Battle-Dazzling the Nimbasa Gym! (711)

[PhoenixFlame12]

Maybe it's just tradition that pikachu needs to be used in all electric gyms /shrugs.

Dissapointed about how Snivy's battle was handled, her gym debut and she gets owned, not cool

[Evll33t]

This gym was really awful, short and pointless. The worst gym in Pokemon's history.

Nah I would call Watson's for obvious reasons the worst but I would say this was not really decent. . .

[PhoenixFlame12]

This gym was really awful, short and pointless. The worst gym in Pokemon's history.

It wasn't really short, took up the whole episode like most gym battles do, i didn't mind it..gym battles have been a bit lackluster this series.

I do <3 Elesa though, defo my favourite gym leader now

[RandomOne]

When I'm saying short, I refer it to the battles - 1HKO for both Emolga and Tynamo, and for Snivy - after like 30 seconds she was out with no hits on Emolga. Pretty screwed up.

[Almighty Zard]

i'm confused what did Pikachu use to knock out Emolga?

[playerking]

Umm, LAMEST GYM BATTLE EVER!
Snivy is defeated without any hits on Emolga, and both Emolga and Tynamo are 1HKO defeated by Pikachu. LAME WRITERS, LAME!!!
Once again, damn Pikachu is staring...

Emolga had Aerial Ace, which did it's toll on Snivy and since Snivy's a Grass type...

This gym was really awful, short and pointless. The worst gym in Pokemon's history.

You mean, worse than the ones where Ash didn't even win the gym battles, plus Ash used a bit of strategy here. I think you're overreacting. Palpitoad got a win, Snivy is shown that she isn't that strong yet again and Pikachu got some more wins, which is alright since it lost to Excadrill and it'll probably lose to Bouffalant.

This battle was good.

i'm confused what did Pikachu use to knock out Emolga?

No idea, I only saw Electro Ball clashing against Electro Ball.

[Evll33t]

i'm confused what did Pikachu use to knock out Emolga?

A single quick attack

[dman_dustin]

This has to be my least favorite gym battle so far in Unova.

There were some great moments, and funny moments like Ash leaving the gym in the middle of the battle. But everything else was just nauseatingly bad.

- Palpitoad is male. I mean why give it such a feminine voice? I mean it was very feminine in this battle, even more so than it has been in the past few episodes. So yeah, not really cool. But I expected prior to this episode that Palpitoad was male, way to cheapen it here. And I'll get to why this is even worse down the line.

- Snivy lost. If anyone should've lost it should've been the rat but I'll get to that it an moment.

- Ash was completely and utterly out of character. Whomever wrote this, kindly stay the hell away from gyms from now on. Seriously, I don't care what kind of message you're trying to shove down our throats but honestly you did not need to make Ash do horribly that you had to resort to Cheapchu as your last resort.

- Pikachu.
A)Okay so let me get this straight. Elesa's Emolga isn't male and is female, and yet she didn't use ONE attract on Pikachu at all. What the hell. This is what really irritates me. It's like the writer went "Oh we did the attract thing just to confirm Palpitoad and Emolga's gender" but no sense it using it in a way that might actually cost Ash the entire battle by not using it on Pikachu. It doesn't help any that Elesa just let Pikachu use that OHKO quick attack on Emolga.

B). Pikachu being chosen in this. I mean it's bad enough that Ash is completely and utterly out of character. They really had to bring in Pikachu in all this and make it be the one that smacks Ash upside the head. Roggenrola would've been so much better. Sure it takes 1x damage from electric attacks, but honestly all Tynamo ever did (as far as I saw) was tackle. Ooh Roggenrola is going to be knocked out from a tackle.

The only decent match which has it's downsides as well is Palpitoad's battle with Zebstrika. And the only reason why I can't praise it for being the best battle, is because of that stupid close call it had, where it looked like it was knocked out.

I don't know how this episode that revolved primarily around the gym battle, could have so many things wrong with it. And I can't blame the gym being sucky merely just because of Pikachu. Because there were so many other things wrong with this gym that Pikachu is merely icing on the rotten nasty cake.

Now I didn't watch this is perfect quality, so maybe my irritation primarily stems from the fact I was getting annoyed with the quality not being perfect. So I'm going to reserve final judgement until I can actually see it in better quality. But from what I saw and what I expected, least favorite gym of Unova so far.

