shadow Balls (which indicates that the attack was far more dense in addition to having greater volume). It’s safe to say that this was significantly stronger than any regular Shadow Ball MG has used including those used both later and in XY 28 to send TRio blasting off and break through their barrier cage respectively. Despite this Water Shuriken outright overpowers this “multi-fused” Shadow Ball and strikes MG with her moaning both at the moment of contact and when the Water Shuriken explodes; the sheer force then flings MG back with her then falling on the ground, and we see visible bruises on her (while she’s in the air at least). Note that shortly after Gardevoir MEs, MG and VA-G have a Shadow Ball vs Water Shuriken clash and cancel each other out. While this doesn’t mean that they were equal, it does mean that 1 move could only be so much stronger than the other. Let’s call this “max ratio” X. If we consider VA-G’s Water Shuriken to be the stronger move in that clash, then we have Pow(VA-G WS)/Pow(MG regular SB) =< X and Pow(MA-G WS)/Pow(MG multi-fused SB) > X which implies Pow(MA-G WS)/Pow(MG multi-fused SB) > Pow(VA-G WS)/Pow(MG Regular SB) <=> Pow(MA-G WS)/Pow(VA-G WS) > Pow(MG multi-fused SB)/Pow(MG regular SB) where Pow() is the power function that takes a Pokémon’s damaging move as an input and returns a positive real number (a.k.a the power of the move) as an output. For the record, if we had instead assumed that MG’s regular Shadow Ball was the stronger move, then we would obtain an even greater disparity between VA-G and MA-G’s power (try working it out!
). Based on this we can conclude that MA-G at the end of the battle was significantly stronger than what VA-G was right after Diantha MEed Gardevoir. The strength progression during the battle is supported by (6.).
8. From (7.) we know that MA-G is significantly more powerful than VA-G. We also know from (4.) that VA-G had a substantial boost in power and speed from Base Greninja. MA-G is just the Ash-Greninja form mastered to a greater degree, it follows that the stat boosts should be of the same proportion as VA-G’s stat boosts. As a (not necessarily accurate) example, say we know that VA-G got a power increase of 60 and a speed increase of 40 compared to it’s base form and also that going VA-G -> MA-G granted him an additional power boost of 30, it would logically follow that the corresponding speed boost from VA-G -> MA-G would be 20 since that would maintain the same proportion of increase (60/40 = 30/20). Therefore, MA-G would also be significantly faster than VA-G and by extension Base Gardevoir.
9. After battling Ash-Greninja and sending Team Rocket (TRio) blasting off, Gardevoir falls to her knees panting in exhaustion with Diantha saying “That really was a bit too much, wasn’t it?” to her. This state was primarily caused by the Greninja/A-G battle with the evidence being the sheer amount of time spent battling A-G in addition to the number of moves used against it relative to TRio where only 2 moves were used and they were dispatched quickly. Also “full power” was MG emitting a full power blast of Psychic energy (a.k.a Psychic) to break her shackles rather than her merely “powering up” since in Pokemon (unlike say DBZ) destructive energy isn’t emitted by merely powering up unless you’re going from 1 state to another (e.g. Ash’s Infernape going from Base to Blaze). There have also been other instances where “full power” has been used after which the Pokémon has shown no signs of exhaustion whatsoever (e.g. Pikachu using full power on his Thunder when facing Juan in order to overpower the 5th Ice Ball). The interaction with TRio did push her over the edge in terms of stamina drain, but primary credit for her accumulated stamina drain unequivocally goes to (Ash-)Greninja.
9. The boost from initial VA-G -> MA-G based on (7.) and (8.) should more than compensate for the cap mentioned in (5.). It follows that Mastered Ash-Greninja >= Diantha’s Base Gardevoir as of XYZ 25.
— Section II: The Alain’s Mega Charizard X Feat
In XYZ 38; right after the A-G transformation Alain states “Thank you, Ash. I’ve been waiting for you to show that full power of yours. Take me to even higher stages!” After a while of intense battling, Alain says “I’m having a lot of fun right now. I’m grateful to you for making me feel this way” and Alain again thanks Ash at the end of their battle. Finally Alain says “Through this battle, Ash and his Pokémon made us grow” when talking to his Charizard’s Poke Ball. Based on this Ash and A-G pushed Alain and Mega Charizard X (MC-X) the most since they went through their rigorous training between ME Acts 3 and 4. On a side note Alain implies A-G > Kalos League Finals Peakachu since he only acknowledges A-G as Ash’s “full power” despite witnessing Peakachu’s perfromance first-hand.
We know that Alain and MC-X lost to Siebold in ME Act 1 and got owned by Primal Groudon in Act 3; however, believe it or not people don’t have scouters in Pokémon (unless you’re Clemont)! By this I mean Alain can’t go “Pokémon A was this much stronger than my MC-X and my MC-X’s strength has increased by so and so, therefore that Pokémon would now beat/loose to MC-X with X difficulty”. Alain needs to actually have a proper battle with a Pokémon to discern how well that Pokémon would fare against the now stronger MC-X and of all the opponents he’s faced, Ash-Greninja gave post ME Act 4 MC-X the best fight. This is further supported by MC-X stumbling against A-G and not against MDoom, and although Alain’s Zard was previously damaged by Pikachu in the KL finals, it had substantial stamina drain from facing 9 ME Pokémon and we also know it wasn’t at full health despite healing between some battles based on its visible bruise marks prior to facing MDoom in ME Act 4. It should be noted that stumbling after a face-off is a classic shonen anime trope and has also been used in other Pokémon battles (e.g. Ash vs Norman; Grovyle vs Slaking). It follows that Ash-Greninja >= Malva’s Mega Houndoom as of XYZ 38.
