• Hi all. We have had reports of member's signatures being edited to include malicious content. You can rest assured this wasn't done by staff and we can find no indication that the forums themselves have been compromised.

    However, remember to keep your passwords secure. If you use similar logins on multiple sites, people and even bots may be able to access your account.

    We always recommend using unique passwords and enable two-factor authentication if possible. Make sure you are secure.
  • Be sure to join the discussion on our discord at: Discord.gg/serebii
  • If you're still waiting for the e-mail, be sure to check your junk/spam e-mail folders

Iris and Excadrill Against the Dragon Buster! (695)

TotalPotato

Vegetable of Doom!
This episode is much better than the general standard of Black & White so far, in my opinion. Iris's flashback really captivated me, and the whole emotion of the episode didn't feel contrived, which has been a problem in the past for me. It all just made so much sense. And the battles were exciting too - there was none of the "Pokémon! Use Deus Ex Machina!" that make so many battle sequences unappealing for me. I saw closely fought battles where the outcome actually made sense. I just wish more episodes could match this one in terms of quality.
 
I happened to really like this episode. I saw the Japanese version, and then when I went to watch the dub when it came on Cartoon Network, I only got to see the second half because my Cable went out. Thankfully I had seen the Japanese one.
 

Manchee

extra toasty
This was one of the first episodes I made sure to watch when I got back into the animé recently. I had only read summaries about Georgia, but I thought the idea behind her character was awesome. I like her purpose and I like that there is a character there to test Iris.

What really made me happy was that Georgia wasn't happy that she didn't get to really battle a Dragon-type. With that incentive, I think Iris will definitely work harder to train Axew, if not more Dragon-types. Plus the backstory into Iris and her Excadrill was great too.

Overall, I thought the episode was good. The plot was cool, Georgia was cool, and it all ended nicely. I look forward to where everything from this episode goes.
 

OshyHikari

c l a r i t y
This was one of the first episodes I made sure to watch when I got back into the animé recently. I had only read summaries about Georgia, but I thought the idea behind her character was awesome. I like her purpose and I like that there is a character there to test Iris.

What really made me happy was that Georgia wasn't happy that she didn't get to really battle a Dragon-type. With that incentive, I think Iris will definitely work harder to train Axew, if not more Dragon-types. Plus the backstory into Iris and her Excadrill was great too.

Overall, I thought the episode was good. The plot was cool, Georgia was cool, and it all ended nicely. I look forward to where everything from this episode goes.

I agree with you, this was one of the best Iris episodes.

Excadrill regaining his confidence and learning Focus Blast was good plus we also got to see Excadrill's backstory.

I started liking Excadrill after seeing this.
 

KingMinun

Dawn/Sinnoh Fan!
Its half term here, and I'm really bored, so I thought I'd watch an episode of BW, I decided to watch this episode because it has Haxorus and Drayden in it. Now normally I hate BW and I can't stand Iris, but this episode turned out to be really good and made me like Iris a little bit. I may tune into more episodes in the future.
 
This episode was kind of weird. Partly because Excadrill was completely out of character, and partly because this was basically a copy of "Charizard Chills" and "Trials and Adulations," where a main character bonds with a disobediant pokemon after it gets beaten up by some other pokemon. It was kind of boring, and there was way too much crying this time around. I wish Excadrill had a problem that we hadn't seen already with other pokemon. Other than that, this episode introduced Georgia, who's not a bad character so I'll give this episode a 5.
 

Janovy

Banned
This episode was kind of weird. Partly because Excadrill was completely out of character, and partly because this was basically a copy of "Charizard Chills" and "Trials and Adulations," where a main character bonds with a disobediant pokemon after it gets beaten up by some other pokemon. It was kind of boring, and there was way too much crying this time around. I wish Excadrill had a problem that we hadn't seen already with other pokemon. Other than that, this episode introduced Georgia, who's not a bad character so I'll give this episode a 5.

This episode was nothing like those. Sure, Iris and Excadrill became friends again but the reason Excadrill refused to come out of his shell was because he was ashamed of having lost against Haxorus which is why he closed himself off from Iris. And you cannot claim that Excadrill was out of his character when this specific episode ESTABLISHED his character, he didn't really have one before. And I say that Excadrill's case was handled much better and far more unique than any of the other cliché disobedience cases. We've never seen this kind of reason for shutting off from your trainer like this so this makes Excadrill the most unique case out of all of them.

