Review BW061: Underground Gym Battle! VS Yakon!!

[Dogasu]

Underground Gym Battle! VS Yacon!!


Animation - Team Kato
Screenplay - Junki Takegami
Storyboard - Tetsuo Yajima
Assistant director - Tetsuo Yajima
Animation director - Tomohiro Koyama



After his adventures on Milos Island, Satoshi can finally battle Yacon for his fifth gym badge.

 

[Yoshi-san]

I'm freaking out here! The battle was awesome and THEY BROUGHT BACK DARE DA!!! Best episode ever!

 

[Crysta Blade]

Missed the first five minutes of this episode.

Pikachu and Oshawott high fiving is totes adorable.

Add Clay's Palpitoad to the list of Pokémon-into-Snivy's-weird-kinky-shit.

Damn, tantrum much, Clay?

Ash references his Pokémon Master goal. You still think that's gonna happen after all those years? Aww, sweetie, you're cute.

Younger Clay looks kinda creepy.

Blah, blah, blah, Roggenrola takes a ridiculous amount of hits and evolves just like Sewaddle did way back when.

Yikes, Boldore had a near miss with Excadrill's claws there. That woulda hurt.

The Quake Badge appears on screen AND gets mentioned by name, in case anyone was wondering.

Well, I'll be! If it isn't 'Pokémon Dare Da?' again!

 

[Dogasu]

Yeah, the return of dare da? was a real surprise. Almost as surprising as Satoshi winning a battle in this series using *gasp* a pokemon who has a type advantage against its opponent. What is this world coming to?

 

[Crysta Blade]

Almost as surprising as Satoshi winning a battle in this series using *gasp* a pokemon who has a type advantage against its opponent. What is this world coming to?

Even more amazing, he used Pokémon with type advantages twice in the same battle. And those Pokémon won. Mind = blown.

 

[Volfi]

The gym battle was good! I really liked how the anime portrayed Yacon.

That new ending...

Overall, it was a good episode with some nice animation.

 

[Dogasu]

Please keep all discussion of the new ending theme to this thread. This thread is to talk about BW 061 and nothing else.

 

[Musashi]

I thought this episode would be a bore since the comic spoiled the whole thing, but it was actually a really fun battle. Mijumaru's technique reminded me a lot of the counter shield, and Yacon as a kid was so cute. <3

But my favorite part was definitely the return of dare da. They even had the same music! ;_;

 

[Dogasu]

So, this will annoy people.

The attack that Satoshi's Dangoro takes head on before it evolves is Horn Drill. It's a one-hit KO move, and Yacon and Satoshi even say as much, but...Dangoro is still able to take it head-on. And then evolve.

 

[Blazing Charmander]

So, this will annoy people.

The attack that Satoshi's Dangoro takes head on before it evolves is Horn Drill. It's a one-hit KO move, and Yacon and Satoshi even say as much, but...Dangoro is still able to take it head-on. And then evolve.

Doesn't Roggenrola have the Sturdy ability? I am sure that Pokemon with that ability can't be taken out by One-Hit KO moves, so it would make sense for it to come out of it unscathed and then evolve.

 

[Hassel]

Didn't watch the episode but looking at the screencaps, I'm disappointed that they use normal stock art for the Dare Da featured Pokémon now. It was cool in Kanto when they drew an exclusive portrait of the featured Pokémon in that sequence... Though I think they started using stock art in Johto already.

 

[Masurao]

inb4Hitomi reaction to little Yacon. XD

Really good gym battle. Easily the best one this season, even with the Boldore stuff. I liked Yacon alot in this episode, and his little flashback was nice too. Nice to see Ash win the type advantage...twice even, shame he hasn't really used his head like this much up until this point. Snivy's attract actually working was nice too, it been a while.

 

[Jukain]

I liked when the elevator descended to the giant doors in the game. It's nice to see an allusion to that. So, Osha has spinny junk now, too, eh? It will be interesting to see how that develops. He loses to Palpitoad=it will now live under the shadow of Ash's own Palpitoad. It was bound to happen, but I didn't expect it to be established in the middle of the saga. Snivy pwns the junk out of something with her feminine wiles again. Yeah, Sturdy would've prevented Horn Drill from working, but I still don't think Roggenrola or it's evo should've lasted through so much punishment. Oh well, the anime always seems to think pokemon (or at least Ash's pokemon) are made of iron.

