DP 189 " Sinnoh League Semifinals! Darkrai Appears!!" Review Thread

[Snake Bandage]

They should have revealed Takuto is just an illusion created by Darkrai to crush the dreams of honest trainers so he can feed on their nightmares.

That's too damn cool for the Pokemon anime, man. Maybe one of the games could pull of something as cool as that.

[Ampharos King]

And what might that move be?

The attack Latios used was Light Screen, which halves any damage from special attacks. This is why Pikachu's Thunderbolt, which was able to electrocute Latios previously, did not do any harm after the use.

In the anime, however, Light Screen completely protects the user pokemon from any special attack (regardless of damage).

[The Outrage]

"If an athlete can train his body to accept steroids with few side effects, he should be able to take them."

"If this race car driver can still steer with a rocket engine attatched to his F-1, he should be able to use it in the drag race."

"If you can aim a gun well, why not allow it in this fencing match?"

Takuto being allowed in the League is roughly the equivalent of America entering Superman into the Olympics.

You know, the only analogy there that actually seems comparable is the Superman one and possibly the race car. Taming a legendary isn't the same as steroids, and the reason you can't use a gun in a fencing match is because its a fencing match. Darkrai is a Pokemon competing in a Pokemon battle.

[Daren]

You know, the only analogy there that actually seems comparable is the Superman one and possibly the race car. Taming a legendary isn't the same as steroids, and the reason you can't use a gun in a fencing match is because its a fencing match. Darkrai is a Pokemon competing in a Pokemon battle.

I'd have to agree with this, if only because you get to the slippery slope. So you can't use Legendaries? But Dragonite and his ilk have comparable stats. Do we ban them too? But now there's a new set of "strongest" allowed Pokemon.

[Hellion]

Again time was against the battle. It was rushed there was no time for strategies, and could you really expect anything with Sceptile's move set.

Oh god... the "don't blame the character blame the writers" The character don't exist outside of what the writers give them. The writers made Pikachu and, to a lesser extent, Sceptile cheapen by giving them unbelievable wins... Happy?

I mean come on they are over powered Pokemon, how the hell was any strategy going to work.

That's exactly what makes it cheap... They're supposedly overpowered pokemon that Ash beats, no by finding a way to counter that power but by apparantly just matching the power of his own regular pokemon with it... They had to downplay the strenght of legendary pokemon and up the strenght of the regular pokemon just to make it believable... and they failed.

Oh in that case Pikachu vs Regice wasn't Deus Ex Machina then since Volt tackle sure as hell didn't come out of nowhere.

Nowhere in my post did I mention Deus Ex Machina... I just likened the overpowering of Pikachu for the battle against Latios to its overpowering in the battle against Regice. Which isn't all that wrong. Pikachu v Regice was terrible writing and Pikachu v Latios isn't all that far behind.

Why would you think a full battle in one episode would be anything more than OHKO's is kind of beyond me. I don't see how (even if you cut out Team Rocket) it would've worked.

So I'm supposed to excuse the lame writing because it's only one episode? That doesn't change the fact it's lame writing. Status moves? Abilities? Status ailments? Actual tactics instead of meaningless attack calls from Ash? That's easy to ass to the battle and doesn't take that much time. Have Torkoal land a hit that burns Darkrai, have Gible use dig to escape Ice beam and use rock smash from behind, neither would have taken more than 10 seconds. Darkrai would have taken more than 4-5 hits and it would have made the battle seems a whole lot less cheaper. But no... Leaf Blade spamming it has to be cause we just didn't see enough of that...

So it's okay for the opponent to OHKO a protagonist's Pokemon but the Protagonist needs to hit the opponent like infinite amount of times before its acceptable.

No which is why I complained about the OHKO fest beforehand. But to be honest, I'm not suprised to see Gible being OHKO since it's a freaking Gible... but Heracross? The more hits Darkrai has to take to be defeated, the better the battle, the more involved everybody is, the less cheap it is and the more meaningful.

No I wouldn't have.

I'm not saying necessarily somebody else against Takuto, you're quick to pass judgement on the value of other characters' wins and loses but when we talk about Ash, nobody can say a word... Just saying Ash isn't exempt from cheapness...

[Werebazs]

"If an athlete can train his body to accept steroids with few side effects, he should be able to take them."

"If this race car driver can still steer with a rocket engine attatched to his F-1, he should be able to use it in the drag race."

"If you can aim a gun well, why not allow it in this fencing match?"

Takuto being allowed in the League is roughly the equivalent of America entering Superman into the Olympics.

Sorry, but none of your examples are accurate. All of those you've listed are about gaining unfair advantage, which are assuming the one who used them, didn't stand a chance without them. However the very fact Takuto was able to capture, and control two legendaries, shows that he would've been able to win the League without them as well. Using steroids are forbidden -besides because they're dangerous- not because they boost the physical toughness, but because with them the user don't have to work for it. But I doubt Takuto would have been able to capture Darkrai and Latios, if he wasn't a skilled trainer already.

