Do Showcases Bother You?

[Cinderfella]

I think it's been on everyone's mind.

While I think the development Serena got in her very first debut may be one of the best in all anime history, the goal and the actual competitions themselves fall lackluster. Serena seemingly being good is nice and all, but other than the little dramas and technicalities here and there, what obstacles can she really overcome?

I think showcases hold an even bigger issue because there are no battles. While it is nice that there are other things besides battling, showcases seem to fall flat.

Also, Serena not being remotely interested in battling at all, being given this goal as well as her crush on Ash, reaaaallllyyy rubs me the wrong way. That is because ultimately she is technically the first girl in the cast to not be related to battling, battle-tournaments, or have a goal that requires battling to get stronger. Not to mention that showcases are for females only.

Then there's Jessie: Who everyone keeps clearly seeing being overlooked. She's actually pretty decent.

Rivals: Nini, Miette, and Shauna are all cool, but something is missing. I'd rather have them there then not, but with them posing no threat to Serena and giving her no attitude whatsoever, it makes these showcases seem....bleak.

While a coordinator 3 times in a row is repetitive, it would've been a lot better than this. Showcases are one example of why XY, in my opinion, is running short of being just as good as DP. They're not bad, but something is off, missing, or on the writers part....a bit lazy.

And I say all of this, as a Serena fan.

Thoughts.

 

[Sakuraa]

Nope, I love them! I love that they have different themes for the first round rather than the repetitiveness of doing the same thing for the appeal round of contests over and over. (The styling round is the best thing ever.) And I like how the competitors can use their entire teams in the free performance, even though we still haven't seen this yet. It's nice to have an event that all of your Pokemon can be included in. The fact that there are no battles doesn't bother me at all. I actually like it. We already have Ash battling throughout the entire series, not to mention that there were even battles in contests. Seeing a competition with no battling is a nice change for me.

 

[Mareepy]

In my opinion, the ones that are memorable in Contests are never the battles, I can't even remember a singe of them. And the one thing that is complete bullshit in the battle rounds is that you can actually aim to knock out your opponent ASAP and win it. Ursula vs Dawn is the prime example of this. That Sandstorm/Scary Face is like the best combo I have seen ever, but Dawn simply won with a Mamoswine OHKO. As much as I love Dawn and the whole DP series, I felt so sorry for Ursula.

Instead, I enjoyed the performance round. Ursula's Hidden Power themed performance and Dawn's Ice Roller Coaster is my absolute favourites. I think Showcases are an amazing idea, just executed wrongly. Like people said, they wasted too much time on dramas and cut off the performance of Jessie, Nene, Miette and Shauna as a result. Thats the only problem I have with it.

But if you ask me solely about the concept of Showcases, I will say its amazing compared to Contests, simply because the lack of battle rounds so you must do amazing combinations to win, instead of having an off chance of winning by knocking opponent out.

 

[Hidden Mew]

Showcases are pretty lackluster to me. I haven't seen Serena's most recent Showcase, so I don't know if that would change anything, but Showcases just aren't that engaging to me. At most, they're pretty to look at, but that's about it. Serena has gotten some good moments and development since becoming a Performer, but the competition itself is kind of boring. They're basically Pokemon talent shows in the first round, be it either fashion or baking related, and glorified Contest appeals in the second round. They aren't bad glorified Contest appeals and to be fair, that's one reason why I'm disappointed that Serena didn't become a Coordinator. The performances she has done with her Pokemon have been pretty nice and I could have seen her really enjoying Contests as a result.

The lack of a battle round really does hurt Showcases. Sure, the idea of a Pokemon competition without battling is a unique concept, but I think that they needed something more than that to make Showcases more than just pretty to look at. There isn't a whole lot of struggle to overcome by not strengthening your Pokemon's strength and the appeals themselves, while nice, really aren't enough to make Showcases engaging for me. Contests were full of pretty flash and glitter, but the amount of time needed to pull off some of those appeals, especially in DP, and needing to showcase your Pokemon's beauty during a battle was more challenging and interesting than what they've showed with Showcases thus far. Maybe if the glorified Contest appeals were more memorable or the first round didn't make me think of a Pokemon fashion or cooking show, it could work, but it just really falls flat for me.

