"Kindergarten Choas!"
This episode started with the main gang meeting a Trainer named Penelope, who challenged Ash to a battle in the forest because their eyes has met. I liked how they actually implemented the
"eye contact means battle" rule from the games, it was a nice touch. It was nice to see the new Fairy type Eevee-lution Sylveon in the anime, although Ash didn't seem too excited after seeing a Fairy type Pokémon for the first time. Bonnie mentioning about Dedenne being part Fairy was good, It's about time they acknowledged that Dedenne is part Fairy.... and it took them 10+ episodes. Oh well, better late than never. When Ash said Sylveon reminded him of Espeon before he scanned it, and when the Pokédex mentioned it evolved from Eevee he was like, "I knew it!". I thought that was cool because in BW... he never noticed similarities between a Pokémon he doesn't know and a Pokémon he's seen before. Usually he's like, "Huh? who's that Pokémon?" and starts dexing it.
I thought the battle between Penelope and Ash was decent. Froakie was doing good at the beginning, it's clever of him to use the Apples as decoy and hit Sylveon with Water Pulse. Sadly Sylveon's
Attract turned the tables, and It was over when Sylveon gave Froakie a Draining Kiss. Froakie is shy towards females, so that Attract + Draining Kiss combo must've been too much for him.
The battle ended in a rather humorous way, but the fun part about the battle was the deal that Penelope made with Ash Before the battle. Basically, she said If Ash loses the battle, he must
"go out" with her.... and Serena didn't seem to like the deal. It's cute how Serena got all worried about Ash "going out
on a date" with Penelop. That was a nice Amourshipping hint there.
I think Serena misunderstanding the deal makes sense because the way Penelope said "You're Coming with me, sweetie", it sounded like she really wants to go out on a date with Ash, but actually she just wanted him to help the kids at her kindergarten. It's kinda weird that she battled with Ash just to get her request fulfilled when she could've just ask him for help. Knowing how Ash's personality is, I'm sure he would've helped her anyway.
Seeing the kindegarten class having fun with the Pokemon was a bit boring, but it got better when Team Rocket joined the fun. They captured Pikachu and Sylveon, then they tried to get away with the truck... But Ash didn't let that happen. Seriously, Ash was so awesome here. He jumped on the moving truck and got inside it, helped Randall to get over his fear of Pokémon, and even blasted Team Rocket off all by himself! It's so cool to see Ash being heroic again. He managed to save the day and showed some great competence. This heroic side of Ash was really lacking in BW, so kudos to XY for bringing it back. Overall, this episode was awesome. The battle between Penelope and Ash was a bit short, but Ash being heroic later in the episode was cool. Not to mention, Serena getting worried about Penelope's deal was cute. The animation has been extremely smooth throughout the XY series, and this episode's animation was nice too.
The English dub of this episode was great. The voices were decent and Serena's reaction to Penelope's deal was handled well in the dub. Music-wise, Six pieces of the original BGM were kept in the dub of this episode. Like the last episode, Clemont's invention theme was kept in this episode too. TPCI tends to keep a handfull of original music tracks in the dub episodes and I'm guessing Clemont's invention theme is one of them now, which is cool because the original Clemont's invention theme is much better than the dub music that TPCI uses most of the time.
