Review JN125: The Semifinals IV: "Impact"

[Vengeful Ghost]

Fine then. Go ahead and accept every nonsense that the writers are offering us, no matter how implausible or forced. If Plot Armor is obviously such a bad invention by evil fans, then from now on let's worship the writers' infallible holy words. Shame on those infidel who won't accept their truth...

If you had paid attention in literature class, you would know there are a variety of methods of textual criticism that don’t involve negationism of the text itself. This is a nice straw man you’ve made for yourself.

Let me turn around your argument, may I ?
How is it not an a priori assumption to assume that a 10 year old brat boy can defeat a veteran Champion like Cynthia when

1. we hardly saw brat boy train
2. his team is completely new and apart from Pikachu has almost zero battling experience (Only Sirfetch'd, and Gengar to some extend, had battled before. But damn, this is not a simple gym challenge, this is the Masters Eight where "some experience" just isn't enough)
3. his new team only needs 125 episodes to be on par with Champion Pokemon that have been trained for all their lives

Tell me, how this isn't ridiculous, Plot Armor and suspension of disbelief? So, if you want, the whole concept behind Ash is an a priori assumption in that case.

Are you arguing against the concept of heroes fighting against impossible odds in order to achieve a goal? Because the concept of someone who is less experienced and less powerful defeating someone much stronger and more experienced has been a thing long before David and Goliath was written down. Because acting like this is somehow ridiculous in fiction is in and of itself a ridiculous claim. Acting like this is ridiculous in real life is also stupid since dark horse victories are also a thing.

What’s funny is that you’ll probably find that many of us hold your criticisms to be valid, but we do not hold your denialist attitude with your “Cynthia is the true champion because Ash can only win by plot armor.” You can criticize what happens in the text without going into conspiracy theories and making up arbitrary rules like your previous classist statement of “Leon looks like he’s from the ghetto.”

 

[Sai]

Actually, it just gets more and more powerful the lower the user's health is. At the verge of fainting, it becomes one of the strongest Fighting moves out there. So even more reason why it was so devastating on Garchomp.

Interesting I didn't know that, so Reversal is even a better finisher than I thought. This also goes against what @Alola and @Queen Cynthia were saying before, that Lucario was withstanding damage, because not only did it look exhausted, but Reversal would not have done as much damage if Lucario was still at good health by the end. They literally ended the battle on the best way possible.

 

[Alola]

I really do like your suggestion here! But I'm afraid Cynthia wouldn't have had any additional advantage.
Psychic Terrain, caused by Max Mindstorm only prevents grounded Pokemon from being hit by priority moves (see Bulbapedia and Smogon ; I guess serebii's definition is a bit inaccurate here). As Togekiss is a Flying-type, all of Psychic Terrain's advantages wouldn't affect it unfortunately, and I'm sure Cynthia was aware of that.

I wasn't aware of that distinction. Still, that could have helped Garchomp though. These are also the same people who pick and choose when to apply Max Move secondary effects, and mostly don't, so extending the terrain effect to Togekiss wouldn't have been too outlandish. But, I see now that it shouldn't technically be affected. Thank you.

Interesting I didn't know that, so Reversal is even a better finisher than I thought. This also goes against what @Alola and @Queen Cynthia were saying before, that Lucario was withstanding damage, because not only did it look exhausted, but Reversal would not have done as much damage if Lucario was still at good health by the end.

Except it doesn't as Lucario taking more damage than it realistically should and utilizing an effective Reversal are not mutually exclusive. Anyway, I think you're blowing my misgivings with how Lucario looked after it won out of proportion. All I'm saying is that Lucario, in my opinion, should have looked and sounded like this:

when the match was called and Ash's victory was announced. A strong indication that fighting the ace of the second strongest Trainer in the world was incredibly taxing for it. Except, it didn't and I found it a jarring narrative decision that clashed with how it was just depicted, which made me laugh. Which I spoke to in my original post about this episode. Furthermore, I would appreciate if you wouldn't tag me in a comment for a conversation I clearly indicated I have no wish to continue with you - especially as your decision to specifically call out other users (rather than respond to a post directly) in an effort to provoke a comment comes dangerously close to Baiting per our rules; we're going to agree to disagree and you should move on with another topic/person.

