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Finals IV: Partner (1221)

ShuckFam

Well-Known Member
This is not shade at Iris but just an observation: it seems like she's the poorest member of the M8. She needed to climb a tree to get a decent internet reception to watch the final that she couldn't actually attend in person (most likely because she would have to buy a ticket to attend since she was knocked out) and she never wears her princess outfit outside of battle, most likely because it's a day rental.

Also, Lance and Alain clearly did not care enough about the final. Especially Lance, he didn't give a damn about it.
 

MegaSalamence05

Well-Known Member
As much as I've been critical of Pokemon Journeys, the 1v1 fight between Leon's Charizard and Ash's Pikachu is the best singular battle in the anime's history. Surpassing Paul's Electivire vs Ash's Infernape and Alain's Mega Charizard X vs Ash's Greninja. In my opinion and it's not because Ash won in the end.

Okay now on to the episode. (Needed a bit of time to digest everything).
This episode is a tale of two things. As Cinderace was set up through out these 4 episode as this looming threat where in reality it became a GOTCHA moment. That I didn't like. The battle between Gigantimax Cinderace and Gigantimax Pikachu should've been longer but stylistic pieces later on in this episode make up for it. I just can't escape that criticism. Now how the battle between Leon's Charizard and Ash's Pikachu unfolded. At moments they were on equal footing. but as the battle progressed Leon's Charizard overwhelming Ash's Pikachu and rightfully so. Two base Pokemon, two Pokemon that are synonomous with the Ash Ketchum character. When Pikachu is in the exhaustive faint state came the best moment in the episode. When all of Ash's Pokemon came to Pikachu's aid to provide it the emotional support that it needed to push through the exhaustion and win in the end. Everyone showed up. Even his released Pokemon. (Butterfree, Pidgeot, Lapras, Greninja, Naganadel). 2 Pokemon that some people don't recognize Ash owns. (Larvitar and Solgaleo) (I'm firmly not in that camp). (I'm in the camp that they're the same way Ash owns Mr. Mime). When Pikachu uses Thunderbolt. (I recognize it as B Thunderbolt from Pokemon Masters EX). Vs Leon's Charizard's Fire Blast it was a clash of wills who's will is stronger and Ash's will to win was stronger in the end.

A beautiful episode concludes, one of the greatest singular episodes this franchise has ever done. The animation was just superb.

Now I'm interested to see where things go in the next few weeks whether the show continues. (I want it to) It's status is still up in the air. The only time that I can recall the next series being unveiled in November instead of October was in 2007 (Movie 7, Movie 8 and Movie 9 aired on consecutive weeks) (If I remember that correctly (I could be wrong on if it was just Movie 7) (That lone part is what I'm hazy on) to Unveil Diamond and Pearl's saga. So there is history there.
 

Peluched49

Well-Known Member
Defs agree about Cinderace. It was the weakest part of the battle for me in general. They set up Libero at the beginning but it didn’t go anywhere. Dracovish just threw random attacks without any strategy, even weird combos like using dragon rush when it was a steel type. It’s also a shame he didn’t take a single hit there, bc that would’ve made losing to Pikachu more believable. Otherwise have it miss hjk or something. Compared to Inteolon/Rillaboom it’s battles were just relatively worse

But it’s literally my only problem with the battle, everything else was top-notch
I dont think i had any problems with cinderace vs dracovish. To be fair from the first attack its set up that cinderace has the win in the bag, it outspeeds the already damaged slow dracovish. For a water gun attack cinderace uses the weaker type pyro ball to cancel it out, ash uses fisheous rend to attack (a water type move to attack a fire type) cinderace turns to a steel type and outspeeds dracovish to land the hit first. At that point ash really cant tell what type cinderace will turn into, so charging with dragon rush doesnt seem questionable at all, at this point cinderace speed advantage is emphasized again with him running into the attack, dodging and finishing the fight with move he used first at the beginning. That final high jump kick shot is excellent, probably the best shot from that episode. Masaki Iwane is just great at selling the impact of the attacks.

It was a well done curb stomp that made sense, quick and fast paced with some great shots . It set up cinderace as even more formidable than the first episode, unfortunately the execution was crap.
 

doofinc

get rillaboomed
Cons:
  • Cinderace
    • One-shot OMEGALUL
    • I don't care about your in-universe justification
      • Well you see the G-Max form of Cinderace is mostly the ball instead of Cinderace, so when Cinderace jumps off the ball and has to deal with the G-Max Volt Crash, it does not have nearly as much stamina as Chonkychu blocking the G-Max Fireball, so it makes sense that it fell in one shot
        • I made this up to try to justify it for fun, but I totally do not agree that this is a justification. Feel free to use this as a bad faith argument to troll people
Someone pointed out to me that all of Cinderace's moves were soccer/football references. Therefore the real reason why Cinderace lost was because none of the other D-Max moves were soccer/football-related and thus the writers were blocked from incorporating them and were stuck with giant fire ball.

