PokeOpinion

My opinion:

It starts with Serena's mom, Grace, being annoyed because her daughter won't get up. This is understandable but I don't agree with letting your pokémon attack your daughter to get her to wake up. It's kinda like training your dog to bite your child to wake up, a bit weird and to be honest lazy parenting.

Then we go to Ash being his goofy self, we see a cool Blaziken, Ash overreacts about having to wait to battle a Gymleader, we learn there is a Gym there as well(something she could have said sooner) and we get the first of many shots featuring a hand shake. (it is really weird that throughout the amine, there are soooo many closeup handshake shots)

Something I find quite strange is that when Ash tries to challenge the gym and it turns out he doesn't have any badges, he gets shocked and thrown out ofthe building. And later we learn this should not happen, Clemont prefers 4 badges but you're not obligated. But then why does Clemont have a shock thing and a trapdoor that throws people out far above the streets, causing them to fall down and probably break a few bones?

Luckily Ash gets saved by Clement, something no challenger before him and likely no one after him will, and they introduce themselves. After a ''Who's that pokemon'' they just continue not noticing that they are suddenly standing somewhere completely different. Bonnie comments that Ash and Pikachu are probably good friends because 'if you weren't, Pikachu wouldn't be sitting on your shoulder like that.'' Well Bonnie, Pikachu isn't sitting his shoulder, he is sitting on his hat. And ofcourse, its bullsh*t to rate the amount of friendship using such things.

Then they have a battle and we get that vs. screen that I just personally don't like. Bunnelby throws up sand that, for some reason, is stronger that Pikachu's Thunderbolt. This is enough for Ash to think that he is 'really strong'. To be honest the fact that the very first move didn't hit because of some sand doesn't mean the pokemon is strong, it doesn't even make it smart because it was the trainer who came up with it. So it's just a meaningless compliment/observation.

We get some more moves, Ash wastes precious seconds talking before ordering a Electro Ball and then comes Team Rocket.

The battle doesn't go too well and Pikachu gets hurt, but then Ash gives a small speech about ''don't give up'' and they continue. And I understand that if you still have enough strength and there is a lot to lose you don't give up. But most of the times in the show it is just being stupid, like being prideful.

Then Pikachu, who is miraculously without a single scratch again, gets saved by Froakie, causing him to get hurt as well. But when Froakie wants to continue fighting, Ash says it shouldn't go on if it's hurt. Well that ''don't give up'' message only works for about 30 seconds I believe. Why do you want Pikachu to keep on fighting till it's near death, but Froakie has to stop after getting hit once.

Then, after murdering Team Rocket, Froakie passes out and they run to the Lab to get help. Though I doubt it can do much harm to walk there in stead of run, as Froakie has not even fainted(he opened his eyes while Ash was running) and even if he fainted, this happens all the time and is never really a big thing unless they need drama.

My opinion:

The beginning really annoyed me. The Rhyhorn is clearly trying to throw her of, why else would he jump and buck while she is screaming and obviously not having a good time, and mom is doing nothing but yelling ''be one with Rhyhorn''. Well you know lady, that isn't enough. You can't put a kid on a horse and scream ''be one with the horse'' and he will have no problem riding it. The kid has to learn to ride, to move with the animal and understand how to communicate with it. And I think the very first thing you need if you want to learn a kid to ride an animal is a calm animal that they can sit on. You don't put a 10 year old on a wild mustang and you don't put a 10 year old on a bucking, jumping Rhyhorn.

Also, her kid had just been thrown off and landed on the ground and she seems not the least bit concerned about her.

Then we go to Ash and Bonnie who run to Professor Sycamore's Lab. Professor Sycamore recognizes the Froakie (how actually? what is different about it?) and Froakie gets help from Sophie who ''is the absolute best at what she does'' Nice and vague.