— Section III: Other Notable Feats
- In XYZ 7 Heidayu’s Bisharp takes on Sampei’s Greninja along with Ash’s Pikachu (most likely nowhere near his “peak”) and Frogadier simultaneously yet despite this is able to heavily damage all 3 of them with Fury Cutter and Snarl while not getting hit even once itself. After Frogadier evolves, Greninja lands a Water Shuriken on Bisharp due to the latter being distracted by Pikachu’s Electro Ball though what’s really impressive was that after Greninja becomes VA-G for the first time, it charges in with Cut against Bisharp’s X-Scissors and utterly owns it resulting in Bisharp getting KOed when previously Bisharp owned Sanpei’s Greninja, Ash’s Pikachu and Ash’s Frogadier both times when they attempted to charge in simultaneously.
- In XYZ 13 Ash’s Greninja faces off against Sawyer’s Sceptile where the latter is able to gain the upper hand thanks to Sawyer’s tactic of focusing on long range attacks. Sceptile lands both Dragon Pulse and Leaf Storm while not getting hit directly even once prior to VA-G though it is worth noting that Sceptile and Greninja had a Leaf Blade vs Aerial Ace clash and close range move clashes usually result in both Pokémon taking damage. After Greninja transform into VA-G; however, it is able to easily strike an on guard Sceptile with Aerial Ace resulting in Sceptile crashing right into the wall and getting KOed.
- In XYZ 23 as VA-G is battling MC-X, Alain shows genuine excitement and states “This is it... This is what I’ve been waiting for!” as well as “Charizard, can you feel their power as well?”. This is very notable since Alain feels this way even after having faced opponents like Siebold’s Mega Blastoise and Steven’s Mega Metagross, and having beaten Malva’s Mega Houndoom. Now I certainly don’t think that VA-G was on the lvl of any of those Pokémon as of XYZ 23, but it still does say a lot when VA-G was able to get such a reaction out of the only non-Champion trainer to ever defeat an E4 in an on-screen battle.
- In XYZ 29 (Ash-)Greninja beats Wulfric’s (Mega) Abamasnow lower mid diff (certain aspects of the Wulfric battles are addressed later on).
- In XYZ 32 A-G OHKs league competitor Titus’s Altaria with Water Shuriken and is heavily implied to have swept Titus 3-0 similar to how Alain’s MC-X swept Trevor 3-0.
- In XYZ 35 Ash-Greninja beats Sawyer’s Mega Sceptile. It should be noted that Sawyer’s Sceptile in Base was able to beat Tierno’s Blastoise without taking any damage in a manner that was even more dominant than Paul’s Electivire’s win over Barry’s Empoleon. Base Sceptile also easily overwhelmed the same Pikachu who previously beat Clawitzer + Aegeslash and while Pikachu was exhausted and very damaged, Pikachu was also in a weakened state when facing Paul’s fresh Electivire in the Sinnoh League yet was able to stay competitive prior to Electivire activating Motordrive. Sawyer’s Sceptile (both in Base and Mega form) can freely control the trajectory of the Frenzy Plant wines as if they were guided missiles, and it’s implied that Ash needed the heightened reaction time granted by the A-G form (due to the synchronized sensations) in order to successfully have A-G outmaneuver the wines. It should also be noted that this Frenzy Plant does not have any recharge time. Lastly while Sawyer may be a relatively inexperienced trainer, Hoenn Champion Steven Stone does consider him worth mentoring which speaks volumes about his potential and by extension the potential of his ace (Mega) Sceptile who got its Mega Stone from Steven.
— Section IV: Additional Assertions
- Based on the progression of A-G’s max power WSs from vs Diantha to vs Sawyer KL semis to vs Alain KL finals, XYZ 38 A-G > XYZ 35 A-G > XYZ 25 MA-G.
- Base Gardevoir’s full-power Moonblast wouldn’t overpower the max power Water Shuriken MA-G used against Mega Gardevoir’s multi-fused Shadow Ball never mind the giant Water Shurikens that A-G used in the Kalos League. If it could then from (7.) we would have Pow(Gardevoir’s MB)/Pow(MA-G’s WS) > X <=> Pow(Gardevoir’s MB) > Pow(MA-G’s WS)X <=> Pow(Gardevoir’s MB) > Pow(MG’s multi-fused SB)X^2 (since based on (7.) we have Pow(MA-G’s WS) > Pow(MG’s multi-fused SB)X) <=> Pow(Gardevoir’s MB)/Pow(MG’s multi-fused SB) > X^2 > X (since X > 1). It is absurd to think that there would be such a difference between Base Gardevoir’s full power Moonblast and MG’s multi-fused Shadow Ball (especially when considering how drastic the boost from Mega Evolution is), therefore Gardevoir’s Moonblast isn’t overpowering MA-G’s initial full power Water Shuriken (and thus certainly not any of A-G’s giant Water Shurikens).