Basically, everything you said (except for Langley being good, which I agree with) isn't really true.

- Excadrill's personality got truly established in this episode.
- The reason for Excadrill shutting down was unique and unlike anything we've seen before.

So while they did bond - everything else was completely different.
 

Charizard-Fan

Star Wars fan
This episode is absolutely one of the best and one of the most emotionals in Best Wishes. Iris's and Excadrill's flashbacks are so sad, especially the parts where Excadrill loses and when Iris realizes that she didn't think Excadrill's feelings at all. And rematch between Excadrill and Beartic is very good. Iris's and Excadrill's bond definitely becomes very strong in this episode.
Overall, fantastic and very sad episode.
10/10
 

MusicalZoroark

Well-Known Member
I love her. She is amazing and needs to return.
 

wobbanut

Team Awesome
Oh great, Georgia. :p I don't like Georgia very much, though I don't dislike her as much as Trip or Ursula. I don't know, something about her rubs me the wrong way.

I do like that Excadril finally starts listening to Iris with this episode, though. It was about time. :) At least Excadril has proven to be a pretty awesome pokemon since. I didn't think much of him apart from Emolga's debut showing prior to this episode, but I've grown to like him since.

7/10
 

NPT

Just a member
"Iris and Excadrill Against the Dragon Buster!"

Dragon Buster Georgia was a fun character, I really liked her. Although her goal to defeat Dragon-type trainers seemed kinda random until she explained how she got defeated by a Dragon-type trainer in the past. There was never been a 'Dragon Buster' like Georgia in the Pokémon anime before, so it was somewhat refreshing too.

The first battle between Iris and Georgia was satiesfying, I liked how Georgia defeating Iris in the battle. LOL Iris thought she could win against Georgia's huge Beartic with her Not-so-trained Axew. As expected, Beartic knocked Axew out in the battle. Then there was her disobedient Excadrill, who started battling against Beartic on his own instead of obeying Iris' commands. As a result, Excadrill also got knocked out by Beartic. I got a good laugh when Georgia made fun of Iris and told her to get serious since she really needs to train her Axew more seriously than she has.

The Excadrill vs. Beartic battle led to Iris' backstory with Excadrill. Excadrill sure gave her a lot of trouble as a Drilbur, everytime Iris swinged a vine to kick it.....she kept getting hit by Excadrill's Metal Claw. It was nice to see Iris training hard everyday to beat Drilbur, but Iris beating Drilbur and catching it was surprising since Iris didn't look like a ten-year old in the flashback. Geez, Iris was lucky to have her first Pokémon before turning ten.

It was hard to believe that Iris actually managed to got Ninty-Nine wins in a row with Drilber. Iris seemed nothing like a experienced trainer in the in the early BW episodes, in fact she seemed like a rookie in the episodes. Maybe it was the result of all the training she did with Excadrill. If she can train Drilbur to a tough Pokémon, I wonder why didn't she train Axew the same way? Then there was the scene where Iris challenged Dragon Master Drayden to a battle without thinking. Well, Iris got overconfident after Winning Ninty-Nine in a row, hence why she thought she could beat Drayden Iris' Excadril lost the battle badly and started disobeying her.

I liked how Cilan pointed out that Iris didn't understand Excadrill's feelings in the middle of the battle, it made her realize that she was wrong about Excadrill. While seeing Iris try to bond with Excadrill by apologizing and sleeping under stars was cute, but I didn't like how that's all it took for Excadrill to obey Iris by learning Focus Blast. Unlike Charizard and Mamoswine, Excadrill was disobedient for Years......so it should've took more than just one apology for Excadrill to obey Iris again.

It's good that the rematch between Georgia and Iris ended in a draw instead of Iris winning the battle. Seeing Excadril happy with Iris was nice, but I think the whole 'disobedient Excadrill' problem solved too easily.

Overall, this was an interesting episode. Georgia was a interesting character, seeing her make fun of Iris was funny. I'm glad she became a recurring character later in the series.
Iris and Excadrill's backstory was nice, however, I think this 'disobedient Pokémon obeying it's trainer' storyline was rushed compared to the Mamoswine/Charizard storyline.
 