We learn that Froakie walks away from trainers or the trainers give him up. But if that has already happened so many times, why does Prof. Sycamore keep giving him away? He is clearly not a good starter pokémon and he is the only pokémon new trainers have to defend themselves during the beginning of their journey. So they need a pokémon who listens to them, and you're giving them a very difficult start by handing them a pokémon that you know has zero chance of listening to them, or might even run away and leave them to defend themselves alone.

Garchomp comes in to look at Froakie and Ash just pets it. At least Bonnie asked if it was okay. It's just like with dogs, it probably won't bite you but it is better to ask. Also how would you find it if someone randomly starts petting you because they wanted to? Ash also just walks into the area Froakie is in without asking if it is allowed and then talks to it while it's trying to rest and recover. It doesn't matter if what he says is nice, it can wait till Froakie has had some rest.

Ash goes the Clemont and Bonnie and says that Froakie is feeling much better, with is weird because I did not see that at all. I saw a tired Froakie who looked up when you said something but went to sleep right after because it was exhausted.

Prof. Sycamore starts talking about mega evolution and everyone acts surprised. And I understand Ash is. But we later see many (many!) people with megastones, so it's not that new. The champion has it and (even though they only learn this later)their own dad! So how do Clemont and Bonnie not know? We later even learn that Mega evolution has been in Kalos for at least as long as Gymleader Korrina's grandfather has.

Then we see Team Rocket who pretend to be researchers and Froakie is apparently able to see them on a monitor. Why is there a monitor that shows the entrance in a room that is used for healing pokémon?

Team Rocket throw a collar that gets around Garchomp's neck and after it gets damaged it causes the pokémon to become angry and attack everything. I just don't really understand why a damaged collar would do that, it works for drama purposes but it's not really logical. It even turns its eyes red, it what way can a brain control device have any effect on a pokémon's eyes? Team Rocket gets blasted out of the building because, well, they're not necessary anymore, and Garchomp goes off to destroy everything.

An agent Jenny tries to warn people about it but gets stuck in traffic. How does she get stuck in traffic?! Where I'm from everybody moves away as soon as a policecar, ambulance or firetruck is behind them with a siren and/or flashing lights. Also is a car really the best thing they have? Do they not have a police Arcanine they can ride on or a Pidgeot or Charizard that can fly over it. Even the reporters got helicopters, why doesn't the police?

After a quick look at Serena and her mom we go to Prism Tower, where you can see many people standing right below it. Why?! It is dangerous, why go and stand right under an out of control pokémon? That, they don't show or say this but it's impossible for it not to be true, has already killed multiple people with its Hyper Beam. There are even small children there.

Ash wants to try and get close to Garchomp to get the collar off (as no one else seems to try anything to stop it, like the police, or the army, or, like, anyone?) and goes to the top of the tower. There it is clear Ash had no plan or any idea at all how to get it off except the good old 'try to talk to the problems away' with the pokémon, who he has known for like an hour now. This would have more effect if it was Prof. Sycamore doing it.

After Garchomp attacks him, flies higher and Ash follows him, we go to Clemont and Bonnie at the bottom of the tower. Bonnie remarks how brave Ash is when helping pokémon. I wouldn't call it brave, it's just reckless, without thinking. He still doesn't have any more of a plan then just ''talking'' which he already tried and didn't work. Doing something dangerous without any preparation or thinking because it has a tiny chance that it might help someone is just stupid. And when Bonnie says this, Clemont just thinks about Ash catching Pikachu and running with Froakie, because this is brave? I don't really find that brave things, also it just screams '' we want you to like Ash, look how good everyone thinks he is. He cares about pokémon, that is so special because no one else does that''.

We're back at the top of the tower and Garchomp tries to kill them again. Pikachu wants to defend them but Ash doesn't want that. He rather gets himself and his pokémon killed that attacking this pokémon. They could have just fought with it (you know just like in a normal battle, because then attacking another pokémon is fine) and take the collar off as soon as it fainted, this would not only save lives but also help Garchomp get away from the pain and confusion of the collar a lot quicker.

