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Review XY124: The Explosive Heat at the Mechanical Festival!

WatcherMark

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XY124 - Bulbapedia, the community-driven Pokémon encyclopedia

I would have given you all a write-up of the events of this episode, but there's no point because 90% of it is just Satoshi-tachi and Team Rocket messing around in a fun house with a battle tacked on at the end. Even Mecha-Mecha-Mega Nyarth fails to impress, as it ends up barely moving and breaking down. The only Pokemon to appear in this episode are those belonging to main characters, and even then only six (Pikachu, Dedenne, Harimaron, Pancham, Maaiika, Pumpjin and Puni-Chan).

This episode is essentially the show trying something quiet before the league kicks off. Problem is, it was too quiet. Totally skippable.

Pokemon Quiz was Pikachu.
 
11/10 top quality art
Yeah, very skippable episode. I do have to admit that there some points that I did enjoy, but it's a below average ep.

ClELzU8UgAANSfY.jpg

Anyone able to translate this..or not?
 
Forget Citron, this was Kojiro's episode. He was so cool, so cool. I wanted to be Musashi by the time he smoothly pinned her against opened the door, *sigh*.
ClENFqkUgAArxR2.jpg:large

Physics is so sexy.


20 minutes of him swaggering around so effortlessly made it that much more satisfying when he lost his cool at the end of the episode :p
 
No Sonans ;-;

I would've preferred it if we actually got more Pokemon to play roles in this.
My temporary score is going to be 7/10

Will edit this post after seeing full episode.
 
A very pleasant episode. It didn't feel boring to me, everything was really dynamic actually.

Team Rocket were awesome this episode. That Mechanical Meowth scene lmao

Could've preferred more Pokemon be involved. Pancham, Chespin, Pikachu was good TV but it would've been nice if we saw more of Sylveon, Braixen, Bunnelby. I get that having bigger Pokemon in the scene would be too much, but scenes like these make me wonder if characters pick favorites in their teams :p

10/10 for a filler.
 
No surprise... It was so bad overall, but hey, who cares for ? In two weeks we will have the league, And it starts with Charizard's Fight 8D !
 
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This was boring, but I can understand if this was for fun, but the fact that this was supposed to be tied with the Magearna Movie made me a bit sad that we didn't get more out of it. So, time for the hiatus before the league begins look like.
 
I wanted a Magearna cameo :( but I guess the Citron ending was nice and the preview for next episode got me hyped!
 
I'm not going to comment beyond there wasn't enough Clemont

However, I am going to mention the strange artwork, the character designs were all over the place
Example :-
153.jpg
154.jpg
 
@Misty-Moo Serena definitely not the worst victim today:
ClEMQkBVEAIIP5G.jpg:large
:p
I'm sure everyone can agree that the animation was inconsistent, but God for once the protags rather than the TRio drew the short straw! Clearly Oohashi and the AD (a new name to me...) enjoyed writing/animating them best in this episode, and who can blame them? Without their antics the episode would have been a sub-par filler for sure, despite being labelled a Citron episode.

It was truly an episode of parallels. It took some of the lousiness it had (read terrible reused animation & not-that-noteworthy dialogue) and transformed it into a number of good gags. Citron was good fun, particularly his 180° energy swap, but really the best thing about him was the obvious comparison with Kojiro. Many of their lines in the episode were shared with slight alterations in wording/context (part of me actually died when Kojiro bellowed "NONSENSE!" near the end of the episode HAHAHAHAHA).

The other parallel was with balls rolling down chutes. I thought we'd had the gag after the first excruciatingly long scene of the ball rolling and cracking that acorn, when Serena just snapped one in her hands. But this was later followed by having to see the TRio's tortuorously bad monster ball animation 3 times and the whole time I was thinking "how low is the animation budget for this episode". AND THEN, finally the real best scene of the whole episode - Nyasu, the ball, rolling expressionlessly and completing the same damn circuit again!! OH MY GOD, made it all worth it!

