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I hate to be the one to post on old threads, but I'm watching this series at my own pace and I just really felt compelled to write about this episode. Also noticing no one uses the Dub threads as reviews of the actual episode anymore, but I still watch dub so here is where I'm posting this (hopefully this won't upset anyone - my guess is it doesn't get read, which is perfectly fine by me!)
This episode was absolutely fantastic! Rarely (if ever?) are callback episodes so satisfying! I was also super hyped for this episode (hearing about it was the main reason I chose to come back to Journeys) and even with all the personal hype I was not the least bit disappointed!
First of all I'm really pumped that they followed the game route and made Iris champion! I get why some people might not be for this, but I feel it actually is reasonable given the circumstances. If we are to believe that Ash is good enough to be the best trainer in this wide world then I don't see why Iris can't be an incredible trainer as well, considering she was always a skilled battler and gets along with Pokemon very well. And whether or not "years" pass in the anime this timeframe was enough time for Ash to travel through all of Kalos, hang out in Alola and become champion, and then spend enough time to have trained up an entire team of 5 new Pokemon while region hopping; so based on that I see it reasonable that Iris (now traveling alone and relying on herself) could see a lot of growth and train enough to become Unova champion. If we are to believe that Ash is somehow more special than everyone else I don't see why it is a stretch that Iris is similar, considering during BW she was not far off Ash in her battle success, she just had a different pace about her training and different goal with less tangible benchmarks. The farther removed from the general negativity surrounding BW the more I realize just how much I love Iris (I always liked her, but during the BW run it was hard to avoid the negativity), so I'm personally really excited to see her portrayed this way! At this point Iris is easily in my top 5 human characters in the show, and has been moving up the list for a while now!
Before I started watching Journeys I just did a re watch of BW so it was very fresh for me going into this. Still, right before I watched this episode I decided to re watch BW101 (Drayden vs Iris) because I knew this episode was in Opelucid Gym. So I truly went into it with some very accurate remembrance of Opelucid City and Iris' personality, and even so I was very happy with how this episode was portrayed. For contrast I felt Dawn was a bit off in her BW callback, and while May was done well in DP there were a few moments that didn't seem quite right. I was really excited to see the tower Iris climbed in this episode and the fact that the gym looked the same! Considering how different the Hoenn cities looked in the previous two episodes (not to mention places in the past like Cerulean Gym) I was very pleasantly surprised by these aspects!
I thought they did a great job of introducing Iris at the beginning, not necessarily because of the Pokeball joke replay (I could take or leave that), but just to showcase her personality by having her up in a tree before the battle and show her traversing the forest in a way only Iris could (even for just a brief moment). This was important because the remainder of the entire episode was in the gym, so they were able to show Iris acting like herself before the big battle. I loved how she very much maintained her own personality, but also had a champion-like elegance at the same time. I also really love her champion outfit, and she had some very adorable expressions throughout the episode! The only thing missing was her getting annoyed by a Cilan-esque outburst! Maybe the best moment in the episode was when Iris was worried Drayden would be mad when they blew to top off the gym, that was outstanding! It was cool to see how Iris and Drayden's relationship has evolved and how supportive Drayden has become of her.
It was really weird seeing Axew as a Haxorus. This was honestly kind of inevitable since Axew was shown daydreaming about evolving at one point, but still really crazy. I was thinking about this, I'm guessing Iris's Axew probably has the 4th most screen time of any individual Pokemon in one evolutionary stage (right after Pikachu, Meowth, and Piplup), so it is really weird to see the evolution, but also really cool to see the growth and improvement. I'm assuming this means there is no "lost at the Masters 8", but I guess I'll have to watch to find out
. Speaking of Pikachu, I loved his reaction to the letter in the beginning and how he interacted with Iris!
