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Why do you think the potential last tournament in Best Wishes was so insignificant?

Masurao

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With the Don Battle, Donamite, and the Junior Cup...each of these were four episodes long a piece and seemed significant enough a give rewards to their victors and be televised with a large audience present.

Yet with the Marine Cup tournament, the one in which the writers have Ash win, it's condensed into the first part of an episode that focuses another character (but shares the same number of contestants) and gives out no prizes. Why not just make it stand out more like the other ones, have the rivals participate...giving them much needed wins (Burundy beating Cilan and Georgia beating Iris), and maybe introduce a tournament only character like Montgomery who'd be the one to beat? Seems like a somewhat wasted chance.
 
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Re: Why do you think the potential last tournament in Best Wishes was so insignifican

Honestly, I'm glad they didn't make another four episode tournament. It would just be unbearable to sit through the same thing for another 4 episodes, for the 4th time (5th, if you count the League) in a row. Why they didn't give out a prize, I assume because it wasn't as extravagant as the last tournaments.

That, and all the other tournaments were tools to help develop or encourage certain characters. This one was probably just there for the sake of giving Ash a win this saga, to fill up time in an episode, or because they just felt like having one more tournament for fun.
 
Re: Why do you think the potential last tournament in Best Wishes was so insignifican

The tournament wan't even the point of the episode. It was just there to fill space.

I wouldn't want anything more than that. This saga has done a poor job with tournaments so far, I'd take more filler episodes over another one any day.
 
Re: Why do you think the potential last tournament in Best Wishes was so insignifican

Maybe the writers realized how crappy these tournaments are and decided to stop making them. But yeah, I feel sorry for Ash, the poor kid not even won the generic prize of a year's supply of Pokémon food.
 
Re: Why do you think the potential last tournament in Best Wishes was so insignifican

Its kinda ironic people complain about the tournaments in BW, when in every previous saga people were BEGGING for more tournaments.

People liked the Whirl Cup and DP's tag battle tournament, so the writers did exactly what people wanted and added in tournaments throughout a saga.
 
Re: Why do you think the potential last tournament in Best Wishes was so insignifican

Its kinda ironic people complain about the tournaments in BW, when in every previous saga people were BEGGING for more tournaments.

People liked the Whirl Cup and DP's tag battle tournament, so the writers did exactly what people wanted and added in tournaments throughout a saga.

The difference between something like the Tag Battle tournament and the tournaments in BW is basically the quality. The idea of having more tournaments over the course of the series isn't really a bad one, but it just had poor execution.

Anyway, they probably weren't even interested in stretching out a tournament for another four episodes. The other tournaments were mainly about getting the rival characters, Iris and Cilan to battle more than anything else and without any of the rival characters, perhaps the writers didn't want to stretch it out for too long. It's also possible that they tossed it in just so that Ash could win something in this series, despite the fact that it's so insignificant.
 
Re: Why do you think the potential last tournament in Best Wishes was so insignifican

Its kinda ironic people complain about the tournaments in BW, when in every previous saga people were BEGGING for more tournaments.
Having tournaments and having good ones is a different matter. I still want them to do tournaments and I liked what they tried to do with them - but then they screwed it up by rushing the battles and having one on one battles throughout. Like a lot of BW, there was plenty of potential if they pulled it off.

The tournaments in the previous series weren't good because there weren't many of them, they were good because they did lots of character development as well as having decent battles. BW had this more or less right for the first Don Battle tournament, but then seemed to totally drop the development of Ash's rivals after it - just using them as vehicles to create league time revenge matches (hence Ash beating both Stephan and Trip in the league).
 
Re: Why do you think the potential last tournament in Best Wishes was so insignifican

I like tournaments and I think they made the first tournament good.
 
Re: Why do you think the potential last tournament in Best Wishes was so insignifican

I actually like tournaments and wish they would make more and the Marine Cup should have been expanded on. Unfortunately it was used as exposition/plot-device for that one episode. I really don't mind tournaments at all and I like how the outcomes of the first one and potentially second one were so random and up-in-the-air. I don't think anyone expected Iris to actually make it to the final round or for Trip to get knocked out by Cilan of all people in round one, things became really unpredictable after that point. Most people thought Luke would go to the finals with Ash since he was a pre-introduced character around the time, that never happened. I genuinely thought a lot of the battles were well done and entertaining to watch, Stunfisk VS. Larvesta, Palpitoad VS. Stoutland, Axew VS. Golett, Emolga VS. Sawk, Snivy VS. Pawniard, Pikachu VS. Excadrill. Even the blink-and-you-miss-it battles were somewhat amusing, Georgia's big ass Beartic up against Joltik for example.

