Do you find mid-battle evolution's cheap or perfectly acceptable?

[Ampharos King]

I find mid-battle evolutions acceptable or unacceptable depending on the context. Evolutions in the anime usually result from a pokemon needing more power to overcome a situation that they couldn't have done otherwise; battling a stronger opponent is just one of those moments. If certain pokemon such as Ash's Phanpy or Dawn's Swinub had to evolve to destroy TRio's mechas, then there shouldn't be any issues with some of Ash's other pokemon evolving to battle on greater footing against strong living opponents.

I also don't mind that pokemon can learn new attacks immediately after evolving, because this isn't new and this is an element in the video games. Just to name a few moments where this was the case in the anime, Ash's Grovyle learned Leaf Blade; May's Combusken learned Fire Spin and Sky Uppercut; the two Quilavas learned Eruption; and Cilan's Crustle learned Rock Wrecker. There were plenty of other evolutions in this series that also followed through with this formula.

However, I have a difficult time accepting most of the mid-battle evolutions that took place in Best Wishes. There have been five so far with the main cast pokemon (Sewaddle, Roggenrola, Tranquill, Swadloon, and Tepig), with a sixth evolution coming up in the near future. Most of those pokemon were rarely seen training or battling alongside Ash on-screen, and it was to the extent that a few of them actually evolved during their first notable battle. Evolutions in this context should not be treated as milestones because there was hardly any progress, and they cheapen Ash's experience as a pokemon trainer and battler.

Most of the evolutions in past series were from pokemon that either trained extensively on-screen and competed in many battles, or had desperately yearned to evolve so they could better assist those that they cared about. Unfortunately, most of the evolutions in Best Wishes lacked either of these requisites. It's hard for me to care about a pokemon like Sewaddle that evolved into its mid-stage form during its third episode appearance, and later evolved into its final form after only being seen a few more times (most of which were cameos) over the course of fifty-something episodes. Many of the pokemon in Ash's ownership that evolved twice had accomplished much more than that, and some of those evolutions did take place in battles.

Again, my opinions on mid-battle evolutions differ according to the context. I had no problem with Ash's Tepig evolving in the middle of its fight against Suwama's Emboar and Heatmor. Tepig had competed in numerous other battles (some of which it had lost terribly), and it had learned several powerful attacks under Ash's ownership. There was notable progress in Tepig's case. Tepig was a pokemon that Suwama gave up just because it lost to another trainer's Deerling, a pokemon that it should have had a type advantage against. Tepig was still relatively inexperienced even after Ash had obtained it, losing to opponents like Trip's Tranquill and Lenora's Lillipup very easily. Over the course of seventy episodes, Ash trained Tepig to the point where it was able to defeat powerful evolved pokemon like Scrafty and Mandibuzz.

On top of all of that battling experience, Tepig's evolution resulted from an emotional upheaval after its trainer and another pokemon put their lives on the line to protect it. Even after Tepig evolved, it still lost to certain opponents. Evolutions in this manner are perfectly acceptable to me.

 

[Hidden Mew]

It can be acceptable, but it really does depend on the situation. If the Pokemon has had a significant amount of battles prior to the evolution to make it more believable, then it would be perfectly fine. Chimchar evolving into Monferno during that first full battle against Paul is a good example for me since Chimchar had quite a bit of experience and was helpful in a lot of Gym battles, so evolving right in the middle of that match didn't feel cheap. The problem I've had with the mid-battle evolution in BW is that it always saves Ash losing the match, and in most cases his chance to get a badge, and the Pokemon that evolve and learn a new move that saves him have had barely any screentime before that battle. Not to mention having four of his Gym battles earn through that same last minute save, even though Swadloon didn't win the whole match for him, gets really old quite quickly. Seeing it being repeated over and over again also makes it feel incredibly cheap. An evolution during the middle of a battle and learning a new move to boot can be done well, as they have before, but the specific Pokemon really needs to be used frequently enough and shown to grow stronger over the course of the series in order for that to work.