Ash keeps talking to it, with has a short effect while it shouldn't, as Garchomp has no emotional attachment to Ash in any way. And finally after a long time, the thing I've been screaming for minutes now happens, Ash asks one of his pokémon to do a move and break the collar. WHY DID HE NOT DO THIS RIGHT AT THE BEGINNING?! He wouldn't even have had to climb the tower, just ask one of your pokémon to go to Garchomp and attack the collar or scream ''who of you has pokémon that can fly'' at the group of people standing around the tower and tell them to let their pokémon attack the collar. There was absolutely no reason for Ash to be in any danger except because we needed drama and to fake Ash being brave.

Pikachu falls because a bit of the tower breaks off and the smartest thing Ash can think of is to jump after him. Well, better both of you dead then only one of you, right? I mean you could have shouted to people below to catch him, or ask Froakie to use its frubbles to attach Pikachu to the tower, or Clemont could have used his big airbag thing in his backpack. Why is this the first thing you think of! Again, this is not brave but reckless. Him falling with Pikachu doesn't help Pikachu in any way.

He gets saved and we end the episode with there being no visible damage to the city anymore, Serena recognizing Ash and Froakie joining the team.

My opinion:

We start our day at Serena's house, where Serena is getting ready. Her mom comes in and asks where she's going, and it turns out Serena is going to pick her first pokemon. But how does her mom not know this? I would think this is something you know as a mom, something the Professor talks about with you. Or can a kid just register for a starter pokemon without their parents knowledge?

We go to Ash, Clemont and Bonnie. Clemont talks to Ash's about all the stupid reckless stuff he did the other two episodes and how he admires him for it, and Ash says that jumping of a building(!) isn't such a big deal. Ash registers for the League, Team Rocket talk to Giovanni and scream about taking over the world (not that anyone next to them reacts to it), and Prof. Oak gets toasted by Rotom.

As Ash exits the Poké Center we learn Clemont and Bonnie will join Ash on his journey, because they want to learn to be just as reckless as Ash. At the same time Serena is leaves her house. She quickly pets the Rhyhorn and this makes me wonder, they seem to like each other? So why was the Rhyhorn so rough with her, bucking till she would fall off? Then her mom tells her to not forget to practice her Rhyhorn racing, but how is she suppose to do that? She doesn't have a Rhyhorn, how is she going to find one to practice with? I mean she know's Serena's going on a journey right? How is she going to find a Rhyhorn in every city she travels through?

Ash and co. find a wild Dedenne who drops its berry and just as they try to give it back to it, a wild Fletchling grabs the berry, lands on a branch nearby and eats it. This is what I would think is normal behavior, the wild Fletchling has to eat as well and if it has not been able to find food himself it will take if from others. It is not about being mean, it is about surviving. This is the wild, not everyone can be friends.

Froakie is angry at it for making Bonnie sad and attacks the Fletchling, not listening to Ash. Ash tells Froakie to listen to him and gets thrown against a tree because one of Fletchlings attacks. He just gets a couple scratches on his arm but Froakie looks at him as if Ash just broke his arm while trying to save him.

Now that Froakie listens, they try to think up a plan and Fletchling is polite enough to stop attacking them. Clemont uses his machine and attracts some Beedrill, they run away, it blows up and everyone gets big curly hair, because that is a realistic consequence of a explosion.

Fletchling probably really want to be caught because it follows them and waits till they're ready to fight. Ash uses Froakie to battle and tells him to ''make it hard to fly'' what Froakie for some reason knows means use your frubbles. Then when Fletchling thinks he sees Froakie and attacks him, it turns out it's a statue made of frubbles. But Ash didn't tell him to do this, and when did he have time for this? How is he even able to make such a flawless Froakie statue? How did he learn that? Did he pratice this when he was younger? It just doesn't make sense, this is not just a skill you have from birth!

