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Review S16 EP10: Cameron's Secret Weapon!

I am disappointed by this battle. After seeing his battle with Stephan I though Ash was actually doing good with his strategies, but I guess not.

First of all, Ash’s team for this battle was terrible. After seeing Cameron’s battles with Marlon and Bianca, you would think that Ash would have prepared a strong team capable of beating a strong Riolu, a fully evolved Ferrothorn and Samurott, and three other Pokemon. But no. He chose Pikachu, his starters, 2 of which are unevolved, Boldore, and Unfezant, both of which are very lackluster. (C’mon they lost to a Koffing)

So Cameron’s secret weapon turns out to be a fully evolved Hydreigon. So Ash decides to send in Boldore. This is smart seeing as Boldore knows a Fighting-type move to combat the dark-type Hydreigon. However, Hydreigon has an advantage since he can fly and dodge most of Boldore’s long ranged moves. Unsurprisingly, Boldore is quickly beaten.

So next, instead sending out his Fighting-type Pignite, he sends out Oshawott . He has 3 water-type moves, that aren’t very effective on dragon-types, and the weak tackle. Obviously, Oshawott loses. Bianca was right; Oshawott was a throwaway.

NOW, Ash decides to send in Pignite, who eventually knocks out Hydreigon by Brick Breaking him in the neck. Cameron then snaps his headband and gets the genius idea to send out his doubly weak Ferrothorn against Pignite. (I thought the headband was supposed to get him to make smart decisions) So Ferrothorn gets knocked out in literally 1 minute.

Then all of a sudden Cameron’s brain starts working again and he sends out Samurott. However, Ash thinks it’s a great idea to keep Pignite in the battle instead of switching to Pikachu or even Snivy, who resists 3 of Samurott’s known moves. So, Pignite is quickly beaten and Ash loses a Pokemon he easily could have avoided losing.

Now Ash thinks it’s a great time to send in Pikachu. However, Samurott uses her seamitar to block Pikachu’s electric moves. Pikachu must really on his Quick Attack and not very effective Iron Tail. Somehow Iron Tail, the move Samurott resists, is able to knock her out.

Once again, Cameron makes the genius decision to send out a doubly weak Swanna against Pikachu. It gets defeated after one Electro Ball.

Now Cameron sends out his final Pokemon Riolu. Wait? What? Final Pokemon? So now it turns out that Cameron thought a full battle consisted of 5 Pokemon. I guess he didn’t notice the 6 Pokeball slots on the giant screen in the stadium, nor did he hear the announcement Freddy made about round 3 consisting of FULL 6 ON 6 MATCHES the day before. Anyway, Cameron believes Riolu is strong enough to battle Ash’s 3 remaining Pokemon. Ash decides to recall Pikachu and send out Unfezant. Though somehow, Riolu is able to avoid all of Unfezant’s attacks; including being able to jump in the air and avoid a large gust of wind. Then Unfezant is unable dodge any of Riolu’s attacks. Unfortunately, Ash wanted to have Unfezant get down close to Riolu, instead of keeping her in the air where only Vacuum Wave and a Copy Catted Gust or Air Cutter could hit her. So Unfezant gets knocked out without doing anything to Riolu.

Next we have Snivy. She’s actually able to dodge Riolu’s attacks, but he still hits her hard. It’s going good when Snivy grabs Riolu’s leg and starts slamming him in the ground. But then when Riolu charges a Vacuum Wave, Snivy decides to let go of his leg instead of pulling on him to stop the attack. Next Snivy hits Riolu with a powerful Leaf Storm. As Riolu gets up from his pain, he feels an immense amount of happiness and evolves into Lucario. Then the episode ends.

So basically the first half of the battle was terrible when compared to the last one with Stephan or any full battle whatsoever. In fact, it wasn’t a full battle since Cameron only had 5 Pokemon. Neither Ash nor Cameron used any strategic moves and it’s basically just attack, attack, dodge, attack, dodge and more attack. Where’s the strategy that Ash had been using for like most of the series? And then all of the stupid decisions made by both of them. Cameron has Ferrothorn and Swanna basically get destroyed by sending them out against Pokemon with double advantages. Likewise, Ash loses Pignite when he essentially could have saved him and then had a Pokemon to take on Lucario. He says three battles in a row is tough for Pikachu, but why not Pignite?

I really feel that Ash should have substituted Oshawott, Snivy, and Boldore for Palpitoad, Leavanny, and Krookodile and this would have been a much better battle. Obviously that wouldn’t have happened since it seemed like the writters wanted each of Ash’s Pokemon to battle at least once, but I would have rathered seeing Oshawott, Snivy and Boldore beat Stephan in order to switch around Palpitoad, Leavanny, and Krookodile, than see them in this horrible battle.