 

[Adil]

Way better episode than the previous Gym battle. Also, fantabulous animation, I must say.
Cutest moment.

Spoiler

Dangoro's evolution almost looked like a digivolution, so dramatic.

 

[Zoro]

So, this will annoy people.

The attack that Satoshi's Dangoro takes head on before it evolves is Horn Drill. It's a one-hit KO move, and Yacon and Satoshi even say as much, but...Dangoro is still able to take it head-on. And then evolve.

Sturdy nullyfies those type of moves.

 

[Hitomi]

I missed the episode this morning since I had to take my kitty to the vet to get snipped (poor baby), but reading these comments makes me WAY freaking excited to watch it later. The Yacon flashback was the one thing I wanted more than anything in this episode and since there was one, I'm already content.

inb4Hitomi reaction to little Yacon. XD

xD OH JUST YOU WAIT. Once I've seen it, there will be some hardcore fangirling going down in this thread.

 

[Karamazov]

Holy God, that was an ugly Gym referee.

 

[Moe]

Usually I wouldn't comment on the Japanese airings (on the basis of not having a clue what they've said), but I was impressed with Oshawott's battling against Krokorok, and the good tactics to get out of sandstorm - he finally looked capable and fairly strong. But Ash had to ruin that by not changing him when he saw Palpitoad, which made no sense - they even had the scene of Oshawott coming back to Ash, they could easily have pointed the ball at him then and sent out Snivy from the start, it was a needless defeat of Oshawott that undid his good work and makes him look much weaker than he needs to.

Sigh @ Attract. Snivy already has the type advantage, just fight rather than waste time on defence.

With the flashback I don't get why it wasn't a Drilbur at that point (assuming its the same one?) - every other Gym Leader flashback has shown the pre-evolved form, seems odd that didn't happen.

The evolution (which seemed very undeserved) didn't look like any other one, and goes back to the more traditional form shifting evolution, rather than the earlier ones that seemed to animate the same as in the games with the swirling around and white glow. Perhaps rocks evolve differently?

 

[Cybersai]

Wow, this episode made me feel like I was watching DP Ash.

Finally. I think this is the first time I didn't feel like Ash was regressed while watching BW. Now if only his skill from DP would continue for the rest of the arc.

 

[Hellion]

A good, entertaining episode, still some things here and there bothered me.

Good points

+ DP Satoshi is back... sorta. I was so very glad to see legit strategies from Satoshi, one that even looked like Counter Shield with Mijumaru. It felt like he was strong and had a good head on his shoulder but he was still a kid with a good heart, and I liked that. The only thing I didn't like is that he didn't switch pokémon between battles.

+ Mijumaru. He wasn't brattish and annoying, which is always nice. His battle looked really great and the high fives, though kinda piplesque, were very cute. My one pet peeve is that this episode just highlights that Mijumaru should have evolved by now and gotten more serious. He's overcome his Aqua Jet issues, he's less bratty, he's kicking ass... evolve already.

+ Yacon. Yay tantrums and flashbacks!

+ Animation. It was just a visually stunning episode, though... gratuitous new sandstorm animation was gratuitous.

+ No Pikachu in the Gym battle. Just yeah... that was one of the best part of this episode.

Bad points

+ Pacing. The battles felt rushed for the most part. Especially the ones involving Yacon's Gamagaru. It really felt like the writers were rushing to get to Doryuuzu v Dangoro which felt underwhelming.

+ Tsutarja v Gamagaru. It was kinda predictable and very quick, I wished that we would have seen more from Tsutarja in this episode, especially personality wise.

+ Dangoro evolving... didn't do anything really for its personality except he can now pull a Muk, wasn't really believable and gave it one of the more overused moves of Gen V, Rock Smash. I haven't really seen anything to actually make me care about Gantle more than Dangoro so here's hoping it evolves soon as to actually not look like crap while having a non-existent personality.

Easily the best gym of the season and an entertaining episode, and a good battle, but somethings could have been better.