While the previous two matches against Hyouta were both fantastic, the repetition really starts to sink in here. Combined with some rather questionable moments on the whole, Satoshi's victory in Kurogane is a whole lot less thrilling than his loss. For once, we've already seen Hyuota's Pokemon strut their stuff more than once before, and they fail to do anything special here. That even includes Rampard. Admittedly, that is this battle's biggest falling - deja vu. Even with Pikachu's new strategy against Onix, the atmosphere feels really dry in combination with some anticlimatic music and animation. I said it in early 2007, and I'll say it again - "Together" just doesn't set a battle mood like prior openings, and it's easy to see why it was never again used for a big battle.
While the Pikachu and Aipom bouts are rather stale, Naetle's bout against Rampard makes for perhaps the most tilted Sinnoh gym match. Rampard seems to have taken a power nerf from its Zugaidos stage, not only being less aggressive, but going down in a whopping two blows from Naetle. This is made less believable by the fact that no matter how many hits Satoshi previously landed on Zugaidos, the thing took eons to go down. Additionally, Naetle has never been proven strong enough to lift up something as heavy as Rampard with its mouth, nor has it since, even in its Hayashigame stage. No unique strategy is really utilized here, and while it's not the BS victory that has been a select few past gyms, it's definitely the weakest installment of the Kurogane arc.
C
