J Bouken
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Dec 31, 2019
- Messages
- 120
- Reaction score
- 855
My favourite exchange during this episode was:
Iris: *calls Ash a kid for getting excited over battling too quickly*
Ash: You're the kid!
Iris: I'm not a kid I'm the Champion!
If only Ash responded with "Well I'm a Champion too!". It would have been perfect. Ah well.
I came out of this remembering why I used to enjoy Iris' character. She's a hyperactive mix of cuteness, childishness, and competence and can have enjoyable interactions with Ash when the writers want her too. What this episode did so well was demonstrate her growth while at the same time remembering the ultimate purpose of the battle was to progress Ash into hyper class. She gets enough moments to show off and then loses in a way that preserves her credibility as a strong trainer and just feels "right". Maybe you can argue she should have won to really show off her new Champion status but that wasn't really the point of her return; she herself says becoming Champion wasn't even her end goal and that becoming a Dragon Master is still her focus.
To that end, we saw plenty of progress. She can tell right away Ash's Dragonite is a gentle soul, so when it starts to get fired up she jumps in to calm it down, telling it to enjoy the battle instead because that what she and Ash really want. It's possible she would have won the battle had she not done that, but she wanted the best battle she could get which speaks to her empathy for Dragon-types. They always come first.
Of course, she's made strides as a battler, too. She worked out swiftly Dracovish's weakness was it's mouth after watching it beat her Dragonite and managed to evolve Axew all the way to Haxorus, which ties up that loose end. But in the end, she came out second best to the classic Ash strategy of using offensive moves for defence and turning his opponent's power against them. Now we can add defeating a Champion for the first time to his rapidly expanding list of firsts.
Seriously, at the end of Best Wishes, if you had said Ash would win a Pokemon League and defeat a legit Champion you would have been called delusional. Somewhere along the line, someone just said "Screw it, let Ash be good and keep it that way!" and it just works. Nothing is off limits now.
On the technical side, the pacing of this episode was near perfect. They managed to establish the context of the battle and why it matters succinctly without wasting too much time, gave plenty of time to the battle itself so they could show off some fun action and slow things down so Iris can do her thing, and they ended on a promise of more Iris to come and Ash making progress on his goal. So much packed into 20 minutes without anything feeling under-cooked or neglected. Good job writers.
Iris: *calls Ash a kid for getting excited over battling too quickly*
Ash: You're the kid!
Iris: I'm not a kid I'm the Champion!
If only Ash responded with "Well I'm a Champion too!". It would have been perfect. Ah well.
I came out of this remembering why I used to enjoy Iris' character. She's a hyperactive mix of cuteness, childishness, and competence and can have enjoyable interactions with Ash when the writers want her too. What this episode did so well was demonstrate her growth while at the same time remembering the ultimate purpose of the battle was to progress Ash into hyper class. She gets enough moments to show off and then loses in a way that preserves her credibility as a strong trainer and just feels "right". Maybe you can argue she should have won to really show off her new Champion status but that wasn't really the point of her return; she herself says becoming Champion wasn't even her end goal and that becoming a Dragon Master is still her focus.
To that end, we saw plenty of progress. She can tell right away Ash's Dragonite is a gentle soul, so when it starts to get fired up she jumps in to calm it down, telling it to enjoy the battle instead because that what she and Ash really want. It's possible she would have won the battle had she not done that, but she wanted the best battle she could get which speaks to her empathy for Dragon-types. They always come first.
Of course, she's made strides as a battler, too. She worked out swiftly Dracovish's weakness was it's mouth after watching it beat her Dragonite and managed to evolve Axew all the way to Haxorus, which ties up that loose end. But in the end, she came out second best to the classic Ash strategy of using offensive moves for defence and turning his opponent's power against them. Now we can add defeating a Champion for the first time to his rapidly expanding list of firsts.
Seriously, at the end of Best Wishes, if you had said Ash would win a Pokemon League and defeat a legit Champion you would have been called delusional. Somewhere along the line, someone just said "Screw it, let Ash be good and keep it that way!" and it just works. Nothing is off limits now.
On the technical side, the pacing of this episode was near perfect. They managed to establish the context of the battle and why it matters succinctly without wasting too much time, gave plenty of time to the battle itself so they could show off some fun action and slow things down so Iris can do her thing, and they ended on a promise of more Iris to come and Ash making progress on his goal. So much packed into 20 minutes without anything feeling under-cooked or neglected. Good job writers.