Another issue is just how late into the series they started Showcases. Because of how long it took for Serena to find a goal, that really limits what they can do with the goal. Even the three key requirement comes off as an explanation as to how Serena could get to the Master Class when Ash was already halfway through his Kalos Gym badge quest by the time she won her first Showcase. I can understand why it took Serena so long to find her goal, but I think it did more harm than good for the concept of Pokemon Showcases though. The Pokemon Showcases being only for female Performers doing more traditionally feminine stuff like putting on fashion shows and baking does have some unfortunate implications. At the very least, they do feel like a step backwards from Contests for multiple reasons.

Needless to say, I would have greatly preferred for them to bring Contests back instead. Technically, it wouldn't be the third time in a row since Iris wasn't a Coordinator. I've also never quite understood the complaint about the idea of a third coordinator being too repetitive. Ash is on his eighth badge quest, if we include the Battle Frontier as a badge quest, and no one has complained about that as being repetitive. Plus, May and Dawn were handled differently despite having the same goal, so a third Coordinator would be handled differently as well. Not to mention Pokemon is pretty repetitive in a lot of ways in general anyway. I still think Serena could have made a really nice Coordinator, but it was way too late in the series for them to start doing that with her by the time she found a goal anyway.

I just hope that the next generation of games either has Contests or introduces some other kind of sidequest for the anime to adapt as a goal for the new female lead. The writers were pretty much forced to make their own goal, so I'm sure that didn't help with Showcases either. I would much rather see the female characters actively battle than just look pretty in their competitions. Sure, Ash is battling, but we'd get double the battles and the female characters would most likely have a different kind of battle than Ash would, so it isn't like it would be going through Gym battles twice. I think that a goal that stretches through a series needs to have some kind of battle in order to be more engaging to me and Showcases just lack it completely.

 

[Mareepy]

Showcases are pretty lackluster to me. I haven't seen Serena's most recent Showcase, so I don't know if that would change anything, but Showcases just aren't that engaging to me. At most, they're pretty to look at, but that's about it. Serena has gotten some good moments and development since becoming a Performer, but the competition itself is kind of boring. They're basically Pokemon talent shows in the first round, be it either fashion or baking related, and glorified Contest appeals in the second round. They aren't bad glorified Contest appeals and to be fair, that's one reason why I'm disappointed that Serena didn't become a Coordinator. The performances she has done with her Pokemon have been pretty nice and I could have seen her really enjoying Contests as a result.

The lack of a battle round really does hurt Showcases. Sure, the idea of a Pokemon competition without battling is a unique concept, but I think that they needed something more than that to make Showcases more than just pretty to look at. There isn't a whole lot of struggle to overcome by not strengthening your Pokemon's strength and the appeals themselves, while nice, really aren't enough to make Showcases engaging for me. Contests were full of pretty flash and glitter, but the amount of time needed to pull off some of those appeals, especially in DP, and needing to showcase your Pokemon's beauty during a battle was more challenging and interesting than what they've showed with Showcases thus far. Maybe if the glorified Contest appeals were more memorable or the first round didn't make me think of a Pokemon fashion or cooking show, it could work, but it just really falls flat for me.

Another issue is just how late into the series they started Showcases. Because of how long it took for Serena to find a goal, that really limits what they can do with the goal. Even the three key requirement comes off as an explanation as to how Serena could get to the Master Class when Ash was already halfway through his Kalos Gym badge quest by the time she won her first Showcase. I can understand why it took Serena so long to find her goal, but I think it did more harm than good for the concept of Pokemon Showcases though. The Pokemon Showcases being only for female Performers doing more traditionally feminine stuff like putting on fashion shows and baking does have some unfortunate implications. At the very least, they do feel like a step backwards from Contests for multiple reasons.

Needless to say, I would have greatly preferred for them to bring Contests back instead. Technically, it wouldn't be the third time in a row since Iris wasn't a Coordinator. I've also never quite understood the complaint about the idea of a third coordinator being too repetitive. Ash is on his eighth badge quest, if we include the Battle Frontier as a badge quest, and no one has complained about that as being repetitive. Plus, May and Dawn were handled differently despite having the same goal, so a third Coordinator would be handled differently as well. Not to mention Pokemon is pretty repetitive in a lot of ways in general anyway. I still think Serena could have made a really nice Coordinator, but it was way too late in the series for them to start doing that with her by the time she found a goal anyway.

