S. Suikun said:
The only Kanto contest that I felt really held a candle to the Grace and Kelly contests (the benchmarks for good contests) was the one with Wakana.
Bleh. They made Wakashamo suddenly learn Mega Kick when it was all two convenient, that really kills that contest for me.
Houen contests, definitely. No Zenigame, it had Eneko and Agehunt, more interesting characters as was stated (Ogata, Wakana, and if you wanna count her, Mika, the girl with Absol and Ratta, can't hold a candle to the likes of Grace and Phantom), and the writing for the contests was so much better than they are now (see my other rants about contests). Grace vs. Shuu, and Haruka vs. Grace, that whole episode alone truely seemed to stick to the ideal of battles that look good, rather than all this "just try and KO the opponent" crap I've been seeing lately. Also, the Houen contests had appeal scores. I liked those, it gave us a good idea of how well Haruka did compared to the other coordinators there. And I say it alot, but Eneko vs. Samayouru may've been the only botch-up, but Eneko's preparation before the battle was perfect.
And every contest in Kantou having the Grand Festival rule of switching Pokemon between each round sounds good, but considering that she had a single good Pokemon in her team the whole time (though Gonbe and Eievui are decent), and one Pokemon that makes me emo everytime it appears on-screen, yeah, horrible idea. It would've been great to have back when she had Wakashamo, Eneko, and Agehunt, but in Kantou, no.
I personally didn't mind Harley appearing so much in Kantou (considering he never showed up until late Houen, when Shuu had been getting the spotlight up to that point), but that first Kantou contest was friggin degrading towards the guy. If those god damn writers had just let him win that thing, I'd have been perfectly fine with it, but due to a horrid deus ex, the Yamabuki two-parter's been reduced to being amongst my least favorite episodes ever. However, Kantou is the only region where Harley scored a victory against Haruka thus far. However, that contest was pretty much the only noteworthy one of the entire region, and though the guy only appeared twice in Houen (and didn't act near as hilariously gay as he did in his last few appearances), I certainly can't deny Houen credit for introducing the loveable rival in the first place (besides, his losses in Houen were at least sensible).
As for Shuu, never quite liked the guy for seeming like such a friggin Shigeru clone, so Houen loses points for introducing him and having him show up as much as he did. Kantou, meanwhile, gains points for making his appearances less frequent and for finally making him a bit more indepth. But then Kantou loses points for the seemingly more blatant Contestshipping hints during the Wakana contest*. So in the end, I'd go with Houen contests.
*I don't quite like that pairing... aside from Shuu rubbing me the wrong way at first, there's all the "They're major rivals of the opposite sex, they just HAVE to get together" bullcrap I'm never one to agree with. Though, I said I'd put Advanceshipping over Contestshipping, and that same thing could apply ("They're co-stars of the opposite sex, they just HAVE to get together"), in the end, I just find Satoshi more likeable than Shuu (otherwise, though, I'll admit both Advanceshipping and Contestshipping have their fine points. Satoshi and Shuu support Haruka, even if it's in their own ways with Shuu being more of a hardass about it. Thus, it comes down to likeability for me).
