Review S14 EP23: Battling For The Love of Bug-Types!

[Iteru]

BW23 - "Battling For The Love of Bug-Types!"

After helping out with the swarm in Castelia City, Ash challenges the Castelia City Gym Leader Burgh, for a 3 vs 3 match! Will Ash's first choice of Tepig be a smart one, and will Ash win the Insect Badge?

 

[Eitarou]

If I hear one more "flavor" from Cilan, I'm going to lose it.

Oh well, great match, though the tail thing, as far as I remember, came TOTALLY out of nowhere. Was that ever mentioned before?

 

[Jukain]

Hello, resolved offscreen. What an unusual ref. Hmmm...Ash has learned from the Unova pokemon, taking away it's defense. Interesting. Again, I'm left wondering how in the world one of Ash's pokemon can take so much punishment. And how come something portrayed as being strong can be taken out in only a few hits. This TR scene is so strange to see, but the motto is fabulous. A somersault into the Leaf Storm? And people say this arc doesn't have continuity with the last. Pretty good, but it's still formulaic in nature.

 

[ehh123]

Hooray! Team Rocket hasn't gone back to doing alliterations!

 

[Musashi]

The gym battle was boring and Yamask's voice was almost as awful as I feared. At least nothing was edited, though I do feel bad for all the kids out there who are confused about the many dropped plot lines.

But I really love the summery for this episode.

Ash gets his chance to face off against Burgh, the Castelia City Gym Leader! Burgh is an expert on Bug-type Pokémon and a formidable opponent. Can Ash find the winning combination of powerful Pokémon and battle smarts to claim victory? And what has Team Rocket done to earn the silent treatment from the boss?

Looks like someone wasn't told about the skipped episodes.

Oh well, great match, though the tail thing, as far as I remember, came TOTALLY out of nowhere. Was that ever mentioned before?

It learned Electroball in that episode with the three ducks. It looks like that move was heavily featured in the Rocket/Plasma episodes, so that's why it feels more random here.

 

[LightningKimba]

Sewaddle has seriously grown on me since it's debut in the anime, and I honestly felt kind of bad it lost against Leavanny, considering how its expression as a Swadloon pretty much screams to me as "Come at me, bro. 8<".

Honestly, I liked this ep, was fun to see, even if I don't watch the anime as I used to.

 

[Eitarou]

Hooray! Team Rocket hasn't gone back to doing alliterations!

Shush. You'll jynx it....

Sewaddle I did there?

*Someone throws a tomato at me*

Yeah, I deserved that.

The gym battle was boring and Yamask's voice was almost as awful as I feared. At least nothing was edited, though I do feel bad for all the kids out there who are confused about the many dropped plot lines.

But I really love the summery for this episode.



Looks like someone wasn't told about the skipped episodes.

It learned Electroball in that episode with the three ducks. It looks like that move was heavily featured in the Rocket/Plasma episodes, so that's why it feels more random here.

I know. I was talking about the balance being ruined if its tail is binded.

 

[Egghatch]

I've never seen an episode focusing almost entirely on a gym battle. It was pretty cool to see how all the different moves looked (I haven't watched BW much...), but as the battle continued, it got repetitive.

 

[Grave-E]

My thoughts on this gym battle are as follows;

Spoiler

 

[Mijumaru]

This was an average episode. The battle started off really well; however, as it progressed, it got really repetitive and bland. I loved Swadloon and its voice. And I'm really glad that Team Rocket was dubbed well, compared to the late DP episodes. Something that bothered me was how Ash made this really sudden comeback when Sewaddle had nearly no energy left. And Cilan continues to annoy me with his food talk.

So overall, I give this episode:

5.5 points out of 10

 

[SuperTrainStationH]

Wow. Wow. Wow.

Team Rocket goes back to white uniforms and their pikachu obsession after all this buildup? The single biggest improvement to the anime after several hundred episodes just turned out to be a temporary gimmick that couldn’t even last for 30? To say I’m disappointed would be an understatement.

I obviously can't speak for future episodes, but based on what I saw today, here's what I have to say.

As for the episode itself, at least the gym battle only took up one episode.

As for Team Rocket, their re-imagined look and role in the latest series of the Pokémon anime has been one of the biggest departures from the earlier seasons, and it was basically the main reason I started following it again once the dubs started airing in the US.