However I agree, this match wasn't as good as I expected. I don't mean, I wasn't ready for the OHKO-fest, but that it was sooo slow. With all the TRio scenes, and the 3 sec breaks between each made move, it lost a lot of potential.

About Takuto, I really do hope he'll turn out to be Ash's next Main Rival.

[The Outrage]

I'd have to agree with this, if only because you get to the slippery slope. So you can't use Legendaries? But Dragonite and his ilk have comparable stats. Do we ban them too? But now there's a new set of "strongest" allowed Pokemon.

Well, ignoring in-game stuff like stats, Dragonite and other pseudo-legendaries I imagine are also quite difficult to train and are naturally more powerful than the normal run of the mill Pokemon. There's a reason why in real life, competitive battling communities have a tier system, the anime has no such thing (which actually reminds me of that episode with Casey's first appearance and Ash used a Charizard, with Team Rocket spouting BS about not being allowed to use Charizard against beginners).

Realistically, even if Legendaries were found to be broken despite the fact they are much rarer to come by and harder to catch and train than in the games, they probably didn't have regulations due to its rarity.

And again, this is a Pokemon battle. I mean, with the examples Zeta gave, why is Marowak or Farfetch'd allowed a weapon? The rocket engine and gun analogy fit those Pokemon much more than it does Darkrai. The anime reasons this because they naturally have those in the wild, well Legendary Pokemon are naturally powerful, hard to catch and hard to train. Takuto did, and unlike the steroid, and gun analogy, that required a lot of skill, and probably the thing that the show tries to drill into our heads, the ability to connect with Pokemon. It's not like if he were like Paul, Darkrai couldn't have easily left.

Besides, legendary Pokemon aren't necessarily powerful, especially when they get that title for being rare to the point of a disputed existence.

Though, I'm not disagreeing this was a cheap way to cause a loss to Ash, but let's not write off Takuto as a cheap-ass trainer. They don't have Masterballs for easy capture and magical badges that causes automatic obedience once we have eight of them.

[PikachuColoredPichu]

I am TEARING OUT MY HAIR! This makes NO SENSE WHATSOEVER! So that little message from one of the E4 members saying he'll see Ash again was a FREAKING LIE?! ASH CANNOT WIN ANY NON-FILLER TOURNIES?!

[Iteru]

I am TEARING OUT MY HAIR!

Now dear, if you do then I'll have to get you a wig that resembles Takuto's hair.

[NeoKING]

Pikachu and Sceptile are justified winning their bouts. It's been implied since AG that Sceptile is Ash's new-school Charizard, and Charizard himself took down a Legendary. Pikachu beating a Legendary just goes to show how strong Pikachu has gotten over not only DP, but the entire series.

[Xenon]

I'm a little upset that we didn't see Totodile but Sceptile and Pikachu were pretty epic so I'm cool with that. I wouldn't be to amazed by Sceptile's win though I mean Heracross,Gible and Torkoal all battled against Darkrai before although they didn't do that well. I wish Swellow would have done some damage to Latios so Pikachu could maybe knock it out so we could see what other pokemon Takuto had. Takuto didn't mention anything about Isshu did he?

[Abaddon]

They should have revealed Takuto is just an illusion created by Darkrai to crush the dreams of honest trainers so he can feed on their nightmares.

We get it. You're outraged.

Considering there are no rules against using legendaries, the insults about him being "cheap" are unfounded.

[Iteru]

Takuto didn't mention anything about Isshu did he?

Not a thing.

[NeoKING]

Once again, Takuto says NOTHING about Isshu. All he says are Darkrai's attacks and praises Ash for forcing him to use Latios and a good battle. He's a Gary Stu in the most ideal sense. Ash learned NOTHING from him. Not even the foreshadowing from Flint and Bertha came in handy here, and they had the PERFECT chance to do it after Heracross fainted.*

*When Heracross fainted, Takuto said "Type advantages will not win Darkrai." The writers could have put in a flashback to Flint telling Ash what he did that one time.

[The Outrage]

I finished watching the battle, and as far as I'm concerned, Ash's strongest Pokemon were able to defeat the legendaries. Pikachu was still awesome going head on into a Luster Purge with Volt Tackle, fighting through it and defeating Latios.

Why are we blaming Takuto when we know Ash has more powerful Pokemon than he used? Yeah, we all wanted more of his old Pokemon featured but considering how it ended up, Charizard should have just been in there. At the risk of sounding like a Kanto starter lover, that thing on my last count has faced up against an Entei and Arcticuno and won, and unlike Ash's other Pokemon which were just chilling at Oak's lab, Charizard was training.

And hey, defeating two legendaries consecutively is more than any other trainer at the league has done.