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What is the Champion League?

Paulisthebest

"Ursaring, standby for battle!"
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We learn in the anime that a trainer gets to enter the Champion League after coming out as #1 in a regional Pokemon League Tournament from Lucian of the E4 in DP 035 when talking to Ash and the group after first meeting him.

He also mentions that a trainer can become a member of the E4 if they win a Pokemon League from their respective regions. For Ash to be a member he’d have to beat the Indigo League, Paul it would be Sinnoh League or Trip using his haxed Garden Hose…I mean Serperior it would be the Unova League.

Things get a little confusing for me after that because it seemed like double talk in terms of how to become a member of the Elite 4 vs. how you get to face the actual Champion of a particular region vs. how do you become a Pokemon Champion yourself.

I got the impression that similar to the games (minus having an actual tournament against numerous trainers which seems to be substituted with the Victory Roads of most games) you face the Elite 4 one by one until you get to the Champion for a battle.

Another impression is that once you win a regional league you get to face other regional league winners in a tournament which is called the Champion League. I’m assuming that it must be similar to the tournament in Driftveil City in BW2 where as a Champion of the Unova League you get to face the other champions of leagues?

My biggest concern is how it will eventually/hopefully be shown for Ash in the anime. There is no doubt in my mind that as Cynthia hoped; Ash and Paul would BOTH be in the Champion League. The question is how?

I guess that Ash would have to re-enter and win the Indigo League while Paul re-entered and won the Sinnoh League beat their respective region E4 members and challenge Lance (Ash) and Cynthia (Paul) and see what happens from there.

Why do you think? To me this makes as little sense as to how a trainer in the anime is supposed to reach the title of Pokemon Master.
 
The real question is, Will anime ever get there? Or writers keep resetting ash in losing Regional leagues until the anime gets cancelled.
 
The real question is, Will anime ever get there? Or writers keep resetting ash in losing Regional leagues until the anime gets cancelled.

Valid point it SEEMS the only reason he'd re-challenge the Kanto Region (and I'd love to see that for him to actually EARN all 8 badges from the leaders instead of getting them from pity, luck or facing the TRio...) is to close out the series.

*sigh* its a shame...I really want to see this happen for real!
 
The real question is, Will anime ever get there? Or writers keep resetting ash in losing Regional leagues until the anime gets cancelled.

Valid point it SEEMS the only reason he'd re-challenge the Kanto Region (and I'd love to see that for him to actually EARN all 8 badges from the leaders instead of getting them from pity, luck or facing the TRio...) is to close out the series.

*sigh* its a shame...I really want to see this happen for real!

You and me both.
I'd get very disappointed if they close Ash's story without resolving his master status.
However, If they do want Ash to re-enter Indigo league, I don't think He will fight gym leaders for badges again.. It will probably be like Going to palette and being told by Oak that Indigo league is like 1 month away. So Ash starts training and directly enter with his old badges.
Then it will probably end like this:
Win the indigo league and declare Ash a pokemon master, Start a new journey, With screen turning into a painting as he is walking on the road and writing "The end." Instead of "To be continued..."
 
^You know I've ALWAYS wondered about that I remember back in DP when Dawn's mom rival with the Delcatty battled Dawn (and lost of course...). She had 4 ribbons earned in her childhood and one more win meant going to the Grand Festival.

It was established that contest ribbons do not "expire" in terms of how many years you've had them. I'm sure same holds true with regional badges for example; let's say Ash only earned 6 Kanto badges when he was 10 and then years later (still at age 10...) goes back to win the last 2 letting him battle in the Pokemon League.

Hmmm...this is an interesting topic that I wish was established in the anime. That always got me confused considering a trainer wins 8 badges or more and then loses in the first round, does that mean they would have to wait until the next year earn the SAME badges over again?

The only piece of legit evidence is this; if I remember correctly during the sign up for Pokemon Grand Festival or League Tournaments the registration officers scan the badges/ribbons earned by the trainer/coordinator. My guess is that scanning them loads the info into the computer. So, let's say Ash refaces the Kanto League or May fights the Hoenn Grand Festival again. Would they be able to reuse the same badges/ribbons that were already scanned?

My guess is no but I can't be too sure. I mean look at it this way; 247 coordinators entered the Hoenn League Grand Festival and only 32 made it past round one. Now that would mean in retrospect that each one of them needed AT LEAST 5 ribbons to get in the GF. That year there would have to have been at least 1,500 contests. Rather unlikely since the Contesta and Mr. "Remarkable" are seemingly at EVERY contest in Hoenn, Kanto and Sinnoh.

So, you might have a point contest ribbons seem to be able to be reused instead of having to win them again. I'm assuming the same can be said for badges but again I wish we could get some kind of OFFICIAL confirmation of these theories you know?
 
I don't think that he would need to challenge the Gyms in the Kanto region to re-enter the Indigo League. I remember that when he was passing through Virdian City and Agatha was asking him if he wanted to have a Gym battle, Ash said that he already had the Virdian Gym badge. That makes me think that he could just use his badges to go directly to the Indigo League. Either that or he would have to challenge other Gyms in Kanto to earn different badges. Both seem like pretty unlikely options for the show to take. I can't really see Ash skipping through the Gym battle portion of a journey to go directly to a League, even if it was one he already competed in, and I can't see them having Ash go to anime only Gyms to lead up to something as big as winning a League, let alone winning the Champion League.
 
Well since XY doesn't start until October, and we don't know when in October, and if DA ends mid-late July, that would give them time to have a league in Kanto if they wanted...

...though that is highly unlikely.

