Thread: Club Battle, Clubsplosion, Junior World Cup. What are your thoughts?

Regardless of some disappointments i fully welcomed them. How many times you wished side characters got involved more in action, instead of Ash taking glory all the time?
Well that changed in Best Wishes with writers coming up with fun and engaging concept which allowed that no one in main cast ends up left out with Ash, Cilan and Iris having opportunity to compete in something, learn from wins and defeats in theory and improve their skills.

Since contests got removed you could say how Don George tournaments like Club Battle, Donamite and now Junior Cup serves as supplement for them providing material to make nice story arcs out of it.

So in general foundation behind them was interesting and creative, but execution was poor for the most part and ill get into why as i review all three of them.

First we start with Club Battle. I can say i enjoyed in interactions between characters and rivals being refreshing when everyone gathered to compere in something. Battles were decent too, enjoying in Cilan vs Trip battle, Ash vs Burgundy etc. and yes even between Iris and Ash in finals. Granted Axew learning outrage out of nowhere was in least hand jarring to see, and way through which characters advanced in tournament could have been handled a lot better.

But when it comes to finals i had no problems with Iris defeating Ash considering how she wasn't rookie battling and training long before he even started journey, and because Excadrill had huge advantage as ground type.
Maybe no one gained much from this, but you don't need to have development in every battle being nice to see sometime character winning just for the sake of it and show his skills through duel.
It was first tournament, refreshing substitute for contests and i enjoyed in it not being bothered much by some deux machina battles and contrived plot devices.

Donamite tournament was probably most enjoyable tournament for me out of three. Interactions between rivals and characters were for most part fun and Stephan was real star in here. He proved to be strong opponent with Sawk against Throh being easily highlight of whole tournament. In a way it foreshadowed how at league Ash wont have easy time against him at all.

This tournament also portrayed Bianca in different light showing big improvement since Club Battle. And even though she didn't changed much as character going from incompetent ditzy blonde in competent ditzy character, she improved as trainer a lot with her Emoboar showing some nice strength in there with unexpected use of fling against Conkeldurr earning her win. On a side note i should mention it helped Ash Scraggy indirectly in training to perfect focus blast too, i guess.

A far as Junior Cup goes it is by far most disappointing and worst out of all three imo. Battles were predictable,super rushed and there was no suspense or much emotion in them for most part being full of bad writing.

From Iris catching Dragonite just one episode before tournament starting to dominate opponents left and right completely ignoring type advantage leading to nothing, to Trip suddenly coming of in light of competent and super strong trainer with Serperior despite not showing any concrete training or strength which would justify such drastic improvement.

Only good battles in which i enjoyed were when Ask Krokorok managed to reveal true core of problem behind Dragonite disobedience not having enough faith in his trainer when battling strong opponents, and even though Dawn lost i liked battle between her and Iris. If only because Mamoswine showed big improvement since last time being a lot stronger, considering it managed to actually hold its ground against yellow beast for awhile with his ice attacks being much stronger than Beartic from Langley leaving some mark on Dragonite.
Honorable mention goes to Cilan and Stunfisk which scored his first win(it was about time), and exhibition match between Cynthia and Caitlin.

As far as rivals go, i don't know should i cry or laugh at sheer amount of disappointment they showed in here. Burgundy is nothing more than punching bag through whole course of Unova always losing, which portrays her as joke instead of threat. Which is shame because she had potential to be so much more.
With Langley i don't really feel any real rivalry between her and Iris. Primarily because whole competition between two is mostly based on humor and bickering not having any elements of something which should be taken seriously. At least that's how i feel about it. Granted i don't find Bianca to be threat either,but still she is more appealing imo.

Oh almost forgot, i guess it was nice seeing Alder teaching Trip important lesson about bond and mutual love between trainer and pokemon, with Unova champion having certain charm about himself being pleasant to watch.

Speaking of Junior Cup, better luck next time i guess. Reason i say next time is because whole name "Junior" basically reveals how there might be more of them in future, not being everything we will see from world Cup concept in games.

So in nutshell i liked premise behind idea of such tournaments serving as interesting way through which we can see all main characters competing in something filling up time between gyms in similar way like contests did, but bad writing and lack of believable development lowered my initial excitement about it leaving a lot of room for improvement.

Even the Club Battle didn't rush the rival battles. In the episode where Pawniard and Snivy appeared to be prominently featured according to the title, we had a good battle between Trip and Cilan, Bianca and Stephan AND Ash and Georgia. In BW091 the only battle that wasn't rushed was Iris vs Dawn.

I loathed how every match was a one on one match. I'm sorry but it doesn't make sense from a tournament stand point because type system and what a trainer is: someone who trains and captures multiple pokemon the games and by extension the world'ss battling culture is designed for multiple pokemon use. Yes I do see the appeal of one on one battles both from atmospheric stand point and a writing stand point. But a tournament is the LEAST appropriate time for one on one battles. Traveling through the wilderness meet a trainer one on one battle sounds good it each train a specific pokemon we want to train and we still in good shape if we get attacked by a pack of Beedrill. Gym battle I want to test trainers with this pokemon specificly it's part of the charm of the gym and I have lots of challengers fucking good time for a one on one battle. Bad guy attacking don't have time for long battle cause they are trying to get away take them down quick good time for a one on one battle. A tournament's goals are to entertain people and see who the better trainer is. Except it doesn't show who the stronger trainer is Baseball games have nine innings for a reason and the same could be said for full battles having 6 pokemon on each side. And it's not as entertaining to the in universe audience cause they don't see as much diversity and build up.

