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Review XY059: Satoshi and Serena's First Date!? The Tree of Promises and the Presents!!

Piplup

XY
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The whole "date" thing was like 1 line of Serena thinking to herself and that's it. The ep didn't focus on that at all. Also, the summary was very misleading cause they made it sound as if Serena is using the idea just to be with Ash and neglects her pkmn -- but thankfully that was totally wrong! She didn't really focus on Ash THAT much and she was actively looking for and getting the presents for her pkmn. The focus was really each of the 4 main characters getting presents for their pkmn, rather than any romance thing.
I really loved everyone's chosen presents, they were all cute and fitting for their personalities. The moment Serena suggested that Ash should give his pkmn something that he would be happy to get himself I just KNEW it'll be food lmao... I love Ash so much in these moments. Also loved Serena getting a dress from her mom, that was cute.
 
Re: XY059: Ash and Serena's First Date!? The Oath Tree and the Present!!

^^ So the title of the episode was a bait title. Because I had a feeling that there was'nt gonna be any "Date" in the episode.
 
Re: XY059: Ash and Serena's First Date!? The Oath Tree and the Present!!

It's a shame the episode didn't have many cute AshxSerena moments (I'm a hopeless shipper), but I LOVED how the episode highlighted every human characters' traits, particularly through the types of presents they gave their Pokémon. Bonnie made a drawing of all the Pokémon, Clemont created a little music box (?) of his Pokémon, Serena bought accessories for her Pokémon and Ash gave his Pokémon berries (=food! Bless his glutton self).

And once again when Ash is on his own, he finds and gets intrigued by the weirdest things (case in point: His sense of fashion is out of this world) and Serena suffers because this wasn't the date she had mistaken it to be!

All in all, it was pretty consistent with the characters' personalities and that's superb. It had an adorably sweet ending, so there's that! :)
 
Is there really any major moments for this episode regarding Ash and Serena that wasn't already shown in the preview? Also what exactly was said in the ending of the episode? I could've sworn I saw a scene of Ash and Serena talking with each other towards the end.
 
I don't get much of a chance to say this, but - Team Rocket were my favourite part of this episode. Not the going through the motions of stealing stuff, but the way that Jessie and James got their Pokemon presents in such a way that slightly hides their love for they have for them. It's always a nice side of them to see in any episode, and was handled particularly well here. I want to know what they got them though.

The interactions between Pokemon while they were waiting were nice too. Bunnelby and Hawlucha particularly wasn't something I was expecting - I like this kind of thing a bit better than in BW where they really pushed Scraggy and Axew at the expense of developing all of the Pokemon with a unique personality. There's still some problems with how unbalanced the screentime was - Fletchinder manages to be almost invisible here.

I love Ash's enthusiasm about Dunsparce. I wonder if it's a coincidence that the last time Ash tried to catch a Dunsparce it was an episode about Ash and Iris fighting and making up - symbolic Dunsparce about how they always get away?

Indeed the only disappointment in this episode would be equal to the amount you got your hopes up from the title and promotions for it. The episode itself is great as long as you weren't expecting the episode in the title. Hopefully there's the "Ash Catches a Dunsparce!?' episode down the track which is Ash and Serena on a date to complete the circle.
 
I can't believe Ash tried to catch a Dunsparce again, I thought the Land Snake Pokémon would only have a cameo appearance or Ash would ignore it just like he did to Deerling who's also a Pokémon who Ash tried to catch but failed and after that, during its reappearances Ash never had tried to catch it again. I dunno what the writers were thinking....
 
Oh wow my reply in that thread turned into a thread on its own lol...

Is there really any major moments for this episode regarding Ash and Serena that wasn't already shown in the preview?

Not really. The focus wasn't Ash x Serena at all. It was Ash, Serena, Clemont and Bonnie each finding a present for their pkmn.

Also what exactly was said in the ending of the episode? I could've sworn I saw a scene of Ash and Serena talking with each other towards the end.