It would be interesting to have August and September having Ash re-challenge Indigo before starting over in October with a new character from Kalos. One can dream...
 
Well since XY doesn't start until October, and we don't know when in October, and if DA ends mid-late July, that would give them time to have a league in Kanto if they wanted...

...though that is highly unlikely.

It would be interesting to have August and September having Ash re-challenge Indigo before starting over in October with a new character from Kalos. One can dream...

No thank you. If we do get to see Ash reface Kanto, I'd rather have it done with a WELL-WRITTEN story line, something the Pokemon staff has seem to forgotten about theses past few years. They rushed the Sinnoh League for Unova and we saw how well that turned out. They could have closed the Ash-story with him winning a league and facing Cynthia and have been done with it. Perhaps using a new character in Unova while Ash faces the Pokemon Champion League back in Kanto in a Chronicles-like series or something I don't know. Or just have stopped it with Cynthia all together and I would have been somewhat satisfied with that.

Have they ever had a mini-series that lasted for only 2 months? Doubtful and I'd rather not let them do it with Ash especially if that would be the final story arc with his character, he maybe an idiot but he started the franchise and when/if they ever do a final farewell to him and Pikachu they should do it the right way.

Something tells me if there was a Champion League tournament I'd bet it would be between Ash and not only the E4 (or omit them completely) have him against rivals from his old days like Tyson (Hoenn), Tobias (Sinnoh, I want Ash to destroy that bastard!!), Paul (let him win the Sinnoh League if he challenges it again), Harrison if he re-challenges Hoenn or maybe Johto and throw in Richie just because I want Ash to beat him.

That would be good closure in my opinion and a final battle with Gary. He could join the Kanto E4, become a Battle Frontier Brain, etc. but Ash is Ash and of course he'd probably be on a new adventure but while the sunsets on him let it rise for a new trainer :)
 
I was thinking about something like this the other day. I'd image Ash could just sign up with the badges he already has instead of earning them again, although it would be nice for him to re-visit the old gyms. During the BF Saga I wished Ash would have had a bit more memories about the gyms he faced in that city, or perhaps meet up with a gym leader.

I was then thinking about if he did enter the Champion League, who would he face? I personally would like to see Ritchie as the final E4 member, or even perhaps the Champion. Afterall, the Champion of Kanto is unknown, but I would love to see either Ritchie, Lance, or even Ash's father have the Champion title.

All in all, I would really love to see a Champion League play out in the Anime. It's something I hope the writers get to in/after the Kalos region.
 
^You know I've ALWAYS wondered about that I remember back in DP when Dawn's mom rival with the Delcatty battled Dawn (and lost of course...). She had 4 ribbons earned in her childhood and one more win meant going to the Grand Festival.

It was established that contest ribbons do not "expire" in terms of how many years you've had them. I'm sure same holds true with regional badges for example; let's say Ash only earned 6 Kanto badges when he was 10 and then years later (still at age 10...) goes back to win the last 2 letting him battle in the Pokemon League.

Hmmm...this is an interesting topic that I wish was established in the anime. That always got me confused considering a trainer wins 8 badges or more and then loses in the first round, does that mean they would have to wait until the next year earn the SAME badges over again?

The only piece of legit evidence is this; if I remember correctly during the sign up for Pokemon Grand Festival or League Tournaments the registration officers scan the badges/ribbons earned by the trainer/coordinator. My guess is that scanning them loads the info into the computer. So, let's say Ash refaces the Kanto League or May fights the Hoenn Grand Festival again. Would they be able to reuse the same badges/ribbons that were already scanned?

My guess is no but I can't be too sure. I mean look at it this way; 247 coordinators entered the Hoenn League Grand Festival and only 32 made it past round one. Now that would mean in retrospect that each one of them needed AT LEAST 5 ribbons to get in the GF. That year there would have to have been at least 1,500 contests. Rather unlikely since the Contesta and Mr. "Remarkable" are seemingly at EVERY contest in Hoenn, Kanto and Sinnoh.

So, you might have a point contest ribbons seem to be able to be reused instead of having to win them again. I'm assuming the same can be said for badges but again I wish we could get some kind of OFFICIAL confirmation of these theories you know?

They could have some badges actually expire. Like, have a gym close and another opened somewhere else and the new gym badge was needed to qualify for the league.

Or, how about this. Since Giovanni is technically the boss of a crime syndicate, all the badges HE gave out would be 'cancelled' when he's arrested- lose its status as a league-qualifying badge. Thus, you'd need a new Earth Badge from the new leader (game counterpart Gary lol) to re-qualify, or maybe a different gym badge.


And even if the badges didn't expire, they could easily make one or two unofficial Kanto gym matches as part of Ash's training. Maybe he could take a trip back to Fuchisa and find that Janine was newly appointed, and she challenges Ash because she can't believe Koga gave a gym badge to a n00b-looking trainer in her opinion.


These are just examples. Anything is possible as long as the writers are being creative enough.
 
What I never understood was if you have to win the league from your region, why would Ash enter all of the other Leagues? If he won, it would make his victory worthless. By those standards, he would have to win the Indigo League, and that's the only one that would count.

The only thing I can think of that would make sense there is if they "represented the region" that they won at. For say Ash didn't lose to the beginner trainer Cameron at the Unova league, he would go on to represent the region of Unova at the champion league.

also it seems likely that Virgil is going to re-appear with his evee as a newly evolved Sylveon
 
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I imagine that the league is a group not an event since the E4 challenges were considered champion league matches. So I assume this group is the champion, the elite four and winners of the tournaments. The Strongest members can do an elite four challenge around once a month but mostly fight each other.
 
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