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- Jan 22, 2014
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This is the first I'm hearing of this. However, I would imagine the praise primarily regards Volkner for several reasons:The Volkner battle getting praised as the best of JN has never sat right with me. The last PWC match I enjoyed was Bea 3, but that has its own issues (including Lucario taking too much damage).
- The animation was really nice. A good mix of fluid (ex. Pikachu and Electivire Iron Tail jousting) and static (ex. Lucario's Aura Sphere charge animation) shots, that made for an engaging battle with a good pace. Their Pokémon fought on the ground and in the air, making full use of the battlefield.
- Volkner ended up combining the most strategies out of any trainer Ash has faced (including Terrain Effects, status ailments, combination moves, super-effective moves, debuting a new move, and Ability usage along with applying precise switching pressure).
- He didn't use a single gimmick, having pushed Ash to rely on something that even Tapu Koko, one of the strongest Electric-type Pokémon in the entire anime, couldn't outdamage, with just his Pokémon's normal unaugmented strengths.
- The music choices throughout the episode were amazing and introduced several new, popular Volume 2 tracks (which is finally out, btw) that reinforced the animation and storytelling of the battle.
- And then aside from Volkner, this was Lucario's first major battle outside of Bea. People like Lucario.
Gengar actually connected two - Psychic and Night Shade. So, for me at least, taking a point-blank Aura Sphere afterwards seemed reasonable enough to warrant a KO on Luxray.Also Gengar scored an attack on Luxray forcing Volkner to recall it, so Luxray wasn't just defeated by Lucario. After that Lucario fainted too with a double KO so it's not like Lucario didn't go down as well.