I just hope that the next generation of games either has Contests or introduces some other kind of sidequest for the anime to adapt as a goal for the new female lead. The writers were pretty much forced to make their own goal, so I'm sure that didn't help with Showcases either. I would much rather see the female characters actively battle than just look pretty in their competitions. Sure, Ash is battling, but we'd get double the battles and the female characters would most likely have a different kind of battle than Ash would, so it isn't like it would be going through Gym battles twice. I think that a goal that stretches through a series needs to have some kind of battle in order to be more engaging to me and Showcases just lack it completely.

Unless knocking out opponent's Pokemon means disqualifications, I object any form of battling in Contests or Showcases.

I do agree showing the beauty of Pokemon in a battle is a very good concept, but the premise of the battle in Contests are horrible.

So its either disqualification for knock outs or no battles for me.

 

[DS0308]

For me, I'm not particularly fussed about all the background problems regarding Showcases, female-only, does stereotypical girl stuff, etc. Like, I can acknowledge that they're definitely prominent to the whole concept but I'm more than willing to forget it just to fully invest myself in the experience of it all.

On the whole I'm fairly alright with them because they're a half decent distraction from the Badge Quest of Ash. It's given Serena something to do which I'm happy about and she's shown how good she is at it, so her performances have been quite good and at least kept me entertained and interested. Like I said in the review thread for last week's episode, one of the main problems is that the writers seem to be unsure as to how they want to do it at times. It feels like they've somewhat restricted themselves in how they want to actually write the episode (I'll save myself the trouble of repeating what I said in that thread and just point people to it if you want a slightly better explanation of what I mean).

I will agree with some things that Hidden Mew mentioned, the Free Performances can be considered glorified Appeal Rounds but they really aren't that bad at all. The whole tournament is quite nice to watch. The introduction of Showcases relatively late into the series may have hurt it a bit, which ties into my point earlier about the writing. Although I don't feel like blaming Serena's slow-ish progression for it because I thought that at least made her revelation to commit herself to Showcases more prominent, but that's another discussion in itself.

 

[LuxrayOfTheWild]

They're not as exciting as contests, but honestly, I'd rather have Serena do this than do nothing.

 

[Hidden Mew]

Unless knocking out opponent's Pokemon means disqualifications, I object any form of battling in Contests or Showcases.

I do agree showing the beauty of Pokemon in a battle is a very good concept, but the premise of the battle in Contests are horrible.

So its either disqualification for knock outs or no battles for me.

Contest battles ending in knock outs didn't usually bothered me, but I can kind of see why that would for others. I'm not sure if I'd be in favor of a knock out being grounds for disqualification though. I guess that would help with making them even more different from regular battles, but disqualifying someone for knocking out their opponent seems a bit too much. I enjoyed quite a few Contest battles, so we'll have to agree to disagree on that point.

 

[Mister Mayhem]

Comrades,

i do not like them. you can tell they don't really care about them. it took a long time for serena to start participating in them, they only last for one episode, and they don't have the same energy as contests. the first rounds are boring and the free performances do not hold a candle to the appeal rounds in contests. i guess something is better than nothing but contests should have never left the series in the first place.

 

[ii kanji]

Bring back contests!!

I have made my thoughts on the tripokalon concept clear elsewhere but let me briefly reiterate the main reason why I dislike it:
A girls-only competition which is judged by popularity contest.

What is not to hate about this?

I fell into Pokemon when it first became a thing in the UK because its message said loud and clear that girls could enjoy playing the game/watching battles as much as boys, and no one could ever contest you on that. This idea and its implementation via Serena is a big step back for the franchise in this respect.

This is without even touching on the specifics of the tripokalons themselves and Serena's arc:
- First rounds are boring to watch (which is why they have to be cut short and the time filled by pointless dramas)
- Doesn't feel complete without battles
- Serena's goal was late starting & poorly paced
- She is shown as a prodigy Mary Sue
- No noteworthy rivals
- Pointless dramas (I don't buy into the haircutting drama being this amazing piece of character development - she tried her hand at tripokalons for the first time and unsurprisingly flopped it, and then she overreacted and chopped off all her hair?! And THEN, because of this, she's suddenly a shining star? That is not a great message to be giving kids.)