Blame the soccer/football association for not allowing Quakes, Steelspikes, or Punches into the game.
 

Bortgreen

Captain Pikachu is EPIC
Someone pointed out to me that all of Cinderace's moves were soccer/football references. Therefore the real reason why Cinderace lost was because none of the other D-Max moves were soccer/football-related and thus the writers were blocked from incorporating them and were stuck with giant fire ball.

Blame the soccer/football association for not allowing Quakes, Steelspikes, or Punches into the game.
If only

95e9011e364db3595e181d5049d048ca.jpg
 

Durrendal

Well-Known Member
No, he will have a child called Kasutoshi with Misty and three yampers. I have this feeling that Serena will be a lonely, drunk, homeless woman. She will be shouting 'I COULD have been Kalos queen!' at random passers by in Pallet town and Ash and his family will walk past her and Ash won't even recognize her.
Why is he having children with 3 yampers?? What??
 

Niormon

Well-Known Member
Dephender woke up and decided to be savage today.
His opinion is only just that, opinions what he says doesn't that #1 Ash was trending on twitter #2 People where happy to become a champion ( even the English VAs were happy) and as far as I know that was victory writers and animators deserve an admins words on the episode aren't be all end all, no offensive to dephender, just giving my own opinion on this.

edit also people need to stop thinking Goh is companion lol HE IS NOT ONE! he has his own stuff going on right now
 
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Kazuniya

read/watch dungeon meshi
Probably because those are the companions who watched Ash win live/on TV and then congratulated Ash on his victory.

Goh didn't watch the finals, and he doesn't even know the outcome of the battle yet because he's doing Project Mew at the same time, so it wouldn't make sense to include him there with other companions.

I'm sure Goh will give his own congratulations once he meets up/talks with Ash again. :)
 

AARTX

Dead inside…
I like that after the match, Leon is the one that wants to keep battling to be "stronger" whereas Ash just responds with him just wanting to have "more battles" instead of the usual "battling to be motto motto tsuyoku" (its also Leon who says his "let’s battle again" catchphrase)

Looks like even Ash knows that he has peaked XD.
 
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Ash-Pikachu

Well-Known Member
I really how people felt a potential victory wouldn't be legitimate because Ash had access to all three trump cards but here we all are celebrating Ash's victory. It just goes to show just well this episode was executed. Ash and Pikachu's determination was at its peak thanks to the friends on their side cheering them on. They really made it feel like this victory was earned.
 

Jikkle

Volcano Trainer
Watching the episode again after the dust has settled a few more thoughts I had.

Cinderace and Mega Lucario should've been the penultimate battle. Felt like the writers forced the whole Eternatus thing to make the battle "special" event like they did with the Tapu's in SM and thus they were able to cram in G-Max Pikachu to throw everything possible in the battle.

I liked how they presented Leon in a way that he was completely confident in his victory but not in an arrogant way.

I also liked how as the battle progressed he got more and more absorbed into just the pure joy of the battle. It's not that he didn't enjoy battling but it felt like he became less about taking on a challenger and more just becoming a childlike joy and excitement of the battle.

It wasn't just the animation was great in this episode the cinematography was great as well. Now I'm no film expert but I thought all the angles of the action were really well done and added to the feeling of epicness of the battle.

On that note I loved the angle of Leon from behind when Ash was announced as winner. You could see his body language start from the tension of the battle, disbelief in losing, and finally acceptance of the loss all in a matter of seconds. Not to mention the symbolism of his hat which is his crown just being kinda laying flat on the ground when previously when he threw it off the crown was pointing straight up.

Finally I liked how the battle also lit a fire in Diantha to go along with the fire it lit under Cynthia earlier. Felt like the passion for battling was dull for all these champions and Ash really ignited that passion in them with his passion for battling and his Pokemon.
 

pickapika

Well-Known Member
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
 
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KukuiFanatic501

Well-Known Member
It's gonna be weird seeing Ash lose later on seeing as how he's the current world champion.
Not really. A lot of us had this feeling when he won Alola but lost to opponents like Bea afterwards. It’s not an official match to transfer titles, and if Ash does continue into S/V, he’ll just use a different team. Losing with a different team doesn’t diminish the feats of the former one.

There’s no official rule saying a Champion can’t reset and make new teams with different Pokémon from the ground up.
 
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