 

[Sai]

I mean if you're looking for battle damage/marks, they were there, it's just not consistent between most battles. Just a minor detail of animation I suppose.

The reason why most people liked how Lucario performed here is it didn't take a ton of damage, just enough to be believeable to be worn down by Togekiss a bit and then since the dragon claws naturally would do less damage to a steel type, he wasn't fending off say super effective moves either. And the Reversal as pointed out above gave him the strongest finisher at the end. It's why I haven't seen this brought up anywhere else (in other forums/social media either where the Cynthia battle is being discussed). Also have to give props to the writers for the powered up Aura Sphere not being an instant win like in Raihan's battle (I liked it there because Duraludon is 4x weak to Aura Sphere, but of course that wouldn't make sense against Togekiss)

 

[Unireon]

Satoshi used hacks, ban him.

Joke aside, what a shameless abuse of plot armor being given to a 'team' that is unable to run without it.

There are ways on how to write a believable turnaround, but this is beyond the limit and deep down in forced.

This is the quintessence of Journeys, a mangled fanfic-ish mess of a series that rewards those who hasn't earned anything.

Edit: Watched a bit, dropped after realising where everything was going.

 

[VetProf]

I really do like your suggestion here! But I'm afraid Cynthia wouldn't have had any additional advantage.
Psychic Terrain, caused by Max Mindstorm only prevents grounded Pokemon from being hit by priority moves (see Bulbapedia and Smogon ; I guess serebii's definition is a bit inaccurate here). As Togekiss is a Flying-type, all of Psychic Terrain's advantages wouldn't affect it unfortunately, and I'm sure Cynthia was aware of that.

Cynthia could've had Togekiss intentionally land on the ground to benefit from Psychic Terrain, similar to how Paul forcefully grounded Ash's Flying-type Pokemon to make them susceptible to Toxic Spikes. This could've been another opportunity for the writers to take advantage of anime battles taking place in a dynamic medium, so it's unfortunate that they opted to have D-Max Togekiss use Max Airstream three times in a row instead.

I still stand by my point that D-Max Togekiss had as much strategic value (if not more) as Mega Garchomp, especially given the circumstances. Plus, giving Cynthia access to multiple power-ups reinforces her image as a veteran trainer with tons of experience, so I enjoyed the surprise revelation that she has access to Dynamax. With that said, I do acknowledge that D-Max Togekiss didn't perform as best as it could've in this battle.

 

[BigDocFan]

The AfterStory for this episode

 

[Singaporean]

The AfterStory for this episode

Leon first ever loss about to occurs. Sadly, that won't happen until October. Nevertheless, only two person will cheer for Leon. His energetic younger brother, Hop and his childhood friend, terrible driver and now professor, Sonia. Then, on the other side his former chairman rose lurking and awaits to see the match end and make his sinister move for revenge...

 

[JinksChow]

True, but I wanted to go back and time how long the Dragonite sleeping segment was as the ep aired. For example I started at the moment Spiritomb used Hypnosis, not the part before with Dragonite/Spiritomb battling with Draco Meteor or Sucker Punch. And then I stopped when the referee declared Dragonite fainted.

It literally only lasts a little over a minute in real-time. That means the other roughly 21 minutes of the episode are spent on the rest of the battle. Which I think we all know, most of that battle was Cynthia constantly switching Spiritomb/Roserade/Togekiss/Gastrodon and Ash using Gengar/Pikachu, countershield, two pokemon fainting, and leading to the final Destiny Bond. The whole "Dragonite sleeping" portion is a minute and 15 seconds longs compared to everything else in the episode. I don't know where the claim that it slowed up the battle that @Kairyu mentioned came from.

