Thread: BW99: "The Tag Battle of the Sky and the Earth!"

YAY UNFEZANT GOT TO DO SOMETHING!

Really, that's all I care about. As for the episode, it was lame.

I have placed my episode review in spoiler tags. Feel free to read it if you want to.

At first glance, this appears to be little more than just your "run in the mill" tag battle episode. We have all of the elements: two young twins who are really overconfident in their battling, the opponents having their pokemon combine their attacks in a pseudo-contest fashion, Ash and another main protagonist teaming up to stop them, etc. The only difference in this scenario is that Ash and his partner of the tag battle (Cilan), although they were cornered at first, managed to defeat the twins without going back and challenging them again.

The double battle that takes place during most of the first half was arguably the most prevalent aspect of the episode. It was nice to see Unfezant compete in an actual battle since... its two-minute beatdown from Roxie's Koffing during BW083. (Yes, poor Unfezant doesn't get used much in real combat, unfortunately), but it felt that all Unfezant had done was support Pansage in the air. Braviary combined its attacks with Drilbur, yet Unfezant only used two real attacks during the entire battle. It was a horrible resolution to what should have been Ash and Cilan teaming up with equal prominence instead of having one of the trainers act as the other's support.

I also felt that Cilan should have used his Stunfisk, an actual Ground-type pokemon, instead, considering that the the two COTDs in this episode used a flying-type and a ground-type, respectively. Frankly, I don't like Pansage too much, and I feel that it is overused compared to some of the other members of Cilan's team. Meanwhile, Stunfisk doesn't get too many battles, yet it has some very powerful and diverse moves. Both its Scald and Thundershock would do wonders against its opponents, and having Cilan use Stunfisk instead would have better led to Cilan suggesting to the twins to catch Water-types, considering that the twins' pokemon are at a disadvantage against those types of opponents.

The second half of the episode was rather bland, in my opinion. I already got the gist of the two twins' personalities during the first half, but I hated having to hear them repeat the exact same lines and catchphrases again and again. Outside of the twins catching two water-type pokemon species that Ash also has members of back at Professor Oak's lab, I couldn't have cared less about the twin's "accomplishment" in battle. If these two characters are going to compete in more tag battles, then why would they bother having their own two pokemon (two each, I mean) combine their attacks? If Buizel or Corphish won't be used with Braviary or Drilbur, respectively, what is the freaking point?

But I did like the inclusion of the wild Swanna and Palpitoad at the end of the episode, and Cilan just realized that he screwed up big time. Cilan told these two trainers to catch water-type pokemon so their team could be more diverse, and the two Water-types that they did caught beforehand had very little to do with their "sky and earth" theme. The two twins would have probably been happier if they had caught the part Ground-type Palpitoad and the part Flying-type Swanna. I guess an A-class connoisseur's skills have to be limited. It is nice to see that Cilan made a little mistake with his "tasting time;" this rarely happens.

Overall, this episode was average. The battle was interesting to watch, and I liked that both Braviary and Drilbur got proper screentime from all of this (Drilbur only got a flashback and a few cameo episodes under its belt, while this is Braviary's anime episode debut). Nevertheless, this was just another tag battle episode, with very slight differences between this one and ones that had aired in past series. I liked that the writers didn't attempt to make this into a "lose and rematch" plot line. I mean, if Ash lost a battle here before he got to Higaki City against two generic trainers, that would have been very disappointing.

I won't be commenting much about Ash scanning Buizel and Corphish into the dex. Logically, this anime does not make much sense, and the pokedex bits are primarily for the audience members who need to be reminded that these pokemon species exist in the first place. Ash scanning pokemon species that he had already caught or interacted with regularly had happened since the original series, so there shouldn't be too many complaints.

Next week's episode should be "interesting."

A decent ep, nothing particularly groundbreaking, but hey at least Braviary was cool, and Ash and Cilan got a win.

But we did learn that Pokeballs are evidently light enough to float on water.

The twins are ugly! The midriff baring is just meh. Chili and Cress finally appeared in a fantasy after fourty-one episodes of absence. At least it made me feel better their better to look at than the twins (I didn't like the twins designs). It's nice to see a funny flashback of Emmet and Ingo. They seemed to be more close to their pokemon than they were in the past. Even though I'm not fond of them it was funny how they screamed and over reacted over their pokemon being defeated. lol at Emmet and Ingo acting mentally ill and paranoid! It shows Emmet and Ingo can't tolerate losing. Why are they out in the open still in proper uniforms instead of being in the gear station? It's make more since if they weren't hats and the jackets. I'm pretty excited that Chili and Cress made it!!! I still think Chili left on his journey.