Ash tries to gets it with a pokéball, it gets out, he does another attack, tries again and he gets it. Now Fletchling is part of the team. When Ash lets it out Bonnie says ''tell me when you get hungry next time. Because stealing other pokémon's food is bad'' and Fletchling looks sorry. But he has nothing to be sorry about, he was a wild animal, trying to survive. Of course now he can just ask, because he has a trainer, but before is was life or death, eat or be eaten.

At the end we see Serena, who is in Lumiose City, about to choose her pokémon. But how did she get there so quick? She lives pretty far away from it, and Ash, Bonnie and Clemont haven't even reached Santalune City yet!

My opinion:

After we see Serena choosing Fennekin, we go the Ash and co. in the woods. Bonnie pets Pikachu's tail and Ash says Pikachu loves it when people pet his tail. But I can remember in the very early episodes of the anime he did not respond well at all if people touched his tail, he most of the time shocked them. And right after, Ash says Fletchling loves getting his wings cleaned, but how does Ash know that? He probably knows Fletching for like two days now.

Then Dedenne comes and steals food from Pikachu. He does not get the whole 'don't steal' speech like Fletchling got because they're to busy running after it. They search for it while Dedenne and Pikachu are busy rolling around underground, and after landing in a field Dedenne and Pikachu are hunted by Team Rocket.

The pokémon fall in water and Team Rocket go after them in a tiny boat. Which by the way would have enough room if Jessie would just recall Wobbuffet. The boat gets damaged and Team Rocket fly off, leaving Dedenne and Pikachu alone on the shore.

But Dedenne won't wake up and Clemont suggests electricity. So what do they do? They use a machine that undoubtedly will explode at some point, instead of just using Pikachu. It works but blows up and leaves them with curly hair and broken glasses, though they will be fixed in the next shot. Then Team Rocket appear again, and Ash exclaims ''this whole thing was your fault the whole time'' which is not only a weird sentence but also impossible for Ash to know.

Dedenne fights Team Rocket and when they're almost done Pikachu jumps next to Dedenne and they 'shock communicate'. I really liked this part, the pokemon communicating in a way that's not too obvious but you understand what they mean and they do it themselves, as a team. And that is why it annoys me even more that right after, Ash gives a command to Pikachu and Clemont does the same with Dedenne. Not only takes this a big part of the teamwork out of the two pokémon as they just do the attack their trainer say without any thoughts of their own. This also takes away the helping element of Pikachu. First it was Dedenne's fight and Pikachu seemed to be offering some help at the end. Now it is just Ash taking over, suddenly ordering Pikachu to do an attack without asking if it is okay he also takes part in the fight Dedenne wanted to do on its own, and even ordering the attack before Dedenne's, not as a helping attack, but as the main attack.

I also don't really understand the communication shocks that much, as most of the time when they do them they are talking as well. Like right after the fight with Team Rocket. *shock* ''PikaPika'' *shock* ''Danana''. It is just a normal talk but with light effects. Why not just only use electricity.

Then Dedenne wants to go with them and Bonnie grabs her brother and says ''Pretty please''. Pretty please what? He already told you that you could have it last episode. You have spent this whole episode trying to catch it. Did you really feel you had to ask again? That Clemont would have changed his mind in the last couple of minutes? Really?

I must admit the tail petting looks really cute.

At the end we get Serena who says she is in 'the middle of the woods' though we can see buildings behind her multiple times, so she could just go back. Also how is it sunset already? She just started traveling!

My opinion:

We start with Serena who is near Santalune City, and the weird thing is that Ash and co. seem to have just gotten their themselves.

So.....Ash, Bonnie and Clemont started traveling to Santalune City at the same time Serena was about to go to Lumiose City to get her pokémon. Then we see her at Lumiose City but Ash and his friends are still in the woods and on their way to Santalune. Then Serena start traveling to Santalune City herself but, don't forget, she didn't get far because she was still only a couple miles away from Lumiose at the end of the last episode because you could see the buildings in the background. So it takes Ash, Bonnie and Clemont two episodes of traveling through the woods to get to Santalune City, but it only takes Serena the end of last episode and the beginning of this one. That doesn't make sense!!