But on the other hand, the other roughly 21 minutes were not all allocated to the battle itself:
https://wiki.52poke.com/wiki/宝可梦_旅途_第123集

If we count the start of battle in JN123 as the moment Dragonite appears from its Pokeball (05:50) and the end of battle as the moment when Spiritomb is recalled (21:15), basically giving the maximum amount of time to the battle, Ash and Cynthia's battle lasted 15 minutes and 25 seconds in JN123.

So for roughly 10% of the battle, we saw Dragonite falling victim to the Hypnosis + Dream Eater combo. In fact, at 1 minute and 25 seconds, this portion of the battle lasted longer than:

• The rest of Dragonite VS Spiritomb (52 seconds)
• Gengar VS Roserade (1 minute and 14 seconds)
• Pikachu VS Gastrodon (1 minute and 13 seconds)

So while that portion of the battle was only around 1.5 minutes long, I can see where some users are coming from when they say that it felt like it dragged on.

 

[Queen Cynthia]

You claimed Sirfetch'd couldn't hurt Garchomp

No, I didn't. Of course it can be hurt. It's more about the way it was done.
Let me ask you this: Why are people so willing to accept that Leon's DEM-Charizard is so extremely strong that it can do basically everything without any logical limitations?? If "Mr. DEM" (Leon) gets such "priviledges" I demand the same for Cynthia's Garchomp as well! (Why not?)
I mean this is Cynthia's Garchomp, one of the, if not the strongest trainer's Pokemon in the world that has always been portrayed as an awe-inspiring, super powerful beast! Her battles were even called "legendary" by the announcer in the match against Iris. Yes, it got hit by Star Assault and yes, it got hit by some Lucario attacks. But again, we're talking about an ordinary Sirfetch'd and and ordinary Lucario that certainly do not have the same amount of training, power and stamina as Garchomp does (Remember Lucario just recently hatched from the egg and after one short "training" scene with Greninja got that totally exaggerated DEM-like power boost. You can't deny that was a prime example of DEM).
So, under normal circumstances, Garchomp would have shaken off those attacks and still shredded Mega-Lucario into pieces with ease. But it didn't, because first it wasn't allowed to mega-evolve and second, it was deliberately portrayed weaker than usual. All that to make the audience believe brat boy could actually "defeat" Cynthia.

I simply want justice for Garchomp. She should be treated just the same way as Leon's Charizard, with the big difference that Cynthia would use that power in a realistic way, while Leon is just written terribly through and through.
(And to make things even worse, now we're getting a match between "Mr. DEM" and "Mr. Ash-pull victory" ...oh joy! Totally NOT looking forward to this mess...)

Here you claim a tanky Togekiss that received MULTIPLE attacks from Lucario should not go down

I could say the very same about Lucario receiving super-effective damage from Togekiss and not going down. Now tell me which is worse and if that doesn't clearly look like the writers were biased in favor of Ash?

I mean it's obvious your posts on this forum for a long time you're bias about whatever Cynthia does, and I'm willing to bet if this battle played out exactly the same against a random opponent and not Cynthia, you would not be bringing up most of these point

I'm sorry to tell you that you're wrong. I've been a member on Bulbagarden for more than fifteen years and I've always(!) criticized if a battle was badly written or implausible, regardless of the opponents.
Yes, I admit I'm biased in Cynthia's favor but this doesn't prevent me from pointing out things that are outright stupid, implausible or unfair. Even more so if they're just there to give Ash undeserved victories and make him advantage to the next round at all costs. (Given the circumstances, it would be much more realistic if Ash didn't win this tournament. A fact that made his previous league losses much more realistic than what Journeys is giving us right now)
Ash winning at all costs, no matter how bad the collateral damage might be, is a message/concept Journeys has constantly been shovelling down our throats. And it's that flawed concept I'm criticizing here, nothing else!

You can criticize what happens in the text without going into conspiracy theories and making up arbitrary rules like your previous classist statement of “Leon looks like he’s from the ghetto.”

I'm sorry for saying that about Leon. That was a mistake. Still, I'm not going into conspiracy theories (I can't help but wonder where you got that from?)
You're talking about "arbitrary rules". Fine then. I guess you should have noticed by now that it's not me making those arbitray rules but it's in fact the writers who're putting Leon and Ash in a totally different universe of its own. Because most of the rules all the other characters have to obey will just be screwed as soon as it comes to Ash and Leon. If anything, it's them those "arbitrary rules" are made for!

