Power Up
...
I think this is a distinction without a difference and doesn't really change anything about my argument. The battle and battles in the anime in general have multiple dimensions to them like how Ash vs Shota battles were one of a mentor and a student and Ash vs Paul battles were one of clashing ideals. Similarly, one of those dimensions is what you've went into here, but that doesn't change the fact that one of the multiple narratives of the battle is Ash facing a Champion. I'm not of the opinion that narrative is less so because of other dimensions of the story.To be fair, I think the narrative of this episode leans more towards Ash facing one of his former companions rather than strictly Ash vs. a Champion. It wasn't just a Champion that we'd want Ash to face towards the end of this tournament, it was his friend. A friend and former traveling partner that we haven't seen in a long time so now we get to see Ash reunite with Iris and have a battle with her in a dragon vs. dragon match where we get some other callbacks throughout the episode. Iris being the Champion is not only a callback to the games, but it meant that she grew as a trainer since the last time we saw her and that she overall is a strong opponent. You can also turn it around and say the same for Ash: he's a trainer that grew even more since Iris last saw him and he's an overall strong opponent.
No argument here.And one thing I'll add with this PWC. Everyone is at an even playing field at the start. When someone first gets registered for the PWC, they are at the very bottom. The only way to get to the top is to win battles. Obviously, it's more likely that E4 trainers and Champions will be closer to the top because of the probability that they'd win more. But the battle is set up so you are matched with someone in the same rank as you. So if two very strong trainers battle early on, well...chances are one will progress a little further than the other (which is what happened).
As I mentioned earlier, it's an issue of comparison and development to me between Alola and Journeys, the former which I'm not even a fan of.Considering that Pikachu is probably the most plot-influenced pokemon out of anyone's, he's probably not the best example. There will probably be a point in this series where we see Pikachu lose to pokemon that Ash's Journeys team will win against. It's not any bias towards Ash's Journeys team, it just happens every series. But also, I don't think you can compare Dragonite and Dracovish to Lycanroc like that when in the same series, Lycanroc (the pokemon that won Ash the league) lost without a win against Kukui (the strongest trainer in Alola), yet Torracat (who had less wins than Lycanroc/multiple losses to Incineroar) beat Incineroar. Just like when Charizard who previously won against an Articuno lost against Brandon but Bulbasaur got a win; different pokemon battles yield different results due to different circumstances. Honestly, that is a copout answer, but it's not wrong, so sometimes you can't really compare things 100%. But if you really want to try to make a comparison, you might as well compare Dragonite and Dracovish to Torracat and Melmetal. In each pair we have a pokemon who we haven't seen a lot of battles from but know that they're pretty solid (Dragonite/Torracat), and a pokemon who's pretty new and we really need to see more from (Dracovish/Melmetal) vs. a very strong trainer (Iris/Kukui) where the battle ended up with Ash winning.
I don't know man, I think the anime still took the battle pretty seriously especially since it was the battle that Ash got into Hyper Class with with pretty heavy consequences for both Journeys and previous regions of the anime.In the end, I don't think Ash vs. Iris here is supposed to be that deep, imo. We got Ash, who has grown to be a strong trainer using his two dragons vs. Iris, who has grown to be a strong trainer using two of her dragons and only one can win.
Last edited: