We have a scan of sorts that seems to confirm the episode's title, at least.
Still overall unconfirmed. Also apparently the source of the scan is a bit dubious. I’ll happily update the thread title when we have more concrete confirmation.
I'd hate for Ash to fob training his Pokémon off on someone else. He's a league winner for heaven's sake, he should be well past that point.
Knowing Journeys I’m not expecting anything beyond a 1 vs 1. Anything else can be a pleasant surprise for me.
Ash getting rid of literally the only Pokémon who has had some semblance of decent screentime in the series? No thanks.
I mean, Pokemon that grow without needing to evolve are a dime a dozen in the anime, and the majority of them do a much better job at that plotline than Axew, who didn't really grow so much as he was randomly given powerful moves whenever he conveniently needed them. Outside of training to master Dragon Rage, Axew made very little actual progression onscreen, and his development was the definition of telling over showing: we constantly got told that he'd made amazing improvements, but there was barely any believable evidence of that, as his overall battle record is spotty at best and he wasn't seen battling or training much outside of sparring with Scraggy (something that abruptly came to a halt when Axew finally mastered Dragon Rage. It's an honest shame we never got a rematch, because Scraggy did eventually go on to participate in Gym and League battles and even a Don George tournament where he performed relatively well, so it honestly just feels that Axew ended off the series weaker than his own baby brother), and the whole "cutsey-patootsie baby" shtick took so much priority over Axew's growth that in practice he's basically just Togepi 2.0, making the times he learned powerful moves out of nowhere feel completely undeserved.
The worst offender or which was Outrage, which was literally used just one time for Iris to win a battle she was losing. A prime example of a DEM. BW really liked doing those.
(Off-topic alert)
Don’t get me wrong I agree that Dragonite shouldn’t be given away. But at the risk of sounding pedantic, I’m going to point out that this definitely isn’t true. Even if you’re just talking about Ash’s Pokémon.
The definition I'm using is "Deus Ex Machina".
Given the setting of Sakuragi Park, dumping it to get new captures wouldn’t even make sense considering he can easily rotate Pokémon on a dime.
It's also been hidden on the Bulbanews list on upcoming episodes.
I’m kinda hoping not because if so, the writers are laying the parallels with Ash on a little thick. First him getting fished out of the water by Lana, then mistaking Iris for a Pokémon. What next, is he gonna fry Misty’s bike?
Have to disagree here, while I can easily admit Outrage came out of left field and was never really relevant after the episode where Axew learned it, there was definitely progression in its development. It literally couldn't even take a hit from anything but Scraggy and its Scratch hit as hard as a pillow before it started training. Sure, it didn't become Iris' ace, but it still got progressively stronger as the show went out, and even though it wasn't used much in tournaments it did participate in other important battles like in Episode N against the mind-controlled Pokémon.
