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Review JN046: Battle and Catch! The Revival of Mewtwo

They really should've gotten the master of callbacks, Atsuhiro Tomioka, to write this episode. I don't think Mewtwo called Ash by name once. So basically, Ash knowing who Mewtwo is and Mewtwo having its old voice actor are the only solid references to their past encounters, and that's a bare minimum.
Trust Journeys to take a such a cool and interesting idea for an episode and then proceed to waste said idea until it's not cool and interesting anymore in classic typical Journeys fashion.
 
Basically, Mewtwo questions how Gou "getting all the Pokémon" ties in with his goal to meet Mew (so basically, the same question we've all been asking since this series began). Gou explains Mew is a Pokémon said to have the DNA of all Pokémon and so in order to understand them (and, therefore, understand Mew) he needs to actually get all the Pokémon.
Holy shit, that meta question that we've all been asking actually being acknowledged in-universe does make me want to re-watch this episode for proper context now. I thought the writers never even bothered with it.

It's really ironic that Goh explains his reasoning to capture every Pokemon being that Mew has everyone's (minus some exceptions) DNA, yet we've seen him do jack-all with his Pokemon in terms of that 'understanding'. Even more ironically, he tends to be a better researcher and actually inch closer to his goal in episodes not focused on him capturing left and right.
 
Geez, I know making Lucario and Cinderace kind of the central focus of the battle after their evolution episode is to be expected. However, ONE SHADOW BALL put Pikachu down for the count on the sidelines while those two took a few hits before Mewtwo ended things?

Well, considering Pikachu's defenses, even with the supposedly "improved stats" since XY... yeah.

Man, why they didn't put the improvement on its speed instead, I will never know.
 
Mewtwo was like a manager who conducts a performance review.
YES OMG!

Seriously if I wanted to watch a PDR I would either stick on an episode of The Office or, I dunno, turn up to my own appraisal. As highlighted by @Dogasu the 'reminding the amnesic audience about our goals' episode is not cute and between these and the precious seconds wasted by starting most episodes with that bloody goal reminder intro, I am starting to get seriously peeved. Who here remembers when the anime used to actually tell stories over arcs spanning years in order to keep their audience in the loop about the main characters' goals?

It was nice to hear some of Mr Miyazaki's music, but besides that, as far as I'm concerned, this is another 20 minutes I'm not getting back.
 
I have realized that Go uses Pokémon as tools. Just like a Pokémon Ranger. But Pokémon Ranger do not own those Pokémon and they take care of nature.

That's just sad. You want to catch every Pokémon to reach the for the rarest one.

Cheap.
 
The episode was about what you'd expect from the preview, except the flashbacks were used for recent events rather than anything involving Mewtwo. Oh well.

One thing that felt strange about this episode was that for the most part, Cinderace was in its Poke Ball which rarely happens

Goh only sent it out to battle Cinderace
It rarely happened for its pre-evolutions, but it's certainly going to be the norm for Cinderace. It's too big to stay outside all the time.
 
I was hyped for the episode, but overall...rather meh, this one. Basically no continuity and Ash yet again not using Pokémon other than Pikachu and Lucario, which was especially irksome when the boys had to cross over the swamp. Dragonite flying them over? Nah, let's have Caterpie make a rope.
 
Lol, so the only reason Mewtwo appeared was because of marketing. These JN Episodes which are just there for hype and add really nothing to the Whole Scheme of things are getting extremely tiring. Other than that, the battle was well-animated and decent. Still, it feels extremely unusual for Mewtwo from Movie 1 to return after 20 years, all of a sudden out of completely nowhere. It would have made sense if they did an episode like this during the M22 release period since that had something to do with Movie 1, but now all of a sudden? This is clearly a cheap bait to try and get views and with it generating hype for nothing. At least they revealed why Goh wants to catch all Pokemon before Mew, they fixed that plothole.
 
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It was all good until pikachu gets knocked out by one shadow ball and cinderace survived the whole fight. For the people who said that mewtwo didn’t acknowledge ash are wrong because after the destructo shadow ball mewtwo said “you have told me your dreams before” implying that they knew each other. Good animation but just sick of cinderace plot armour which is a bunny who hasn’t done much battling as Ash’s pikachu. Not the best episode not the worst but I honestly felt like we didn’t even need this episode and i rather have ash do a pwc battle. I mean Ash is honestly just the side character and i really feel it compare to goh. Goh also just gave the dogsh** explanation on why he would catch every pokemon. He doesn’t even use his damn pokemon for sake of arceus lolz
 
I get not liking the "reinforcement" of the dreams, though I would also argue affirming them in the face of Mewtwo is rather different than a few kids younger than them. As for the episode itself, it was good, especially the non-Mewtwo portion, as that was more "exploration" and that's what this series is supposed to do. Also, this is a rare time we get to see a party of Pokemon upset at someone not villainous catching one of them, which honestly I thought was cool. Gou using a bevy of Pokemon that people will call "convenient" but also makes sense to use exploring an island was great, as this is the first time a "party" has been established since episode 15. And Mewtwo humoring his guests with a battle, that while I understand people calling it boring, but Mewtwo did not need to exude great effort here was entertaining, as was some of the combinations, particularly the last Double Team/Aura Sphere/Pyro Ball one. And Koharu showed a relevant "point" in her development here, if people follow that at all, so that was nice to see.
 
Just watched the subbed version and I must say it wasn't that bad. On the contrary , it was quite an entertaining plot featuring an exciting, dramatic battle at the end.

Here are some of my thoughts:

Why did they show the names of Professor Sakuragi, his daughter and his assistants again? That doesn't make sense to me, considering we've already reached episode 46 of this series.