— Section V: Refutations Of Supposed Counters
— If anyone believes that Malva didn’t go all-out against Alain because when Mega Houndoom had MC-X on the ground Malva chose to tease/provoke Alain rather than continue attacking (after which there are no other signs of Malva not battling optimally), then note that Alain was also not battling optimally since he had a major falling out with Marin which would unquestionably affect his mental state. Matter of fact MC-X performs noticeably better after Alain gives a speech about reaffirming his bond with Charizard which ties into Ash’s statement in XY 75 about the attitude of the trainer rubbing off on the Pokémon. When facing Malva, Alain’s mental state was initially still reeling from him yelling at Marin (a person important to him), but after finding his resolve to be the strongest with Charizard, he became fully focused on the battle (a.k.a Malva’s provocation ironically helped Alain battle optimally).
— If anyone thinks Diantha is a weak Champion, then keep in mind that she was portrayed as Steven’s equal during the Team Flare climax and both even considered it an honor to be battling alongside each-other.
— For anyone who believes that the Avalugg battle in XYZ 27 or the Mega Abamasnow battle in XYZ 29 can be used to discredit my CBA/EMA estimate for Ash-Greninja:
Ash-Greninja’s strength is contingent on how synchronized Ash and Greninja’s feelings are. In XYZ 27 it’s made abundantly clear that Ash wasn’t in his right state of mind due to overly prioritizing strength/winning over love (which makes sense if you apply continuity since XYZ 25 was the first time in over 900 episodes that Ash could battle competitively with a master lvl trainer) and it got so bad during the match to the point that Ash and Greninja were so out of sync that the form in all likelihood actually started weakening Greninja rather than strengthening it (and there’s also the point of how a trainer’s attitude can affect his Pokémon in general as stated by Ash in XY 75).
Regardless Ash-Greninja was nowhere near his best which is supported by Wulfric stating “Wow, it’s like a completely different Pokémon from before” as well as asking Ash “Just what made you two so strong within these few days?” during their 2nd match when Ash-Greninja pummeled Base Abamasnow like a rag-doll. It’s clear that the fault for the Avalugg loss primarily lies with Ash, therefore using that feat as evidence to cap Ash-Greninja in any way at all is utterly fallacious.
In the 2nd Wuflric battle, after Abamasnow owns Talonflame, Clemont has a statement about Wulfric “playing for keeps” this time indicating that Wulfric (with Abamasnow in particular) was battling at an (unquantifiably) higher lvl in the 2nd match than in the first making any comparison to Hawlucha’s battle with Abamasnow in the first match inadmissible. Further evidence is given in the visible depiction of Abamasnow’s Ice Shards which look noticeably stronger and faster in the 2nd match.
With regards to the number of hits Ash-Greninja took to win; I’d like to bring attention to Ash’s Sceptile vs Spencer’s Claydol. Their battle was very close eventhough Sceptile only needed a single strike to win. In a converse sense: while Ash-Greninja needed many hits to beat Abamasnow, Abamasnow would’ve been KOed in a fairly short amount of time without landing a single hit (against Ash-Greninja specifically) if it hadn’t Mega Evolved meaning that Ash-Greninja would have beaten Base Abamasnow with negligible difficulty despite needing many hits to do so (a.k.a number of hits needed to win needn’t correspond to the difficulty of the win which is the actual indicator of overall relative battle viability).
— For anyone who believes that (Ash-)Greninja’s perfromance against Diantha’s (Mega) Gardevoir was analogous to Axew’s perfromance against Cynthia’s Garchomp and therefore shouldn’t be given serious consideration since if Axew’s feat were taken seriously, then Axew would be superior to some of Paul’s Pokémon (in particular his Torterra as of DP 40):
A) Comparison of the Iris’s Axew vs Cynthia’s Garchomp and (Ash-)Greninja vs Diantha’s (Mega) Gardevoir battles:
- Garchomp does not attempt to dodge, block or counter any of Axew’s attacks whereas (Mega) Gardevoir attempts to dodge, block or counter every single 1 of (Ash-)Greninja’s attacks.
- Due to the above (Ash-)Greninja earned every single hit it landed whereas Axew earned none of the hits it landed.
- Axew took 2 super effective attacks from Garchomp and Greninja took 1 not very effective attack and 1 super effective attack from Base Gardevoir. On a side note using the fact that Garchomp’s Draco Meteor had a visible charge time to claim that Garchomp wasn’t suppressing herself against Axew is fallacious since Gardevoir’s Moonblast against Base Greninja also had a visible charge time and yet it is unanimously accepted that Gardevoir wasn’t battling seriously from an offensive standpoint against Base Greninja specifically (since that would go against the premise of the battle which was to draw out and learn more about the Ash-Greninja form).
- Axew clashed with 0 of Garchomp’s moves whereas Veil Ash-Greninja has 4 clashes with (Mega) Gardevoir’s regular Shadow Ball which include Cut vs Shadow Ball, Water Shuriken vs Shadow Ball, Water Shuriken vs Shadow Ball (MG) and Aerial Ace vs Shadow Ball; 2 clashes against Reflect where the 2nd time Veil A-G was able to make the barrier collapse and finally as Mastered A-G overpowered Mega Gardevoir’s Multi Fused Shadow Ball (the strongest variant of the move ever seen in the anime) making 7 clashes in total.