Are you arguing against the concept of heroes fighting against impossible odds in order to achieve a goal? Because the concept of someone who is less experienced and less powerful defeating someone much stronger and more experienced has been a thing long before David and Goliath was written down. Because acting like this is somehow ridiculous in fiction is in and of itself a ridiculous claim. Acting like this is ridiculous in real life is also stupid since dark horse victories are also a thing.

So what you're basically saying is: Everything Ash does makes sense because he's the hero who's allowed to do whatever he wants and any criticism about it is useless?
If that were true, I honestly would have better things to do than spend a lot of my free time with such a show ...

Cynthia could've had Togekiss intentionally land on the ground to benefit from Psychic Terrain, similar to how Paul forcefully grounded Ash's Flying-type Pokemon to make them susceptible to Toxic Spikes.

According to the game mechanics a Pokemon automatically counts as non-grounded if it has the Flying-type. Of course, there's the good old question of whether the game mechanics translate into the Anime or not. Nevertheless, in my eyes it would have looked a little bit odd if a Pokemon with such massive wings had landed on the ground. Would have reminded me of those birds in real life who can't fly but sometimes try to flap their wings in a clumsy matter. But that's just my personal opinion.

 

[SlyGecko]

I could say the very same about Lucario receiving super-effective damage from Togekiss and not going down. Now tell me which is worse and if that doesn't clearly look like the writers were biased in favor of Ash?

Lucario didn't take any super-effective from Togekiss though. Lucario is only weak fighting, ground, and fire and Togekiss only knew psychic and flying moves. So no, the writers weren't biased in favor of Ash.

 

[Vengeful Ghost]

I'm sorry for saying that about Leon. That was a mistake. Still, I'm not going into conspiracy theories (I can't help but wonder where you got that from?)
You're talking about "arbitrary rules". Fine then. I guess you should have noticed by now that it's not me making those arbitray rules but it's in fact the writers who're putting Leon and Ash in a totally different universe of its own. Because most of the rules all the other characters have to obey will just be screwed as soon as it comes to Ash and Leon. If anything, it's them those "arbitrary rules" are made for!

It’s less about how you let real life bigotry seep into your opinions of the characters and more like how you seem to denigrate characters based on what they wear because you think wearing anything less “dignified” is somehow a slight against you personally because Cynthia is your personal self-insert character.

So what you're basically saying is: Everything Ash does makes sense because he's the hero who's allowed to do whatever he wants and any criticism about it is useless?
If that were true, I honestly would have better things to do than spend a lot of my free time with such a show ...

I think we can end this conversation here. You have clearly admitted that you do not want a good faith discussion and are abusing terms like Deus Ex Machina and Plot Armor to massage your ego. The fact you believe I think Ash is infallible like he’s the Pope speaking ex cathedra when I flat out say that many of us hold your criticism of Journey’s story structure to be valid but hold how you criticize the story to be utterly invalid.

This was you flat out making a fanfic of Cynthia being the true Victor of the match before it even aired.

To sum up: Not only is Cynthia not allowed to go full power at Ash, no, the latter can only win with Plot Armor and cheap, forced defeats. Frankly, I had the feeling this would happen but by doing so, the writers also gave us that invaluable argument that Cynthia would have won if she had been allowed to go full power.
So, Ash' s "victory" is already invalidated and no matter how that battle ends, what's incredibly satisfying is that Cynthia's legend will live forever!

Cynthia was literally introduced with her Pokémon no selling a high power 4X effective move.
Her plot armor is just as bad as his, possibly worse.

You are not allowed to deny what happens on the page. Refusing to deny what happens on the page is not the same as saying you cannot criticize it. Ash won. Period. That is what happened. Saying that Cynthia is the true champion and that Ash’s victory didn’t count is denialism.

