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Preview JN122: The Semifinals I: "Overwhelming Victory"

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Twilight-Kun said:
D2CSedE.jpg

Man, wouldn't it be stupid if the pokemon with literally over a decade of experience lost to a pokemon that's less than a year old given its trainer was ten when he got it, ten when it evolved, and still ten when it battled in matches against the world's (current) strongest trainers
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While true, it's no different than Ash beating all the adult Gym leaders with new captures every series. Characters like Wulfric are like 50-60 years old and Ash beats him with his Kalos team that he owned for a few months
 
FinnishPokéFan92 said:
If the leak is true, I think Pikachu going down early is not so much of an evidence towards Mega Lucario being used as Ash's last mon against Leon, but rather as his last mon against Cynthia's Mega Garchomp. That way, Ash will also use his second gimmick in this match and leave his last one, namely Dynamax/Gigantamax, until the last match with Leon. (Also, my guess is Ash will use Gigantamax Pikachu instead of Gigantamax Gengar, as a callback to Ash and Leon's first unofficial match.)
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Just because I said I'd argue it was evidence it doesn't mean that I think it's 100% guaranteed. I wasn't even being fully serious with that remark. And like I said, Lucario beating Charizard would be a bad writing move if it happened regardless because Lucario has zero histoy with Leon's Charizard whereas Ash's Pikachu at the very least has interacted with him a couple times.

That said, I'd also say that Pikachu using G-Max against Charizard would also be a bad writing move, since Pikachu was extremely clumsy with his G-Max form and wasn't seen practicing mastering it onscreen. So for him to go from literally not being able to launch attacks properly to defeating the world's strongest non-Legendary with it (who on top of things likely has decades of experience with his own G-Max form) like that would only reinforce the feeling that the Journeys team didn't earn their power and achievments properly or fairly, and I want that to be mitigated as much as possible. So yeah, I'd prefer for Pikachu to beat Charizard either with his Z-Move or with no gimmick at all (albeit after Charizard has exhausted the G-Max form if the latter).

Daren said:
On one hand as has been observed before Pikachu is a Pokémon who least needs extra wins.
However Pikachu beating Charizard with a type advantage and tons of experience would make more sense than Lucario doing it, and it feels fitting for Ash's starter to be the one who defeats the world champion--and as I've noted before, all of Ash's major boss victories (Drake, Brandon, Kukui) were by Pikachu.
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Yeah. I obviously don't seriously think that Lucario is the one who's gonna beat Charizard. Like I said, it wouldn't even be satisfying narratively since Lucario hasn't even met Leon's Charizard in person, so what does he have to gain by beating it? Other than becoming the new strongest non-Legendary in the world, I guess?
 
Diantha about to get clapped by Leon faster than Ash-Greninja swept her team in my AU
Also in every single battle in this series Ash trails and beginning (minus vs Drasna but he was struggling bad that time)
 
Ghost Diplocaulus said:
Yeah. I obviously don't seriously think that Lucario is the one who's gonna beat Charizard. Like I said, it wouldn't even be satisfying narratively since Lucario hasn't even met Leon's Charizard in person, so what does he have to gain by beating it? Other than becoming the new strongest non-Legendary in the world, I guess?
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Honestly, I really could see it happen even if I think Pikachu is a better narrative choice.
Remember Gary? Charizard barely interacted with him but was the one to beat his starter while Pikachu never got to beat Umbreon despite the obvious setup there. He never beat Paul's Electivire, either. Plus some anipoke series' have a tendency to give it's favoured ace as many wins as possible, so Lucario beating both Cynthia and Leon wouldn't shock me.
 