- Only Axew’s Giga Impact deals damage to Garchomp whereas the Scratch barrage and Dragon Rage have practically no effect (so 1 move dealt damage). On the other hand both Base Greninja’s and VA-G’s Cut deal damage on Gardevoir and MA-G’s Water Shuriken deals (substantial) damage on Mega Gardevoir; in addition Gardevoir is pushed back after the Cut vs Shadow Ball explosion (right after Greninja becomes VA-G) indicating that partial damage was dealt and based on Diantha’s comment right afterwards she believes that this Cut (with its power amplified thanks to forward momentum) would have dealt substantial damage had it hit Gardevoir directly, and finally the Cut (+ Double Team) causing Reflect to collapse also likely dealt partial damage (so 5 moves dealt damage). This also shows that it’s far easier to dismiss Axew’s “feat” as an outlier than (Ash-)Greninja’s since for the latter we have multiple cases of being able to deal damage (a.k.a a consistency measure) whereas for the former we only have 1 case where damage was dealt.
- Cynthia deliberately stops Garchomp’s last attack and calls the battle off whereas Diantha never does either of these things (Ash fainting does stop the battle, but the battle stopping was never Diantha’s voluntary choice).
- There is no reliable method for determining the existence of an upper bound for how much Garchomp was suppressing herself in terms of raw stats whereas there is a reliable method for determining the existence of an upper bound for how much Gardevoir could feasibly have been suppressing herself in terms of raw stats since she resorted to Mega Evolution. Note: the greater this upper bound is, the further said Pokémon was from using its maximum stats.
- The (Ash-)Greninja vs (Mega) Gardevoir battle lasted roughly 3 times as long as the Axew vs Garchomp battle (with respect to on-screen time progression and not in-universe time progression); this indicates that the writers cared far more about the former battle which implies that the former battle is meant to comparatively be taken far more seriously than the latter battle.
As you can see Greninja wins overwhelmingly in all but 1 comparison (and it’s already covered that we have no upper bound for how much Cynthia was holding back but we do for how much Diantha could have been holding back) .
B) Cynthia’s Garchomp when facing attacks from Paul’s Pokémon:
— Garchomp vs Chimchar
- Garchomp blocks Fire Spin with her scythe arm
- Garchomp counters Chimchar’s Dig with her Dig
— Garchomp vs Weavile
- Garchomp also blocks Blizzard with her scythe arm
- Garchomp (mid Dragon Rush) dodges Ice Beams
— Garchomp vs Murkrow
- Garchomp dodges Haze
- Garchomp counters Sky Attack with Giga Impact
— Garchomp vs Torterra
- Garchomp is unable to do anything against Giga Drain because she’s immobile
- Garchomp blocks Frenzy Plant right after she regains mobility
Notice the pattern here; Cynthia’s Garchomp always either blocks, dodges or counters a move of any of Paul’s Pokémon whenever she is physically able to whereas against Axew she didn’t even attempt to block, dodge or counter a single one of Axew’s moves. This along with the above assessment of the Axew - Garchomp battle solidifies that Axew has no business being compared to any of Paul’s Pokémon whatsoever much less (Ash-)Greninja. Also Axew tanking 2 SE moves can’t be used to compare it to any of Paul’s Pokémon (who all got OHKed) since by the above assessment Garchomp could have just been suppressing herself to the point that her attacks became weak enough for Axew to tank.
— Section VI: Concluding Statement
In conclusion, Ash-Greninja is definitively in the CBA and EMA spectrums making him Ash’s strongest Pokémon (pre-SM) by a comfortable margin.
the following is a compilation of all of my arguments concerning Ash-Greninja’s “battle viability”. This topic has been heavily debated around here for roughly the past 1 and a 1/2 years and this thread is basically my way of finally getting closure on the matter. Note that I may update this post if I feel the need. This compilation will be divided into the following sections:
I: The Diantha’s (Mega) Gardevoir Feat
II: The Alain’s Mega Charizard X Feat
III: Other Notable Feats
IV: Additional Assertions
V: Refutations Of Supposed Counters
VI: Concluding Statement
Please let me know if I missed anything that should’ve been considered when assessing Ash-Greninja’s battle viability. Here are some short forms that you should be aware of before continuimg: A-G = Ash-Greninja, MC-X = Mega Charizard X, VA-G = Veil Ash-Greninja, MA-G = Mastered Ash-Greninja, MG = Mega Gardevoir, SB = Shadow Ball, MB = Moonblast, WS = Water Shuriken, TRio = Team Rocket trio of Jessie, James and Meowth, CBA = Champion Base Ace and EMA = E4 Mega Ace.
— Section I: The Diantha’s (Mega) Gardevoir Feat
1. Prior to starting his battle with Diantha in XYZ 25, Ash states “Greninja, in our last battle with Diantha, we got defeated even before Gardevoir mega evolved” while we see a clip of Gardevoir wrecking Pikachu after which he says “But we’ve gained a lot of experience since then”.
2. After Gardevoir dodges Greninja’s first attack, Clemont states “They really are amazing” and then Serena states “They can communicate via mere eye-contact!”. Gardevoir then dodges several more attacks after which Ash says “At this rate, this is going to end up like last time. Gardevoir is too fast; we can’t get a hold of it”. We then cut to a worried sweating Pikachu and then Serena says “I expected nothing less from Diantha” and Clemont says “Dealing damage to the Champion will not be that easy”. Ash also says “she predicts our every move” after Gardevoir dodges a flurry of Water Shuriken and then Greninja gets flung back hitting a tree from the mere shockwave of Moonblast. Since they have seen Diantha and Gardevoir perform before, the above statements wouldn’t be made if Diantha and Gardevoir were severely suppressing their capabilities (in particular Diantha’s eye-contact communication and Gardevoir’s evasion since those were the aspects that the statements were praising).