The fact you misconstrued the argument I made that the concept of a dark horse/underdog victory is not something new in fiction and reality with the stupid straw man that Ash is above criticism says a few things about your argument.

1. You actually agree with me. The mere refusal to admit that a dark horse victory is a staple of both fiction and reality is a way to avoid admitting the mere possibility Cynthia could lose because you built an identity around her and how she should be defeated. It’s the same mechanism the “Alain cheated” crowd used back in XY&Z when Ash lost.
2. You legitimately believe denialism is a valid form of criticism since you seem to equate refusing to deny what happened as not criticizing the work which is outright wrong.

Whatever it is, I don’t want to hear it. There is no arguing with a denialist.

 

[Eitarou]

So, all this buildup for Cynthia "surprising" everyone with Dynamax, Togekiss proceeds to use the same move three times in a row, fail to land any real hits despite a three-times stat boost, and take more screentime than the battle they've been building up to? I'm sorry, but if they wanted Togekiss to soften Lucario up, I'm not seeing why we needed another D-Max battle to do that.

 

[Sai]

I mean this is Cynthia's Garchomp, one of the, if not the strongest trainer's Pokemon in the world that has always been portrayed as an awe-inspiring, super powerful beast! Her battles were even called "legendary" by the announcer in the match against Iris. Yes, it got hit by Star Assault and yes, it got hit by some Lucario attacks. But again, we're talking about an ordinary Sirfetch'd and and ordinary Lucario that certainly do not have the same amount of training, power and stamina as Garchomp does (Remember Lucario just recently hatched from the egg and after one short "training" scene with Greninja got that totally exaggerated DEM-like power boost. You can't deny that was a prime example of DEM).
So, under normal circumstances, Garchomp would have shaken off those attacks and still shredded Mega-Lucario into pieces with ease. But it didn't, because first it wasn't allowed to mega-evolve and second, it was deliberately portrayed weaker than usual. All that to make the audience believe brat boy could actually "defeat" Cynthia.

I simply want justice for Garchomp. She should be treated just the same way as Leon's Charizard, with the big difference that Cynthia would use that power in a realistic way, while Leon is just written terribly through and through.
(And to make things even worse, now we're getting a match between "Mr. DEM" and "Mr. Ash-pull victory" ...oh joy! Totally NOT looking forward to this mess...)

Pokemon portrayed as unbeatable are usually disliked, Leon's Gmax Charizard is an example of how not to do things. Cynthia's Garchomp already took a beating from Caitlin in BW, from the Genies in the Meoletta arc in BW as well, and Sirfetch'd managed to score a direct attack on it. You basically want Cynthia's Garchomp to be portrayed as some unbeatable God, and that doesn't make an interesting battle to watch.

I could say the very same about Lucario receiving super-effective damage from Togekiss and not going down. Now tell me which is worse and if that doesn't clearly look like the writers were biased in favor of Ash?

Unless I'm mistaken, Lucario didn't take any super effective attacks? Someone correct me if I'm wrong here, but does flying do neutral damage to Lucario in the games?

EDIT: So it isn't supereffective like I thought. So Queen Cynthia you're wrong here, Lucario did not take any super effective hits. So is that why you were confused about Lucario taking attacks?

Ash winning at all costs, no matter how bad the collateral damage might be, is a message/concept Journeys has constantly been shovelling down our throats. And it's that flawed concept I'm criticizing here, nothing else!

That doesn't reflect anything that happened in this battle though. Cynthia was in command for most of the battle and he stayed realistic comebacks with his Pokemon each time. Both Garchomp and Lucario were not in the final battle at full health, both took tons of attacks with Lucario being resistant to dragon type attacks and then the Reversal gives it the strongest attack when its HP in low. There was no other realistic way to end. Once again, why do you also not comment on what the move Reversal does? Did you purposely leave that out because you know it's a realistic way to win?

Joke aside, what a shameless abuse of plot armor being given to a 'team' that is unable to run without it. There are ways on how to write a believable turnaround, but this is beyond the limit and deep down in forced.Edit: Watched a bit, dropped after realising where everything was going.

