JN129: The Finals I: "Torrent" | Page 2

Publish date: 2024-05-18
Okay, I finally finished watching the episode and so far I'm enjoying this battle. And I gotta say, THIS is what I was expecting to see an Undefeated World Champion do in a battle: I love how we saw Leon not only execute multiple different strategies that employ Abilities and move combos (seriously, his use of Cinderace's Libero and Mr. Rime's Psychic Terrain+Expanding Force was just... chef's kiss) but even borrow one of Ash's most famous ones in Counter Shield. It's a huge shame we only ever got Leon brute-forcing his way through opponents up until now, but better late than never I suppose.

With Ash getting the first KO I'm starting to suspect that we indeed might end up getting a Drake-esque situation where Ash manages to beat Leon's team down to Charizard with most of his Pokemon still active only for Charizard to pull off a comeback sweep that concludes with a very narrow by-the-skin-of-his-teeth win for Ash. Or maybe Leon will conserve his World Champion title regardless, but it'll most likely be a close fight either way.

Now, regarding the removal of the Gimmick Restriction... I am still holding onto the hope that we'll see Leon use multiple Gigantamaxes courtesy of Eternatus's energy (Inteleon might be down, but Leon's still got three other Gigantamax-capable Pokemon. Granted, I would have preferred G-Max Inteleon over Rillaboom since we've already seen the latter and not the former, but oh well), and with Ash having already used up G-Max Gengar it'll certainly be an uphill climb for our boy and his team. Heck, if anything, Ash is in kind of a bind right now: of the Pokemon that he's still got left Pikachu and Lucario are really the only semi-safe answers he's got for Mr. Rime, but those two are his remaining Gimmick users, so he can't really afford to tire them out this early (especially when Pikachu has already taken a big hit from Cinderace's Scorching Sands), and while Freeze-Dry is currently out of commission, that won't be the case forever, so should Ash decide to take advantage of Mr. Rime's lack of Ice STAB and send out one of his dragons, regardless of if it's Dragonite or Dracovish they need to defeat Mr. Rime right away (because remember that Freeze-Dry has the secondary effect of being super effective on Water-types, meaning that both Dragonite and Dracovish have a x4 weakness to it).

Dawn and Chloe coming to Wyndon Stadium to cheer on Ash is sweet too, if somewhat random. My guess is that they have a sixth sense that alerted them to Goh's absence and, knowing that Ash will need all the in-person cheerleaders he can get, they both decided to fill in that vacancy :p

In conclusion, I'm looking forward to what comes next. I just hope Dragonite gets a win because she's gone too long without one.

All this episode did was validate literally EVERYTHING people like @Ghost Diplocaulus @Unireon @A Wild Luxray @Enzo and @Kurolegacy have been saying right from the very start!

These guys KNEW that Goh wouldn't be able to show off the Galarian Starters true potential.

They KNEW that the Galar Starters needed an actual Trainer who Battles and not just collects Pokemon

These guys should seriously applaud themselves because EVERY SINGLE THING they said about Goh having all the Starters was completely correct
View attachment 164605

D'aww, I'm flattered! :bulbaLove:

You shouldn't applaud me too much for this, though. I mean, to be fair, Goh did get to show off both Cinderace and Inteleon a little bit, so really it was mainly the Grookey line that got the worst deal. And we were hardly the only people pointing out that giving all three Galar Starters to Goh wasn't the best idea even on this forum. Pretty sure that at least @Hidden Mew was at least skeptical of that writing decision as well, for example.

ncG1vNJzZmiapaGvorPAq5uepl6jsrV706GpnpmUqHyrupBrcGasmJp6p7XNmqOsZZliwbC%2B0Z6lrWZiboF5g5Nop5qflWJ%2F