3. By (2.) Greninja being able to land a hit on Gardevoir is both an impressive feat on Ash’s part for coming up with using the steam from Water Shuriken as cover for a surprise Cut and on Greninja’s part for causing actual damage on Gardevoir indicated by her flinching and moaning. Furthermore (2.) provides support for all later mentioned A-G feats in this battle also being impressive.
4. After the initial Cut vs Shadow Ball clash between VA-G and Gardevoir, Gardevoir (via momentum) is pushed back while moaning after which Diantha states “Had that hit, we wouldn’t have stood a chance”. This indicates that VA-G was capable of dealing substantial damage on Gardevoir. Later on when VA-G goes in for a Cut Diantha for the first time visibly calls out “Dodge!” indicating a shift in how seriously she’s taking this battle. After VA-G is able to strike Gardevoir with Cut, Diantha visibly gasps in surprise and then Serena says “They caught up...” with Bonnie finishing “...to Gardevoir’s speed!”
5. Due to (4.) Diantha used ME because VA-G proved itself to be an opponent warranting its use and based on (1.) this narratively symbolizes Ash being good enough as a trainer for making a Champion resort to ME. Note that warranting ME needn’t mean that VA-G > Base Gardevoir, but it does mean that VA-G was sufficiently close to her in strength a.k.a there’s a cap on how much better than VA-G Base Gardevoir could have been. These conclusions are further enforced right after Gardevoir MEing by Ash saying “She finally mega evolved it!” and Serena stating “They’ve got Diantha and Gardevoir backed into a corner!”.
6. Mega Gardevoir is able to fully block VA-G’s Aerial Ace upon MEing, then MG again fully blocks another Aerial Ace with Reflect, but after Clemont says “I have never seen these waves before”, VA-G uses Cut (that may or may not have been augmented by Double Team) and the Reflect barrier collapses indicating that MG could not fully block this attack. This is particularly notable because Diantha would have no reason to deliberately hold back from a defensive standpoint and matter of fact trying hard from a defensive standpoint would go perfectly in-line with the premise of the battle. To make a comparison Cynthia’s Garchomp could effortlessly block Paul’s Torterra’s strongest attack without even using a move whereas Diantha’s Gardevoir in Mega form couldn’t fully block VA-G’s (Double Team augmented) Cut even with a move that too a move that is specifically designed to help a Pokémon block attacks.
7. After achieving MA-G, it launches the Water Shuriken on its back and MG responds by launching an especially strong Shadow Ball which is depicted as the fusion of several smaller Shadow Balls (which indicates that the attack was far more dense in addition to having greater volume). It’s safe to say that this was significantly stronger than any regular Shadow Ball MG has used including those used both later and in XY 28 to send TRio blasting off and break through their barrier cage respectively. Despite this Water Shuriken outright overpowers this “multi-fused” Shadow Ball and strikes MG with her moaning both at the moment of contact and when the Water Shuriken explodes; the sheer force then flings MG back with her then falling on the ground, and we see visible bruises on her (while she’s in the air at least). Note that shortly after Gardevoir MEs, MG and VA-G have a Shadow Ball vs Water Shuriken clash and cancel each other out. While this doesn’t mean that they were equal, it does mean that 1 move could only be so much stronger than the other. Let’s call this “max ratio” X. If we consider VA-G’s Water Shuriken to be the stronger move in that clash, then we have Pow(VA-G WS)/Pow(MG regular SB) =< X and Pow(MA-G WS)/Pow(MG multi-fused SB) > X which implies Pow(MA-G WS)/Pow(MG multi-fused SB) > Pow(VA-G WS)/Pow(MG Regular SB) <=> Pow(MA-G WS)/Pow(VA-G WS) > Pow(MG multi-fused SB)/Pow(MG regular SB) where Pow() is the power function that takes a Pokémon’s damaging move as an input and returns a positive real number (a.k.a the power of the move) as an output. For the record, if we had instead assumed that MG’s regular Shadow Ball was the stronger move, then we would obtain an even greater disparity between VA-G and MA-G’s power (try working it out!
). Based on this we can conclude that MA-G at the end of the battle was significantly stronger than what VA-G was right after Diantha MEed Gardevoir. The strength progression during the battle is supported by (6.).8. From (7.) we know that MA-G is significantly more powerful than VA-G. We also know from (4.) that VA-G had a substantial boost in power and speed from Base Greninja. MA-G is just the Ash-Greninja form mastered to a greater degree, it follows that the stat boosts should be of the same proportion as VA-G’s stat boosts. As a (not necessarily accurate) example, say we know that VA-G got a power increase of 60 and a speed increase of 40 compared to it’s base form and also that going VA-G -> MA-G granted him an additional power boost of 30, it would logically follow that the corresponding speed boost from VA-G -> MA-G would be 20 since that would maintain the same proportion of increase (60/40 = 30/20). Therefore, MA-G would also be significantly faster than VA-G and by extension Base Gardevoir.
9. After battling Ash-Greninja and sending Team Rocket (TRio) blasting off, Gardevoir falls to her knees panting in exhaustion with Diantha saying “That really was a bit too much, wasn’t it?” to her. This state was primarily caused by the Greninja/A-G battle with the evidence being the sheer amount of time spent battling A-G in addition to the number of moves used against it relative to TRio where only 2 moves were used and they were dispatched quickly. Also “full power” was MG emitting a full power blast of Psychic energy (a.k.a Psychic) to break her shackles rather than her merely “powering up” since in Pokemon (unlike say DBZ) destructive energy isn’t emitted by merely powering up unless you’re going from 1 state to another (e.g. Ash’s Infernape going from Base to Blaze). There have also been other instances where “full power” has been used after which the Pokémon has shown no signs of exhaustion whatsoever (e.g. Pikachu using full power on his Thunder when facing Juan in order to overpower the 5th Ice Ball). The interaction with TRio did push her over the edge in terms of stamina drain, but primary credit for her accumulated stamina drain unequivocally goes to (Ash-)Greninja.
