What a bad episode. It looked really nice but that's all it had going for it. What the hell is May doing winning this battle in the first place when she has little battling experience? Seriously, she thinks Drew is a challenge and yet the person who destroys him can't beat May. Terrible episode and another reason why I prefer Dawn's contest arc to May's.
Are you joking? Beautifly Vs. Medicham is one of the best contest battles in the series.
This was the episode that made contests popular in the first time.
And considering Dawn beats a character who was a rival to her mother for like 20 years,
I don't see why you're bringing this up.
If you think this episode wasn't good you might as well stop watching the show entirely because it was one of the best.
Yeah, it looked nice.
That was a bad victory too. Don't try to justify one character's dumb victory with another's. They're both equally dumb.
I stopped watching after Sinnoh.
The techniques in this contest battle are the first thing that truly made contests stand out. May's first Contest was just her getting creamed by Drew, but this one was the first with actually strategy and techniques involved. Beautifly using its attacks to immobilize Medicham's arms to stop its attacks was great, as were the rest of the battling in this episode.
Neither is a bad victory. Characters win against older, mature characters all the time. By this logic Ash shouldn't be able to beat any Gym leader since most are 25-30 year olds who have been battling their entire lives.
Now May does have some cheap victories later on, but I remember back in 2004 this was where Contests really took off in popularity in the series.
I simply assume that the Gym Leaders limit the strength of the Pokemon they use depending on the trainer. It ruins my suspension of belief otherwise. This scenario doesn't deliver me any kind of way to do so. We have just seen a clearly superior Pokemon trainer in Drew lose in a rather one-sided battle against Grace. It has been made obvious from the episodes leading up to this one that Drew is superior to May in nearly every way in terms of Pokemon battling and yet she is able to win rather handily here? Grace didn't show any kind of strategy use like the kind that she displayed when battling Drew and many of the moves May used here were never hinted at being able to be used before (Tackle with a Gust attack protecting it, Tackle with a Gust attack while using Silver Wind at the same time, etc). It's as though she suddenly got better since her last battle. That's poor writing especially since we know that May hasn't had much battling experience.
Well, that was 2004 and I probably enjoyed this episode back then too. Re-watching it now, it's easy to spot all of the story telling flaws and I'm reviewing these episodes as I re-watch them.
No, it was to show that Drew wasn't some invincible or unbeatable character.
Its a mistake they made with Zoey, making her way too perfect and almost unbeatable in rare cases.
As for May, Beautifly had been used in most of her episodes at this point, like when she went training it in that Wailord filler and so forth. Considering this is what...nearly the 50th episode of AG or something, I'd say it was about time. Remember Dawn won her first ribbon only 26 episodes into DP, it took May over 50.
You can say that for any episode then. Obviously rewatching episodes as an adult you're going to notice things you didn't care about before when you were a kid.