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Ash vs Tobias, what went wrong?

RafaSceptile

Well-Known Member
Nothing went wrong. Tobias was genious for spending all time catching legendary. In that universe, apparently no one thinks that way except goh.
I bet everyone here used to think the same way when they were small.
*hides his Lvl70 Rayquaza in Pokémon Emerald in the Hoenn League*
Absolutely no, imagine using Legendary Pokémon in a Pokémon League. Shame /s
 

U.N. Owen

In Brightest Day, In Blackest Night ...
Putting aside my distaste for league rivals as a whole, the issue on the table is the nature of Tobias. We aren't built up to his character, but we do get a mention of his power and how he steamrolls entire gyms with his Darkrai.

The issue is that we get the same attempt to captivate the audience with mystery and awe with Latios which does not work in the slightest because we don't get lines dedicated to Latios nor do we get any significant foreshadowing. It also attempts to repeat the same feelings we received from Darkrai. Karl Marx did once say.

Karl Marx said:
Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.
 

Litleonid

Well-Known Member
Supposedly, the League Winner is meant to get a chance to challenge the region's Champion.

Do you think that the fact that Cynthia is still Sinnoh's Champion implies that she managed to defeat Tobias' team of illegal mons? Or that maybe he decided not to take her on? Or what I proposed is actually not the case?
I like to believe our queen, Champion Cynthia, destroyed him and his bs team.

Also, yeah this was such a horrible battle. It was basically them admitting Ash is strong enough, but they weren't allowed to have him win for whatever bs reason.
 

Ignition

We are so back Zygardebros
Introducing a character who’s a walking Action Replay with his sole defining trait being unbeatable Legendaries is bound to be a disaster. Though I must admit I weirdly admire the complete BS that it is and helps convey how much the writers have to go out of their ways to screw him over
 

Trillion

Well-Known Member
Ignoring the obvious [the writers' desire to end the Shinou League in just one episode], I think Satoshi made several mistakes when he chose his line-up. He never should've brought Fukamaru and Cotoise to that battle. Fukamaru's only real claims up to that point was its Draco Meteor attack and the fact that it could use Rock Smash: the latter attack which Darkrai recovered from quite easily, anyway. Draco Meteor in itself wasn't a particularly useful attack again fast opponents from my viewpoint, so that wasn't a good strategy either. Then there's the simple fact that Fukamaru just wasn't bulky enough to have good defensive properties, as witnessed when it lost to a single Dark Pulse. As for Cotoise, it never had any impressive wins up to that point, so it really should've been left out due to common sense alone.

Even Heracross was quite middling in general: it didn't have the most impressive battle record, so it shouldn't have been on Satoshi's priority list as a good weapon against Takuto, but this is assuming that Satoshi put any real thought into his choices to begin with, which I'm not certain we're meant to believe he did. The rest of his choices were decent, although I question why Pikachu was capable of battling while Goukazaru, Mukuhawk, and the others on his main DP team were apparently out of commission. In general however, Takuto outclassed Satoshi in almost all respects.
yeah i always thought it was dumb that he used gible and torkoal when he has charizard and snorlax, along with other stronger pokemon

especially since he was fully aware of how tough his opponent was
 

Leonhart

Imagineer
I like to believe our queen, Champion Cynthia, destroyed him and his bs team.

Also, yeah this was such a horrible battle. It was basically them admitting Ash is strong enough, but they weren't allowed to have him win for whatever bs reason.
Her strongest Pokemon was Gablias, which despite being a great battler, would probably still struggle against Mythicals and Legendaries. And that's only taking into account Takuto's Darkrai and Latios: we don't know if he had other Legendaries as back-up. So while Shirona likely would've won because she had to keep her Champion title, I doubt she would've "destroyed" Takuto's team easily.

On a related note, I vaguely recall a lot of complex battle tactics being discussed in the pre-premiere DP189 topic for how Satoshi might beat Darkrai, and in hindsight it's amusing to me that Jukain's win simply came down to it waking up from Dark Void and hitting Darkrai with Leaf Blade rather than through some innovative stratagem on Satoshi's part.
 

PokemonBattleFanatic-

Well-Known Member
On a related note, I vaguely recall a lot of complex battle tactics being discussed in the pre-premiere DP189 topic for how Satoshi might beat Darkrai, and in hindsight it's amusing to me that Jukain's win simply came down to it waking up from Dark Void and hitting Darkrai with Leaf Blade rather than through some innovative stratagem on Satoshi's part.
If Paul were to defeat Ash and went on to face Tobias he would've done his research on his Darkrai and planned before the battle.Have his Froslass learn Destiny Bond.
 

TheCrazyMaster

Well-Known Member
Not gonna lie, while I understand why most people think "Tobias had legendaries" is a good enough answer as to why Ash lost to him, I honestly find it to be a pretty poor argument.
Legendaries are pretty strong for the most part, but I feel like we've had just as many "normal" Pokemon replicating feats performed by some of the stronger legendaries that we've seen in the anime (like the valley Dragonite). Also, I feel that with the amount of times that we've seen normal Pokemon going up against legendaries, most of them aren't any different from very strong regular Pokemon. Even when trainers do lose to legendaries it isn't always a curbstomp. When When Forrest lost to joy's Latias, his Rhyperior put up a pretty good fight. Even when Ash's Torkoal of all Pokemon battled Registeel, it still put up a fairly good battle before going down.
In all honesty, I feel Darkrai and Latios could just as easily have been replaced by a stong Gengar and Flygon respectively (or a similar Pokemon for that matter).
 