9. The boost from initial VA-G -> MA-G based on (7.) and (8.) should more than compensate for the cap mentioned in (5.). It follows that Mastered Ash-Greninja >= Diantha’s Base Gardevoir as of XYZ 25.
— Section II: The Alain’s Mega Charizard X Feat
In XYZ 38; right after the A-G transformation Alain states “Thank you, Ash. I’ve been waiting for you to show that full power of yours. Take me to even higher stages!” After a while of intense battling, Alain says “I’m having a lot of fun right now. I’m grateful to you for making me feel this way” and Alain again thanks Ash at the end of their battle. Finally Alain says “Through this battle, Ash and his Pokémon made us grow” when talking to his Charizard’s Poke Ball. Based on this Ash and A-G pushed Alain and Mega Charizard X (MC-X) the most since they went through their rigorous training between ME Acts 3 and 4. On a side note Alain implies A-G > Kalos League Finals Peakachu since he only acknowledges A-G as Ash’s “full power” despite witnessing Peakachu’s perfromance first-hand.
We know that Alain and MC-X lost to Siebold in ME Act 1 and got owned by Primal Groudon in Act 3; however, believe it or not people don’t have scouters in Pokémon (unless you’re Clemont)! By this I mean Alain can’t go “Pokémon A was this much stronger than my MC-X and my MC-X’s strength has increased by so and so, therefore that Pokémon would now beat/loose to MC-X with X difficulty”. Alain needs to actually have a proper battle with a Pokémon to discern how well that Pokémon would fare against the now stronger MC-X and of all the opponents he’s faced, Ash-Greninja gave post ME Act 4 MC-X the best fight. This is further supported by MC-X stumbling against A-G and not against MDoom, and although Alain’s Zard was previously damaged by Pikachu in the KL finals, it had substantial stamina drain from facing 9 ME Pokémon and we also know it wasn’t at full health despite healing between some battles based on its visible bruise marks prior to facing MDoom in ME Act 4. It should be noted that stumbling after a face-off is a classic shonen anime trope and has also been used in other Pokémon battles (e.g. Ash vs Norman; Grovyle vs Slaking). It follows that Ash-Greninja >= Malva’s Mega Houndoom as of XYZ 38.
— Section III: Other Notable Feats
- In XYZ 7 Heidayu’s Bisharp takes on Sampei’s Greninja along with Ash’s Pikachu (most likely nowhere near his “peak”) and Frogadier simultaneously yet despite this is able to heavily damage all 3 of them with Fury Cutter and Snarl while not getting hit even once itself. After Frogadier evolves, Greninja lands a Water Shuriken on Bisharp due to the latter being distracted by Pikachu’s Electro Ball though what’s really impressive was that after Greninja becomes VA-G for the first time, it charges in with Cut against Bisharp’s X-Scissors and utterly owns it resulting in Bisharp getting KOed when previously Bisharp owned Sanpei’s Greninja, Ash’s Pikachu and Ash’s Frogadier both times when they attempted to charge in simultaneously.
- In XYZ 13 Ash’s Greninja faces off against Sawyer’s Sceptile where the latter is able to gain the upper hand thanks to Sawyer’s tactic of focusing on long range attacks. Sceptile lands both Dragon Pulse and Leaf Storm while not getting hit directly even once prior to VA-G though it is worth noting that Sceptile and Greninja had a Leaf Blade vs Aerial Ace clash and close range move clashes usually result in both Pokémon taking damage. After Greninja transform into VA-G; however, it is able to easily strike an on guard Sceptile with Aerial Ace resulting in Sceptile crashing right into the wall and getting KOed.
- In XYZ 23 as VA-G is battling MC-X, Alain shows genuine excitement and states “This is it... This is what I’ve been waiting for!” as well as “Charizard, can you feel their power as well?”. This is very notable since Alain feels this way even after having faced opponents like Siebold’s Mega Blastoise and Steven’s Mega Metagross, and having beaten Malva’s Mega Houndoom. Now I certainly don’t think that VA-G was on the lvl of any of those Pokémon as of XYZ 23, but it still does say a lot when VA-G was able to get such a reaction out of the only non-Champion trainer to ever defeat an E4 in an on-screen battle.
- In XYZ 29 (Ash-)Greninja beats Wulfric’s (Mega) Abamasnow lower mid diff (certain aspects of the Wulfric battles are addressed later on).
- In XYZ 32 A-G OHKs league competitor Titus’s Altaria with Water Shuriken and is heavily implied to have swept Titus 3-0 similar to how Alain’s MC-X swept Trevor 3-0.
