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Review JN046: Battle and Catch! The Revival of Mewtwo

Let's get some Fs in the chat for the boys after the absolute demolition Mewtwo unleashed upon them.

I'll need subs to understand what happened in the exchange between Mewtwo and Goh but if his goal isn't tweaked properly after all of that display, I'll be disappointed. There are many world building and plot issues that I'll address later, otherwise, a well animated episode which was okay in quality.

EDIT: I also "edited" the Bulbapedia page appropriately. :wynaut:

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Great battle episode and we all knew that Mewtwo is too OP for Ash and Goh to deal with and he decided to leave again after being know of his present for nobody else can find.

Overall rating: B+
 
I'm just saying, Red was able to damage and defeat Mewtwo by himself haha.

Just as I feared, Mewtwo primarily spammed Shadow Ball; so much so that there was even a Spirit Shadow Ball. A real missed opportunity to demonstrate the vast movepool the Genetic Pokémon possesses.
 
"Oh he kicked our tinny butts"

"Oh let's smile about it"

"HA HA HA We could have been shreed to pieces"

This kind of attitude makes me wanna puke. Why don't you put a rainbow in the end.

Nice beating but this series lacks any drama.
 
Yeah, gotta admit it. I wasn't feeling this one. *Yes, I know a continuity episode that I thought wasn't that great, what a shocker*.

It was nice to hear Masachika as Mewtwo and some of the old music again but the battle got repetitive with the overuse of Shadow Ball as mentioned really fast (though obviously Ash and Gou had no chance of winning).
 
Geez, I know making Lucario and Cinderace kind of the central focus of the battle after their evolution episode is to be expected. However, ONE SHADOW BALL put Pikachu down for the count on the sidelines while those two took a few hits before Mewtwo ended things?

Seeing the Egyptian steel puppy and fiery soccer rabbit get their tails handed to them (I did like the battle for what it was despite the Shadow Ball spamming) kind of reminded me of Monferno's evolution into Infernape but then the very next episode it got K.O.'ed with one Mach Punch from Flint's Infernape. Though to be fair these two didn't win against Eternatus either even though they did take care of Rose and Oleana's Pokemon.

Can't wait to rewatch with English subs to get a better feel for the episode.
 
This episode suffered from the classic "Oh dear, we've got this plot we want to do but we've found we can't stretch it to a full episode so we need to waste the first half with some fluff" problem, hence Satoshi and Go nearly getting killed in the forest multiple times (it should be perfectly clear at this point that going on a Pokemon journey is life-threatening. I can't help but wonder how many beginning trainers have ended up falling off a cliff or drowning in mud or getting eaten by Gyarados).

Once again, Go is shown to be playing by Pokemon GO rules in that he seemingly has more than six Pokemon on him at any one time (and naturally, all the Pokemon he has were perfectly suited to help him out at the right time). Also, I've got to feel sorry for Aceburn... now it's reached its final form Go has decided to keep it in the ball until it's needed, poor guy.

As has been said by others, the Mewtwo battle really didn't amount to much; the battle basically amounted to Mewtwo shoots Shadow Ball, Lucario and Aceburn fail to score a hit, Mewtwo shoots Shadow Ball, Lucario and Aceburn fail to score a hit, Mewtwo shoots giant Shadow Ball, fight over. To be honest, I don't understand why Mewtwo needed to be brought back since it really didn't do much (except for fanservice, natch).

I did enjoy the World of Pokemon intro at the beginning, it's always nice to see those. Of course, I would have liked to have seen Mew interact with Mewtwo but alas.
 
So... this was the same Mewtwo but could have easily just been another Mewtwo - welcome to another addition of ‘continuity but we’ll keep it quiet’ ala Lance. After Surge, Korrina and Chuck were more explicit examples of good continuity (flashbacks and explicit talking about the past) I thought this would be better.

And, sure, I haven’t seen subs but I assume given their was no kind of flashback that neither Ash nor Mewtwo actually referenced their past together besides vaguely acknowledging they’ve met before...

The episode may have been better in the first half, not saying the fight was bad, but seeing Goh use different Pokémon was refreshing.

Awsome battle between four Pokémon playable in Smash Bros. (Just you wait)
 
A few early thoughts about this episode before I watch it again with subs:
  • I wasn't expecting to get one of those "World of Pokemon" intros, but I really liked it. Interestingly, Kartana shows up during the DNA transformation sequence, which implies that Mew is also the ancestor to Ultra Beasts.
  • First half of the episode was alright. On one hand, it was fun watching the boys just goofing around on the island and Gou using a whole bunch of his Pokemon, but on the other hand, I would've preferred if some of that screentime was spent on the Mewtwo segment instead.
  • Aside from the fact that Ash recognized Mewtwo and Mewtwo's VA is the OG VA, I dunno if there's any explicit continuity references in this episode. Not that I'm bothered by the lack of references, but it does make me question why they went through all that effort to bring back the OG Mewtwo if it doesn't even do anything substantial in this episode. Hopefully it'll return again in the future.
  • The Mewtwo battle was alright. On one hand, the animation was superb, but on the other hand, Shadow Ball spam got old very quickly. Watching Lucario work together with Cinderace was really nice too.
If it wasn't for my heightened expectations for this episode I'd say it was a decent one, but for now, I'll just say it was an above-average episode.
 