Daren said:
Honestly, I really could see it happen even if I think Pikachu is a better narrative choice.
Remember Gary? Charizard barely interacted with him but was the one to beat his starter while Pikachu never got to beat Umbreon despite the obvious setup there. He never beat Paul's Electivire, either. Plus some anipoke series' have a tendency to give it's favoured ace as many wins as possible, so Lucario beating both Cynthia and Leon wouldn't shock me.
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To be fair, those other examples kinda have justifications that Lucario beating Leon's Charizard doesn't: with Gary Charizard vs Blastoise you could argue that they were simply trying to emulate the original Red and Blue games more faithfully, something that they couldn't quite do with Pikachu vs Umbreon, in no small part because not only does Umbreon no longer even match with the Yellow Rival's Eevee anymore for obvious reasons (and it could even be argued that it was never meant to be a perfect match anyway due to Eevee not being Gary's starter, since it was always rather blatantly stated that Gary's starter was one of the classic trio), but also because if we go by how the Rival's Eeveelution was determined, Gary's would've been a Vaporeon, and Pikachu overcoming a rival that formerly beat him by virtue of having the type advantage the next time around just isn't quite as satisfying. By contrast, Charizard vs Blastoise better emulates the protagonist having the fully evolved starter with the disadvantage in the games. In other words, Charizard vs Blastoise may have no in-universe buildup, but at least it is meaningful from a meta perspective. As for Paul's Electivire, with that one the writers at least took care to establish a clear rivalry between Electivire Infernape that was honestly far more pronounced than Electivire vs Pikachu, meaning Infernape beating it was far more fulfilling than it would've been for Pikachu to do it (also, one could argue that Pikachu still got some closure on the Electivire rivalry by proxy of beating Volkner's, so...)

Here, though, Lucario has literally no connections either in-universe or from a meta standpoint: from the former, it has no interactions with Leon's Charizard to justify beating it ala Infernape; and from the latter, there certainly never has been a Lucario/Charizard rivalry anywhere. If Leon's ace was a Blaziken or a Zoroark (the two species that are most often treated as Lucario's "rivals") I could actually see why Lucario beating the ace would make sense thematically even despite the lack of in-universe buildup, but instead we have a Charizard, so it's all kinds of random.
 
Sai said:
While true, it's no different than Ash beating all the adult Gym leaders with new captures every series. Characters like Wulfric are like 50-60 years old and Ash beats him with his Kalos team that he owned for a few months
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Gym Leaders test a trainer's skill and aren't going all-out with their champion-level teams though, so yes, Ash winning against them with barely-trained pokemon shows how well he's raised and trained them
 
Twilight-Kun said:
Gym Leaders test a trainer's skill and aren't going all-out with their champion-level teams though, so yes, Ash winning against them with barely-trained pokemon shows how well he's raised and trained them
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The problem is with every Gym leader that Ash faces, we know they're using their strongest pokemon because the Gym leader usually gives us some history whoever their ace is and we see some backstory on it. We know, at least in terms of Ash, they're not holding back. And this was every season.

For example Volkner used the same Electrivire/Luxray on Ash in JN as he did back in DP, proving he wasn't holding back when he was just the 8th Gym leader. Korrina's lead is her Mega Lucario. Even in OS-AG and DP there is no indication the Gym leaders go easy on Ash, they're using their main/favorite pokemon as their last pokemon to win. None of the XY Gym leaders looked like they were holding back, none of the BW ones either for that matter.

Now of course in-universe, I doubt Misty is using her Mega Gyarados agaisnt newbie trainers coming to her from Pallet town with a Pidgey and Rattata. But since we follow Ash, from his perspective they always use their strongest pokemon. This is also why the Gym leaders always look so shocked when Ash defeats their last pokemon in every series, he's not just taking out a random pokemon, he's taking out their most powerful.
 
Queen Cynthia said:
I agree with you. Still, there's an even simpler solution in my eyes:
Just make him roughly on par with all the other champions, don't hype up his alleged power level to such an unrealistic extent and above all, don't treat the other champions that disrepectfully. Simple as that.
I'm fine (kind of..) if he eventually wins against another champion, as long as it's a realistic, roughly balanced and exciting battle in which Leon has to struggle, too.
Also, they could introduce a long-lasting rivalry with Cynthia, a constant competition for the throne,so to speak. After all, it looks like Cynthia is the only one who would beat him if only she was allowed to! (Because she wouldn't depend on that infamous, DEM-like power boost courtesy of the writers that our dear Ash can regularly rely on.)
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Yeah, they could've made it so that Leon is an A+ compared to the A- champions. Things are in his favor, but not soo much so that he can just roflstomp whomever comes his way.
 
So Ash and Cynthia's battle is coming up soon.

I have two feelings:

A sense of excitement that he's finally battling Sinnoh's top champion but a sense of worriness since this is JN and there's a chance this series could flub it all up.
 
Eitarou said:
Cynthia, please go away until next ep. Diantha's already getting screwed over by getting taken down in one ep. She doesn't need you and Ash eating her last bits of relevancy.
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Rip Diantha. At least she watches Ash vs Cynthia
 
Looks like we'll only see Rillaboom vs Goodra and Charizard vs Gardevoir with Cynthia/Ash in between
 
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