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Dragon Battle! Ash VS Iris!! (1154)

Mr.Munchlax

Great Ball Rank Trainer
now don't ask Ash to use reserves lmao

If Dracovish can beat a Champion-level Pokemon in one hit, those stupid reserves aren't needed.
It'd still be nice if Ash handled his pokemon like he did in the Battle Frontier: mainly using his Journeys team while occasionally rotating one of his reserves if a PWC match calls for it
 

Risrhayne

Well-Known Member
Wow! Did I blink and miss the episode? While it was absolutely a great episode, the hugest mark against this was its pacing, holy cow was that fast. At first I appreciated them getting right to the point with Ash getting the letter immediately (Aw, Sirfetch’d opened the letter for cool points, somebody tell him he’s not coming this episode) but then they decided to cram in Goh catching Panpour and Pansear, conveniently leaving out the grass monkey since he already has one, have the gag of Goh trying to catch Iris who I guess didn’t know what time Ash would be coming and decided to snooze, have Drayden tell the viewers to put their pitchforks down because that’s his Axew and infodump that Iris is now the champion of Unova in practically about 10 minutes. And for what? The hyped up Dragonite vs Dragonite battle that barely happened because Ash’s panicked and Dracovish had to come in and one-shot Iris’? Did they not wanna spoil Axew evolving?

I wish this episode was a two-parter because it really needed it, especially for Dragonite’s sake since it was the one with the problem. It would have been a nice little arc of it feeling nervous about battling such strong dragons. Maybe Ash could have been grinding his way through the super class in preparation while Iris was watching so she could pick up on Dragonite getting worried. She talks to it and Ash the day before about cheering up, bringing up her journey with Axew, but during its battle with Haxorus (there would be no teasing Dragonite Vs Dragonite), it starts to falter again, so ASH reminds it to relax and have fun, leading up to it learning Draco Meteor.

The way that they did it feels like Iris gave the match to Ash by nudging Dragonite back in-sync with him rather than it being because of Ash. If she never gave it that dragon master pep talk in the middle of the match, she probably would have won. Ash was using his same old technique of using opponents’ moves against them, he didn’t have to do any work to help Dragonite. So congrats Iris, you played yourself. Such a kid.

But yay, Ash is now in the Ultra Class. Hopefully this means no more time skips and his opponents are serious threats that have full episodes dedicated to their fights. The rankings have no sense of scale as it seems like every win Ash gets changes his rankings either by the hundreds or maybe a few points. I don’t want his next win to launch him from 99 to 34 and the next battle is THE tournament.

Pacing aside though, this was still a great episode because it wasn’t all just find Pokémon, fling pokeball. And just because your Pokémon in fully-evolved, it doesn’t mean it can’t have anymore important episodes.
 

Dephender

Gizakawayusu
Staff member
Moderator
"Saikyo" as "greatest" is often used analogously to "strongest" in the series, though, from what I recall.

I mean the word DOES mean strongest/best/topmost etc, but in this case Shaga literally says "Iris is now the top Trainer in the Isshu region; in other words, she holds the position of Champion." It's just a description of the term Champion, not a separate statement supposed to imply anything beyond that.
 

Dragonsoldier77

Bittersweet Satisfaction
I personally like the Dracovish part, the writer is correct to teach kids that no matter how strong they are, never underestimate opponent.

Irish clearly say that she had Haxorus avoiding Dracovish's jaw. She know that even though Haxorus is stronger, it will fall prey to that jaw if not careful, just like the Angrynite.
And how in the world is angrynite using one of the move it uses often in anyway ‘underestimating’ an opponent? That’s just as bad as when ash decided to never get close to anything ever again after losing to bea, just dumb.

Even with haxorus i find saying it’s iris being ‘careful’ as a huge stretch, when haxorus never took a step even againts nite who had many long range attacks.
 
If Dracovish can beat a Champion-level Pokemon in one hit, those stupid reserves aren't needed.
Sadly, it need 2 hits: Fishious Rend and Ice Fang (Not to mention that in the previous fight against Happynite, Angrynite clearly got hurt by Hurricane, it had to cover its face with both hands and the body which wasn't covered by hands are hit, the sound and flash animation signifying it). So the reserves are needed?
 
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Deleted member 384931

Guest
Cant that girl with her "Clefairy" be Valerie? She is a Fairy type trainer after all
 
Seeing the sad treatment to the poor "Champion" Iris , Im glad that my fav gym leader Korrina got out of the way quickly. At least his Lucario did better than Haxorus/Dragonite lmao
 

Mr.Munchlax

Great Ball Rank Trainer
It's kind of ironic how, between this & Alola, the episodes with the most callbacks were for the two seasons that were the most hated by fans (pre-dating Journeys)
 
So here is the thing. Without sound like a deranged fan I think it was Dragonite who sunk the ship. Iris could very well be an excellent trainer and probably could defeat Ash (she did it with Excadrill) but for some reason something keeps possessing her to use Dragonite despite his terrible losing streak. Couple that with Ash’s Dragonite’s out of nowhere tankness from taking all those Dragon type moves and that’s why he won. She also seemed less interested in taking the battle seriously towards the latter end and was just enjoying what was going on.
???
There is no losing streak but maybe an on-screen one. It definitely contributed to her becoming champion, we just have to assume it rather than seeing it.
 

Blood Red

【推しの子】
So here is the thing. Without sound like a deranged fan I think it was Dragonite who sunk the ship. Iris could very well be an excellent trainer and probably could defeat Ash (she did it with Excadrill) but for some reason something keeps possessing her to use Dragonite despite his terrible losing streak. Couple that with Ash’s Dragonite’s out of nowhere tankness from taking all those Dragon type moves and that’s why he won. She also seemed less interested in taking the battle seriously towards the latter end and was just enjoying what was going on.
...are you seriously gonna blame Iris' defeat on her Pokémon, instead of the trainer herself? Also, what's this about her not 'taking the battle seriously'? She fought Ash, and she lost. That's that.
 

Dragonsoldier77

Bittersweet Satisfaction
???
There is no losing streak but maybe an on-screen one. It definitely contributed to her becoming champion, we just have to assume it rather than seeing it.
And what exactly is the point of arguing for off screen battles? You can make up whatever you want for offscreen.

Might as well argue that noivern, or whichever other mons people say were useless, all had a bunch of winning streaks off screen against random trainers. See? Noivern really was dependable like the profile said guys, we just didn’t see it.
 

Mr.Munchlax

Great Ball Rank Trainer
Out of curiosity, was anyone else expecting Drayden to give Goh the Axew he was handling throughout the episode?
 
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