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Captain Jigglypuff

Leader of Jigglypuff Army
There should have been hints of his existence before the League given to Ash and the audience through dialogue. Every dream crusher up until then and Cameron and Alain made at least one episode appearance before the League. Tobias just appeared literally out of nowhere without anyone ever mentioning him which is absolutely ridiculous as you would think Gym Leaders and regular trainers having battled a Latios and Darkrai would be an unusual battling situation and something not seen everyday. It isn’t like Latios and Darkrai are so common in the wild let alone being owned by a Trainer that it would lead to rumors being spread among the public. And you’d think a Nurse Joy would say something about Tobias at some point because a trainer came rushing in carrying their Pokémon while Ash and his friends were in the Pokémon Center saying some incredibly strong Trainer just defeated them and their Pokémon needed help immediately.
 
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Zero1999

Well-Known Member
There should have been hints of his existence before the League given to Ash and the audience through dialogue. Every dream crusher up until then and Cameron and Alain made at least one episode appearance before the League. Tobias just appeared literally out of nowhere without anyone ever mentioning him which is absolutely ridiculous as you would think Gym Leaders and regular trainers having battled a Latios and Darkrai would be an unusual battling situation and something not seen everyday. It isn’t like Latios and Darkrai are so common in the wild let alone being owned by a Trainer that it would lead to rumors being spread among the public. And you’d think a Nurse Joy would say something about Tobias at some point because a trainer came rushing in carrying their Pokémon while Ash and his friends were in the Pokémon Center saying some incredibly strong Trainer just defeated them and their Pokémon needed help immediately.
Just his Darkrai sweeped the League and the gyms, it wasn't any trainer that conquered easily the gyms, it was someone with a freaking Mythical pokemon running rampant through the region with no mention as to who he is and what his purpose on the League was at all, hence why i felt occasionally that this battle was extremely forced with the sole purpose of knocking out the MC.
 

Captain Jigglypuff

Leader of Jigglypuff Army
Just his Darkrai sweeped the League and the gyms, it wasn't any trainer that conquered easily the gyms, it was someone with a freaking Mythical pokemon running rampant through the region with no mention as to who he is and what his purpose on the League was at all, hence why i felt occasionally that this battle was extremely forced with the sole purpose of knocking out the MC.
That’s exactly what I mean. Something like that isn’t a normal occurrence and someone should have said something hinting towards Tobias’ existence. Even if it was a passing conversion between two random background characters with something like this:

“Did you hear about that really strong trainer that just won the Beacon Badge?”
“No I did not.”
“Apparently he won using one really strong Pokémon.”
“I wonder who he could be? Do you think he’s here right now?”
 

Leonhart

Imagineer
Just his Darkrai sweeped the League and the gyms, it wasn't any trainer that conquered easily the gyms, it was someone with a freaking Mythical pokemon running rampant through the region with no mention as to who he is and what his purpose on the League was at all, hence why i felt occasionally that this battle was extremely forced with the sole purpose of knocking out the MC.
I don't think that anyone denies that it was forced, but realistically speaking, I don't think that Takuto's achievements prior to the Shinou League had to be well-known throughout the region much less to Satoshi himself, because Satoshi isn't someone who normally keeps tabs on what other trainers are doing [with the exception of his major rivals].
 

sampleswift

Member
Tobias came out of nowhere, and had very few character interactions with anyone besides Ash. I would have Tobias appear a bit more earlier and have him interact with more characters, especially Cynthia. At least give him more characterization.

Tournament antagonist who is not a villain, has an unparalleled strength and bulldozes everything in the way, a red/gray color scheme, usually a loner, and the protagonist gains their respect by standing up to them. Tobias is Jiren from Dragon Ball Super done badly.
 

Ubermuk

Sticky & Sweet
What went wrong? I think the pacing of the show back then is the main reason why we got Tobias. The writing team probably ran out of time and realized that the Sinnoh league wasn't going to have enough episodes to flesh out Ash's dream killer so they quickly came up with Tobias and left it at that.

But I also gotta facepalm at the writers for making Ash go down in such a lousy way. Darkrai vs Sceptile and Pikachu vs Latios were both well written but the rest of the battle was stupid and they made Ash seem really dumb for picking Torkoal of all things...
 

AuraChannelerChris

Easygoing Luxray.
The writing team probably ran out of time and realized that the Sinnoh league wasn't going to have enough episodes to flesh out Ash's dream killer so they quickly came up with Tobias and left it at that.
They sure as hell had all the time in the world, but then the filler hell between the 7th and 8th gyms happened.
 

DatsRight

Well-Known Member
The whole point of the battle was to admit that Ash was strong enough to win a league but they weren't allowed to let him. Tobias came out of nowhere so viewers wouldn't be invested in the battle and Ash and Paul would remain the highlight of the Sinnoh league.
It really does feel like that was the point, that they had Ash lose to such a blatant almost comically cheap plot device to make obvious to the viewers 'look we know you want him to win, but we can't do it! You know we can't if THIS is what we have to stoop to!'.
 

mehmeh1

Not thinking twice!
It really does feel like that was the point, that they had Ash lose to such a blatant almost comically cheap plot device to make obvious to the viewers 'look we know you want him to win, but we can't do it! You know we can't if THIS is what we have to stoop to!'.
pretty much, plus letting him go out on a blaze of glory to not have it feel like an insult after Ash vs Paul pretty much wrapping up DP's plot
 

SerenaRulez

Well-Known Member
But I also gotta facepalm at the writers for making Ash go down in such a lousy way. Darkrai vs Sceptile and Pikachu vs Latios were both well written but the rest of the battle was stupid and they made Ash seem really dumb for picking Torkoal of all things...
They could have had Ash use a better Pokemon but then if it was one of the more popular ones like Snorlax people would have been more upset if he had lost to Darkrai. :(
 
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