soundtrack and visuals just about drag it across the finish line. Legitmately might be the best use of both in the anime in years, the soundtrack use might be goated actually. Brining back th ekanto theme was a great touch.
doesn't really feel like an epic conclusion tho. THe build-up left lots to be desired and the resolution feels like an after thought. Pikachu's friends were a nice touch, but the arbiatrarily chosen cameos for ash really made it feel fake. And it doesn't help that leon is barely a character. You're putting the masala them, and yet you have these 2-non kanto sides in the back with one of them(cleo) compeltely dropping their established mannerisms to become replaceeable side character #100. They put no thought into how Ash's friends" would intergrate and contribute. It was pure lazy, heeeey these guys were in the anime before! and at this stage, for this project? That's just pathetic.
Compunding things is Leon hogging a bunch of screen-time despite, again, having basically nothing. That he lost the first battle we've been seeing flashes of is nice, but the show treats leon and ash as this great well developed character bond when they're pratcically strangers and leon has had nothing to do with 90% of ash's journey or the vast majoruty of his character developoment.
There was a moment where I thought that pikachu was dreaming and he'd actually lost(now that would have been interesting and would explain why the ref didn't call the amtch when he had fallen down), but i suppose that was a little too ambitious.
Also these cameos brings attention to all the wasted potential here. For example, Team Rocket hasn't developed, and their dialogue throughout is honestly just grating.
the action of the 1 v 1 was phenomenal and ash actually seemed like a skilled trainer for once. A shame they couldn't do this for more than flashes.
In a vaccum, there were nice touches, but this doesn't feel like the culmantion of a multi-season journey, it feels like a glorified special episode, and that's really all on how badly all this was set-up.
I'm going to pretend emeratus didn't happen because i don't want to give this episode of all the episodes a bad grade, but..yeah, this was pretty lame