CupidKirby
Well-Known Member
These are fictional characters. They don’t have ‘choices’, they can’t be at fault. It’s up to writers to give them something, and on this occasion they choose to not allow volkner to have anything. My problem is while there is nothing preventing volkner from getting any gimmick to strengthen himself storywise, unlike characters whose story revolves around rejecting the gimmicks, the writers choose to keep him static. Then againts this static opponent the writers choose to suddenly up what ash brings without appropriate threat escalation, so i think the writers screwed up.
Those things actually follow the same logic, though. They don’t want ash to just stomp through gyms, so they have ash use new pokemons, but also lower the power of the gyms to match. Throughout the series the power of both ash and his opponents are scaled to match, even with gimmicks. In XY, aside from korinna who was the designated mega evolution showcase even in the game, ash didn’t fight mega evolutions until he had greninja. There’s no reason to not give the other gym leaders megas as well if it wasn’t to keep things balanced, or on the other hand no reason to give wulfric a mega otherwise. While everyone of importance had a z ring in alola. Now they have ash fight someone he already beat, with barely any change in his opponents team or arsenal, with a team people have been claiming to be one of if not his best, and then give him a gimmick even though he hasn’t really had much trouble to this point. It just seem like overkill from the get go.
I’m not singling out z moves. All gimmicks feel cheap when having it or not becomes what decides the match. Imagine how lame it would’ve been if the only reason leon won againts lance and got his rank 1 earlier in the series was because he had dynamax and lance didn’t, and then had his charizard just stomp gyarados.
And I ask you this: why does every important battle that Ash is in have to be an even match? On the contrary and in my opinion, I think it's boring and bad writing not to shake things up a little once in a while. Maybe the point is to show us how much Ash has improved since Sinnoh by having his opponent stagnate. Maybe the point is for him to use the z-move recklessly and hence waste the opportunity it provides. Maybe Ash loses to prove that Volkner is way ahead of him by defeating him without a mega or z-move. Maybe the point is for him to step it up a notch because he realizes that he's in the big leagues now and needs to give it everything he has instead of meandering around with memory loss.
You are singling out Z-moves at least a little. You forgot that Korrina also fought Ash in Journeys with a mega evolution (the specialty of her region) when he didn't have Ash-Greninja or anything equivalent to face her yet he still won. Why does having a z-move when your opponent doesn't equal an auto win when the same is not true for mega evolutions?
Last edited: