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The School of Hard Knocks! (009)

DankOverlord

Komodo Dragons Rule!

DatsRight

Well-Known Member
I'm hit and miss about this episode.

On one hand it's probably THE episode that most prevalently shows Shudo's original plans of a deconstruction of the "Pokemon journey", where the profession is a crapshoot and everyone is toxically 'serious business'.

On the other hand, it STILL tries to whitewash it all in the end by giving it a happy idealistic ending out of nowhere. Gizelle spent the entire episode an on-the-nose tyrant and Ash beating her doesn't really do much but make her a sore loser, and the school is still blatantly run on a flawed ethic. What fixed this? Stopping Team Rocket?

This would the first of many episodes to have this problem, where beating Team Rocket or some other irrelevant antagonist made everything all better, because....things, not even bothering to have a proper plot resolution. I get the feeling either executives were seriously toning down Shudo's original story idea here, or they were already becoming lethargic by the ninth episode in the whole show.

(Unless there's something that was seriously lost from the Japanese edit, I know early episodes were prone to that sometimes.)
 

Flashyspark

Well-Known Member
Why do people always make a big deal about that? It was one of those early series things where the writers didn't know jack **** about the characters they were writing for yet so they had them say things that were out of character by today's standards. Reminds me of how people still talk about Ash's dad even when the dude was only mentioned one time in episode 2 smh.
 

lemoncatpower

Cynical Optimist
Why do people always make a big deal about that? It was one of those early series things where the writers didn't know jack **** about the characters they were writing for yet so they had them say things that were out of character by today's standards. Reminds me of how people still talk about Ash's dad even when the dude was only mentioned one time in episode 2 smh.
no one will ever be more beautiful than Giselle and that is the story of why he will never blush at another girl again.
 

DankOverlord

Komodo Dragons Rule!
Why do people always make a big deal about that? It was one of those early series things where the writers didn't know jack **** about the characters they were writing for yet so they had them say things that were out of character by today's standards. Reminds me of how people still talk about Ash's dad even when the dude was only mentioned one time in episode 2 smh.
Dude, take a chill pill it's a joke FFS
 

Zoruagible

Lover of underrated characters
Giselle will always be my favorite COTD. It's a shame they don't make them like her, AJ and Samurai anymore
 

ash&charizardfan

Humans are tools
Ash x Gizelle endgame. No further elaborations

I am down with that, sad part is giselle stayed as COTD when she should have made an appearance in johto like other kanto characters did.

Why do people always make a big deal about that? It was one of those early series things where the writers didn't know jack **** about the characters they were writing for yet so they had them say things that were out of character by today's standards. Reminds me of how people still talk about Ash's dad even when the dude was only mentioned one time in episode 2 smh.

Simple, she is legendary because in 26 years she is the only girl who was able to make Mr. king of oblivious ash ketchum blush to the point that he even called her attactive, that says something. He didn't do that afterwards.
 

vondecayle

Well-Known Member
Such an iconic episode that people are still talking about it to this day. I rewatch every once in a while because it’s funny.
 
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