It was bad enough that the plot that Jessie, James, and Meowth’s new role in the anime revolved around vanished spontaneously right before the payoff due to Rocket Vs. Plasma being removed from the continuity indefinitely, but then in the episode we get in its place they’ve reverted to their old white uniforms and evidently their tired obsession with stealing Pikachu as well.

This is especially baffling to me since they made a bigger on-screen deal of them getting their old uniforms back than when they appeared with more traditional black TR uniforms and a immense boost in competence with no specific explanation given, which I thought they could have built up a bit more since this makeover was first teased back in the last eipsode of Sinnoh League Victors and was arguably being built up since the fall of Team Galactic.

Additionally, I REALLY don’t know how they’re going to even work around Rocket Vs. Plasma now since I hear they’ve preemptively rectonned yet to be aired episodes to accommodate Rocket Vs. Plasma happening WELL after it was originally planned, which was when Jessie and James still had their black outfits, while in the preview of RVP they obviously still had their black suits.

I’ll give the anime a chance, but I have to say, the whole mess with Rocket Vs. Plasma's uncertain future combined with the Team Rocket Trio apparently reverting to their pre-Unova outfits and behavior, a huge part of my motivation for following this series has been deflated.

To elaborate, I didn’t DISLIKE Team Rocket in Sinnoh at all, but when the few episodes where Team Rocket teamed up with, temporarily befriended, or accidentally fought alongside the main characters the most interesting, I realized that their role as antagonists was becoming lost in a obligation the writers felt to have them in every single episode and to lose horrible every time.

Shouldn’t the villains pose a serious threat to the heroes when they do choose to appear rather than serving as a minor, daily, easily overcome nuisance? Even though the good guys always have to win, shouldn’t it feel like a big victory to defeat the villain? Popeye did a good job of this for example, Bluto came off as a real threat to the characters and you WANTED to see how Popeye and the other characters would manage to defeat him, even if it was predictable, you never knew quite when or how Popeye would get his hands on the spinach he needed to save the day.

Even if the viewer knows that the good guys are going to win, when the heroes act as though they are aware of this as well, the whole element of conflict and suspense is ruined.

Even Team Rocket goes back to their old antics and gimmick robots, if the writers at least keep this in mind, the Team Rocket trio may still be a worthwhile and interesting element of the anime asides from mere convention and the fact that they’re fan favorites. I’ll still like them either way, but won’t forget the potential the writers built up and then tossed to the wind.

 

[Iteru]

Let's keep the Rocket's overal role in Best Wishes to this thread and not go too offtopic on the Plasma episodes. This thread is about the dub of BW23 in which Ash battles Burgh.

 

[SuperTrainStationH]

Let's keep the Rocket's overal role in Best Wishes to this thread and not go too offtopic on the Plasma episodes. This thread is about the dub of BW23 in which Ash battles Burgh.

I just mentioned that briefly because that's an direct concern this episode brings up, I'm still talking about their role in the series as concerned to the developments in this episode, that was one facet of what I spoke of.

 

[Musashi]

Except for the fact they didn't act any differently in today's episode than in any other. Don't let the old uniforms fool you.

 

[Iteru]

I just mentioned that briefly because that's an direct concern this episode brings up, I'm still talking about their role in the series as concerned to the developments in this episode, that was one facet of what I spoke of.

You went onto how they were in DP and how they should pose more of a threat in general.
My point stands. Now let's get back on topic.

 

[Ampharos King]

The gym battle was straightforward and relatively to the point. The only hint of strategy that was ever presented in this match was, indeed, Burgh's Leavanny using String Shot to bind Pikachu's tail to prevent the latter pokemon from moving. The meaning of this gym battle was still preserved simply because of the pokemon Ash had decided to use.

Sewaddle was the pokemon that brought Ash and Burgh together in the first place. At the end of his debut episode, Burgh was deeply inspired to create a new masterpiece of artwork based off of the relationship that had blossomed between Ash and Sewaddle. That relationship had only improved in the middle of the battle, and it was best conveyed through Sewaddle's evolution. It is safe to say that Ash had intended to battle Burgh with every ounce of his strength and soul. In return, Burgh was impressed and amazed by the growth of this relationship in such a short amount of time, but he knew that he had to fight with everything he had simply because he is the gym leader. This is the impression that I have received from it. With their love of pokemon, Ash and Burgh are brought together to battle on equal ground. This is not simply a battle for Ash to win a token badge. If his intention was to only defeat Burgh, Ash would not have used Pikachu or Sewaddle in the first place. Sewaddle's presence and evolution in the middle of this battle helps to convey that message.

