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Review JN080: Trial Mission! Ulgamoth's Golden Scales!!

My apologize for the late review for my opinion due to real life work. As for this episode is excited for the boys to find collect the dust from Volcarona, only to get trick by Pokemon hunter in disguised for the eggs and almost set the whole tunnel in blaze. If it wasn't the Shiny Larvesta evolve to Volcarona, the whole place will be pile of history. Just almost out and being confronted by the hunter again, this time calling for backup and I thought, the episode will have two-part because of the time running out. The researcher come to the rescue and defeat with the legendary pokemon with both style of Urshifu, respectively. They probably to be goner. Also, love to see the hunter eyes being rolled after got owned.

Overall rating: B+
 
So, Project Mew apparently said they're gonna release the hunters' Pokémon into the wild. Kinda reminds me of that one Orange Islands episode where a pirate's Pokémon are released once he's arrested. Have these guys considered at all that maybe these Pokémon are not doing bad things just because they're told to do so? We know evil Pokémon exist.
 
All in all, I'd call this a good episode. Nothing spectacular but not completely bad, either.
What I liked was the nice setting that added to the whole adventure /exploration atmosphere of the episode. Also, the mine was done pretty well and turned out to be a good location for the main part of the plot. Great to see Asah, Tsurugi and especially thier Urshifu again! These are my favorite Pokemon from Galar and now we even got to see both alternative forms. Awesome!

What I didn't like, however, was already pointed out by another user:
Maybe he could have handled them, who knows? The show just hasn’t written the scene to be satisfying for me.
If he did enough for you, then fine. For me, he didn’t. I just cannot understand seeing someone who jumps into the heat of battle, have a face of worry when in a position like that, like he’s cornered. I think it’s the fact Ash literally just sat there, like it was helpless.
I’m not going to argue with your opinion, mainly cause Ash let me down, and if you saw it differently, I’m glad you’re satisfied with the episode.
I agree with you! It was only a few episodes ago that we saw Ash becoming number 64 in the PWC and defeating Volkner, and here he seemed to be totally out of character. First, when he wanted to fight Roggenrolla but was pushed aside by Go. And later it clearly looked as if he was afraid of the grunts and didn't feel capable of dealing with them. The "normal" Ash we know would not hesitate to take on all four of them at once. So yes, Go was right. They once again needed the Project Mew team to rescue them which kind of left a bitter aftertaste.

But as I said at the beginning, all in all it was a good epsiode.
 
Within this episode, he couldn’t, and had to be rescued.
And, that was my opinion in what I saw the show do? It’s opinion that you claimed that Ash could handle them. Again, that’s fine if you do, I just wasn’t satisfied, and my emotions were kind of annoyed at the time of that comment.
Facts are not opinions, opinions are not facts. Saying "he couldn't handle them so needs to be rescued" is an alleged fact, "I think he could/couldn't handle them" would be an opinion. There was no battle between them, Gou didn't even bring out his two fully evolved starters, saying that they can't handle them is an unsupported claim.
 
Satoshi may have been able to handle them, if the writers weren't so keen on making him look this bad. But Gou would have got beaten, regardless if he tried or not.

At the end there was some struggling, but in the sense of trying to escape the clutches of the writers and failing.
 
The scene where Volcarona sheds its scales all over Ash and Goh was... Pretty gross.
 
The beginning was okay. The adventures were more boring and less simple than the ones in JN014, but they made up for it with continuity and Goh actually using his Pokemon to battle.

The middle part was very messy with all the chaos that ensued. The predictable twist of the explorer being evil was revealed too early and it just felt unconfortable to watch. Sorry If I sound heartless, but a Flamethrower should actually be beneficial to Fire-type eggs. Also, if the golden Volcarona evolved from a Larvesta does that mean there's another Volcarona deeper in the cave? Or how was Goh supposed to complete the mission?

The ending was the part of the episode I enjoyed the most, even if it was just for seeing Asahi and Tsurugi again. They have good chemistry with one another, and it's nice that they could have been designed after Urshifu's forms and have obtained walking Pokemon of their respective Urshifu's type.

An okay episode, but kinda boring at times and I don't think it pushes Goh forward as a character. Also, how have the writers not realized how many tokens Goh needs to participate? Contests and even showcases had a clear number of collectibles from the start.
 
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Goh's goal wasn't to catch or battle Volcarona. Just to get its scales.
Battling in this series isn't exclusive to catching Pokémon or explicitly wanting to defeat someone; there have been many battles in the franchise for more arbitrary reasons, so, as I said, seeing a battle between the two would have been nice in my opinion. The scales could have been obtained with one as they were without.
 
