day 1873 ash gets 4th badge {bw50}
Tragically, right when I finally started to get invested in this series at last, they had to start piling on the shit! Bw49, before Ash can have his round with Elesa, Bianca steps up to the plate and she puts on a good showing, but in the end loses. That's not why I'm pissed at this episode, oh no... it's what happens next that makes me want to break something because of the levels of stupidity present!!
So Bianca walks out of the gym and who should be waiting but her dad. Who says that since she's patently useless as a trainer, he demands that she come on home. Ash won't stand for this of course, and challenges him: if he wins, Bianca's dad has to STFU; but if Ash loses, he has to... go home to Pallet?
And then, and then Oshy loses. No, no,. Fuck that noise! Ash Ketchum, regardless of what Pokémon he used or was used against him, darmanitan which in fact gives him an advantage because water beats fire, should not ever lose to an out of practice salary man. To drive the sheer idiocy all the way home, Iris actually asks if Ash would be leaving soon. I... I... Do you see, why I don't like her? She says the stupidest things. Iris, sweetie, only a little kid would think Ash would have to honor that bet. Long story short, B's daddy has a change of heart. I'd ordinarily flip my fingers up at the writers in a futile gesture at this point, but if you can believe it; it's about to get worse.
To put this in perspective, the 4th gym battle in Unova is the one I hate the most. Yes, it even beats out that “thunder armor” bullshit in the 7th gym in Hoenn. Don't be mistaken, the win itself is perfectly legit but the road to get there is fraught with so much dumb.
To start with, Ash's grand strategy that he spent 2 whole nights thinking up amounts to: Use Palpitoad. No really, that's it. When Palpi gets knocked out in a 3 vs 3 I might add, Ash has to leave and go the Center to get the rest of his team... What!!!!!!!!!!!!
He returns... with Snivy... with the new absolutely fool-proof strategy of: Use Attract. Except oh wait, Elisa's Emolga is also a girl, and you should fucking know that, because you watched Bianca's match. Also, Snivy is a grass type, yes Ash that does make her resistant to electric attacks. Tell me, did you forget, Emolga's part flying?! Newsflash!! That annoying as hell girl you travel with now has had one for awhile now.
After all this, Pikachu has finally had enough! He has to shock Ash, literally, into remembering that he exists and that he can wreck shit. THEN THEY WIN... DUH.
There is no excuse for this, the writers forced Ash to be as retarded and ill prepared as he's ever been, solely to create an arbitrary conflict and to spit in the face of both the fans of the show and even Ash himself for daring to rise above the level of total n00b and marketing ploy. I'll be objective here, you might not buy into how awesome I say Ash is or should be by now, but you have to agree, he's better than this sorry excuse of a battle plan. Bw51 just has Ash celebrating his “hard-fought victory”, and they relax while the bridge to driftveil is repaired.
day 1875 ash meets alder the unova champion {bw52}
Alder is basically like Jiraiya from Naruto, a wise old mentor type who knows his stuff, but who is also lazy as hell and is fond of the ladies. Ash attempts to have a battle with him but Alder falls asleep midway through instead... when Trip sees what has become of his idol, he is not amused.
At this point, the audience becomes aware that really Ash and Trip's character arcs really have nothing to do with one another; Trip just existing in bw1 to give Ash an undeserved and impossible beat down and to give the series a bad fresh start, while his arc for lack of a better word is more about dealing with the nature of strength, disillusionment, and generic maturity stuff as he tries to surpass the in his eyes weak man he used to look up to. Ash doesn't really factor in to that, except maybe as a good role model, so from here on Trip is just really standoffish towards him.
53,54,55 are all bad filler and deserve to be cut, but 55 deserves a special mention. It's an episode devoted to the bromance between Scraggy and Axew, there's a whiny gothita and a big piece of shit garbador, and oh dear I've gone cross-eyed from the levels of Do Not Want.
day 1883-1884 ash wins a tournament, befriends victini, teams up with either reshiram or zekrom to stop other dragon + its partner from accidentally destroying the world (ash recently turned 16) {m14}
First thing that's noticeable about this film is the animation budget. If Best Wishes updates Pokémon's look to somewhere around this decade, the 14th movie takes that step even further. It looks niice.
Another point in this movie's favor, it disposes of, at least temporarily, the intelligence limiters Ash has been infected with for the past 50 or so episodes. And Now for some horribly written exposition. "Eerboy! Kalm da fuck down, Ketchum's here, he knows how ta deal with all the world go kablooie stuff, he'll stop the what's a hoozat from screwing with the cosmic ley-lines or what have you, and survive conditions dat would proly kill anybodyel.
That last half of the paragraph hurt to type, moving on. This one feels like a 2.0 version of the 2nd movie, though that's more to do with the scale of both movies rather than any plot similarities. As there are two versions of the movie, I must state for the record that beside which dragon is on what side, and what time of day/night some scenes are in, and what direction the camera pans/faces as the movies are half-mirrored... there really isn't much difference.
As such I recommend watching Black: Victini+Reshiram version, so that the well meaning but stupidly misguided villain has Zekrom in his possession with Reshiram sealed which does kind of fill in the plot hole of “hey zekrom has shown up, but where's the white guy?”, and really would Ash team up with the dragon that tried to smite his bestest best friend without even a little acknowledgment of that? Though I will add that Ash's heroic speech to Damos as he tries to rescue Victini is unique in both versions, so maybe watch them simultaneously? That's what I did, didn't find it confusing at all.
Random comment, Wow Ash and here I thought between Hunter J being gone and Zekrom trying to off the two of you as soon as you landed, you decided to lay off using the mortal coil as a jump rope. Instead, you just did two near death experiences back to back... Ash Ketchum: the only guy ever who could survive hypothermia and asphyxiation due to being in space, by being hit by a magical nuke. GG!
Canon wise, discounting the whole two versions both couldn't of happened unless alternate dimensions thing, well it partially fills in that lingering question from bw1, and it's referenced obliquely in the next movie, but as of bw108 at least nothing really concrete cements it to the show other than by weight of numbers with all the other movies being canon, and by the end of the Team Plasma arc in bw122 it seems to be completely seperate from the plot, which sucks considering I like this a heck of a lot more than the arc in question or even 90% of this particular series.
Timeline wise, with all the plot happening from the battle tournament to Nimbasa it has to happen afterward, but because of TR's evil schemes and an upcoming evolution, it narrows down the frame to somewhere between episodes 52 and 56.
Speaking of 56, it's not filler, but only just and even if it was filler, I'd still reccomend it. Its plot is pretty good all on its own and is the one rare occasion where Iris doesn't grate too much on my nerves, and appears to be developing an actual character. The group helps out at a daycare center and she bonds with a dieno until its owner comes to take it home. Sadly, because this is Best Wishes it amounts to nothing, but a glimmer of something more no matter how brief, is worth mentioning. Meanwhile, we see Team Rocket are concocting plans to capture the cloud genie legendary trio.
Next time... At least by now we're halfway through it, and the worst is behind us... right? Eps 57-69
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