 

[Hidden Mew]

Bring back contests!!

I have made my thoughts on the tripokalon concept clear elsewhere but let me briefly reiterate the main reason why I dislike it:
A girls-only competition which is judged by popularity contest.

What is not to hate about this?

I fell into Pokemon when it first became a thing in the UK because its message said loud and clear that girls could enjoy playing the game/watching battles as much as boys, and no one could ever contest you on that. This idea and its implementation via Serena is a big step back for the franchise in this respect.

This is without even touching on the specifics of the tripokalons themselves and Serena's arc:
- First rounds are boring to watch (which is why they have to be cut short and the time filled by pointless dramas)
- Doesn't feel complete without battles
- Serena's goal was late starting & poorly paced
- She is shown as a prodigy Mary Sue
- No noteworthy rivals
- Pointless dramas (I don't buy into the haircutting drama being this amazing piece of character development - she tried her hand at tripokalons for the first time and unsurprisingly flopped it, and then she overreacted and chopped off all her hair?! And THEN, because of this, she's suddenly a shining star? That is not a great message to be giving kids.)

I disagree regarding Serena cutting her hair. I didn't see it as an overreaction, but an understandable response to a first defeat. After finally finding a goal she wanted to do and was so determined to go after it, she lost and not because she just wasn't good enough, but because of a choice she could have easily fixed. She most likely still would have lost her first Showcase, but she could have at least made it through the first round if Fennekin's ribbon wasn't so long and that would have made the defeat less painful for her to deal with. I could understand it from that regard, so it didn't feel like an overreaction to me. I'm also not sure if I'd consider Serena a prodigy Mary-Sue, but I don't know if her next Showcase would change that for me. Other than that, I agree completely.

 

[ii kanji]

I disagree regarding Serena cutting her hair. I didn't see it as an overreaction, but an understandable response to a first defeat. After finally finding a goal she wanted to do and was so determined to go after it, she lost and not because she just wasn't good enough, but because of a choice she could have easily fixed. She most likely still would have lost her first Showcase, but she could have at least made it through the first round if Fennekin's ribbon wasn't so long and that would have made the defeat less painful for her to deal with. I could understand it from that regard, so it didn't feel like an overreaction to me. I'm also not sure if I'd consider Serena a prodigy Mary-Sue, but I don't know if her next Showcase would change that for me. Other than that, I agree completely.

I think it's different strokes isn't it. As far as I'm concerned it was OTT, especially when you compare it with how other characters have handled much more acute/bigger losses. Serena has also not met anyone whose innate talent appears to exceed hers which I find annoying to watch... I'm not sure if it's too late to bring in an actual rival at this stage.

 

[Mikuri]

Pokémon Showcases are ridiculous in every possible way. I've been saying how bad and boring they are for a while now and I think everyone here knows I hate the concept and would have preferred to see Pokémon Contests making a return and Serena becoming a Coordinator rather than a Performer. The writers had the chance of bringing Pokémon Contests back to the show with the release of Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire but they chose to ignore a competition that they adapted so well into the anime to come up with an extremely flawed and sexist career option for Serena.

First things first, I think making Showcases a girls-only competition was a really dumb idea. There is no good reason to forbid boys from entering these tournaments and there is nothing in them we haven't seen boys doing before. It makes no sense whatsoever and it goes against everything Pokémon is all about: Trainers journeying across a region and exploring their options with Pokémon by their side. It's such a shame we have to see gender roles determining what you are allowed to do with your Pokémon. We have seen boys and girls in the Pokémon League and the Grand Festival and several other smaller competitions such as the PokéRinger and the tournaments hosted by Don George. It's beyond me why it has to be different with Showcases. It's something I do not approve and it hurts Showcases in my eyes.

Second, the Theme Performance is as boring as it can get. Seeing a bunch of girls baking Poké Puffs is not interesting at all and the Pokémon have little to no involvement. Two out of the three activities that have been used as a theme are almost entirely focused on the Performers. Showcases were introduced as a competition where Performers and Pokémon show off their partnership, but they're more like Performers using Pokémon to become idols. The Pokémon Styling theme requires the Pokémon to sit still while Performers dress them up with accessories while in the Poké Puff Baking theme the Pokémon are nothing more than servants. Even in the Pokémon Quiz it feels like whatever the Pokémon are doing is really minor because ultimately is up to the Performer to get three questions correctly.