Last edited:

TurtwigFan1

burning it down
What a great episode! I teared up when Excadrill and Iris started to get along again. So lovely to see Iris' backstory and her past relationship with Excadrill. It was really sad how Excadrill became so distant from her. I'm so glad they're back to being friends and hopefully Excadrill will have a lot more screentime. Georgia's a much more interesting rival than Trip in my opinion, so hopefully she'll turn up again soon.
 

minerswhocraft

Misty Come Back!
This episode was amazing! One of the best since The Johto League battles! (Ash V Gary, Ash V Harrison) Nothing really ever came close to those episodes, but this one was really really fantastic. True, believable, well developed emotion and relationship, amazing background depth and a wonderful end resolution! Excadrill and Iris have been very funny so far this season but this really opens up Iris' character a ton!

Excadrill is such a cool Pokemon and this was truly a tear jerking episode. So wonderfully executed. It's episodes like these that really take you back to the glory days in the original series. This season all around has felt like something out of the original Kanto series and its been such a refreshing change to previous seasons. Ash is goofy again, Iris is sassy while being epic and Silan is hilarious in his view on everything as a recipe! Not to mention the Pokemon actually have some freaking personality!

I'm looking forward to getting to watch Iris kick some real *** now that she and Excadrill are back together!
 
See Cilan, that's what happens when you leave all that stuff out unattended. It get's eaten by random passerby's.
 
Wow. Talk about bland: Georgia has to be one of the least interesting rivals I've seen in the anime so far. Iris and Excadrill's story wasn't much better.

Georgia shows up out of nowhere and says she wants to fight dragons and the only reason she gives is "I h8 dragons now because I lost to one lol". So she challenges Iris, and Beartic immediately wrecks Axew for obvious reasons. Excadrill also gets destroyed because it doesn't follow Iris' commands nor does it really do anything besides sit in its Pokeball for who-knows-how-long. Georgia leaves. Iris tells this story about how she met Drilbur and started training it... at an age that looks much younger then ten. Iris continues to contradict the rules by challenging Drayden without owning any badges. Drilbur evolves, but still gets destroyed and then locks itself in a rather uncomfortable-looking position and stays that way, refusing to train or battle.

Then Iris finds out she hasn't tried to understand Excadrill's feelings. Iris apologizes to Excadrill, makes it cry a little and then it's fine, and agrees to learn focus Blast. Iris battles Georgia again because she ate the gang's food (Who even leaves their breakfast unattended when there are going to be traveling people nearby?) and it ends in a draw instead of Iris winning because Georgia has to be a rival even though she's not even good rival material.

_________

Extra thoughts:

- The episode claims that Iris hasn't tried to understand Excadrill's emotions. Actually, her constantly asking Excadrill the reason for his behavior and trying to snap him out of it were attempts to understand Excadrill's feelings. You can't get away with implying that a character doesn't care about another after blatantly showing that she does.
- The ending would have been far more satisfying if Excadrill won instead of tying against a Pokemon it has an advantage over.
- Excadrill stayed ashamed of his loss against Haxorus for that many years? That's... not natural in the slightest. That could have been avoided if Iris was ten when she caught Drilbur, and then the episode wouldn't have contradicted the rule that trainers have to be at least ten years old. There was no reason to de-age Iris.
- Georgia's reason for becoming a dragon buster sounds like it was made up in ten seconds.
- Iris had to taunt Georgia into battling Excadrill. What happened to battles that had a side you wanted to see win?

Yeah I didn't care for this one. It wasn't as bad as others but I wouldn't rate it very high.
 

Mrs. Oreo

Banned
I liked how Georgia and Iris developed a rivalry here although I wish that Excadrill had won cuz it had an obvious advantage over Beartic. Any ways, I was proud that Excadrill finally began listening to Iris. :D
 

Pikachu979

Sinnoh Champion
I liked that we got some focus on excadrill and Iris also got a rival so that's good too. I do think her and excadrill should have won the rematch.
 

JudySpell

Banned
Iris and Excadrill got so much development here and I loved it. Georgia was such a good snarky rival too so everything worked out for the best. 8/10
 

Leonhart

Imagineer
Here we got the long-awaited debut of Iris's first rival, Langley. Langley reminded me of Urara, only she seemed much more aggressive. Her hobby of challenging Dragon-types was very fitting since she had the clear advantage with her Tunbear, and I enjoyed how we saw Iris and Mogurew in a flashback.
 
Top