Japanese Title: Satoshi and Go, Crawl Up From the Sand Hell!
Original Airdate: September 6, 2020
US Airdate: December 4, 2020
Following his loss to Bea, Ash finds himself in a losing streak in the World Coronation Series. However, he and Goh are called to investigate a sandstorm that appeared in the Hoenn region near Mauville City.
- Character Development: Goh uses out of the box techniques normally used by Ash to catch Flygon.
- Corner of Woe: Poor Ash does this when he’s sulking about dropping a whole class.
- Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: Goh tells Ash to pull himself together when he's too depressed to focus on the mission at hand.
- Goggles Do Something Unusual: The boys grab several Go-Goggles before trekking into the sandstorm.
- Heroic BSoD: Ash goes into a funk after being bumped down to Normal Class. Not helped by every opponent using Combat Tentacles against Riolu. You get the feeling he needs a break to refresh when he snaps out of it, which the next episode is happy to provide.
- Idiot Ball: Ash faces off against two different Water-Types, and rather than his super-effective Pikachu or his resistant Dragonite, he chooses his newly born Riolu which knows no super-effective moves and has no natural resistances (and in one case, is at a disadvantage, as his opponent resists Fighting type moves). Predictably, he loses.
