Panky..
Arthur Morgan is the GOAT character ever.
In terms of visual quality, this battle seems on par with last week's, maybe slightly better. Though, not that big an improvement that it would be impressive or noticeable by any margin.
In terms of writing quality, I have mixed feelings. Ash did pretty well and kept Steven on his toes often with some out of the box stuff, but they insisted on using that stupid helpless Ash trope so many times that it felt off-putting in contrast with his smarts. Then there's him suddenly losing all manner of intelligence during that final match-up, insisting on just straightforward attacking a speedy Metagross over and over for no reason even after it failed repeatedly, and this happens right after he used a clever strategy to trap Cradilly, like wtf? It just felt like cheap fake drama to soften up Pikachu given how fresh he was while Metagross had sustained prior damage, it felt completely unnecessary and padded out screentime. They could have just given us a comprehensive and dominant Pikachu win over yet another Metagross.
The small silver lining is that the nuke didn't finish off Metagross, and instead, just stunned+damaged it long enough for an actual super-effective finishing move to land. Also, that "Alain interaction" amounted to nothing.
I do agree with the sentiment that none of these battles so far (except QF2 maybe?) have felt like Champion Tier matches for the World's biggest tournament, for one reason or another. If I had to rank all the QF battles based on writing and visual presentation then (QF2 >> QF4 > QF3 >> QF1) for the former and (QF4 >= QF3 > QF1 >> QF2) for the latter.
In terms of writing quality, I have mixed feelings. Ash did pretty well and kept Steven on his toes often with some out of the box stuff, but they insisted on using that stupid helpless Ash trope so many times that it felt off-putting in contrast with his smarts. Then there's him suddenly losing all manner of intelligence during that final match-up, insisting on just straightforward attacking a speedy Metagross over and over for no reason even after it failed repeatedly, and this happens right after he used a clever strategy to trap Cradilly, like wtf? It just felt like cheap fake drama to soften up Pikachu given how fresh he was while Metagross had sustained prior damage, it felt completely unnecessary and padded out screentime. They could have just given us a comprehensive and dominant Pikachu win over yet another Metagross.
The small silver lining is that the nuke didn't finish off Metagross, and instead, just stunned+damaged it long enough for an actual super-effective finishing move to land. Also, that "Alain interaction" amounted to nothing.
I do agree with the sentiment that none of these battles so far (except QF2 maybe?) have felt like Champion Tier matches for the World's biggest tournament, for one reason or another. If I had to rank all the QF battles based on writing and visual presentation then (QF2 >> QF4 > QF3 >> QF1) for the former and (QF4 >= QF3 > QF1 >> QF2) for the latter.
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