The judging process is another thing that bugs me. I can't get over the fact Serena received more votes than Jessie in the Coumarine Showcase despite her flop of a performance. Fennekin failed to walk down a catwalk but got enough pity votes to place her above a competitor that did everything right but wasn't cute in the eyes of the crowd. Forget we once had Harley showing off how scary a Cacturne can be or Kenny reminding us of just how strong and tough a Machoke is, forget the talented Coordinators using moves in a creative manner to highlight the key characteristics of their Pokémon, because we're now in a competition where being cute is the way to go. It would be so much better to have professional judges evaluating these performances instead of the audience.

And finally the rivalries, which are just pathetic right now. Even though Showcases do not provide direct confrontation, the writers could still make Serena feel pressured for being around certain contestants. However, Serena currently sees Shauna the same way she sees any other Performer, and that's pretty bad considering Shauna is supposed to be her main rival. The writers are failing to give Serena a proper challenge. I think we're at a point to question why any of Serena's rivals should be considered a threat to her. I mean, Nini was a joke in the last Showcase, she was brought back only to lose in the first round and make us laugh. Then there's Miette, but we have no reason to believe she is a talented Performer because we didn't get to see her performance as it was much more important to show Serena dealing with the major issue that is having a ripped furisode. We also have Jessie, better known as the walking definition of butt monkey. And last but not least, there's Shauna, someone who Serena managed to defeat in her last Showcase, someone who was considered your average Performer when she was at her best. Shauna may have won the Coumarine Showcase but she failed to impress Palermo, so she isn't that good to begin with. Serena has no tough competition, and that's another low point for Showcases.

Of course there are many more things I could complain about, like how the writers are adding drama to every Showcase episode to keep us entertained because the competition itself is boring and they know it, something which I detailed on the review thread for the Anistar Showcase episode, but I think I've covered the aspects that bother me the most.

Unless knocking out opponent's Pokemon means disqualifications, I object any form of battling in Contests or Showcases.

I do agree showing the beauty of Pokemon in a battle is a very good concept, but the premise of the battle in Contests are horrible.

So its either disqualification for knock outs or no battles for me.

I'll try and write this in a way that does not offend you, but you're making yourself look unknowledgeable about the concept of Contest Battles. Since you said you enjoyed the first round of Pokémon Contests, I'll tell you about the second round by using the first round as an example. Do you remember how Kenny was eliminated from the Sinnoh Grand Festival? He tried a risky fusion move using Empoleon and Floatzel and the end result was a disaster because Empoleon's attack was too strong and Floatzel was unable to handle such amount of power. The same thing can happen during the second round.

The objective of a Contest Battle is to show off your Pokémon in an appealing way while reducing your opponent's points instead of making your opponent's Pokémon faint like in a regular Pokémon battle, but sometimes a combination is so powerful that it causes the opponent to be knocked out. It's a possibility, it's not the goal of the battle. The writers have made countless efforts to make sure that said goal is as obvious as possible, and you can clearly see that battles ending with a Pokémon with swirly eyes are not so common in the Diamond & Pearl series as they were in the Advanced Generation series.

Whenever I see a person having problems to understand how Contest Battles work, I remember the battle between Mamoswine and Granbull in the Lilypad Contest in Dressed for Jess Success!. The entire episode is very educational as Lyra and Khoury are watching a Pokémon Contest for the very first time and every other character is explaining to them how things are done in these competitions. There's a scene in which Lyra is confused as to why Dawn is sad if her Mamoswine just won the battle against Granbull, and I think it was Brock who explained that Dawn wanted to do so much more to show off her Pokémon instead of winning with a single combination. This scene sums up everything I'm saying. It was never Dawn's intention to one-hit knock out her opponent's Pokémon, but things like this can happen. That's why we have elimination by knockout in Contest Battles.

 

[Hidden Mew]

I think it's different strokes isn't it. As far as I'm concerned it was OTT, especially when you compare it with how other characters have handled much more acute/bigger losses. Serena has also not met anyone whose innate talent appears to exceed hers which I find annoying to watch... I'm not sure if it's too late to bring in an actual rival at this stage.