Ash tells Clemont that he doesn't know where the gym is but his motto is ''keep moving ahead and you can't go wrong'' . So don't think about it, just go. Well, that kinda fits with all the stupid, reckless stuff he's been doing. He is probably only able to think that it might not be the best to jump of a building after he has jumped of a building. How is he still alive?

Ash gets photographed when he smiles at Pikachu and is told where the gym is. Ash just runs off but Clemont first calmly thanks the woman for her help, something I really liked. It's good to show some respect or gratitude even if it is not really important to the rest of the story, and the best thing is that they don't make it to big, just something very simple but effective.

Ash reaches the gym, finds out Alexa is there and the gymleader is the photographer from before. They go inside, see the many photo's on the walls and Clemont says that the pictures really capture the love she has for her subjects and Bonnie says it shows how much she cares about bug types. Is there something I missed? I just see photo's of pokémon, some with nice environments and good lighting. Don't really see any love.

Bonnie does her first of many, many ''she's a keeper'' and Clemont quickly takes her away. To be honest I never really liked this. It seems a cheap ripoff from Brock, and I already didn't really like it with him, but he did it for himself. Bonnie does it continuously, even though she knows Clemont doesn't want it, she just doesn't listen. And as soon as Clemont takes her away it's just fine. She never brings it up with Viola again. There is no use to it.

We see Serena has already reached the town even though it has been only like a half hour since the beginning of the episode, and Ash his battle is about to begin. Viola sends out Surskit, who is apparently able to slide around on ground the same way it does on ice, and Ash chooses Pikachu. All is alright, till Surskit covers the ground with ice and Pikachu starts losing his balance. And Ash says nothing!

Let Pikachu stand on all fours so he has more grip and a lower center of gravity! He could also tell Pikachu to get of the ice and use the trees on the side of the field! Or use the lights/ceiling decoration to move around the field!

Pikachu keeps getting hit and instead of telling Pikachu to move away of use a move to block the attack of Surskit, Ash just yells ''Pikachu, no!'' It is no surprise he is losing if he doesn't say anything.

Ash send out Fletchling, a pokémon who he has barely trained, in hopes it will be able to defeat Viola's two pokémon. By the way, wasn't Ash planning on battling Viola right after exciting his plane? Did he really think he would have been able to beat all her pokémon with only Pikachu?

Serena just walks into the gym, how did she get there so fast?! The timing of these episodes is way off. I also find it weird you can just walk into a gym when a battle is going on.

Fletchling is able to defeat the Surskin but is now up against a Vivillion. Fletchling is using Peck and Clemont says ''See! Flying type moves are super effective against Vivillon'' What are you talking about, nothing shows this, he is still busy flying towards it and hasn't done anything yet. He doesn't even hit the Vivillon because of Psychic, so in what way can we 'see' it is very effective?

Fletchling gets stuck in a web and Ash tells it to ''break free'' but does not tell him how he is supposed to do that. It is the trainers job to tell the pokémon how to do that Ash, maybe tell him to use Steel Wing, see of that helps a bit. But Ash tries nothing and Fletchling gets defeated.

Clemont says they need to got to a PokéCenter quick and Ash looks sad as he sees his hurt pokémon. He can of course put them or at least one of them in their pokéball, but that would not make for such a dramatic shot. And calm down Ash, they have fainted many times before, it is not fun but it won't kill them.

As Ash waits in the PokéCenter, we see Viola and Alexa talk about the photo Viola took of Ash and Pikachu. And Alexa says ''you can really pick up the powerful bond Ash and Pikachu have with each other'' and this is again such a moment of 'look how special Ash is, everybody talks about so it must be the truth'.

