I’m mostly confused by the metric for a "good battle" because are we talking about battle choreography? Animation and art? Actual action and strategy shown by both parties. Because I personally enjoy plenty of early series battles that certainly didn't have that super beautiful animation and fluidity that newer anime have. Haruka v. Shuu, Satoshi v. Sumomo, and Satoshi v. Kenyan were all good battles to me and they didn't have more modern animation beats and all.
I guess it depends on who you ask but I think I prefer a battle with more emphasis on the actions of the Pokémon and trainers and storytelling rather than just the spectacular of whether the animation is beautiful or not. Buoysel learning Water Pulse, pulling out Swift Swim, evading Bone Rush and the usage of Aqua Jet was good battle to me for what happened not whether it was animated beautifully. I liked seeing the glass-wearing crocodile pull out Aerial Ace and suddenly start flying after the previous fight with Swarm before. Haruka's usage of the water/fire combo harkening back to the Battle Dome contributed well to her pulling back against Shuu's Dragon-Razor Wind formation.
I never cared for the "DBZ-style" fist punching back and forth that ultimately was there for animation fluff without having any impact on the actual narrative weight of the fight when I prefer the writers focus more on the actual narrative and progression of the confrontation more than anything. I think for me a battle starts and end with proper writing, strategy and in-universe handling narratively rather than boiling down to choreography/animation beats. Even if I can appreciate a good in-universe writing solution mixed in with cool animation beats like Riolu breaking Octolock and going into a close-quarters fight with Otsopus.
My main problem with newer battles is they move too fast at times. Gengar kind of just destroyed Vizquez's Raichu too easily and got KO'd itself too fast for my taste. They started off good with the good scuffle and actions by Pikachu with the tail grounding callback and usage of Raichu's tail and Reflect. I just want more of a tug-of-war rather than constant sweeping and all. I don't really care about excessive fluff close combat scenes or erratic camera usage/3D effects. (Well unless the battle is obvs something for the sake of just pure spectacular, like the opening fight in the Darkrai movie, Goukazaru vs. Gureggru's little scrap always charmed me.)
I do wish the technicalities of battles were honored more, feels like super effective moves, status moves, disadvantages and abilities don't matter a ton anymore and characters are hardly costed anything by these factors anymore in-favor of more of a focus on the win-lose end result.
