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Review JN040: VS Thunder! A Legendary Raid Battle!!

Somebody please tell me this didn’t actually take place in Vermillion city like it appeared to?
 
Told you all, legendary played an important role for eco-system. That why, it is forbidden catches one of them. Anyway, what a great episode and also hilarious Team Rocket team up with Ash and Goh. Before turns face after Goh head up to battle Zapdos.

Overall rating: B+
 
This did not age well.
Can't wait for Go to catch Zapdos tomorrow :). His first legendary

Onto the episode itself, although I did miss out the first 5-7 minutes due to stream issues and then another half a minute when Raboot went down, the latter which resulted in me missing this.
Loved Raboot learning Blaze Kick

It was good, I guess? I have quite a lot of nitpicks but I'll keep those for the full review. The episode turned out to be surprisingly dialogue heavy and it seems like it imparted some actual wisdom onto Goh (which hopefully is not abandoned/contradicted within the next dozen). TRio's presence here was entertaining though their backstab and exit was somewhat prematurely done. This episode also proves that legendaries are vital and need to be free, even if their impact is quite minor or local to some ecosystem exclusively, that they should not be caught by anyone especially if there's nothing they'll be doing for the rest of their lives. Legendaries are not trophies or collectibles to fill up some log or decorate a zoo.

And now the bad. Horrendous animation quality, since we don't even know the staff lists for this episode, I'll assume that it was worked on by 2-3 interns. It takes place in Vermillion AGAIN, they moved the Power Planet location instead of having it be set at the original location. The 'Raid Battle' was one of the weakest portions of the episode and definitely one of the more insignificant parts, despite the title and summary boasting a lot about it. You might as well have called it Goh vs. Zapdos, Legendary face-off or something because that's what the episode boiled down to. Also, is it me or was this particular Zapdos nerfed in comparison to the ones from M02 and XY110? Seems like it went down far too quickly to relatively weak attacks. Another irritating point is that none of the Vermillion Gym crew (Tony, Visquez, Surge etc.) showed despite it being an electricity related issue, involving an electricity based legendary, and it being set near Vermillion City. How contrived is that? And finally, Koharu got somewhat shafted.
 
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Well, this was a pretty good episode.

Would have been awkward seeing Zapdos in Cerise's laboratory so it makes sense that it would have to be let go.
 
Given that this is taking place in Vermillion City, did they at least give an explanation as to why the GYM LEADER/SUBSTITUTE GYM LEADER of the freaking city did not help with the problem? What reason is there to move the power plant to Vermillion City then?!
 
Somebody please tell me this didn’t actually take place in Vermillion city like it appeared to?
Because Zapdos moved to the Power Plant.
He still managed to get a legendary in a ball .

No one have done that that early in the series.


He is OP and he does not train his Pokémon.

Sorry but I don't get it.
Getting inside the Poké Ball is one thing. Actually getting to keep it in there is a whole other story.
 
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I would have laughed so hard if Gou had managed to get a Thunder with a regular, 100 yen Monster Ball :ROFLMAO:

That's all we get to use in Pokemon Go anyways, we get given Premier Balls which have the same catch rate as Pokeballs.

Where Go went wrong was not stuffing Zapdos full of berries before he tried to catch it
 
This episode also proves that legendaries are vital and need to be free, even if their impact is quite minor or local to some ecosystem exclusively, that they should not be caught by anyone especially if there's nothing they'll be doing for the rest of their lives.

The writers changed their mind again? So, does that mean (several portions of) Sinnoh will suffer from some climate change because Tobias has a Latios, and another trainer has a Heatran? And then there's the Nurse Joy with the Latias. Bad writing and obvious ignorance of past episodes.
 
Given that this is taking place in Vermillion City, did they at least give an explanation as to why the GYM LEADER/SUBSTITUTE GYM LEADER of the freaking city did not help with the problem? What reason is there to move the power plant to Vermillion City then?!

Yup. Basically the same problem they had with the Flygon episode where they didn't even mention or acknowledge Wattson.
 
UxieLover1994 said:
The writers changed their mind again? So, does that mean (several portions of) Sinnoh will suffer from some climate change because Tobias has a Latios, and another trainer has a Heatran? And then there's the Nurse Joy with the Latias. Bad writing and obvious ignorance of past episodes.

Well no, it just "proves" that this one particular legendary is (arguably) vital to its local environment. It's not "bad writing" at all.
 
Well no, it just "proves" that this one particular legendary is (arguably) vital to its local environment. It's not "bad writing" at all.
It's kinda hard to tell if today's "don't ever catch Legendary Pokémon" applies to this particular Zapdos, or to all Legendary Pokémon. If the latter, it outright contradicts Brandon and the Sinnoh League, hence my "bad writing" comment.

I never denied that those were terrible writing scenarios, but comparing plot device of characters (Tobias being one of the worst cases that might as well be universally panned and memed) or one time CotDs (Nurse Joy being a special episode character at that) to main protagonists or cast members is a whole different ball games.
When I meant to imply "bad writing", it is applied to how the writers showed several characters (even if all are minor) owning Legendary Pokémon, then stating that it's taboo to catch them. They could get away with it today because it's been a decade since the Sinnoh League, but people remember things. I apologize if I caused any offense.
 
A good episode but a Rookie with absolutely no idea how to train Pokémon managed to knock a legendary onto the ground.

This irks me. It destroys the fact of training your Pokémon to get stronger. With that premise you only have to catch strong Pokémon and they will handle the rest. I dont like this and I don't like where this is going. Let's hope that after the Galar arc something changes.

Another thing that irates me is that stupid gatcha and how it has Giovanni face in the screen. It's like Giovanni agrees to have Pokémon in his army that are dumber that rocks. I don't get that too.

This are for me really two big flaws not only in this episode but in the whole series.
 
Gou attempting to catch Zapdos by battling it but ultimately failing is pretty much the best outcome I could've hoped from this episode. As an added bonus, Raboot learned Blaze Kick by battling it, and Gou witnessed a legendary Pokemon doing... legendary things in nature, so yeah, I'd say this episode's encounter was quite fruitful.

Small detail, but I like how Gou figured out Zapdos's location by bringing up the age-old "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" question. While the boys initially thought that Zapdos emerged from thunderclouds (which is stated in most of its Pokedex entries), Gou quickly realized that it could've been the other way around instead (i.e. Zapdos creates thunderclouds), which is why he ran in the opposite direction of the thunderclouds towards the Power Plant. Nice observation.

Not much else I have to say about the rest of the episode, though. More Koharu screentime is nice, even though she barely did anything. I think she commented something about how Gou's starting to act more like Ash, so that's a neat little detail, I guess. The trio's appearance and the Raid Battle in this episode was kinda underwhelming too, though that might have to do with the subpar animation in this episode.

Overall, I'd say this was an above average episode that could've been a lot better with a bit more polish.
 
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