- In XYZ 35 Ash-Greninja beats Sawyer’s Mega Sceptile. It should be noted that Sawyer’s Sceptile in Base was able to beat Tierno’s Blastoise without taking any damage in a manner that was even more dominant than Paul’s Electivire’s win over Barry’s Empoleon. Base Sceptile also easily overwhelmed the same Pikachu who previously beat Clawitzer + Aegeslash and while Pikachu was exhausted and very damaged, Pikachu was also in a weakened state when facing Paul’s fresh Electivire in the Sinnoh League yet was able to stay competitive prior to Electivire activating Motordrive. Sawyer’s Sceptile (both in Base and Mega form) can freely control the trajectory of the Frenzy Plant wines as if they were guided missiles, and it’s implied that Ash needed the heightened reaction time granted by the A-G form (due to the synchronized sensations) in order to successfully have A-G outmaneuver the wines. It should also be noted that this Frenzy Plant does not have any recharge time. Lastly while Sawyer may be a relatively inexperienced trainer, Hoenn Champion Steven Stone does consider him worth mentoring which speaks volumes about his potential and by extension the potential of his ace (Mega) Sceptile who got its Mega Stone from Steven.
— Section IV: Additional Assertions
- Based on the progression of A-G’s max power WSs from vs Diantha to vs Sawyer KL semis to vs Alain KL finals, XYZ 38 A-G > XYZ 35 A-G > XYZ 25 MA-G.
- Base Gardevoir’s full-power Moonblast wouldn’t overpower the max power Water Shuriken MA-G used against Mega Gardevoir’s multi-fused Shadow Ball never mind the giant Water Shurikens that A-G used in the Kalos League. If it could then from (7.) we would have Pow(Gardevoir’s MB)/Pow(MA-G’s WS) > X <=> Pow(Gardevoir’s MB) > Pow(MA-G’s WS)X <=> Pow(Gardevoir’s MB) > Pow(MG’s multi-fused SB)X^2 (since based on (7.) we have Pow(MA-G’s WS) > Pow(MG’s multi-fused SB)X) <=> Pow(Gardevoir’s MB)/Pow(MG’s multi-fused SB) > X^2 > X (since X > 1). It is absurd to think that there would be such a difference between Base Gardevoir’s full power Moonblast and MG’s multi-fused Shadow Ball (especially when considering how drastic the boost from Mega Evolution is), therefore Gardevoir’s Moonblast isn’t overpowering MA-G’s initial full power Water Shuriken (and thus certainly not any of A-G’s giant Water Shurikens).
— Section V: Refutations Of Supposed Counters
— If anyone believes that Malva didn’t go all-out against Alain because when Mega Houndoom had MC-X on the ground Malva chose to tease/provoke Alain rather than continue attacking (after which there are no other signs of Malva not battling optimally), then note that Alain was also not battling optimally since he had a major falling out with Marin which would unquestionably affect his mental state. Matter of fact MC-X performs noticeably better after Alain gives a speech about reaffirming his bond with Charizard which ties into Ash’s statement in XY 75 about the attitude of the trainer rubbing off on the Pokémon. When facing Malva, Alain’s mental state was initially still reeling from him yelling at Marin (a person important to him), but after finding his resolve to be the strongest with Charizard, he became fully focused on the battle (a.k.a Malva’s provocation ironically helped Alain battle optimally).
— If anyone thinks Diantha is a weak Champion, then keep in mind that she was portrayed as Steven’s equal during the Team Flare climax and both even considered it an honor to be battling alongside each-other.
— For anyone who believes that the Avalugg battle in XYZ 27 or the Mega Abamasnow battle in XYZ 29 can be used to discredit my CBA/EMA estimate for Ash-Greninja:
Ash-Greninja’s strength is contingent on how synchronized Ash and Greninja’s feelings are. In XYZ 27 it’s made abundantly clear that Ash wasn’t in his right state of mind due to overly prioritizing strength/winning over love (which makes sense if you apply continuity since XYZ 25 was the first time in over 900 episodes that Ash could battle competitively with a master lvl trainer) and it got so bad during the match to the point that Ash and Greninja were so out of sync that the form in all likelihood actually started weakening Greninja rather than strengthening it (and there’s also the point of how a trainer’s attitude can affect his Pokémon in general as stated by Ash in XY 75).
Regardless Ash-Greninja was nowhere near his best which is supported by Wulfric stating “Wow, it’s like a completely different Pokémon from before” as well as asking Ash “Just what made you two so strong within these few days?” during their 2nd match when Ash-Greninja pummeled Base Abamasnow like a rag-doll. It’s clear that the fault for the Avalugg loss primarily lies with Ash, therefore using that feat as evidence to cap Ash-Greninja in any way at all is utterly fallacious.
In the 2nd Wuflric battle, after Abamasnow owns Talonflame, Clemont has a statement about Wulfric “playing for keeps” this time indicating that Wulfric (with Abamasnow in particular) was battling at an (unquantifiably) higher lvl in the 2nd match than in the first making any comparison to Hawlucha’s battle with Abamasnow in the first match inadmissible. Further evidence is given in the visible depiction of Abamasnow’s Ice Shards which look noticeably stronger and faster in the 2nd match.
With regards to the number of hits Ash-Greninja took to win; I’d like to bring attention to Ash’s Sceptile vs Spencer’s Claydol. Their battle was very close eventhough Sceptile only needed a single strike to win. In a converse sense: while Ash-Greninja needed many hits to beat Abamasnow, Abamasnow would’ve been KOed in a fairly short amount of time without landing a single hit (against Ash-Greninja specifically) if it hadn’t Mega Evolved meaning that Ash-Greninja would have beaten Base Abamasnow with negligible difficulty despite needing many hits to do so (a.k.a number of hits needed to win needn’t correspond to the difficulty of the win which is the actual indicator of overall relative battle viability).