First Friday off since the time slot change and I forgot to watch, whoops! :confused: Maybe I should go do that...
 
Apparently Grookey made a cameo during the intro sequence.

It did, although I'm sad they wasted it's debut like this (same goes for Eolb). I'm really hoping an actual Sarunori turns up soon.

Another interesting cameo was Shikijika's Autumn form as one of Mew's transformations, since Best Wishes never got around to showing us Autumn and Winter form.
 
What I loved about this episode is that it felt like an evaluation for Ash and Go.
The first half of the episode felt like a reintroduction to the series, which I really liked. Showing of the world of Pokemon and Go and Ash's typical habits when dealing with situations and Pokemon.

The second half focused more on how Ash and Go are doing in the present timeline and that they have lots of work to do for realising their goals in the future. Mewtwo was like a manager who conducts a performance review. The theming of this episode was really nice and can be compared to real life.

Some other things:
- Ash seemed to remember Mewtwo, but I would have liked to see a litte bit more from that segment
- The battle looked good, but I agree with other people that it was too one-sided (in terms of dominance and using the same attacks) and predictable.
- I loved the combination attacks from Pikachu, Cinderace and Lucario. Imo they should have played the opening for a bit during this segment, it would have been a nice fit
- Miyazaki mixed with Hayashi is music to my ears
- I don't like they are so inconsistent with Pikachu. Sometimes it can holds it own from multiple attacks, and sometimes he is done quickly. I hate it especially when it is used for plot device, like in the Golurk episode, vs Rose and also in this episode. I am starting to hate how shamelessly they put Lucario in our face without showing other Pokemon and also because of this ''weakening'' Pikachu in terms of power. I don't mind something like that happening during a certain part of a certain season (Greninja or Lycanroc-arc), but this intrusiveness happens ever since Riolu's capture and that annoys me.

Solid episode on it's own, but when you look at this episode from a bigger picture there are again some problems where I fear won't be solved any time soon. Especially the treatment of Ash's team is worrying to me. Hopefully they use this episode as a stepping stone towards the goals for Ash and Go, but with the episodic nature of this series that's no certainty.
 
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Koharu was more interested in learning about Mew and almost missed school for the first time. That encounter with Eevee is coming. Really hope she does start traveling with Ash and Goh considering that’s what she seemingly is starting to want to do.

It’s gonna be weird how this episode was basically the perfect start for a season 2 but Pokémon Journeys will probably have JN048 be the ending of Season 1 due to how the episodes are released.
 
This episode feels like a case of the show's director deciding to use Mewtwo and bring back Masachika Ichimura and everything, but then when it came to actually sit down write the episode the poor writer assigned to the episode got cold feet and was too afraid to do anything. You don't want to be the guy known for butchering Mr. Shudo's creation, you know? Which, well, fair enough, I guess, but then if that happens then what's even the point?

Also, I'm not a huge fan of "Satoshi and Gou can't go 15 episodes without taking a half hour to remind themselves of their dreams, again" thing this show keeps doing.


Panky.. said:
I'll need subs to understand what happened in the exchange between Mewtwo and Goh but if his goal isn't tweaked properly after all of that display, I'll be disappointed.

Basically, Mewtwo questions how Gou "getting all the Pokémon" ties in with his goal to meet Mew (so basically, the same question we've all been asking since this series began). Gou explains Mew is a Pokémon said to have the DNA of all Pokémon and so in order to understand them (and, therefore, understand Mew) he needs to actually get all the Pokémon.

(I mean, the actual reason is "because getting all the Pokémon is the goal in the mobile game that Gou represents" but they're obviously not going to actually say that in this show)

Alola said:
Just as I feared, Mewtwo primarily spammed Shadow Ball; so much so that there was even a Spirit Shadow Ball. A real missed opportunity to demonstrate the vast movepool the Genetic Pokémon possesses.

Well, he did use his tail as a whip that one time, so that's something *shrugs*

But I think at this point it's clear that Mewtwo battles are just going to suck, period. When have we ever gotten a good Mewtwo battle?
 
They really should've gotten the master of callbacks, Atsuhiro Tomioka, to write this episode. I don't think Mewtwo called Ash by name once. So basically, Ash knowing who Mewtwo is and Mewtwo having its old voice actor are the only solid references to their past encounters, and that's a bare minimum.
 
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