day 1956 Ash and Giovanni finally meet {bw96+97}
A confrontation 15 years in the making! After 753 episodes(758 if you include the holiday specials and the canceled episodes), 15 movies and 1 OVA tie-in sequel, it finally happens! And unlike that OVA, Mewtwo's Return, there's no arguing over semantics here. There's an argument and a fight and no one suffers from any memory loss, the principal hero has finally come face to face with what amounts to the entire anime's over arcing principal villain. These 2 episodes were certainly not worth the anguish and fan outrage I had to deal with throughout Best Wishes, but Heavens Above, they come really close, It's all so sublime just how fucking amazing this chunk of plot is.
They even cause bw59+60 to become more relevant to the plot than just Team Rocket being competent badasses now; as their attempt to capture Tornadus, Thundurus, and Landorus was just a trial run of Operation Tempest which Giovanni acts out personally by capturing meloetta and mind controlling the other three legendairies into their new therian forms to rule the world!!!™
Back to gushing, dude Pikachu and Persian get into a fight, and Persian wins via sneak attack bypassing Pikachu's broken-ness. Ash has his serious business face on, while Iris and Cilan just look kind of overwhelmed. Dragonite is admittedly a badass, sadly since they're all in grave dangers he listens to Iris's undeserved authority, but considering the situation that makes sense.
Lastly, OHMAIGAWD THAT IS THE GREATEST ATTACK I'VE EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE!! See, there's this mouse named Pikachu and he has had enough of all this diabolical trifling nonsense, so he dives in front of the entire group to shield them from a blast from super charged evil Thundurus absorbs that energy and lets loose an electro ball that's more on par with Goku's Spirit Bomb that killed Kid Buu at the end of Dragon Ball Z than a regular Pokémon technique. It's so epic.
There's one nagging problem with that however; remember how Zekrom fired his laser and robbed Pikachu of his electric attacks for a couple hours? It was a pretty stupid and flimsy premise designed to explain away (supremely inadequately I might add) Ash's first loss to Trip, I even went the extra mile and noted that on paper it could work due to Pikachu not having the lightning rod ability... Now, let's analyze this moment again, with respect to Pikachu's awesomeness in 97... You stupid writers! You invalidated the very plot device that began Best Wishes! You can't have Pikachu's internal organs or what have you be overworked by Zekrom, then shrug off Thundurus's efforts with little effect! That's a major inconsistency! Still doesn't ruin the moment for me, so I'm grateful for that.
This next point is going to sound crazy, and even if I'm proven wrong (most likely) by future events I'll let the record stand. After watching this long awaited climax, I'm left with a question or rather THE question: Did... did they just write Jessie, James, and Meowth out of the show?! And as impossible as that may seem, if that's true, could the anime finally be moving to an ultimate conclusion? Hear me out.
When Ash does successfully rescue meloetta and the cloud genies from Team Rocket's control, Giovanni orders all of his forces back to Kanto. The trio even hitch a ride in his personal helicopter. Black and White 2 just came out months ago,and Generation V is only a little over 2 years old, the shortest cycle Gen I, was around for about 3 years before Gold and Silver came out, so there's going to be a gap with no games to draw plot from once the League comes soon.
Assuming the writers don't want to do something like the Orange Islands with anime exclusive content, and that they feel like Troll-bias returning or Kotetsu or Trip or somebody beating Ash right in the final match might be too mean spirited; could it be that whenever Gen VI comes out we might have a new protagonist as Ash would finally be able to realize his dream, and they're hinting at this by shooing TR? I mean yeah, it's not as outlandish as my preferred ending, but I'm still probably blowing the whistle too early on this... still something to wonder about. For goodness's sake they close out the episode with the song “Team Rocket Forever” the Japaneses song version of “You know us as Team Rocket, and we fight for what is wrong” etc. It really just screams finality to me.
—-Well—- I certainly called that worst case scenario didn't I? In full complete honesty the next 45 episodes have no business serving as the end to a region, especially not after this.
So canonicity aside this is Ash's journey in Unova for me... he gets a single badge the 1st, catches some new team members offscreen, runs into TR infruequently in which he gets all serious, does the nimbasa tournament, and falls for Meowth's friendship ploy, then Pikachu cottons on and fixes that mess, they help save Victini, rendevous with Dawn, Ash has an exhibition match with Roxie, and finally confronts Giovanni to save Meloetta before flying home to Kanto ... and maybe the 16th movie with Genesect happens, and maybe Ash does meet N in the admittedly well done bw110 but the arc would be much more like Team Rocket vs Plasma bw119 than the useless pandering shit we got and Axew would get what it wants and evolve at least once and the girl wouldn't get a damn dragonite.
After a bombastic extravaganza like that though, what could they possibly follow up with? If you said the series's obligatory Ash cross-dressing episode, then you must be cheating; stop that. Bw98 is not a bad filler by any means, though it suffers from heavy mood whiplash with its levity in light of what occurred previously. This was also the point I finally caught up with the anime, and I am now forced to wait a week like everybody else. Bw99 though is a bad filler, with some stupid kids, skip it.
day 1970 they get to opelucid city, iris has a re-match with drayden, she loses again {bw101}
bw100 brings us to Iris's home village presumably in a last ditch effort to get the audience to care about her. At the end of their visit, Drayden shows up and he's like “Get your ass back to the gym you ran away from” and Iris says “yes sir.”
Once there Drayden takes her to task and schools her... but in his mind her attitude and performance these past two episodes has shown that she has grown, even though Axew can't do shit and Dragonite still only half does what she says and those are her only two dragons and half her team besids with Emolga being her regular entitled bitch self and Excadrill having only just got his head out of his ass relatively speaking, but you know let's ignore the fact that throughout Best Wishes she's hardly grown as a character and just shoehorn her into her game canon role as a gym leader. <sigh>
day 1973 they meet virgil {bw102}
Wait hold the phone everybody. This new guy comes out from the void with a full team of all the Eevee evolutions... Yep, he's the guy that's actually gonna beat Ash. That's an awesome team that everybody's at least wanted to make once... and he's more credible than Kotetsu, as for Virgil's personality I'm just glad he has one, making him automatically better than Tyson or Tobias, though certainly not as memorable as Ritchie or Harrison.
Next time... <said with all the hyperbolic sarcasm in the world> The Unova League!!! Hoo-fucking-ray! I'm sure this in no way will be the crowning achievment of dissapointment that whole previous 100+ episodes were plotting towards, I mean Leagues are always written well. Right? Eps 103-109