Alright, it's been a bit, but I really liked a good portion of this episode. Seeing the Ninetales from 71, and further expansion into how the mission system works I thought were nice touches. the Volcorona line still hasn't done "much," but I think it's safe to say they showed out better here than they did in BW episode it got.
 
Battling in this series isn't exclusive to catching Pokémon or explicitly wanting to defeat someone; there have been many battles in the franchise for more arbitrary reasons, so, as I said, seeing a battle between the two would have been nice in my opinion. The scales could have been obtained with one as they were without.
Exactly. Just like how in the episode with Gary they didn’t battle Moltress to capture it but so Gary could get its feather. Plus battles to obtain objectives would give Go a reason to train his Pokémon to get stronger especially with the unknowns that they encounter with each mission.
 
This episode actually wasn't that bad. Mediocre by pokemon standards, I think, but it's a lot less boring than many other Journeys episodes I've watched. There are a few things about this episode in particular that I liked, however.
  • Project Mew honestly feels really interesting in general, and the conversation between Asahi and Tsurugi in the beginning of the episode really intrigued me. They seemed to be actively chasing after Pokemon Hunters and the Hunter that appeared for this episode was actually pretty interesting too. I'm gonna be honest, I suspected him from the second he showed up, but I was actually a little surprised pokemon pulled a fake-out like that, especially since the guy seemed so willing to help them out and was actually pretty friendly. Credit where it's due, they were subtle enough that I think the target audience would've been surprised but not too subtle so that it seemed like it was out of nowhere.
  • I know this question is getting repetitive on my part, but seriously, the score for Journeys is absolutely magnificent. This is one of the reasons why I think Journeys could've greatly benefited from being a separate series to Pokemon, in fact, as the overall plot and character dynamics presented felt like one that wasn't of Pokemon. Tsurugi felt like the mysterious edge-lord with a conscience, Asahi felt like the intuitive "big-sis" character, Professor Hodaka I didn't really feel for much in this episode but he definitely felt like the guy you'd leave at home base, and Goh felt like the protagonist. Do I like how Ash seemed to be pushed to the side? No. But the dynamics are there and had this been an entirely different anime, I'd say Ash would be a solid supportive character, Goh would be a solid protagonist, and the characters in Project Mew have interesting dynamics that have many interesting future possibilities.
  • Still don't feel much for the pokemon. Pikachu and Grookey were kinda useless near the end, albeit I do like how Ash utilized Pikachu to power the train car and Dracovish to "help" with the fire; the pokemon just popped up for like ten seconds and then didn't really add much of value to the episode; and was I really the only one expecting Inteleon to have done more in this episode? He fought against the Raggenrola than failed to put out the fire-I dunno, it just felt anticlimactic for his first role after his evolution episode...
  • I do like how Journeys is starting to add bits of lore about small things like they did with the Eclipse Castle in the previous episode. Except I think I appreciated it in this episode a lot more because of how they brought up the fact that this was a location Ash and Goh had visited before: there could be chance they would visit again, and having this lore set up would make the location be more appealing to visit again for the audience.
  • About the hunter, I really do like the conflict presented here. Normally bad guys for an episode are kinda dumb and to see a hunter not only wait and watch from the shadows but actually call for backup was a pretty nice way of establishing the types of people Goh would be dealing with in Project Mew. Even more so when you consider the conversation between Asahi and Tsurugi at the beginning of the episode and how when Ash and Goh were struggling against the hunters, Asahi and Tsurugi came to save them and defeated the hunters without trouble. It established their strength while also establishing that Goh had a lot to learn, which was nice, I guess.
  • That being said, Journeys Ash is starting to feel off to me. Or more accurately, like how I felt about XY Ash, only instead of him being not expressive enough, he's super expressive, so it's weird there's an issue. I don't know, the fact that so far he's been geared towards "unbeatable" in regards to the PWC while facing off against a champion, a super strong gym leader, and being set-up to face another champion, yet got taken down super quickly by some random pokemon hunters just kinda felt off to me. And while I do like his supportive role in this episode, it also felt kind of off to me? I can't really explain it in words other than he feels like somebody just rolled a bunch of dice on a table and got four fives and one one. There's something not fully right here.
All in all, a fairly normal episode. I wouldn't say it was boring, but it was definitely more interesting than anything else Journeys has dished out so far, and I didn't feel faux enjoyment out of it either, which was nice to me. I'm not forcing myself to write this-I genuinely think this episode was pretty good for what it was. By Journeys standards, it's pretty up there for me. Would I watch it again? Sure, probably. If only because the hunter conflict was interesting-but overall, this episode gets a thumbs up from me. (y)
 
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