I absolutely loved how Iris interacted with Ash's Dragonite, especially during the battle! It was so cool for her to want to help Ash and Dragonite be better friends even if it risked her losing the battle. Her love for both Dragonite and Dracovish was fun to see, but the deeper connection was really cool, her explaining Axew's journey to Dragonite, it was all just really well done and a great moment. The flashback was really cool, as were the other brief flashbacks in the episode. Considering it was showcased alongside Gible are we to believe Iris also has a Goodra? I know nothing like that was revealed later, so just food for thought as we will seemingly never know. I was hoping to hear if she ever found Rayquaza again, but oh well it was only one episode.
As for the actual battle, for this series I would say it was quite good. Iris' Dragonite's speed and power were really well portrayed, showing how in synch they were and how much stronger Dragonite got. Haxorus was also quite impressive given the time constraints. I also really liked the counter-shield like Hurricane (although not quite a counter-shield because no damage was done) and the learning of Draco Meteor.
I will mention the couple items that I didn't feel were quite right. The first was Emolga and Pikachu being super affectionate with one another. That really doesn't jive with how they interacted in BW, but I guess time can change how you react to someone, so I'm not too disappointed there. I also wasn't super thrilled with how Dragonite lost to Dracovish so easily, but I'm "ok" with it being explained away with how they just had no idea how Dracovish would battle - plus they showed Iris adapting to that very quickly in the next round. In general I would have preferred Iris win, but that's just because I love her, but overall I still enjoyed the battle. Ash's Dragonite probably should've been knocked out, considering the damage it took, but this is the anime where stamina varies wildly depending on the circumstance, something that has existed for all ~25 years. And for the final nitpick, I wish they would've used Iris champion game music in the background at some point, but only because that's my favorite in-game battle theme.
Since this seems to be the voice-acting review thread I will also mention that I think Eileen was outstanding (it's a bummer she wasn't able to voice Iris for her final episodes)! I always loved her work ever since Lyra, and she was always excellent with Iris and spot on in this return. Considering 7.5 years had passed this was amazing work, and honestly better than any of the other long gaps I can think of that always seemed a bit off!
Overall I would say this is the best new episode to me since at least sometime in XY and I'm looking forward to (while trying not to set the bar too high) the Dawn, Clemont/Bonnie, Serena, and Cilan returns as well!
This episode was absolutely fantastic! Rarely (if ever?) are callback episodes so satisfying! I was also super hyped for this episode (hearing about it was the main reason I chose to come back to Journeys) and even with all the personal hype I was not the least bit disappointed!
First of all I'm really pumped that they followed the game route and made Iris champion! I get why some people might not be for this, but I feel it actually is reasonable given the circumstances. If we are to believe that Ash is good enough to be the best trainer in this wide world then I don't see why Iris can't be an incredible trainer as well, considering she was always a skilled battler and gets along with Pokemon very well. And whether or not "years" pass in the anime this timeframe was enough time for Ash to travel through all of Kalos, hang out in Alola and become champion, and then spend enough time to have trained up an entire team of 5 new Pokemon while region hopping; so based on that I see it reasonable that Iris (now traveling alone and relying on herself) could see a lot of growth and train enough to become Unova champion. If we are to believe that Ash is somehow more special than everyone else I don't see why it is a stretch that Iris is similar, considering during BW she was not far off Ash in her battle success, she just had a different pace about her training and different goal with less tangible benchmarks. The farther removed from the general negativity surrounding BW the more I realize just how much I love Iris (I always liked her, but during the BW run it was hard to avoid the negativity), so I'm personally really excited to see her portrayed this way! At this point Iris is easily in my top 5 human characters in the show, and has been moving up the list for a while now!
Before I started watching Journeys I just did a re watch of BW so it was very fresh for me going into this. Still, right before I watched this episode I decided to re watch BW101 (Drayden vs Iris) because I knew this episode was in Opelucid Gym. So I truly went into it with some very accurate remembrance of Opelucid City and Iris' personality, and even so I was very happy with how this episode was portrayed. For contrast I felt Dawn was a bit off in her BW callback, and while May was done well in DP there were a few moments that didn't seem quite right. I was really excited to see the tower Iris climbed in this episode and the fact that the gym looked the same! Considering how different the Hoenn cities looked in the previous two episodes (not to mention places in the past like Cerulean Gym) I was very pleasantly surprised by these aspects!