Koharu was more interested in learning about Mew and almost missed school for the first time. That encounter with Eevee is coming. Really hope she does start traveling with Ash and Goh considering that’s what she seemingly is starting to want to do.
Why can Ash (and Go) have fun travelling the world, while Koharu/Chloe, who should be the same age as the boys, still has to go to school? I've been watching Pokemon for over 20 years now and frankly, I still don't get the Pokemon world's school system :p Let the poor girl travel, too"

I did enjoy seeing the boys exploring the island during the first part of the episode. I mean going on a Pokemon journey certainly is adventurous and the episode pointed out that fact (and some of the dangerous situations you can encounter) very well.

I'm not going to comment on Go's "catch a Pokemon without battling it"- moments. I'm going to ignore them from now on ...

And this brings me directly to my personal highlight: Mewtwo asking Go (or rather telling him off) how catching every Pokemon would bring him any closer to catching Mew. THANK YOU MEWTWO! Thank you so much, becaue it was about time someone would finally ask the same question we've been asking since the beginning of the series. Go's answer was very poor. He said by catching a Pokemon he'd also understand them better. Well, it would be true if he only had a few Pokemon with him just like Ash. But we all know Go is using most of his Pokemon either as tools or as trophies and doesn't really try to understand each and every Pokemon he catches. (By the way, I wonder if we'll ever see Mankey and Krabby again.)

What I didn't like was Pikachu's inconsistent power level this time. I'm convinced the poor guy needed to be sacrificed for the saking of showing off Ash's and Go's newly evolved Pokemon. And although I'm a huge fan of Lucario, I'm not happy with how they treated Ash's veteran in this episode.

As has been said by others, the Mewtwo battle really didn't amount to much; the battle basically amounted to Mewtwo shoots Shadow Ball, Lucario and Aceburn fail to score a hit, Mewtwo shoots Shadow Ball, Lucario and Aceburn fail to score a hit, Mewtwo shoots giant Shadow Ball, fight over. To be honest, I don't understand why Mewtwo needed to be brought back since it really didn't do much (except for fanservice, natch).

Well, I do understand what you mean but still, I can't quite agree. Not only did Mewtwo use Shadow Ball, he also used something that looked like Protect(?), he used his tail to shrug off Lucario and Cinderace and he also blocked their attacks wih his mere hands. So, I'd say the battle wasn't that one-sided. After all, this is freaking Mewtwo we're talking about. Of course, he'll destroy his opponents at will. And why use different attacks if one or two of them are perfectly fine to defeat your opponent? Just to show the audience what other attack he's got up his sleeve? That would be pretty inefficient if you ask me.

And now for the last aspect I'd like to talk about because it really, really surprised me:
I never expected Mewtwo to be so "friendly" all of a sudden. In all the episode and movies he appeared so far, he's been portrayed as more or less hostile. This time, however, he was understanding and almost acted like a mentor whose goal was to support the boys that suddenly appeared in his "home", although he could as well destroy them easily. Also, we learned that Mewtwo cares about Pokemon treated badly by their former trainers. That just adds to my positive impression of Mewtwo.

No matter if you liked the battle or not, but at least this episode gave us a different view on Mewtwo that was quite intriguing and refreshing in my eyes. (Also, can't help but repeat how much I loved when Mewtwo told off Go for catching Pokemon just for fun :ROFLMAO:)
 
I think I enjoyed this more than most did. I'm desensitized to Shadow Ball spam by this point so my main gripe with the battle is that Mewtwo stood still most of the time. Might post full impressions later.
 
This episode suffered from the classic "Oh dear, we've got this plot we want to do but we've found we can't stretch it to a full episode so we need to waste the first half with some fluff" problem, hence Satoshi and Go nearly getting killed in the forest multiple times (it should be perfectly clear at this point that going on a Pokemon journey is life-threatening. I can't help but wonder how many beginning trainers have ended up falling off a cliff or drowning in mud or getting eaten by Gyarados).

Once again, Go is shown to be playing by Pokemon GO rules in that he seemingly has more than six Pokemon on him at any one time (and naturally, all the Pokemon he has were perfectly suited to help him out at the right time). Also, I've got to feel sorry for Aceburn... now it's reached its final form Go has decided to keep it in the ball until it's needed, poor guy.

As has been said by others, the Mewtwo battle really didn't amount to much; the battle basically amounted to Mewtwo shoots Shadow Ball, Lucario and Aceburn fail to score a hit, Mewtwo shoots Shadow Ball, Lucario and Aceburn fail to score a hit, Mewtwo shoots giant Shadow Ball, fight over. To be honest, I don't understand why Mewtwo needed to be brought back since it really didn't do much (except for fanservice, natch).

I did enjoy the World of Pokemon intro at the beginning, it's always nice to see those. Of course, I would have liked to have seen Mew interact with Mewtwo but alas.
Maybe its was the ink of money, the reason why aceburn stays in the poke ball to have less ink used. Im curious was the reason Ash piakchu lost because he raced his life by mankeys, attack by gyradoys, and fell from the waterfall. He was struck by mewtwo counter I believed, physical attack and shadow ball.

I'm disappointed that Aceburn was able to handle many attacks I barely get training
 
What's wrong with Cinderace holding it's own against Mewtwo? It was shown to be strong in the prior episode
 
For the people who said that mewtwo didn’t acknowledge ash are wrong because after the destructo shadow ball mewtwo said “you have told me your dreams before” implying that they knew each other.
Mewtwo was talking to Ash and Gou. That statement was referring to their conversation that literally happened several minutes ago before the battle started. So no, as much as I wanna believe it, Mewtwo wasn't acknowledging their previous encounters with Ash.
 
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