I'm not saying every battle should be a full battle but if you're going to devote 4 episodes to a tournament it better feel epic. One on one is just not as epic. And there are solutions to this put a couple less characters and keep in one on one in fewer episodes put the longer. Add more pokemon in later rounds. Like have the first couple rounds be one on one and go three on three from there. Or they could you know not show or shorten battles that are unimportant to them some battles feel way too long others feel way too short if you want to make some matches short just show the end.

Don battle 1/10
Clubsplosion 6/10
World tournament 2/10

Donamite is way on top of my list while Junior Cup is on the very bottom. With of course Don Battle being in the middle. Never mind the fact that I'm a die hard Kenyan/Dageki fangirl, I can't help but feel the battles played out better there. But I am also a fan of the hand-to-hand combat style. I could care less that they were only allowed to use one Pokemon. It really kept me on the edge of my seat. The Don Battle was okay. It had great battles and interactions. It only had a sucky outcome. The Junior Cup... was just plain awful. One second battles and an overpowered Dragonite with undeserved wins for Iris. Not to mention the disappointment I had learning Kenyan and Bel weren't in it. The only good thing that happened during it was Krokorok evolving and beating Dragonite's ass.

Originally Posted by Kenji-girl

Donamite is way on top of my list while Junior Cup is on the very bottom. With of course Don Battle being in the middle. Never mind the fact that I'm a die hard Kenyan/Dageki fangirl, I can't help but feel the battles played out better there. But I am also a fan of the hand-to-hand combat style. I could care less that they were only allowed to use one Pokemon. It really kept me on the edge of my seat. The Don Battle was okay. It had great battles and interactions. It only had a sucky outcome. The Junior Cup... was just plain awful. One second battles and an overpowered Dragonite with undeserved wins for Iris. Not to mention the disappointment I had learning Kenyan and Bel weren't in it. The only good thing that happened during it was Krokorok evolving and beating Dragonite's ass.

Add bitter and twisted hate to Serperior and you've just explained how I feel about these tournaments. Except I'm not a Kenyan/Dageki fangirl, I'm more of Bianca/Emboar fanboy

Club Battle: It was ok.
Clubsplosion: F**king epic!
Pokemon World Iris and Trip Glorification Junior Cup: Holy s**t that was awful...

Club Battle: It was alright. I didn't like that Iris won but it was done very well.

Clubsplosion: Was much better. I just wished that Masoami was the one carrying a Samurott right about now.

Junior Cup: Rushed, horrible writing and strange victories. I liked that Trip won and he and Ash finally had their battle. I wished that Trip could have used his other Pokemon as well as Serperior last. Plus Iris should have done the same.

Too many tournaments, too little time. Even if the three arcs had been spread out a little more it may've been a little more tolerable - but the fact is that we didn't get our first of these tournaments until after the conspicuous stretch of post-Castelia filler episodes. Since then it's been 3 whole tournaments within 53 episodes. Admittedly, DP had 2 tournament arcs within 29 episodes - but the two were very different in what they set out to achieve, and how they ran. The way BW seems to be going at the moment is "Gym, Rocket 2-parter, Gym, 1v1 Tournament, rinse and repeat". It gets a bit repetitive when all the tournaments are pretty much the same thing, and there's another one every 3 months.

To be honest I enjoyed them all, the first two were great development for Trip and the third was just awesome although it did seem rushed but Trip was meant to be overpowered I guess along with Iris but Trip needed it for his rivalry with Ash. I'm expecting a fourth one possibly.

Here are my opinion

Club Battle : I was surprised Iris won this battle. I really liked it! The first epic tournament that I saw. I thought only Ash, Iris, Cilan, and Trip participated, but all rivals participated in it.

Clubsplosion : Oh My God, Trip lost for the second time on screen! I think this tournament is not suitable for him, because it needs great physical power. But, it was quite nice arc.

World Tournament : Yes! People said it focused on Iris and Trip, not Dawn herself XD. So, I enjoyed it. The most beautiful moment of this was Trip receiving Junior Cup from Alder and battling him although he lost against Alder.

Club Battle - Ehh....it was okay I guess. Those running gags made me wanting to punch a wall (or if I was in that universe, choke Bianca to death or steal Zorua's Pokéball, return it to her ball and throw it in water). However, the battles were really decent (especially the Ash VS. Georgia battle!).

Clubsplosion - Now this is more like it! It had some really nice battles (I was impressed with the Emboar VS. Conkeldurr/Sawk VS. Throh battles). I also liked how Scraggy was shown to be much stronger and even learning a new move.

Junior World Cup - Meh, didn't like it at all. Burgundy was again beated in the first round, battle's were incredibly rushed, Dragonite and Serperior portrayed as the most powerfull Pokémon ever etc. The only things I liked was Ash's Krokorok evolving, because it really deserved it (really!) and in the first 2 episodes the Burgundy-Georgia interactions.

Overal - It's a really nice idea but they don't do much with it. I like how they bring the rivals back and all but still.

I think they're only produced to give some screentime to rivals.

All three suffered from the same fatal flaw; lack of focus on interesting battles. Sure, good character interactions are nice and all, (I especially enjoyed Burgundy and Georgia) but that should only be the icing on the cake, not the main selling point.

Club Battle: Good and if Iris wasn't participating it would be better.
Donamite: Awesome even with Iris beating Burgundy.
Junior World Cup: Thought to be awesome but it was a letdown at the end.