[lolipiece]

Emolga had Aerial Ace, which did it's toll on Snivy and since Snivy's a Grass type...



You mean, worse than the ones where Ash didn't even win the gym battles, plus Ash used a bit of strategy here. I think you're overreacting. Palpitoad got a win, Snivy is shown that she isn't that strong yet again and Pikachu got some more wins, which is alright since it lost to Excadrill and it'll probably lose to Bouffalant.

This battle was good.



No idea, I only saw Electro Ball clashing against Electro Ball.

Yes, and he nearly lost because of it.

[Almighty Zard]

I find that amusing, Ash overthinking things is bad yet him impulse thinking is good.

[RandomOne]

Emolga had Aerial Ace, which did it's toll on Snivy and since Snivy's a Grass type...

So? type advantage isn't everything, you know. Snivy is one powerful pokemon and we all know that, and making her lose like that is so stupid. She should have at least damage Emolga a bit... And afterwards seeing Pikachu 1HKO Emolga is kinda stupid, making Snivy a noob.


You mean, worse than the ones where Ash didn't even win the gym battles, plus Ash used a bit of strategy here. I think you're overreacting. Palpitoad got a win, Snivy is shown that she isn't that strong yet again and Pikachu got some more wins, which is alright since it lost to Excadrill and it'll probably lose to Bouffalant.

This battle was good.

Yeah, worse then that. When Ash lost a gym battle (like Lenora's), it gave him a thing to work on... then both Oshawott and Tepig learned a new cool move and managed to defeat her. Snivy is strong, that's the point... in that battle the writers decided to make her look like an average pokemon on Ash's team.

This battle was awful in my opinion. No good moments, boring, not much intreset... 1HKO 2 pokemons on the wall, very creative. And all of the Pikachu-electric moment were really pointless.


No idea, I only saw Electro Ball clashing against Electro Ball.

Answers in quote.

[playerking]

Yes, and he nearly lost because of it.

But he still went with using a strategy and actually showed some development in this episode, compared to the start. He tried something and learn't that he didn't need to change the way he battles.

Answers in quote.

Snivy is not that strong, you guys need to stop putting that Snake on a mother f------ pedestal. She beat two Pokemon! 2! And one due to her utilizing attract.

Worse than Sabrina's battle? Worse then when Brock just gave Ash a badge before he trained again? Palpitoad got a wins as I said, Pikachu did well and as I've said, Snivy lost which further proves that she isn't that good.

And for the people that say this was bad writing, read this.

For the record, the reason why Satoshi botched the battle was very well explained as him attempting to overthink everything and try to strategize ahead of time, panicking when things didn't work out the way he had intended them to. When Pikachu gave him a wake-up shock, he finally realized that taking things as they come, adapting to that, and improvising with what options he has available is how he battles best, used pikachu in such a manner for the rest of the battle, and thus avoided getting hit by obvious counters. No bad writing here.

[j_gamez]

iron tail and quick attack OHKO is disappointing.
worst unova gym battle so far.
i wont mind snivy losing to emolga because of type advantage.
but OHKO on emolga is so... zzz
and whats with crashing the wall for 19279182791 times in a gym battle

[Almighty Zard]

Now that the episode has aired I can post two things I noticed beforehand going into this.

1. in hoenn and sinnoh in both of the region's fourth gyms, Ash's usage of a grass pokemon was a bad choice and the pokemon in question did not get a victory, Third time's...apparently not the charm or grass's best chance for fighting.
2. Ash using grass types in electrical gyms is apparently a bad idea as well

Elesa really needs to focus on her other two pokemon if they got beaten that quickly (though in Tynamo's case i'm not suprised given how people kept referring to it as the magikarp of unova, guess they were right.), sure Emolga knocked out Snivy due to type advantage, but it seems like she's focused on Zebrastrika so much once it goes down all you gotta do is send out a female and you practically have a lock on beating her.

[RandomOne]

But he still went with using a strategy and actually showed some development in this episode, compared to the start. He tried something and learn't that he didn't need to change the way he battles.



Snivy is not that strong, you guys need to stop putting that Snake on a mother f------ pedestal. She beat two Pokemon! 2! And one due to her utilizing attract.