Ash even improvised with his pokemon few times during the match to compensate for any and all disadvantages that they had. Sewaddle/Swadloon attempted to gain a mobility advantage over a faster opponent by using String Shot to throw itself across the battlefield. It worked against Dwebble, but failed against a much larger and faster opponent like Whirlipede. When Swadloon and Pikachu were trapped as a result of String Shot, Ash followed Burgh's example with his Whirlipede spinning to free itself from Swadloon's threads by ordering his own pokemon to risk getting hurt in order to regain their mobility.

In the case with Tepig, Ash was already at a disadvantage because Dwebble was the type of pokemon whose battling style, from using Protect to its lighter shell, triumphs over close combat opponents. Ash still attacked head on with Tepig because this was what he was accustomed to. Ash needed to improvise and work around Dwebble's defenses in order to defeat that pokemon, instead of attacking head-on, and this was what he succeeded in doing with Sewaddle.

TRio also changed back to their white uniforms in this episode, not that it really matters because the personalities that were programmed into them at the start of BW were still there. James befriended a wild Yamask and gave the pokemon some food. This hints back to another one of James's captures in the past. It is very, very weird that this scene had to be brought up in the lieu of those skipped episodes. In just the episode that aired last week, TRio was seen heading to the desert on a helicopter, accompanied by both Professor Seger and Pierce. Now, the TRio is back by themselves in a warehouse in Castelia City awaiting further orders from Giovanni.

This gym battle was decent, as was this episode.

 

[shiney mew]

Yamask's voice disappointed me. I don't even complain about dub voices in general normally; they usually sound fine enough to me, but I really wanted that Yamask to sound as adorable as it does in Japanese because its Japanese voice is really cute. D: At least Yamask was already one of my favorite Pokemon, so I'll still enjoy seeing it in later episodes anyway.

The gym battle... well, I had fun yelling at Burgh for being a Protect-spamming troll and Ash for being... well, Ash. XD Also, Swadloon was pretty cute, and it was kinda cool to watch it fight its own evolution.

 

[SuperTrainStationH]

Now that I think of it, I find it odd that Iris and and Cilan wigged out at ash for sending out Sewaddle against Dwebble, if I remember correctly Sewaddle's opening movie was a grass type offensive move, which would have worked well against Dwebble being a rock type if I'm not mistaken since I'm still new to these Pokémon and only recently started playing B/W.

Just because its not an OBVIOUS type advantage doesn't mean it can't be really useful, I'd expect a gym leader to recognize this.

 

[Ambipom666]

Now that I think of it, I find it odd that Iris and and Cilan wigged out at ash for sending out Sewaddle against Dwebble, if I remember correctly Sewaddle's opening movie was a grass type offensive move, which would have worked well against Dwebble being a rock type if I'm not mistaken since I'm still new to these Pokémon and only recently started playing B/W.

Just because its not an OBVIOUS type advantage doesn't mean it can't be really useful, I'd expect a gym leader to recognize this.

Actually, no. Dwebble is also a Bug-type, and Bug-types resist Grass-type moves, so the super-effectiveness of Grass-type moves cancels out, and does normal damage. Oshawott's moves would've been super effective against Dwebble, so I wonder why he didn't at least do that. Seeing Cilan's Dwebble in action, Ash should at least know about how a Dwebble typically fights.

The gym battle was kinda meh, but the Japanese version of this episode came out on my birthday (St. Patrick's Day = assoicated with green = Grass and Bug-types = conspiracy = joking, lol), so I'll forgive it. Team Rocket was kinda meh as well. Not counting Meowth, Jessie and James have a grand total of... 2 'mons in their party. Yay.

Continuity problems yay, but we already know about that. Now someone will have to do damage control on Youtube....

 

[Serperiority]

It was a decent episode. Another time of Ash's bad choice of Pokemon. Couldn't he see that he was at a disadvantage when he was using Tepig? TRio was also decent. I REALLY love their new motto now.

Also, if I see another Gumball or Looney Tunes commercial today, I'm gonna have to hit someone. They're so annoying and overplayed.