Who ever animated this episode shouldn't touch unfeazants design ever again, she looks bad enough as it is, so a design flaw will just stand out even more.

They had arguably the best animation director in the show working on the parts involving Unfezant, so I can't understand what there is to complain about.

And what 'design flaws' exactly? It's pretty much just a pokemon-ised version of an actual bird, there's not exactly much they can screw up there.

Originally Posted by Grave-E

They had arguably the best animation director in the show working on the parts involving Unfezant, so I can't understand what there is to complain about.

And what 'design flaws' exactly? It's pretty much just a pokemon-ised version of an actual bird, there's not exactly much they can screw up there.

Unfeazants beak was quite huge, looked so terrible IMO

An average episode because of continuous repetitions.. the tag battle was good and nice intro to braviary.. The twins repeat the same thing every 15sec in 1st half really frustrates.. and enough of pansage and bullet seed/solarbeam.. turn ur attention to sum other of cilan's pokes.. good practice for unfezant.. a cilan-centric ep.
Looking forward to next one being better to these eps :)

Dent, you disappoint me. Maggyo should've been used to allow Thunder Armor to make a glorious comeback.

I really liked the twins; they kind of reminded me of the twins from Sinnoh that Ash and Dawn battled against. Anyway, I liked that the battle was taken care of during the first half of the episodes as opposed to the last half. That was a refreshing change of pace. I was also impressed by the battle itself; I thought it was interesting that Drilbur and Pansage were taken up into the sky for the match. Also, the Corphish and Buizel cameos were cool. It was a great episode all around.

It was an Ok episode.

The only thing I was thing about when the brothers went over the top with their combines move were team rocket's old sleves when they were idiots. It got the annoying side really quick. I did like the combinition moves because I'm a DP fan and boy what awesome moves they pulled off in this episode. Rock Side with Fury Attack, Metal Claw with Aireal Ace, Dig with Brave Bird, Awesome! The Battle was ok as well.

Ash and Clian finally got a win as a tag team. And beat two guy that beat them genous. Unfezzent was good in this battle even tho she was carring Pansage it was still helping. I did want her to do more, but the sky fight made up it. What I mean be sky fight, Is with the two Pokemon twist and turn around in the air. I love the comb moves that was episode big point of me.

The middle part of this episode was boring and made me go to sleep. It was good to see Builez and Corhish agian, but it was to short. I laught at Ash pulling out his Poke'dex on the two Pokemon, but I'm ok with and we get new text favorer for them. I give this episode a 5/10. It was strong in the battle department but weak on the plot.

I was reminded of the champ twins episode from DP, naturally. I was rather surprised that Ash and Cilan won, since I was expecting a rematch later in the episode - only to find that the second half of the episode was about training or something or other - but doing something a little different is okay too.

Overall, not really a bad episode, IMO.

This is one of those episodes where the writers should had realized they can't stretch a plot like this for an entire 22 minutes.

I'm at the least glad they... ...erm... 'attempted' to give Ash and Cilan a little episode to call their own before ZOMG IRIS TIME, and that Unfezant actually got to do something. Maybe later she could fashion her feathers into a duster to clean off the cobwebs on Stunfisk's Pokeball.

So the mandatory new characters of the day are named Sora and Rikku? But that can't be right, they didn't have nearly enough zippers and belts on their clothes.

Originally Posted by Don

The Satoshi and Dent teamwork was just as great as always. The two were brilliant at quickly adapting to Soran's and Riku's battling style and beating the twins with it, Dent and Satoshi have an excellent compatibility with each another.

I loved Soran and Riku admiring Dent, especially when they kept embarrassing him by calling Dent their "super aniki".

Originally Posted by The Fighting Misty

Any fan of the AG and/or DP series should have felt insulted when Ash scanned those two pokemon. I've never felt this angry over watching a Pokemon episode since the middle of Johto.

Well then you don't have to fret as Satoshi recognized Buoysel and Heigani before he scanned them with his Pokédex.

I have to agree with you. I always liked how Cilan and Ash battled together.

This was a very dull and boring eppy. The twins really seemed like a carbon copy of the Hoenn gym leaders....

don't know why, but this eppy seemed rushed...