To be fair, every character would handle defeat differently. Serena losing her first Showcase is a different situation than what happened with May losing her first Contest or when Dawn had her losing streak and they all have different personalities. While other characters have had bigger losses and have handled it differently than Serena did, I don't think that I could consider her response an overreaction when she is a different character from May and Dawn and her situation is different from theirs as well.

Although, I can understand the frustration with Serena not meeting anyone whose talent exceeds her own in a Showcase. They seem to be around the same level, if not a bit lower, than Serena's, so that would make it more difficult to be invested in them. If Serena wins all three Princess Keys in a row, then that would make her look too good, so that would be an issue and that's one reason why I'm hoping that they'll give her a bit of a losing streak. It would be one way to stretch out her goal a bit more while also having her struggle to improve. I don't know if it would be that interesting, but it could help to make Showcases something more than just looking pretty.

 

[Misty-Moo]

I don't like Showcases either and it's not just because of the reasons already stated here. To me, they smack slightly of some weird beauty pageant - there's the talent portion and then the swimsuit/evening wear portion

 

[Ryu Taylor]

I don't like Showcases either and it's not just because of the reasons already stated here. To me, they smack slightly of some weird beauty pageant - there's the talent portion and then the swimsuit/evening wear portion

I know this is iffy, but I wonder if, within the show's world, Pokemon Showcases have detractors looking down on it as being fetish fuel the same way "Toddlers in Tiaras" does in the real world.

To answer the thread's question, no, I'm not bothered. Serena needs something to do other than to pursue an unrequited love.

I don't buy into the haircutting drama being this amazing piece of character development

Avatar Korra did that better, honestly.

 

[Mareepy]

Unless knocking out opponent's Pokemon means disqualifications, I object any form of battling in Contests or Showcases.

I do agree showing the beauty of Pokemon in a battle is a very good concept, but the premise of the battle in Contests are horrible.

So its either disqualification for knock outs or no battles for me.

I'll try and write this in a way that does not offend you, but you're making yourself look unknowledgeable about the concept of Contest Battles. Since you said you enjoyed the first round of Pokémon Contests, I'll tell you about the second round by using the first round as an example. Do you remember how Kenny was eliminated from the Sinnoh Grand Festival? He tried a risky fusion move using Empoleon and Floatzel and the end result was a disaster because Empoleon's attack was too strong and Floatzel was unable to handle such amount of power. The same thing can happen during the second round.

The objective of a Contest Battle is to show off your Pokémon in an appealing way while reducing your opponent's points instead of making your opponent's Pokémon faint like in a regular Pokémon battle, but sometimes a combination is so powerful that it causes the opponent to be knocked out. It's a possibility, it's not the goal of the battle. The writers have made countless efforts to make sure that said goal is as obvious as possible, and you can clearly see that battles ending with a Pokémon with swirly eyes are not so common in the Diamond & Pearl series as they were in the Advanced Generation series.

Whenever I see a person having problems to understand how Contest Battles work, I remember the battle between Mamoswine and Granbull in the Lilypad Contest in Dressed for Jess Success!. The entire episode is very educational as Lyra and Khoury are watching a Pokémon Contest for the very first time and every other character is explaining to them how things are done in these competitions. There's a scene in which Lyra is confused as to why Dawn is sad if her Mamoswine just won the battle against Granbull, and I think it was Brock who explained that Dawn wanted to do so much more to show off her Pokémon instead of winning with a single combination. This scene sums up everything I'm saying. It was never Dawn's intention to one-hit knock out her opponent's Pokémon, but things like this can happen. That's why we have elimination by knockout in Contest Battles.

Funny thing is, my first post already gave a clear cut example of it. Intentionally or not, the premise is dumb. As far as the rules go, any Champion can win the battle rounds if they can get through the performance round. I don't care whats the objective of the Contest Battle. There exists a BIG hole in it. Knock out means you win, thats it. Now tell me if Cynthia get a free pass in performance round, do you even stand a chance in battle rounds? Just one Giga Impact without any sparkles and you are OUT!