— For anyone who believes that (Ash-)Greninja’s perfromance against Diantha’s (Mega) Gardevoir was analogous to Axew’s perfromance against Cynthia’s Garchomp and therefore shouldn’t be given serious consideration since if Axew’s feat were taken seriously, then Axew would be superior to some of Paul’s Pokémon (in particular his Torterra as of DP 40):
A) Comparison of the Iris’s Axew vs Cynthia’s Garchomp and (Ash-)Greninja vs Diantha’s (Mega) Gardevoir battles:
- Garchomp does not attempt to dodge, block or counter any of Axew’s attacks whereas (Mega) Gardevoir attempts to dodge, block or counter every single 1 of (Ash-)Greninja’s attacks.
- Due to the above (Ash-)Greninja earned every single hit it landed whereas Axew earned none of the hits it landed.
- Axew took 2 super effective attacks from Garchomp and Greninja took 1 not very effective attack and 1 super effective attack from Base Gardevoir. On a side note using the fact that Garchomp’s Draco Meteor had a visible charge time to claim that Garchomp wasn’t suppressing herself against Axew is fallacious since Gardevoir’s Moonblast against Base Greninja also had a visible charge time and yet it is unanimously accepted that Gardevoir wasn’t battling seriously from an offensive standpoint against Base Greninja specifically (since that would go against the premise of the battle which was to draw out and learn more about the Ash-Greninja form).
- Axew clashed with 0 of Garchomp’s moves whereas Veil Ash-Greninja has 4 clashes with (Mega) Gardevoir’s regular Shadow Ball which include Cut vs Shadow Ball, Water Shuriken vs Shadow Ball, Water Shuriken vs Shadow Ball (MG) and Aerial Ace vs Shadow Ball; 2 clashes against Reflect where the 2nd time Veil A-G was able to make the barrier collapse and finally as Mastered A-G overpowered Mega Gardevoir’s Multi Fused Shadow Ball (the strongest variant of the move ever seen in the anime) making 7 clashes in total.
- Only Axew’s Giga Impact deals damage to Garchomp whereas the Scratch barrage and Dragon Rage have practically no effect (so 1 move dealt damage). On the other hand both Base Greninja’s and VA-G’s Cut deal damage on Gardevoir and MA-G’s Water Shuriken deals (substantial) damage on Mega Gardevoir; in addition Gardevoir is pushed back after the Cut vs Shadow Ball explosion (right after Greninja becomes VA-G) indicating that partial damage was dealt and based on Diantha’s comment right afterwards she believes that this Cut (with its power amplified thanks to forward momentum) would have dealt substantial damage had it hit Gardevoir directly, and finally the Cut (+ Double Team) causing Reflect to collapse also likely dealt partial damage (so 5 moves dealt damage). This also shows that it’s far easier to dismiss Axew’s “feat” as an outlier than (Ash-)Greninja’s since for the latter we have multiple cases of being able to deal damage (a.k.a a consistency measure) whereas for the former we only have 1 case where damage was dealt.
- Cynthia deliberately stops Garchomp’s last attack and calls the battle off whereas Diantha never does either of these things (Ash fainting does stop the battle, but the battle stopping was never Diantha’s voluntary choice).
- There is no reliable method for determining the existence of an upper bound for how much Garchomp was suppressing herself in terms of raw stats whereas there is a reliable method for determining the existence of an upper bound for how much Gardevoir could feasibly have been suppressing herself in terms of raw stats since she resorted to Mega Evolution. Note: the greater this upper bound is, the further said Pokémon was from using its maximum stats.
- The (Ash-)Greninja vs (Mega) Gardevoir battle lasted roughly 3 times as long as the Axew vs Garchomp battle (with respect to on-screen time progression and not in-universe time progression); this indicates that the writers cared far more about the former battle which implies that the former battle is meant to comparatively be taken far more seriously than the latter battle.
As you can see Greninja wins overwhelmingly in all but 1 comparison (and it’s already covered that we have no upper bound for how much Cynthia was holding back but we do for how much Diantha could have been holding back) .
B) Cynthia’s Garchomp when facing attacks from Paul’s Pokémon:
— Garchomp vs Chimchar
- Garchomp blocks Fire Spin with her scythe arm
- Garchomp counters Chimchar’s Dig with her Dig
— Garchomp vs Weavile
- Garchomp also blocks Blizzard with her scythe arm
- Garchomp (mid Dragon Rush) dodges Ice Beams
— Garchomp vs Murkrow
- Garchomp dodges Haze
- Garchomp counters Sky Attack with Giga Impact
— Garchomp vs Torterra
- Garchomp is unable to do anything against Giga Drain because she’s immobile
- Garchomp blocks Frenzy Plant right after she regains mobility
Notice the pattern here; Cynthia’s Garchomp always either blocks, dodges or counters a move of any of Paul’s Pokémon whenever she is physically able to whereas against Axew she didn’t even attempt to block, dodge or counter a single one of Axew’s moves. This along with the above assessment of the Axew - Garchomp battle solidifies that Axew has no business being compared to any of Paul’s Pokémon whatsoever much less (Ash-)Greninja. Also Axew tanking 2 SE moves can’t be used to compare it to any of Paul’s Pokémon (who all got OHKed) since by the above assessment Garchomp could have just been suppressing herself to the point that her attacks became weak enough for Axew to tank.
— Section VI: Concluding Statement
In conclusion, Ash-Greninja is definitively in the CBA and EMA spectrums making him Ash’s strongest Pokémon (pre-SM) by a comfortable margin.
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