And for the people that say this was bad writing, read this.
Just because it's justifiable doesn't mean it isn't bad writing. Since when has bad writing been solely associated to apparently been written by someone who only has a small grasp of the language their writing.
The simple fact is, Ash was COMPLETELY out of character, that's why it's bad writing. It's like suddenly Ash gets pissed off at Oshawott for showing up every time and then kicking him (literally) for not waiting to be called.
Ash shouldn't have been strategizing at all in the freaking first place. I don't know if this was really screw with Ash's character but I'm not buying it. I don't care how he badly he saw Bianca losing, or how bad he lost to Bianca's dad, he still should not have been so indecisive in a way that nearly cost him the match.
And we certainly did not need Pikachu to send that message to him, when he should've just done with what he's used to.
Now had there been any sort of build up to this, sure I would be fine with it. Like Yugioh GX for a moment for a reference. Jaden lost badly to Zane, although he was seemingly close to winning. The next time Jaden battled Zane, he wasn't battling like he usually does and it nearly cost him, since he was "over thinking it" and wasn't playing the game to his best. When he realized this, sure the match ended in a tie, but he was back to himself, and realized he could do it his way just fine, and was the better duelist because of it.
But how does that apply to Ash? He didn't badly lose to Elesa. As far as I can tell there was no reason for him to doubt his own battling method, so much that he had to over think the situation and have it nearly cost him the badge.
So it comes down to, who honestly believes that some of us didn't like this episode just because we "didn't understand it?" Honestly that sounds like a petty counterargument for my opinion. Who says "I didn't understand the meaning" and even if I didn't understand it, what makes it less bad writing, when this episode should not have been written this way in the first place.
Ash should've went in there with what he wanted to use and won the usual way he does things. He chose Palpitoad because it's a ground type, Ash has instinctively chosen Pokemon that were super effective against the Pokemon in question prior to this so it's not out of the realm of possibility that he could've just had Palpitoad and used it merely because he knew it was a ground type.
So it doesn't matter if Ash's indecisiveness is justifiable, it doesn't suddenly change my opinion of the gym, just because the writers apparently wanted to try something new and make Ash look completely out of character. And mostly to make this gym battle last an entire episode, because apparently, they could not fill the entire episode with Ash being normal Ash so they had to throw in some B.S. out of character stuff just to fill out the time.
I'm still not sure how this lasted twenty two minutes, when it really did come off as incredibly rushed and the battles didn't seem that long at all. I mean I usually underestimate how much content can be shoved in the span of a single episode, but for this episode it seems I overestimated how much content can be in an episode, because this episode felt really empty. Edit: Though the quality of the way I saw the episode might have something to do with why it felt so empty.