Of all the contest battles Dawn won, the one vs Ursula is just a pain to watch, and forever became a traumatic experience. And I guess you just made my example clearer by saying how tough the performance round can be with risky combinations. Those can be used at battle rounds yes, but they can be used in performance round too, so I get to see the combination anyways, I lose absolutely nothing from not having battle rounds.

I know so little that I found a hole in the rules. Give me a way so a coordinator stands a chance if a Champion passed the performance round. I'd take that you never even really thought of the premise of this rule, its dumb, and no excuses should be given.

Whats the point of the battle round when the Objective can be ignored if you can OHKO opponent? Whats the point? Argue as you want with the objective, if I am in a Contest Battle, I will ignore it and just go for the knockout, easier, faster, victories. Its cheating so what? The competition is open to that. I am cheating legally.

SO what if the winner felt sorry? Didn't mean to knock out? Wow.. the winner says sorry.... oooooooooo.... I am so sorry, I don't mean to knock out your Pokemon, but hey, I advanced, and you are eliminated... ahahahahahahahaha.

I don't care if everyone in the Pokemon universe are people with such sportsmanship, the hole exists and I want it fixed. Thats my stance and and I most probably will never change it. And I am sure not everyone has such high sportsmanship and some people misusing their decent IQ has already started to aim for knock outs. Kudos to them then, the rules is wrong they are not.

 

[SammyW27]

They're "meh".

It's like someone said "We need to DO something with Serena besides have her drool over Ash.", but didn't know WHAT.

Without a side feature from the games, they had precious little idea how to use her (to be fair, Misty and Iris are in a similar situation). I'm surprised they didn't bring back Contests to help promote ORAS, even if they aren't in the Kalos games. Maybe they wanted to try something a little different this time, but it backfired.

I can always appreciate them doing stuff with Pokémon outside of battling...unfortunately, with battles it's just not as interesting or enticing. As has been said, part of the problem is that they came up with this mid-way through the saga. If that's not bad enough, it feels like they're making it up as they go along. What's more, it now seems like illogical, even unfair things are happening simply because the plot requires it: Nini and Miette are now Serena's rivals even though they'd been away too long, are too underdeveloped, and it was really too late to being in more Showcase rivals; Serena won her latest when her performance was essentially the same thing she did in XY79 (and Shauna's was pretty much the same as in XY 60); poor Jessie being a total buttmonkey when she should a bigger threat; conflict & complications coming from random events that make mountains out of molehills; and, of course, how the whole damn thing seems to be far too much about appearance--frou-frou, girly-girl, suspiciously sexist appearance at that--than actual talent or creativity.

Too be brutally honest, I'm starting to have repressed flashbacks of May's Kanto Contest storyline in AG when she had unsatisfying/underserved wins handed to her on a silver platter... :uhoh:

I was all for Serena finally getting her own subplot, but it has NOT turned out so well... :-(

 

[Hidden Mew]

I don't like Showcases either and it's not just because of the reasons already stated here. To me, they smack slightly of some weird beauty pageant - there's the talent portion and then the swimsuit/evening wear portion

Yeah, the first round especially make me think of the talent portion of a beauty pageant. The majority of the focus going on for the Performers instead of on their Pokemon doesn't help matters either since that really does make the focus more on them than their Pokemon.

I know this is iffy, but I wonder if, within the show's world, Pokemon Showcases have detractors looking down on it as being fetish fuel the same way "Toddlers in Tiaras" does in the real world.

Well fortunately, I don't think that they would cover something like that in the anime since that wouldn't really fit with the tone of the series. Not to mention I don't think that the problems people have with Toddlers in Tiaras would be similar to whatever problems people in the Pokemon world have with Pokemon Showcases.

Also, while it would have made sense to include Contests to tie in with OR/AS, I think it was just a matter of time. By the time those games were released, XY had already been going on for about a year and it was way too late to reintroduce Contests by that point. That's still why I think Serena needs only three keys since anything more could potentially take up too much time. I don't think she could have earned five ribbons and got to the Grand Festival by around the time Ash got his last Kalos badge since she didn't even start her goal until he had four badges. It most likely would have been a really rushed Contest arc and that might not have been a good approach after not handling Contests for so many years.

