The time has finally come for Ash's official gym battle with Fantina, and Barry will be sticking around to watch. Ash is confident that his new technique of spinning while using an attack for simultaneous offense and defense will be a great way to counter Fantina's Hypnosis. The first round sees this technique as a great success when Buizel uses the technique with its Water Gun, which Fantina names "Counter Shield," and defeats Fantina's Gengar. Her next Pokémon is Mismagius, and she starts to fight back against the technique, but Ash's Chimchar still manages to successfully use it and ends up beating Mismagius, while Barry notices how much happier Chimchar seems with Ash than Paul. However, Fantina's final Pokémon is her ace, her Drifblim, and its tricky movements are combined with its own methods of countering Ash's Counter Shield as well as Hypnosis, and it defeats Pikachu and Buizel. Now it's down to Chimchar, but Ash's dynamic battle style and all-out offense allow Chimchar to outmaneuver and overpower Drifblim, defeating it and finally winning Ash his Relic Badge.
Tropes
- Always Accurate Attack: Gengar's Shadow Punch.
- Green Thumb: Mismagius's Magical Leaf is a grass type attack.
- Keet: Even while sitting back to watch another trainer's battle, Barry cannot help but be full of energy.
- Spin to Deflect Stuff: Ash's Counter Shield technique works by having a Pokémon spin around while using certain stream-based attacks, which allows it to simultaneously attack and defend by hitting everything within radius, so the opponent takes damage and is prevented from disorienting the user with its tricky movements.
- Status Effects: Once again, Fantina's specialty is having her Ghost Pokémon use Hypnosis, which combined with their generally tricky natures is exactly why Ash developed his Counter Shield technique.
- Tempting Fate: Fantina does this twice: first after Gengar dodges Buizel's Sonicboom, she says there's not much of a battle to see. Her Gengar winds up beaten. Then, after having her Mismagius stop Counter Shield with Magical Leaf and having Drifblim spin its Will-o-wisp with Psychic, she says she learned everything about Counter Shield. Chimchar blows up the Counter-Counter Shield with Flamethrower and Ash says Fantina didn't learn everything about Counter Shield. Fantina admits she spoke too soon.
- Throw the Dog a Bone: After being in quite the losing streak, Jessie finally wins another contest earning her second ribbon (though of course this is one that didn't had Dawn, Zoey, Kenny, and Nando a part of).
