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Review SM035: A Beautiful Curry Battle! The Dance of Lalantes!!

That nightmare that Ash had at the beginning of the episode was pretty funny.

I wish Mallow had had more to do than just being Ash's shadow, per Olivia's instructions, to ensure he got to the trial site.

Getting up the hill to grab the Mago berry was the thing that irked me the most about this eppy. I mean, if they had walked further up the path and gotten further right of the Fomantis, they could have climbed up the hill unobstructed. Honestly, that would have given them more time to write some more content into the Totem battle. But whatever.... *shrugs*

I mean the Totem battle was okay, I guess. I think Castform used Sunny Day to keep Lurantis powered up like that? I am happy that Rowlet finally got it's dang act together and jumped in front of Litten, and then KO'd Castform to negate the sun's power-up effect.

Anyway, I'm already over the nonsense with Marowak antagonizing Turtonator. I hope this shows up only intermittently and not in every other freaking eppy.

And lol at Olivia stalking Ash & Mallow as they went along. Am looking forward to seeing the Grand Trial battle next eppy.
 
Bah i just think that humor in a battle isnt good. Battles have to be serious. Ash doesnt do much in Alola. And he only uses Rockruff much. Litten and Rowlet doesnt he use much. Rowlet even didnt learn a new move after sm8. It is a bit sad... Ash deserves better. Mellow and fat Clemont are not so interesting. Lillie didnt have a focused episode after sm14. Lana is a bit less boring then Mellow.
 
Ok, first to get this out of the way: Ash's facefaults have gotten into "slap it until it goes away" territory. Seriously, writers, save the comedic faces for people who can actually pull it off, like Kiawe or TR. Also, I have to agree that so far Mallow is among the most lackluster of the group in terms of character progress, just above Sophocles.
The totem battle was better than average in terms of SM battles, but if compared with battles from previous series, it isn't something I'd put in my top 10...or even 20 or 30.
 
I kind of regret that the Gym battles are replaced with trials now. Just comparing that episode's plot and the battle in the second part to Ash's Gym battle with Grant (Lurantis being the second totem Pokémon Ash battled on his own, Grant being the second Gym leader he faced in the last region), there is a huge difference in terms of everything. I don't dislike the episode, nor think it is worse than other episodes. In fact, it was better than probably all the filler episodes, and a good episode in Sun & Moon standards, but the animé's direction has just been drastically going in a wrong way if we compare this series to all the previous ones.
 
I don't think the episode was that bad, for an episode that included both a fetch quest and a totem battle it had decent pace.

I liked the fetch quest and how the problems with the Morelull and Digglet were resolved.

The battle was an improvement over the other two, and it was nice seeing Rowlet redeeming himself and helping Litten. Lurantis being OHKNO was bad, but imo the worst mistake was not adapting Lurantis' sneaking as an horror movie from the games.

Olivia was awesome. :love:
 
Well that was rather disappointing now that I've thought about it. First half was just your clichéd "Oh no, we must do this and avoid this" which ends badly due to forced comedy and "Oh no, we're lost, which way now?". And the battle...
Christ on a tricycle, they're giving up with these trials already aren't they?

Lurantis just spamming the same move over and over and over, just use something else instead of the same move ya lazy jerk.

And to think last week's episode was terrific and we get this...

Oh well Olivia's battle is up next.
 
Well that was rather disappointing now that I've thought about it. First half was just your clichéd "Oh no, we must do this and avoid this" which ends badly due to forced comedy and "Oh no, we're lost, which way now?". And the battle...
Christ on a tricycle, they're giving up with these trials already aren't they?

Lurantis just spamming the same move over and over and over, just use something else instead of the same move ya lazy jerk.

And to think last week's episode was terrific and we get this...

Oh well Olivia's battle is up next.
It was meh, of course. I wish they could make it use more moves instead of using one move all over again. But hey, Mallow will get another episode in Oranguru episode, and I wish they would develop her better than here. Less humor, but more boring snot, just a meh episode, 5/10, really. You happy now?
 
It's a little irritating to watch Mallow in this episode - I wish Ash hadn't as freely told her to leave fighting off the formantis to him, as while I can understand having her participate in other aspects of the trial (such as the battle against the Totem Pokemon) might take away for the challenge it poses to Ash, I just wonder why they even had her tag along with him if she wasn't going to be active in the episode at all. Figuring out the surface by sniffing the Dugtrio's strand of hair, collecting each ingredient and the example I just spoke about - was all Ash and his Pokemon's work. Which I suppose, would be the case, given it is his trial but if they're not going to allow Mallow to participate, they could have at least had some exposition on her character or something. I felt like I had learnt nothing new about her and at the moment, her personality feels very flat.

However, not telling Ash that the assignment was a part of his trial and him not recognising that Lurantis was the Totem Pokemon until afterwards doesn't sit well with me - I believe that it takes it away from the seriousness of a trial, to have the participant unknowingly engage in it. I would have preferred to see Ash's strategies and mindset if it were treated from the start as a trial he had to undertake. It probably wouldn't have changed the mediocre style of this battle, but it doesn't elate it to the same standard it is treated to in the games. The handling of these trials so far is my least favourite aspect of Sun and Moon.
 
This episode was...just okay. I liked Ash's nightmare in the beginning of the episode, the classmates talking about who was a good cook or not, and Ash and Mallow looking for the ingredients. But honestly, the rest of the episode fell flat for me.

Maybe I was just spoiled by Lana taking on a trial, but man was it boring to watch Ash battle Laurantis while Mallow just stood there. It felt like I was watching a gym battle episode, which for me, isn't a good thing. I don't like gym battles. I loved trials in the games, and their adaptation within the anime has been pretty poor so far. I was hoping that maybe we'd finally get to see more participation from the classmates after Lana got to do a trial, but nope, they just went right back to the companion doing nothing but filling the background. And the battle itself really wasn't that good either. I almost fell asleep during it.

I like Mallow as a character, and thought this episode would be great for her to shine and get some more development. But we really got nothing with her. She was in cahoots with Olivia, which I did like, but...that was it. I was hoping she'd catch one of the Fromantis (I think that's a great Pokémon for her) but nope. It actually kind of came across as insulting to her character: Mallow, the grass type specialist, doing nothing while Ash battles and wins a Grassium-Z. I mean, she didn't even give him any advice or try and help out. I thought Mallow was going to be the "main" female (yes, even more than Lillie) but at this point, she's gotten the least development. I still love her character, so I find that very disappointing.

Not really happy the next episode is the grand trial, truthfully. I'm really unhappy with the trials so far (the only part of SM I'm not enjoying) so having to watch two in a row sounds pretty boring. Hopefully they execute that one better.
 
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