In the Junior Cup I enjoyed seeing Krokorok and Dragonite hammering the crap outta each other and the former going on to evolve and bust Dragonite. Serperior VS. Pignite was fun, Ash using Flame Charge to try to surpass Serperior's speed. Mamoswine VS. Dragonite was a nice muscle match for all it's worth. The whole Cynthia stuff with Iris and Dragonite. Alder also telling Trip those words was a nice ending to Trip's defeat by Bouffalant. Especially when Trip was essentially a Cheren stand-in like Paul was a Silver stand-in. The Clubsplosion & Junior Cup showed off Georgia's development well and how she wanted to see Iris improve as a trainer. Though they're rivals and clash at times they've developed a nice frenemyship. Stephan willing the Clubsplosion and the introduction of Montgormery was good too, shame the never showed up again.

The Wallace Cup isn't gold to me at all nor the Tag Battle tournament. Those tournaments had the luxury of only focusing on a few characters because Brock became expendable by that point(One of my banes at that point.) and the writers only really focused on Paul and Ash in the first tournament so Dawn/Brock and their partners got rather quick matches. The Wallace Cup pretty much had not many golden moments at all in battle, most of them were blink-and-you-miss it cut screens, the first episode was appeals. I don't remember Buizel and Ash doing anything aside from getting eaten by Kyle and his Laturn. Though Dawn VS. Kyle and May VS. Dawn were fun to an extent, I actually went back and watched the latter and was surprised at the quality of the battle. I remember it being better than that, for the most part in-terms of usage of strategy by both parties it was a bit lukewarm. Still I acknowledge the good sides of them, the Tag Battle tournament introduced Conway, Dawn's Buizel and Conway's Heracross against Elekid and Chimchar was admirable, and it had some nice smaller moments like Croagunk slamming Torterra's head to the ground. The Wallace Cup also debuted Wallace himself, even though he felt a bit like Juan.

I do wish they would have mixed up the rivals a bit, I don't think Georgia and Burgundy needed to appear in the Junior Cup for example. They provided some nice interactions and commentary during the battles however and Georgia saying that Dragonite won, not Iris, was a highlight of that.
 
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Re: Why do you think the potential last tournament in Best Wishes was so insignifican

It was an unannounced tournament on a boat in a region not known to have a league which didn't seem to have a good prize (if any) all for the purposes of being a plot device used to make a character appear innocent.

It was barely a tournament and I think the general nature of the episode made it clear it wasn't something meant to be serious.

The fact that Don George wasn't there, just like the other tourneys, shows its not the same.
 
Re: Why do you think the potential last tournament in Best Wishes was so insignifican

Maybe the writers realized how crappy these tournaments are and decided to stop making them. But yeah, I feel sorry for Ash, the poor kid not even won the generic prize of a year's supply of Pokémon food.

It's funny, the one tournament Ash did win this saga was the most forgettable one. It's kinda fitting given how he's been handled this region. It just goes to show to writers didn't care to have Ash to stand out in tournament this saga, given they didn't even give him a prize, and how small and unimportant it was. You'd think given he's the central character in this show they put more effort into it.
 
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Re: Why do you think the potential last tournament in Best Wishes was so insignifican

Maybe the writers realized how crappy these tournaments are and decided to stop making them. But yeah, I feel sorry for Ash, the poor kid not even won the generic prize of a year's supply of Pokémon food.

It's funny, the one tournament Ash did win this saga was the most forgettable one. It's kinda fitting given how he's been handled this region. It just goes to show to writers didn't care to have Ash to stand out in tournament this saga, given they didn't even give him a prize, and how small and unimportant it was. You'd think given he's the central character in this show they put more effort into it.
The whole thing was a plot device for a mundane Detective filler.
 
Re: Why do you think the potential last tournament in Best Wishes was so insignifican

The whole thing was a plot device for a mundane Detective filler.

Well yeah, that's what I'm saying. When they do toss him a bone, it's unimportant and not even the main focus of an episode. Unless they have another one this saga that's a bit more grandiose, the one "accomplishment" he did get seemed like an afterthought.
 
Re: Why do you think the potential last tournament in Best Wishes was so insignifican

Well yeah, that's what I'm saying. When they do toss him a bone, it's unimportant and not even the main focus of an episode. Unless they have another one this saga that's a bit more grandiose, the one "accomplishment" he did get seemed like an afterthought.