Worse than Sabrina's battle? Worse then when Brock just gave Ash a badge before he trained again? Palpitoad got a wins as I said, Pikachu did well and as I've said, Snivy lost which further proves that she isn't that good.

And for the people that say this was bad writing, read this.

The writers made her look like a real powerhouse in Ash's team, due to fact she is already well trained and got some awesome moves. When Ash caught it, Cilan mentioned she was well trained.

When I said "worse battle ever", it's ofc a bit over-reacting, but this battle was just bad in my opinion...

[Almighty Zard]

The writers made her look like a real powerhouse in Ash's team, due to fact she is already well trained and got some awesome moves. When Ash caught it, Cilan mentioned she was well trained.

Just because that's the case at first doesn't mean it's going to hold, I've seen pokemon before who were considered strong when captured but then slowly decline after some time had passed.

Also, the attacking power of moves in the anime doesn't follow that of the games, people need to remember that.

[Graham Aker]

I notice gym's still seem to be straight up "fight till you faint" battles so far this season...at least when Ash battles.

[RandomOne]

Umm, it actually does... maybe not 100% correct but it sure is. There is a reason after all for pokemons to learn new moves.

[Almighty Zard]

Umm, it actually does... maybe not 100% correct but it sure is. There is a reason after all for pokemons to learn new moves.

That doesn't mean the moves are going to help the pokemon in the long run, yes pokemon learn more moves over time, but that doesn't make them stronger or weaker, how the moves are used in battle is what counts, not the strength of them.

To get back on topic, I wonder how long Palpitoad and the Zebra went at it, sounds like they faught for a while from what i've heard.

[dman_dustin]

And for the people that say this was bad writing, read this.

Just because it's justifiable doesn't mean it isn't bad writing. Since when has bad writing been solely associated to apparently been written by someone who only has a small grasp of the language their writing.

The simple fact is, Ash was COMPLETELY out of character, that's why it's bad writing. It's like suddenly Ash gets pissed off at Oshawott for showing up every time and then kicking him (literally) for not waiting to be called.

Ash shouldn't have been strategizing at all in the freaking first place. I don't know if this was really screw with Ash's character but I'm not buying it. I don't care how he badly he saw Bianca losing, or how bad he lost to Bianca's dad, he still should not have been so indecisive in a way that nearly cost him the match.

And we certainly did not need Pikachu to send that message to him, when he should've just done with what he's used to.

Now had there been any sort of build up to this, sure I would be fine with it. Like Yugioh GX for a moment for a reference. Jaden lost badly to Zane, although he was seemingly close to winning. The next time Jaden battled Zane, he wasn't battling like he usually does and it nearly cost him, since he was "over thinking it" and wasn't playing the game to his best. When he realized this, sure the match ended in a tie, but he was back to himself, and realized he could do it his way just fine, and was the better duelist because of it.

But how does that apply to Ash? He didn't badly lose to Elesa. As far as I can tell there was no reason for him to doubt his own battling method, so much that he had to over think the situation and have it nearly cost him the badge.

So it comes down to, who honestly believes that some of us didn't like this episode just because we "didn't understand it?" Honestly that sounds like a petty counterargument for my opinion. Who says "I didn't understand the meaning" and even if I didn't understand it, what makes it less bad writing, when this episode should not have been written this way in the first place.

Ash should've went in there with what he wanted to use and won the usual way he does things. He chose Palpitoad because it's a ground type, Ash has instinctively chosen Pokemon that were super effective against the Pokemon in question prior to this so it's not out of the realm of possibility that he could've just had Palpitoad and used it merely because he knew it was a ground type.

So it doesn't matter if Ash's indecisiveness is justifiable, it doesn't suddenly change my opinion of the gym, just because the writers apparently wanted to try something new and make Ash look completely out of character. And mostly to make this gym battle last an entire episode, because apparently, they could not fill the entire episode with Ash being normal Ash so they had to throw in some B.S. out of character stuff just to fill out the time.

I'm still not sure how this lasted twenty two minutes, when it really did come off as incredibly rushed and the battles didn't seem that long at all. I mean I usually underestimate how much content can be shoved in the span of a single episode, but for this episode it seems I overestimated how much content can be in an episode, because this episode felt really empty. Edit: Though the quality of the way I saw the episode might have something to do with why it felt so empty.