I thought they did a great job of introducing Iris at the beginning, not necessarily because of the Pokeball joke replay (I could take or leave that), but just to showcase her personality by having her up in a tree before the battle and show her traversing the forest in a way only Iris could (even for just a brief moment). This was important because the remainder of the entire episode was in the gym, so they were able to show Iris acting like herself before the big battle. I loved how she very much maintained her own personality, but also had a champion-like elegance at the same time. I also really love her champion outfit, and she had some very adorable expressions throughout the episode! The only thing missing was her getting annoyed by a Cilan-esque outburst! Maybe the best moment in the episode was when Iris was worried Drayden would be mad when they blew to top off the gym, that was outstanding! It was cool to see how Iris and Drayden's relationship has evolved and how supportive Drayden has become of her.
It was really weird seeing Axew as a Haxorus. This was honestly kind of inevitable since Axew was shown daydreaming about evolving at one point, but still really crazy. I was thinking about this, I'm guessing Iris's Axew probably has the 4th most screen time of any individual Pokemon in one evolutionary stage (right after Pikachu, Meowth, and Piplup), so it is really weird to see the evolution, but also really cool to see the growth and improvement. I'm assuming this means there is no "lost at the Masters 8", but I guess I'll have to watch to find out
. Speaking of Pikachu, I loved his reaction to the letter in the beginning and how he interacted with Iris!I absolutely loved how Iris interacted with Ash's Dragonite, especially during the battle! It was so cool for her to want to help Ash and Dragonite be better friends even if it risked her losing the battle. Her love for both Dragonite and Dracovish was fun to see, but the deeper connection was really cool, her explaining Axew's journey to Dragonite, it was all just really well done and a great moment. The flashback was really cool, as were the other brief flashbacks in the episode. Considering it was showcased alongside Gible are we to believe Iris also has a Goodra? I know nothing like that was revealed later, so just food for thought as we will seemingly never know. I was hoping to hear if she ever found Rayquaza again, but oh well it was only one episode.
As for the actual battle, for this series I would say it was quite good. Iris' Dragonite's speed and power were really well portrayed, showing how in synch they were and how much stronger Dragonite got. Haxorus was also quite impressive given the time constraints. I also really liked the counter-shield like Hurricane (although not quite a counter-shield because no damage was done) and the learning of Draco Meteor.
I will mention the couple items that I didn't feel were quite right. The first was Emolga and Pikachu being super affectionate with one another. That really doesn't jive with how they interacted in BW, but I guess time can change how you react to someone, so I'm not too disappointed there. I also wasn't super thrilled with how Dragonite lost to Dracovish so easily, but I'm "ok" with it being explained away with how they just had no idea how Dracovish would battle - plus they showed Iris adapting to that very quickly in the next round. In general I would have preferred Iris win, but that's just because I love her, but overall I still enjoyed the battle. Ash's Dragonite probably should've been knocked out, considering the damage it took, but this is the anime where stamina varies wildly depending on the circumstance, something that has existed for all ~25 years. And for the final nitpick, I wish they would've used Iris champion game music in the background at some point, but only because that's my favorite in-game battle theme.
Since this seems to be the voice-acting review thread I will also mention that I think Eileen was outstanding (it's a bummer she wasn't able to voice Iris for her final episodes)! I always loved her work ever since Lyra, and she was always excellent with Iris and spot on in this return. Considering 7.5 years had passed this was amazing work, and honestly better than any of the other long gaps I can think of that always seemed a bit off!
Overall I would say this is the best new episode to me since at least sometime in XY and I'm looking forward to (while trying not to set the bar too high) the Dawn, Clemont/Bonnie, Serena, and Cilan returns as well!
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