Similarly to the last battle, I was annoyed with how Cameron’s primary dark-type Pokemon had no dark-type moves. Did it really need Dragon Rush? We just saw Iris’s friend Shannon use a Hydreigon with the same move. This battle does not compare with Ash vs Paul or any other full battle by a longshot.

Maybe it was the dub’s timing being different, but the fact that we saw Cameron lose 4 of his 5 Pokemon before the first commercial break seemed really rushed to me. Pikachu vs Samurott seemed particularly rushed to me. I feel like it should have lasted much longer.

This episode gets a 2/10
 
HORRENDOUS!!!

This episode was just ridiculously horrendous for the only "full" battle Ash gets in BW and the worst part is the idiot he was facing only brought 5 Pokemon.
I can't express how much I hate this battle from the lack of strategy and the poor choices made by Ash and Cameron(such as sending Ferrothorn and Swanna against Pignite and Pikachu, or leaving Pignite in for Samurott). I'm seriously disappointed as well that Oshawott just HAS to lose, though it was stupid enough to send him out against Hydregion. I'm actually really disappointed that only Pikachu and Pignite got the wins in this battle. Snivy, Boldore, Unfeazant, and importantly to me, Oshawott just got NOTHING. Seriously this poorly rushed battle is just painful to watch and I can't believe just how horrendous this league has been. The writers should really be ashamed of themselves for such a poorly done league.

1/10 for this episode.
 
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Pretty terrible episode. This Ash/Cameron fight was just a buch of one-shots over and over again. I hate I miseed his fight against Stephan, or seeing Bianca fight, but whatever.

It's gonna be a drag until the N episodes start. :/
 
Terrible episode. Bad execution. UGH.

Dub title is kinda cool, though. Other than that, bad episode.

3/10
 
This battle sucked so hard, I'm surprised at how much I enjoyed watching it.

Cameron started off with Hydreigon. That alone should have been enough when Ash's team is mostly unevolved. But no, it lost, though I am grateful to the fact that it didn't lose to Oshawott (who was death fodder).

I was actually worried that Ferrothorn and Swanna wouldn't have been knocked out as quickly as they were, so I'm glad I was wrong about that because that would have pissed me off.

I was also bothered by the fact that Pikachu KOed Samurott without an Electric attack. I don't care if it was deflecting the attacks and the physical ones were the only ones making contact, it should have lost to an electric move. This is just a personal pet-peeve.

Riolu...where do I begin? WHY THE HELL IS IT SO STRONG?!?! It beat a fully evolved super-effective Pokemon!!! Isn't Unfezant supposed to be fast, particularly the female? Ash had every possible advantage and still lost. And then all of a sudden it gets happy and evolves! WTH? So now Ash has is basically screwed.

This. Is. HORRIBLE!! ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE!! (in the words of Burgundy).

It's basically the fight of the idiots. Cameron used two Pokemon against an opponent it had a double weakness to. Ash basically uses Oshawott as death fodder when he could have used it against...I don't know, Riolu, I guess. It makes no sense that Unfezant could not beat Riolu. Cameron thought he only needed 5 Pokemon. Riolu evolves out of sheer deus ex machina.

This battle gets a -6/10.
 
It's basically the fight of the idiots. Cameron used two Pokemon against an opponent it had a double weakness to. Ash basically uses Oshawott as death fodder when he could have used it against...I don't know, Riolu, I guess. It makes no sense that Unfezant could not beat Riolu. Cameron thought he only needed 5 Pokemon. Riolu evolves out of sheer deus ex machina.
I wouldn't say it's a DEM, really. Riolu established itself as a versatile and capable fighter on its own, and Pokemon evolve in the heat of battle in order to gain an edge all the time. It's an established occurrence that happens regularly in all sagas, another fact of the Pokemon world.
 
It's basically the fight of the idiots. Cameron used two Pokemon against an opponent it had a double weakness to. Ash basically uses Oshawott as death fodder when he could have used it against...I don't know, Riolu, I guess. It makes no sense that Unfezant could not beat Riolu. Cameron thought he only needed 5 Pokemon. Riolu evolves out of sheer deus ex machina.
I wouldn't say it's a DEM, really. Riolu established itself as a versatile and capable fighter on its own, and Pokemon evolve in the heat of battle in order to gain an edge all the time. It's an established occurrence that happens regularly in all sagas, another fact of the Pokemon world.

Well, yes I agree, I certainly wouldn't call it the only one that's ever happened. But that combined with the rest of this battle...that just topped it off for me.
 
But that doesn't make it a Deus ex Machina, exactly. It might be poor writing (and I will agree that there's a bit of bad writing involved with this whole match), but it's not a DEM.
 
It was just a disappointment. Period.

Neither Ash or Cameron used any strategy which leads me to ponder why the battle wasn't dragged out.