Speaking of which scene, is it me or is this the first time Nyasu has got his claws out in XY? It was also nostalgic to see the return of the cat's tongue joke (last seen in DP117??) And did I hear the DP TRio theme music as well? On the subject of music, why do they keep using different cuts of the Danka during the motto? Each version seems to have a different awkward cut & paste bit to it because the song's instrumental & motto were not designed to fit together even though I'd really like it if they did...

I might have already previously expressed my love of cool-engineering-nerd Kojiro so let's gloss over that. One of the things I really liked was that he suggested they go and explore the rest of the stuff just for fun before they realised that Satoshi.co were there. We never get to see them having fun for the sake of it! You can tell that his heart's really not in chasing Pikachu during the wandering-round-the-fair scenes e.g. when he mentions to Musashi in a totally carefree voice that Pikachu's going to get away (implied if she doesn't hurry the f up). He's otherwise terribly indulgent with her though isn't he? Like, she's SO stupid and wound up and he's just smiling & ignoring (until the end) whilst Nyasu cannot NOT comment on it!

My best line of the episode is Maaiika's little "Ii ka!" after Kojiro's monologue about men and invention and whatnot during the blast off.

And how can you not love the Pikachu/Harimaron/Yancham dynamic? I'm glad it was just the three of them because, as much as we all love seeing H/Y violence scenes, the added value was really from Pikachu's growing exasperation during the mediation process which we might not have gotten if he was too busy babysitting Dedenne .etc.

Btw, what had this episode to do with the Magearna/Volcanion movie?

PS. Sorry this post is so long, I guess I just really enjoyed this episode! I don't know why I like fillers so much more than plot progression episodes...
 
It was a fun episode, it was funny at some parts. I like how at the beginning Puni-chan looks at the building and went back into Bonnie's bag like he's already bored, and Pikachu has to play peacekeeper since Panchem and Chespin kept on fighting. Dedenne looks kind of weird in some places.
 
This episode was pretty disappointing. It would have been so much better to have all of the Pokemon outside their PokeBalls running around the trick house. Instead all we get is Pancham and Chespin doing their annoying old bickering antics (I seriously thought we were past that). Would have been nice to see Serena and Clemont's other Pokemon before the league where they probably won't even show up. And TR's mecha Meowth was disgusting as hell. All that time spent on him rolling around the damn thing only for him to fail at even harming Pikachu. Utterly pathetic.

I did however enjoy Clemont and the others making their way through the trick house, Clemont pulling TR's PokeBall funnel out of the ground, and Chespin, Jessie, and Meowth getting bashed by those trick house mechanisms.

I'll give it a generous 4.5/10.
 
@Misty-Moo

Btw, what had this episode to do with the Magearna/Volcanion movie?

I have not really seen link, apart gears.

I guess they have decided to arrest the special episodes that serve as a prelude to th movie film of the year (over 3 years, one was excellent (Mewtwo), one was bad (Diancie) and one was nice, but there was nothing very interesting (Hoopa)).
 
I was really surprised to hear Team Rocket's Sinnoh theme (a variation of it, at least). Maybe this means will start hearing some old BGM from now on? Perhaps. Or maybe not, the theme also "returned" in Unova and it meant nothing.

I thought it was a nice and entertaining episode. It was a pure filler, but it had some nice scenes, and even had that scene with the toy splashing tea to our heroes' faces, which depicted some Japanese culture (which I always enjoy). And TR's stealing Pokéballs scheme was nice to see, it made me remember the old days, in which this kind of schemes were common.
 
This episode was okay butt...

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That one was disturbing^...

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This part was sexy (Stewie Griffin voice)

And...
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My reaction to this episode...... ^

I give this episode a 5/10 if it weren't for the ending which saved this episode from being skippable
 

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Wasn't boring, but all the while I was thinking "So close to the league".
 
I'm so salty they used the Sinnoh TR theme, ever since they started using Team Rocket's Team Song for the motto I've been wanting to hear the Kalos motto theme again, if not during the motto then during the climactic battle or something. They finally use a motto theme but it's the Sinnoh one?? At least it was some variety for once, and god knows the XY series needs variety in its BGM usage.
 
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