Well, before getting to the "omg, this was cheap" section, I'd like to say that this was a really nice episode. The battle wasn't -amazing-, but it was very good and enough to keep with a great Grand Festival. The music used was very good and although the animation wasn't great, I guess it was decent enough.
Everybody is saying that this was a cheap win for Dawn and I must ask... why? The way the point bar was handled? Please, if you really watch the battle without
hoping to find flaws on Dawn's side; you'll see that the point bar was handled very badly
on both sides. Let me watch every movement of the battle...
*Pachirisu uses Discharge and is blocked by Gabite. No points lost. Usually, these kind of "but wait, there is more!" moves don't affect the points.
*Discharge also hits Manmoo and it comboes with Take Down to hurt Gabite
and Flareon. Urara loses like 1/6 of her points- too much imo, but as we'll see, there are worse ones.
*Gabite uses Sandstorm and Pachirisu is sent flying away. Flareon comboes with Scary Face creating one of the most creative move combinations, cancelling Manmoo's AncientPower. Dawn loses 1/4 of her points- the combination was better than Dawn's so I guess it is alright..
*Double Team + Shadow Ball combination comes next, stopping Manmoo & Pachirisu. Dawn loses another 1/4 of her points- really? Are they really telling us that this -standard- combination is better than the creative Discharge'd Take Down and on the same level as Scary Sand?
*Here is when that 1/4 & 1/6 show that were too much.
*Begins the Shadow Ball spam. There's nothing more to it, it was just Flareon throwing Balls like mad. Even more, Pachirisu was able to dodge all the Shadow Balls and Manmoo took all of them without flinching. No points lost- Both should have lost points here; Dawn for not being able to really counter the combination and Urara for just attacking without anything else and worse, because her rival avoided/took all the attacks.
*Flareon counters Ice Shard with Fire Spin and Gabite counters... Pachirisu itself with Dragon Claw. Dawn loses like 1/8 of her bar. Was completely fair.
*Flareon repeats last move. No points lost. Here, Dawn should have lost something like 1/16 of her bar- if she loses 1/8 when both moves get countered, half of that should apply here.
*Pachirisu dodges Dragon Claw and hits Flareon with Spark cancelling Fire Spin. No points lost. Now, it's Urara's turn. She should have lost here at least something like the 1/8 of Dawn. Pachirisu, alone, was able to counter both of her Pokémon moves, but the judges didn't notice it.
*And here is when the things get tricky. Here the clocks says "1:29" and Urara has only lost 1/4 and Dawn's bar points to her yellow dress. At "2:10" (just after Gabite's Dragon Claw hit on Pachirisu), Urara is above the 3/4 mark and Dawn is with less than half. That means that Flareon countering Ice Shard took
almost 1/4 of Dawn's points. What? And that the above move of Pachirisu only took a bit of Urara. What? You're really telling me that is fair? How?
*Dawn makes the first Ice Chandelier. The strange and creative combination destroys Urara's point bar. Although the IC is very good (and in this battle is the best combination) it shouldn't have reduced almost half of the point bar. But, it should have been more than 1/4 (Scary Sand isn't better).
*IC is dodged by using Dig. No points lost. Dawn should have lost points, but not many points.
*After taking two hits from the Dig/Shadow Ball combo and dodging Hidden Power, Dawn's bar now point to her red bow.
*And here comes the outrage. But, let me tell you that from here until the end of the battle, no points are lost. Dawn's side takes 4 more Shadow Ball/Dig combos, a Dragon Claw and a Fire Fang. The 4 SB/Dig were just more spam from Urara, nothing different from the first two. The other moves were just attacks; nothing special about them.
*Urara's side takes 2 Ice Chandeliers... but those Ice Chandeliers were different from each other and from the previous one. The 2nd IC was a combination of using an opponent move to your own advantage, Ice Shard + Discharge in the holes and AncientPower used in an unusual way. The 3rd IC was the same as 2nd IC but was powered-up by Manmoo's Hidden Power and was able to cancel Flareon's Fire Fang and Gabite's Sandstorm.
*So, with that in mind, which side should have lost more points? Urara's or Dawn's? I think the answer is clearly Urara, yet she didn't lose points.
Although the last part was really unfair on both sides (yeah, I can agree that by the time the IC hit, Dawn shouldn't have points left) the part that really changed everything was the "jump" from 2:10 to 1:29. Like I said before, Dawn lost almost 1/4 of her points just because Flareon countered Ice Shard... The worse part is that just before, the same thing + Gabite's counter made Dawn lost 1/8 of her bar and suddenly, half of that combination
doubles the amount of points lost? Even worse is that they make Scary Sand, SB+DT combo and Fire Spin > Ice Shard the same. What? How is that even possible? Yeah, I know the last SB should have hurt Dawn's points, but at the same time, her points shouldn't be that low when we got to that part.
See? The points bar was badly handled, that's a fact. It helped Dawn. But, it hindered her aswell. I don't get how the battle can be cheap (the cheapest one!) when it worked like that. Is anyone able to explain me? Or is that just another example that people like to call "cheap" and "unfair" to everything the main characters do without looking at the other side of the money?
Whew, I guess I'm really tired of people complaining about cheapness.
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By the way, I guess I'm liking this battle more as I rewatch it. I kind of love all the music that was used here and both coordinators were good. Still, Urara vs. Dawn Part I & II are better
Urara is a very good character and it was sad to see that she isn't staying for what is left of the GF. I would love to see her in a "The Unbeatable Lightness of Seeing" remake.
