“Last Call—First Round!” Review Thread

[V Faction]

huh??
If I remember correctly, they only mentioned 32 contestants who moved on to the second round. So we don't really know how many coordinators actually took part.
And how do you arrive at the conclusion that Marian, Contesta and Skuziko have to do 40 contests a day??
Even if we agree that there are maybe 300-400 contest a year, we must take into consideration that the year has 365 days. If you ask me, the most likely scenario is that they only have to do one contest a day on average.

Actually, that was an oversight on my part.

It's mentioned in the episode that 108 cooridnators will take part in the Grand Festival. Considering there are 3 stages there I don't know how I missed that.

So that actually increases it to 540 ribbons.

But the original point was that there are a LOT of contests that take place. If you take into account that a person might do a contest and win, but never get 5 ribbons to compete in the Festival, there's even more (1 Ribbon = 1 Contest Hall remember). If you compare that to the known cities/towns of Sinnoh and even the fake ones, that's quite a significant discrepency.

And then Marian, Sukizo, and Contesta are present for all of these officially sanctioned Contests (none of those unofficial ones). They're on the move a LOT it would seem, almost impossibly so. That or its quite convenient that they always show up for Dawn's contests (as in, "holy crap, this shouldn't be possible"). And let's not forget Hoenn contests, of which they take part in as well. They'd have to be making daily trips back and forth between regions constantly. Their lives would be filled with nothing but endless contests!

Basically, if you strip away all the lush and glamour of the contests, you see all the contrivencies. Same so with Gym Badges, but to a lesser extent. Just something to think about.

[Dogasu]

Do we actually know that there aren't multiple Marians and Contestas and Sukizos, just like there are multiple Joys and Jennys? I had always assumed that there were.

[Adamant]

There's never been any form of hinting towards it, and there's been plenty of hints against it (each region has it's own unique announcer with a unique name, the Joy judges have always been introduced as the Joy of that particular city, while no such distinction has ever been made for the others, there's been several situations where the judges have recognized Haruka and Hikari).
The concept of multiple Joy and Junsa, on the other hand, was introduced right away.

[J J M]

Even though it was a tad bit slow, it was still a cute episode. Loved the random moments like Ash running away to escape Dawn (seriously, he RAN away :p), Kenny getting Dawn to smile, Ursula's "they're like children" comment etc.

Okay appeals. Nothing that special. Though compared to Ursula's random evolving, Nando's CGI music notes, Jessie's clothe ripping and Zoey's totally impossible appeal, Dawn's was probably the best. Kenny's could have been the second best but....

Still, it's weird to see a "important" character get knocked out like that.

They'd have to be making daily trips back and forth between regions constantly. Their lives would be filled with nothing but endless contests!

Well, they do get their almost never-ending paychecks for doing nothing but saying "Remarkable!" or related comments after every freaking performance.

[The Puppetmaster]

Yeah I'm pretty sure they have multiple Mr. Contesta's and Sukizo's. Because if May was doing contests in Johto and Dawn was doing them in Sinnoh, that'd mean they'd have different judges in Johto. I guess they could do that, but it'd be strange if Ash just happens to always be going to the same region Mr. Contesta and Sukizo are going.

[V Faction]

I do like how we have Marian, Lillian, and Vivian (all sisters supposedly) for different regions. That was clever.

Of course I know most of the time you're supposed to suspend your disbelief, otherwise the whole idea doesn't work. That's part of the reason why I'm eager to let contests take a break. There's only so many 'Suki Desu ne's and 'Remarkable's I can take.

[Cascada]

Contests were a great idea, whoever created them.