I'm pretty sure since it was used as set-up for the episode it wasn't meant to be taken seriously anyway, honestly they should have just cut out the Rocket fillers and this Detective episode made a Marine Tournament.

If the writers lazy and wanted to toss Ash some more accomplishments they would have made up a PokeRinger competition and made Tranquill evolve in it, but that would require them following the same DP-style mold they did for years. So things like that didn't happen, I'm glad the writers broke from the norm however with some of these competitions.
 
Re: Why do you think the potential last tournament in Best Wishes was so insignifican

If the writers lazy and wanted to toss Ash some more accomplishments they would have made up a PokeRinger competition and made Tranquill evolve in it, but that would require them following the same DP-style mold they did for years. So things like that didn't happen, I'm glad the writers broke from the norm however with some of these competitions.

Even with breaking from the mold, it would have been nice to see Ash win something of importance this saga. They still could have given the other characters their spotlight when needed, but having the main character only win a insignificant competiton, that wasn't even something that wasn't suppoose to be taken seriously seems incredibly odd. It doesn't even appear that he'll get the chance to at least beat some kind of legendary this region either.
 
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Re: Why do you think the potential last tournament in Best Wishes was so insignifican

There wouldn't have been much point in him winning the previous tournaments anyway.
 
Re: Why do you think the potential last tournament in Best Wishes was so insignifican

There wouldn't have been much point in him winning the previous tournaments anyway.

It would have been a better accomplishment to win one of the previous tournaments than one that was so insignificant. It wouldn't be the best accomplishment for him in this region or make Ash look any better, but it would have been better. Plus, there wasn't much point in Iris winning the first Club Battle tournament for that matter, so it wouldn't hurt for Ash to win one of the tournaments that actually had some bit of significance.
 
Re: Why do you think the potential last tournament in Best Wishes was so insignifican

It would have been a better accomplishment to win one of the previous tournaments than one that was so insignificant. It wouldn't be the best accomplishment for him in this region or make Ash look any better, but it would have been better. Plus, there wasn't much point in Iris winning the first Club Battle tournament for that matter, so it wouldn't hurt for Ash to win one of the tournaments that actually had some bit of significance.

That's true. I honestly don't really care that much, so personally it wouldn't have made a difference to me in my view of him. He'd have just won another tournament. So what? He wouldn't have looked any better to me. There wasn't really much point in Iris winning the first Club Battle tournament, but that could be said to every character that could have won. It wouldn't have hurt, but at the same time it just really wouldn't have mattered. I'd say placing Top 2 in the Club Battle tournament and Junior Cup tournament, and Top 4 in the Clubsplosion with his weakest Pokemon has more reason to have something to brag about and look better than winning a tournament that was incredibly unimportant. They're still achievements regardless. It's not like he did terribly in those tournaments, and he definitely shined more on-screen.
 
Re: Why do you think the potential last tournament in Best Wishes was so insignifican

That's true. I honestly don't really care that much, so personally it wouldn't have made a difference to me in my view of him. He'd have just won another tournament. So what? He wouldn't have looked any better to me. There wasn't really much point in Iris winning the first Club Battle tournament, but that could be said to every character that could have won.

Out of all the tournaments the one that would have made the most sense for him to win was the first one. It had no real theme. I think with Dragonite, and had they done better Axew development there could have eventually been a dragon based tournament that Iris could have had. Ash really had no business winning the Donamite, giving that was a fighting based tournament and he was using Scraggy. That tournament was pretty much made for Stephan. It would have been nice to see him win the Junior Cup, but with Adler there it was obviously going to end up being the Trip show because of his (rather weak) backstory. Of course he wasn't going to win the League with Slyveon upcoming, and a last minute Eevee trainer present.
 
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Re: Why do you think the potential last tournament in Best Wishes was so insignifican

Out of all the tournaments the one that would have made the most sense for him to win was the first one.

That's true, but again, it wouldn't have really made a difference for me.

Ash really had no business winning the Donamite, giving that was a fighting based tournament and he was using Scraggy. That tournament was pretty much made for Stephan.

I know.

It would have been nice to see him win the Junior Cup, but with Adler there it was obviously going to end up being the Trip show because of his (rather weak) backstory. Of course he wasn't going to win the League with Slyveon upcoming, and a last minute Eevee trainer present.

I don't see how Virgil coming in the show prevented Ash from winning.



I just can't find any reason for me why it should matter he gets 1st place in a tournament. Yes, he'd look even better, but he already looks good enough for me.
 
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