If X/Y had Contests, then this wouldn't have been an issue, but the writers' hands were kind of tied. I don't think that excuses how Showcases aren't engaging or interesting as a form of competition, but it does make it a bit more understandable as to why they didn't just bring back Contests when OR/AS were released.

 

[Mikuri]

Funny thing is, my first post already gave a clear cut example of it. Intentionally or not, the premise is dumb. As far as the rules go, any Champion can win the battle rounds if they can get through the performance round. I don't care whats the objective of the Contest Battle. There exists a BIG hole in it. Knock out means you win, thats it. Now tell me if Cynthia get a free pass in performance round, do you even stand a chance in battle rounds? Just one Giga Impact without any sparkles and you are OUT!

Of all the contest battles Dawn won, the one vs Ursula is just a pain to watch, and forever became a traumatic experience. And I guess you just made my example clearer by saying how tough the performance round can be with risky combinations. Those can be used at battle rounds yes, but they can be used in performance round too, so I get to see the combination anyways, I lose absolutely nothing from not having battle rounds.

I know so little that I found a hole in the rules. Give me a way so a coordinator stands a chance if a Champion passed the performance round. I'd take that you never even really thought of the premise of this rule, its dumb, and no excuses should be given.

Whats the point of the battle round when the Objective can be ignored if you can OHKO opponent? Whats the point? Argue as you want with the objective, if I am in a Contest Battle, I will ignore it and just go for the knockout, easier, faster, victories. Its cheating so what? The competition is open to that. I am cheating legally.

SO what if the winner felt sorry? Didn't mean to knock out? Wow.. the winner says sorry.... oooooooooo.... I am so sorry, I don't mean to knock out your Pokemon, but hey, I advanced, and you are eliminated... ahahahahahahahaha.

I don't care if everyone in the Pokemon universe are people with such sportsmanship, the hole exists and I want it fixed. Thats my stance and and I most probably will never change it. And I am sure not everyone has such high sportsmanship and some people misusing their decent IQ has already started to aim for knock outs. Kudos to them then, the rules is wrong they are not.

Sounds to me like you're reaching. Firstly, why would anyone do that? I have a hard time picturing a regular Trainer like Stephan entering a Pokémon Contest. It's not something he would be interested in doing. He focuses on raw power and he raises Pokémon to attack their opponents with great force, he wouldn't join a competition that revolves around landing attacks in a stylish manner. But I am willing to go down this road, let's suppose Stephan entered a Pokémon Contest just because...

Now I'll give you an example of how things work in the real world. Capoeira is a famous martial art from Brazil and its practitioners mix dance and combat elements when they face off, much like how Coordinators mix visually impressive techniques to regular battle tactics. Now I'm sure you know that there are several deadlier forms of martial arts than capoeira, and a person with a different fighting style could always enter a capoeira competition and knock out their opponent. Wouldn't this person be disqualified? Yes they would.

... Stephan would end up being disqualified. You're saying there's a hole in the rules, but there isn't. It's one thing to enter a competition, play by the rules, and by chance knock out your opponent. It's a completely different matter to take part in an event with the clear purpose of ignoring all of its core elements to disrespect all of the hard-working people who trained to be there. I would think that Contest Judges can probably tell when a person is playing fair and square and when they're not. There isn't a single character in the Pokémon anime who entered a competition, ignored all the rules, and wasn't eliminated.

Secondly, I don't know why you're thinking it's so easy to advance to the Battle Stage. You're assuming a regular Trainer would enter a Pokémon Contest and breeze through the Performance Stage, beating a large number of Coordinators who actually took the time to train their Pokémon to deliver a performance that would impress the judges enough to assure their progression to the Contest Battles. I think Dawn's arc proved getting to the second round isn't a task that you can accomplish easily. It's serious business. You're competing against numerous Coordinators and only a selected few will advance to the next stage. I remember May was once the #50 contestant called on stage. That's tough, unlike Showcases where there are only 15 Performers participating and you only need to beat two of them to get to the finals of the competition.

Now don't get me wrong, you're free to dislike Contest Battles all you want, and I'm not here trying to make you enjoy them like I do, but please don't act like they're as flawed as Showcases, because they're clearly not. In contrast with all the Showcase-related activities, the writers did a good job when developing Pokémon Contest rounds. This hole you're talking about does not exist. Try harder next time.