Ash recieved a blue ribbon as a gift earlier in the episode but dismissed that as a potential gift to his pkmn. Serena then suggested he gets them a present that he'd like to get himself since his pkmn are similar to him. Which he does. (berries = food = what he'd love) so at the end of the ep Ash is giving Serena that blue ribbon he recieved as a way of thanking her for helping him find the right present. (we might never see said ribbon again but personally I really hope now that Serena will use it in the future like on her hair/dress for the Showcases or an accessory for her pkmn, it'll be cute)
 
This speaks to me on a spiritual level:

vlcsnap-2015-02-05-15h08m57s81_1_zpsjdqcydgf.png
 
This speaks to me on a spiritual level:

vlcsnap-2015-02-05-15h08m57s81_1_zpsjdqcydgf.png

Yeah, I know he tried to catch a Dunsparce again, which I became surprised, because I thought Dunsparce would only have a cameo appearance or Ash would just ignore it, like he did to Deerling.
 
Not really. The focus wasn't Ash x Serena at all. It was Ash, Serena, Clemont and Bonnie each finding a present for their pkmn.

Ash recieved a blue ribbon as a gift earlier in the episode but dismissed that as a potential gift to his pkmn. Serena then suggested he gets them a present that he'd like to get himself since his pkmn are similar to him. Which he does. (berries = food = what he'd love) so at the end of the ep Ash is giving Serena that blue ribbon he recieved as a way of thanking her for helping him find the right present. (we might never see said ribbon again but personally I really hope now that Serena will use it in the future like on her hair/dress for the Showcases or an accessory for her pkmn, it'll be cute)

So while the title of the episode itself is a flat out lie from what you're saying, Ash did at least seem to give Serena something for all the trouble that the lying title went through to trick us. Least SOMETHING came out of this better than nothing to be honest.
 
To be fair, there was a big question mark after the word "date". It's not like it was completely lying.
 
I thought this was a really nice episode. I'm personally glad with what ended up happening since I was never interested in any shippy elements anyway.

First things first, I loved that we got to see Serena register for her performances. The scenes of Ash and Serena shopping were pretty funny. I'm always amused by Ash's taste in clothing and items. Like I said before, I wasn't hoping for anything majorly shippy between Ash and Serena. Their conversation on the train where she gave him advice about what gift to give his Pokemon was my favorite of their actions in this episode. I prefer it when Serena just acts like a helpful friend to Ash giving him advice rather than crushing on him, so I'm glad with how everything between them turned out.

There were a lot of touches that I liked in this episode. Like Hawlucha posing for Bunnelby (and later everyone), Frogadier carrying Dedenne to the rest of the group and helping him stand up for the picture, Luxio carrying Goomy on his head, Fennekin's reaction to Serena returning, stuff like this make the episodes more endearing. I was really glad that Bonnie wanted to make a gift for all of the Pokemon and drew them a picture. I'd like to say that I'm glad that Chespin and Pancham's unnecessary skirmish wasn't a result of Chespin being a dick and that he actually looked sorry...but at the same time that little moment just seemed so pointless overall. Whatever.

What is it with Ash watching to catch a Dunsparce? Is this going to become some gag? Hope not. Anyway, moving on to my least favorite part of the episode, I absolutely hated that TR were so dickish as to try to steal the gifts that everyone got for their Pokemon. And then they, surprisingly, got gifts for their own Pokemon. They could have just had that sweet moment where they gave their Pokemon gifts, but nope. They have to be jerks as usual. Sigh. At least that got a brutal blast off, because they seriously deserved that. And we got to see Frogadier running on air. (At least that's what it looked like to me)

Finally we get to the gifts. I loved Fennekin and Pancham's different reactions to their gifts, that fact that Clemont built his gift for his Pokemon, and Ash giving his Pokemon food. Not surprised that Chespin ditched Clemont's gift to go eat off of Ash's but whatever. Actually, what I was more intrigued by was the fact that there was no Dedenne model in gift Clemont made for his other Pokemon. I guess it's not too weird though since he barely interacts with him. Loved that fact that Grace sent Serena her performance dress and that Ash gives the ribbon he won to her as well. Nice ending.

Overall, I give this a nice 8.5/10.
 
