day 1426 dawn deals with her first major failure {dp49}
So, in 49 it shows that Fantina's not at her gym rendering Mira's help pointless and railroading Ash on the badge path as laid out by the games... remember back in Kanto when Saffron, Celadon, and Fuchsia were all jumbled up? Those were the days. After that Dawn does her contest thing, but she loses... Ouch, she doesn't even make it to the battle round, That kinda sucks, even May at her worst as a total n00b never did that poorly... I wonder if this will effect her emotions negatively or not, could the writers be smart emough to follow that angle?
(2013) They were and did IMO, which begs the question... where did all this great character drama with Dawn and Ash vs. Paul go in the next series? I know its a kids show, but once you reach a good level of writing you shouldn't hit the reset button to meet market demands and the lowest expectations of your youngest audience. Sorry if I broke the flow there.
Moving on, Nando is the ultimate winner of the contest, and he and Zoey become acquainted. Zoey proves she's not as off as Gardenia is as she gets an instant attraction towards Nando owing to the fact that he is a bishie and not because of any strange preferences she might have. After that's done Ash and Brock want to enter a tag team double battle tournament in hearthome that they learned about from Nando, and Ash gets Dawn to enter too in an underhanded way to cheer her up that's painfully obvious.
day 1428 Paul rage-quits like a baby mid-battle, then he releases chimchar for ash to catch {dp50+51}
day 1429 paul's elekid evolves into electabuzz and ash+paul win the tournament {dp52}
OK, we've finally arrived at this point in the plot, but first some last minute stalling before I descend into incoherent rage and bitching. Thanks to the RNG and the need for D+P to have even more side characters that are interesting + sorta fleshed out, Ash's hope to be paired with Dawn in order to bolster her sadness over losing with a different kind of win are for naught as Dawn's partner for the tournament is a new guy named Conway, and Brock gets paired with a lady named Holly. Ash gets stuck with Paul.
On that subject, Conway looks like an older Max if he actually had all the Pokémon knowledge he claims to have and if grew up to be a stereotypical creepy otaku/geeky perv. He's good for a laugh, and hey at least Dawn's not worried about about losing a contest anymore, she has worse problems amirite?
Holly joins the very small minority of like 4 women who have genuine feelings for Brock by the end of this mini-arc, but doesn't tell him anything until after she leaves because she feels like Brock as a smart Pokémon breeder deserves better from a partner, and her battling skills aren't good enough for him. What. No honey, it's OK really Brock's not that shallow, please come back and take him away with you.
Fine, no more beating around the bush, I'll try to keep this from going on for pages. Dp50 is the opening round, the set-up, the calm before the storm. Then there's 51... in which Paul is revealed to out right and explicitly abuse his Pokémon, specifically Chimchar, and does not seem at all aware that what he is doing is wrong, worst of all he never pays for this act.
Now, I know first-hand how long and drawn out Pokémon is, it's why I tried to summarize the plots of all the important episodes and included an abridged episode guide at the top so that if for whatever reason looking at this mess of a text document might interest a potential viewer they would have a slightly easier time of getting through it than I did, because for all its faults, follies and foibles Pokémon is a good anime. It won't win any awards and some parts of it are hackneyed and over blown a bit but it's not terrible by any definition. On a completely personal note, I can rewatch Pokémon (obviously) but you'd have to force me violently to even look at that ninja filled mess I've made references too, or even admit Death Note has more than 25 episodes, for reasons nobody cares about. Still I can't expect anyone to check this out, so I'll try to lay the damning scene out as best I can without too much angry bias.
So after all the preliminaries everybody crashes at the Pokécenter, that night Ash stumbles upon Paul training Chimchar in the woods. By training, I mean have the monkey stand there and get assaulted by the rest of Paul's team's strongest attacks at once when Chim's already past the point of exhaustion in order to train his endurance/unlock his hidden ability of blaze. When even Team Rocket thinks you're being too tough on your Pokémon, maybe you want to rethink your regime?
I mean Paul tries to excuse it saying he only wants Chimchar to be the best he can be, having a flashback on how he met him while the monkey was cornered by a group of zangoose then watched him go ape-shit on them after they had run him ragged. It's why he caught him in the first place, he was already strong he just needed help unlocking his blaze ability, but this just feels like a horrible justification to me. Nurse Joy comes out and convinces him to stop, and explicitly tells Paul that Chimchar needs rest and not to battle with him tomorrow.
What happens the next day? Why Paul uses Chimchar in the next battle, screw doctor's orders right? Against a team of metagross and wouldn't you know it, a zangoose which Chim has a phobia of because of his past history. Combine his freezing up in battle with his sluggish reaction and diminished attacks from having the crap beat out of him all night long, Paul stupidly assumes it's all the chimp's fault, gives him up as being useless, and from then on refuses to issue any commands, basically rage-quitting the battle. Leaving Ash of course to co-ordinate a win from two exhausted Pokémon one of whom isn't even his. Did I mention Paul's last command 2 chimchar was to torch Ash's turtwig along with the opponent as a suicide attack?
To reiterate, in a world that revolves around and depends upon sentient creatures that posses genetic superpowers this cunt bastard of a kid ignores the medical advice of a trained professional that deals with said creatures, and has what amounts to a glorified tantrum in the middle of a competition sport in front of an entire stadium of people, assuming it wasn't also on TV, thereby endangering his Pokémon twice over, and the worst that happens to him is that he gets chewed out by Ash, someone whose opinion he doesn't give a shit about? I— I don't even... <ahem> For the sake of brevity, I'll move on now.
So they win the tournament... hooray. Paul further cements himself as in need of a serious attitude adjustment when he throws his half of the grand prize at Ash, apparently soothe bells are beneath him. 53 continues this as the fall out of Chimchar going with Ash, and oh for fuck's sake Chim is acting like the lifetime movie definition of a domestic abuse victim, still defending their former relationship, put off in terror by a show of genuine kindness, and randomly prone to tears. <sigh> Why does anyone like Paul? To compare the two again, at least Sasuke used to be an OK guy and you can understand his motivations at least, spoilers when we get to Paul's fruedian excuse... not so much. Enough about him.
Next time... Changing teams, and walking about. Not much else to say. Eps 54-65
Comments