It just is so sad to see no technique or anything at all that Ash has used in the past to help him out now in this episode. I feel as if since BW, he's actually getting worse as his journey goes on.
 
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I just got fininshed watching the eppy a moment and as the above posters have said this was a huge disappointment.

It just showed how much stupider Ash and Cameron have gotten, I would have liked it if Ash before that match began contacted Oak asked him to send over some of his old pokemon so he could use them against Cameron and show that loser who's boss by destroying every single one of his pokemon. Expect Lucario where a nice battle could have been fought between him and Inferape plus it was a cheap way for Riolu to evolve into Lucario.

Plus Cameron doesn't deserve Lucario.
 
This battle is a classic example of your average B/W battle. All pokemon just throwing all moves in their arsenal at each other without any real strategy involved (in D/P we had strategys like Counter Shield, but in this saga the writers don't seem to bother with interesting battle strategys). Not only that, but the amount of stock footage animation used in these exchanges of moves is ridiculous. For each move only one version is animated and is then used again and again. As a result, the battles are horrendously boring and overall crap.
 
I didn't realize that Pignite took a couple of water attacks, including a Hydro Cannon to the face and still standing, before going down, even after taking some damage from Hydreigon. Then, Samurott is KO'ed by Pikachu without taking a single electric attack, which I guess I can buy, knowing that Pikachu should be quite powerful by all accounts (or is Samurot just not that tough?), but...WOW. These two occurences sure show how screwy this battle is.

Beyond that, I have nothing to add that I haven't already mentioned or has been said here. Easily one of the most ridiculous battles ever (though, in a different way than something like Thunder Armor, etc.).
 
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Anyone else think that Dp Ash would have creamed Cameron. The choices by cameron were so poor and he is lucky that Ashs pokemon are so weak this series. Riolu wouldnt of lasted 2 seconds vs Staraptor as opose unfezant.
 
I guess it's too late for me to complain much, since everyone else has already said most of what I would say. I can add this: starting a battle with your secret weapon is tactically stupid. (Reminds me of when Ash did so in his re-rematch against Brandon, and look how that turned out.) If your secret weapon gets taken out early on, you could be in big trouble. Besides, a good battle should build up to a big climax, which you really can't do if you put your best 'mon in early.

I'm definitely convinced that TPTB don't take these characters seriously anymore, which means I can't either.
 
One thing I liked about this episode was watching the eyes of the characters behind Cilan...

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Iris' comment to Bianca after the 5 Pokemon thing was great - can't say that about anything else in this episode.
 
Well, the battle was rushed and poorly-written, but at least it looked action-packed and between-friends. Cameron's not-serious dub voice helped things out, as he was neither a complete battle genius nor the perfect scatterbrain. The other good moments though were Bianca's comments about Oshawott and Cameron's mistake, with Oshawott and Iris' reactions... :)

Yet, I couldn't stand Stephan/Cilan being okay with Swanna @ Pikachu / Ferrothorn @ Pignite . Instead, they even figured out what Cameron's strategy was while sending out Swanna! Not to mention the strategy itself which was flawed (type disadvantage both in offense and defense / Static)

It still is a nice episode for what it is, with its funny moments, some Cameron in the spotlight and a Full Battle going on. However, I should not say such things, because it may make the anime team write even worse battles in the future... :-O
 
I have to admit that it's really hard for me to have a clear opinion on this episode.The main problem was that really good and intense battles were again and again followed by badly-written, rushed and unnecessary ones. So I'd say it was a so-so episode.

On the one hand, I did like the intense, back-to-back action in some of the battle (Hydreigon vs. Oshawott, Hydreigon vs. Pignite and Pikachu vs. Samurott) and I don't share some users' critical opinion here. Exchanging attacks is totally legitimate and belongs to a good, intense Pokemon battle as well.

BUT: Some of the choices that were made, especially by Cameron, were so terrible that they are far beyond description. I'm talking about switching in Ferrothorn against Pignite and Swana against Pikachu with both of Cameron's Pokemon having a four-time weakness against Fire and Electric-type attacks respectively.
Well, I'm pretty sure I know the reason for all this: The writers were running out of time, so they desperately needed to pack almost the whole six-on-six battle into one single episode, something that we all know doesn't work at all. Thus, the battles were so rushed that all I can say is this: It was unworthy of a league battle!
Since Paul vs. Ash in the great Sinnoh League we've all known that a full six-on-six battle needs at least(!) two complete episodes, if not three! Everything else is just bound to be a waste of potential. After all, shouldn't the writers know that the league is supposed to be the highlight of every journey? And yet they only reserve a few episodes for that. How about sparing us those more or less unimportant fillers and using the time more reasonably instead?

All in all, an episode with some good and intense scenes but also a battle which, as a whole, was way too rushed! And also an episode that makes you realize once again how much Ash has neglected the development of his Unova team.
 
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