I'm terribly sorry for this episode because they had the stupid idea to promote it all over as a date between Ash and Serena. Bad description, bad preview, bad second preview, bad TV ad, bad title, bad summary. Now sadly, people will talk mostly about Ash and Serena, if them hanging out for a while was nice or a terrible disappointment, etc. Seems like it'll be remembered as "that Amour-troll episode", despite being way more than that.

This episode was beautiful. Every main character had their own moments and they really took full advantage of them. And in a really sweet way, at that. I mean, isn't just adorable how Bonnie took care of everyone and then drew them a picture, and dorky Clemont deciding to make a present by himself? We also got to see all of their Pokémon which is something I always love. Poor Fletchinder yet again had little participation, in favor of Frogadier who had more... but to be honest the mere fact that Pikachu didn't stood out more than everyone else is quite something. On Ash and Serena's side of things... the only thing that bothered me is that at some point it almost seemed like Ash was acting evasive with Serena on purpose, though it was more of a forced or rushed way of acting, rather than a straight out-of-character moment for him. Everything else was nice, specially their talk on the monorail.

And we can't forget Team Rocket. It was a given that they were going to try to steal everything for some reason, but deep inside of me I was expecting all this time that they would at least give their Pokémon presents as well. Not only I wasn't dissapointed, I didn't expect Meowth to receive one as well! They were also very lovely in this episode, specially how Wobbuffet, Inkay and Pumkaboo acted. The latter also surprised me as Pumpkaboo is usually kind of left out of this bonding stuff.

Also, the extras in this episode were all decently well done, like when Ash and co. were giving back everyone's presents, or when they all looked as excited as Ash and Serena when the coast was visible from the monorail, or the guy with the smartphone that got startled by Ash yelling. Also, I'm loving these Pokémon Quiz hosts lately.
 
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This episode was very....cute?

Bonnie taking care and drawing the Pokemon, Dedenne's reaction to the drawing, Hawlucha posing it up for the others, TRio knowing where they'll blast off to to surprise their Pokemon(then Sonasu jumping on them after Jessie's pleas to not do so, lol) and Grace supporting Serena by buying the dress.

Besides the Amourshipping moments, this episode was very nice and good setup to next week's episode!
 
Re: XY059: Ash and Serena's First Date!? The Oath Tree and the Present!!

I wanna know what Musashi and Kojirou gave all their pokemon~~~~~~~

PockyAddict said:
^^ So the title of the episode was a bait title. Because I had a feeling that there was'nt gonna be any "Date" in the episode.

It was about as much of a date as anyone could reasonably expect from a Pocket Monsters episode.
 
It was a good episode if you try to see this as not the dating episode it was hyped to be. It was nice to see all the pokemon be shown and nobody neglected.

The title is somewhat misleading since it asks a question "Satoshi and Serena's First Date?!"

I hope they continue to take these baby steps in this relationship and not just end it here. That would be very disappointing.

I did enjoy how Bonnie decided to give all the pokemon a single gift. The drawing was cute since it showed how much she cares for them.

TR being blasted off very quickly was hilarious. Although I would have preferred them showing TR give their pokemon the gifts they got for them instead of blasting off.

Don't give up armorushippers because they might be more date episodes later on. Since they imply that this is their first date.
 
My guess is somebody asked to do a date episode, was told they had to do it within these confines, and said "screw it, I'll do it anyway" because they really wanted to.
 
Was the young man in the flashback Ramos himself? It seemed like it.

And if I recall, this is the second time that Ash attempted (and failed) to catch a Dunsparce. It really makes us wonder if Ash particularly likes Dunsparce over other Pokémon species.

My favorite part in the episode was when TRio gave Meowth and their Pokémon special gifts. Jessie unsuccessfully pleading Wobbuffet not to pile on top of the group was hilarious.
 
Well, after the shots I looked after, definitely the title itself is misleading. For many amourshipper lover who is kinda pretty much enthusiastic, now it was turned into a most least favorite part. Titles do firing up, but in the end the premier cools them down.

I don't exactly remember the Dunsparce episode but what I've known now for it I can only give a thumb down because the matter it's pointless enough to describe that much. I thought the preview would get something more like a rescue mission but now it's a search and recapture objective.
 
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