So you basically admitted to not even watching the full episode. How was this not a believeable turnaround? None of Ash's Pokemon took unrealistic damage in all 3 eps and all of Cynthia's pokemon went down properly.

 

[PokeFan2005]

In the flashbacks, Cynthia has both eyes exposed. Something must have happened to her before she was first met by Ash.

 

[Nicolas721]

Lucario VS Togekiss was okay. I don't mind the Max Airstream spam, it was accurate to Dynamax battles in the games and every time the move was used Lucario countered it in a different way. I wish the Speed boosts had mattered more and that Lucario had suffered more in general though.

Then it came 3-4 "breather" minutes filled with reactions, random conversations, reactions and Cynthia backstory, which lead to Lucario VS Garchomp feeling rushed. The animation was decent and the moves had a lot of weight, but in all terms it didn't reach the levels of Infernape vs Electivire or Greninja vs Sceptile.

Overall it's a battle that flowed very well and where all Pokemon shined, but that I wouldn't call epic or amazing, it feels it was toned down so they wouldn't have to make an impossible effort to make Ash vs Leon great.

 

[Adelon]

Game stats don't really translate one to one in the anime.

Yeah, Pikachu has the stats of a base stage starter Pokemon in the games, but in the anime, it is treated like it has Weavile's stats or something.

 

[Ghost Diplocaulus]

Okay, I've held my opinions back because I knew that this one would be controversial no matter the results. And indeed, I myself have mixed feelings on how it went. On one hand, I still would have preferred Mega Garchomp over Dynamax Togekiss, especially since like others have already pointed out, Togekiss didn't really seem to make full use of Dynamax's capabilities (though to be fair, it's entirely possible that the writers straight up forgot that Bullet Punch is a priority move so they figured Max Mindstorm would've been a waste anyways). That said, I did like how Togekiss tanked Spirit Bomb Aura Sphere, as it serves as a reminder that for all of its merits as a cool powerup, it's still an Aura Sphere at the end of the day and is thus still bound to the same type chart limitations that a regular Aura Sphere (or indeed, any Max Move for that matter) would be, meaning that Togekiss shrugged it off because it has a 4X resistance to it. It shows that Lucario's ultimate move does in fact have its weaknesses and downsides and is not the 100% surefire finisher that, say, Pikachu's 10.000.000 Volt Thunderbolt is.

Anyway, the final slugfest between Lucario and Garchomp also has its upsides and downsides: on one hand, I think neither Pokemon was shafted in the department of dishing out and taking punishment, and I love that Lucario finished things off with Reversal, as I do feel that Lucario was more damaged than Garchomp by the time both of them were the last Pokemon remaining on each side and the Bullet Punch/Dragon Claw exchanges were dealing roughly the same amounts of damage, meaning Lucario won by taking advantage of his disadvantage, and neatly resolves the issue of him surviving more hits than his opponent in a way that feels realistic due to how Reversal works. On the other hand, the battle was rather short and didn't feel quite as epic as I would've hoped an Ash vs Cynthia match to be. Oh well.

 

[Handy Man]

Psychic Terrain, and terrains in general, only affects grounded Pokémon. Even if Togekiss did activate it, it would only protect Garchomp, since Togekiss is a Flying-type. This is a common misconception I’ve been seeing throughout this thread, so I wanted to clear the air about it. But yeah, Bullet Punch would still work on Togekiss, even with Psychic Terrain active.

 

[Eitarou]

Psychic Terrain, and terrains in general, only affects grounded Pokémon. Even if Togekiss did activate it, it would only protect Garchomp, since Togekiss is a Flying-type. This is a common misconception I’ve been seeing throughout this thread, so I wanted to clear the air about it. But yeah, Bullet Punch would still work on Togekiss, even with Psychic Terrain active.

If Paul can force Staraptor to suffer the effects of Toxic Spikes, then what's stopping Cynthia from allowing Togekiss to temporarily ground itself to benefit from Psychic Terrain? And given Garchomp was weakened, being able to avoid Lucario's fastest move would be a massive boon.