But why out of everyone do they make Tierno such a prominent character for that arc? They made it obvious that his dance strategy was something that Ash had never seen before and that he wanted to overcome it. Plus, why not just introduce Sawyer here and make his progress shown as he is defeated quickly by Ash, but by the end of camp he's much more confident. They could then have him reappear like they did in the anime and have Ash still help coach him until the end of Laverre City.
Shauna was just as prominent if not moreso for that arc. And let's not forget that Ash and Clemont wasted the SC trio easily, already having him overcome the dancing strategy. If anything, it was to set up Ash trying to use the strategy against Korrina above all else. I have no idea why they didn't introduce Sawyer earlier, but introducing two rivals in the same arc would have been a horrible idea when we already had one for Serena as well. Either way, I don't think Tierno was every meant to be anything more than a glorified punching bag.
potat_lasaro said:
There's a difference though. Ash has been shown countless times to not worry about type matchups. This is the same trainer who used a fighting type at a fairy gym and didn't care about the matchup. Sawyer though is shown to be quite the studious trainer who would seem to worry about type matchups as once he found out that steel types were strong against fairies he wrote it down in his notebook to use later on.
Sawyer may have noted it down, but there's nothing to say he always goes for type-effectiveness. That scene was probably meant to show more that he was into learning everything. Remember, he admires Ash above all else, and Ash hardly worries about the type advantage. He saw that with Hawlucha vs. Spritzee. We have no proof that Sawyer does anything other than teach his Pokemon moves to deal with their weaknesses, but nothing to suggest he'd switch out all the time. Plus, switching on type advantages can grind a battle to a halt sometimes. "I switch out my weakness for this stronger one!" "Well, I do the same!" "Damn it!"
Amine said:
'm just saying they did the same thing.
In Ash vs Paul, It's was a good thing Ash switched this is how he won actually. He switched from pikachu agains't Aggron to nullify the metal sound effect and to have better matchup agains't Infernape. He switched from staraptor to buizel to take advantage of the aqua-jet/ice beam. For drapion it was just too strong and had a good strategy using the toxic Spikes and Ash didn't really have a good pokemon that could counter it properly. Electivire defeated Gliscor who was already worn out from the poison and from his battle vs drapion, Pikachu was also worn out. heck he even lost to infernape who was poisoned and already took down two pokemons.
In the end it was only Drapion who Ash couldn't handle. Imagine if Ash didn't switch, he wouldn't have lost and by a big margin (like the battle at the lake).
Sorry but Paul vs Ash was handeled very well. You can't say the say the same for this first half of Sawyer vs Ash.
First of all, even if Slaking has very good stats, he wouldn't be able to withstand all the super effective stabed fightinf move of Hawlucha. Ash should have switched talonflame agains't clawitzer and sawyer should have switched clawitzer vs pikachu.
I'm not arguing which battle was better. The whole fact is, Paul was able to get the upper hand sending out Drapion
because he knew which Pokemon Ash was using due to him switching up a storm. The guy literally sacrificed two members of his team just to make this happen. Most trainers don't do that in the anime.