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Review JN090: Dialga & Palkia! The Space-Time Showdown!!

For your previous post look at the last Lyra ep in DP. Everyone bows to the statues of the legendaries in prayer. Sinnoh always treated its legendaries as deities compared to other regions. The Dialga/Palkia here weren't the focus point of the episode it was mainly to explain why everyone was de-aging. In the previous episode Cynthia said Arceus birthed Dialga/Palkia and is treated like a God. The cast than praying to God in their realm and the visual of Arceus descending to reverse the damage of Dialga/Palkia was the result of that.

For the record the Galactic finale in 2009 handled this similarly and arguably more rushed because Dialga/Palkia didn't even get through the portals and neither Arceus or Giratina even appeared.
Something can "make sense" in lore and still be a bad literal Deux Ex Machina in writing. And honestly "What about x?" Isn’t really a good argument.
 
The episode wasnt bad. But it felt kinda rushed. Were Mesprit, Azelf and Uxie no easier solution?
 
I’d say that they didn’t want to rip off DP’s Galactic ending but they kinda ripped off Necrozma’s so it seems that wasn’t a concern.
I know right lol, it reminded me of Necrozma!
And when you think about it, Mesprit, Azelf and Uxie wouldnt be affected by Dialgas time Powers.
 
The alternative Team Rocket really left me with a weird feeling. I had the impression of seeing again the Jessie and James of BW, certain episodes of XY and their 2 first appearances in « Journeys » and it was a really… really weird feeling… This with their lack of individuality and the strange participation of the grunts of the « Matori Matrix » helping them … they really gave me the impression that they were stealing the role of another evil team. And why are they « blasting off » too if they are really very competents?…
 
The alternative Team Rocket really left me with a weird feeling. I had the impression of seeing again the Jessie and James of BW, certain episodes of XY and their 2 first appearances in « Journeys » and it was a really… really weird feeling… This with their lack of individuality and the strange participation of the grunts of the « Matori Matrix » helping them … they really gave me the impression that they were stealing the role of another evil team. And why are they « blasting off » too if they are really very competents?…
I agree it felt weird. Not to mention how the Koharus beat them just like that, while Cynthia didnt stand a chance
 
Cynthia stood a chance. It just that she was hampered by the time reversal thing. And even with that, she was able to make them retreat.
True. Tho the two Koharus made her battle look kinda pointless, is that the good word?
 
Well, I'm late, but my opinion is that the episode has a M20 story: the rest of the episode is great, but the ending portion kills it for me.
"Praying to Arceus" beign the solution was kinda anticlimatic and lazy. I think there were two ways they could have made it better:either show more of AU Sinnoh in the praying (like in the Manalo Festival Episode back in SM, which is funnily enough ALSO episode 90 of that series) or have Arceus or some other Pokemon spectating the whole thing to begin with and then after the prayers come it then shows up and decides to get involved.
Other than that BS, the rest of the epsiode wasn't that bad, with some battle and also the intro of the AU Goh and Chloe.

Also this episode confirms that the AU characters are much more accomplished than their standard counterparts

Ranking: 7/10
 
Well, I'm late, but my opinion is that the episode has a M20 story: the rest of the episode is great, but the ending portion kills it for me.
"Praying to Arceus" beign the solution was kinda anticlimatic and lazy. I think there were two ways they could have made it better:either show more of AU Sinnoh in the praying (like in the Manalo Festival Episode back in SM, which is funnily enough ALSO episode 90 of that series) or have Arceus or some other Pokemon spectating the whole thing to begin with and then after the prayers come it then shows up and decides to get involved.
Other than that BS, the rest of the epsiode wasn't that bad, with some battle and also the intro of the AU Goh and Chloe.

Also this episode confirms that the AU characters are much more accomplished than their standard counterparts

Ranking: 7/10
The second part was a mess in different ways. The praying was Necrozma 2.0. Some things made no sense tbh like AU Team Rocket being defeated so easily, wouldn't the Lake Trio have worked better than Arceus?
 
The second part was a mess in different ways. The praying was Necrozma 2.0. Some things made no sense tbh like AU Team Rocket being defeated so easily, wouldn't the Lake Trio have worked better than Arceus?
That's why I said the epsiode was like M20;the visuals and other stuff at first were good, and then the ending soils it
 
That's why I said the epsiode was like M20;the visuals and other stuff at first were good, and then the ending soils it
True. Tho Journeys has never been good in doing endings in arcs look at the DD arc or the Cresselia and Darkrai arc.
 
And considering that this prayer aspect seems to be a widespread complaint, quite a few people don’t seem to share your sentiment that this wasn’t a Deus ex Machina especially when it’s a solution that comes out of nowhere.
Initially it was Ash's idea to call for Dialga and Palkia by showing own feelings towards Pokemon. Then another Ash suggested to call for Arceus as well, who was mentioned before as creator, and its power embedded Red Chain. So where is Deux ex Machina, if there was foreshadowing of Arceus involvement?
Though I can understand, if Red Chain was called macguffin, since there wasn't proper explanation about it. It's even unknown, was it made of material or pure energy.
 
Initially it was Ash's idea to call for Dialga and Palkia by showing own feelings towards Pokemon. Then another Ash suggested to call for Arceus as well, who was mentioned before as creator, and its power embedded Red Chain. So where is Deux ex Machina, if there was foreshadowing of Arceus involvement?
Though I can understand, if Red Chain was called macguffin, since there wasn't proper explanation about it. It's even unknown, was it made of material or pure energy.
It’s not so much the summoning of Arceus as the way that the wrote it occurring. In this case, the writers crafted an unwinnable scenario in which the heroes had all of their active Pokémon reverted to eggs and thus were in the position of absolute inability to actively contribute to solving the problem and thus had to break out what essentially was a Hail Mary play and pray to Arceus to save the day. There were just better ways the writers could have played out that solution that feels less like ‘God, we’ve got a total SNAFU and nothing more to play. Please come down and fix this.’
 
It’s not so much the summoning of Arceus as the way that the wrote it occurring. In this case, the writers crafted an unwinnable scenario in which the heroes had all of their active Pokémon reverted to eggs and thus were in the position of absolute inability to actively contribute to solving the problem and thus had to break out what essentially was a Hail Mary play and pray to Arceus to save the day. There were just better ways the writers could have played out that solution that feels less like ‘God, we’ve got a total SNAFU and nothing more to play. Please come down and fix this.’
Completely agree! It felt like a not Satoshi like thing to do. Normally he tries to fix things himself.
 
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