No, you don't feel the bond of them looking at this picture. I see a boy with his pokémon and they smile at each other. I think there are many trainers and pokémon that like each other and smile from time to time. I do not believe that the bond Pikachu and Ash have is something so special no one else can even come close to it. It is a strong bond, that is for sure, but not something impossible to reach for anyone else. And a picture of them smiling at each other is just that, a picture of a kid, being happy with his pokémon.

Ash is thinking about the fact that he lost and how strong Viola is, though she really isn't. Most of the problems were because he just didn't give command's or there were some things they didn't know how to handle like the ice. If he figured out how to get around that problem he will be fine, and well, maybe its not that bad an idea to train Fletchling a little, he is pretty new.

After Serena comes to give Ash his backpack and Ash get his pokemon, Serena asks the Nurse Joy behind the counter how she got here so quick and she learns all Nurse Joys look the same. I didn't really need to hear that again, the gag is better if no one mentions it. Also she never learned that? Her mother didn't tell her? Or Prof. Sycamore? Really, no one knows anything about pokémon or PokéCenters till they get their first pokémon?

Serena shows her Fennekin that apparently sneezes fire partials and doesn't burn anyone's hair while doing that. She asks Nurse Joy to look at it and Nurse Joy says she will preform a ''thorough'' exam. And this is probably just me, but she says it in such a way that it makes me think she's going to check the inside as well.

Alexa has come to help Ash train and they go the the battlefield outside the PokéCenter. Fletchling and Pikachu are wearing balloons for some reason, and they're going to practice their balance during Gust.

Ash's only help is ''hang in there, be strong'' that is not training or helping, you are just waiting till they come up with a solution themselves. You are their trainer think with them, give them advice or idea's. I would once again say to Pikachu to go low and on all fours. Both pokémon get blown away and instead of trying to catch them normally or just waiting as they won't hit the ground that hard, Ash slams himself into the ground to catch them. It is not sweet, or caring, or nice, it is just pure stupidity. They try again and they get blown away a second time. Ash didn't think the first catch was dramatic enough so he now catches them while jumping in the air and doing a bloody somersault. It is not necessary! He could have just jumped, caught them and then landed on his feet!

Then we get a cliffhanger from Serena asking him if he remembers her and the episode ends. Don't know why she feels like this is a good time to ask it, while he's in the middle of training and coming up with a battle plan.

My opinion:

We see a bit of a repeat of last episode's ending and Ash and Serena recognize each other as campbuddies. Serena tells him he used to say ''you never give up until the end'' and that he hasn't changed at all because he is still not giving up. And while that is true, Serena says it as if this makes him special, it doesn't. Many people don't give up the second it gets hard. He would be a pretty bad trainer if he would give up immediately and there would be no way of him even getting 8 badges. By the way, I find his laugh very creepy in the beginning.

The talk with Serena has made him more confident so you can be sure he will suddenly be able to fix his problems this time. Through the magic of 'not giving up'. This time Pikachu already starts on all fours, so that is at least a better start then before but otherwise nothing has changed. Ash just keeps screaming ''stay strong, don't give up'' hoping he will not actually have to train his pokémon, but will just be able to solve his problems by screaming encouraging words this his pokémon till they find a solution themselves. And the magic works because after only three tries, so probably 10 minutes of training, everything is fixed. Pikachu thinks of using his tail, which is a smart move, and right after Fletchling knows how to use his tail to control how the air flows around it. Both pokémon find solution right after each other after 10 minutes of training, not very realistic and because of this, not very entertaining to watch.

After they eat the training continues, but now with one of Clemont's machines. I understand that they don't want to wast any time because they also have to show the battle itself this episode. But why does everything need to be done the same day? I can't imagine it being good for a pokémon to train the whole day, quickly eat a lot of food(meaning when they get very active in training it will cause or cramps or vomiting) and then go right back to training. A body has to rest, recharge, you can't just go on for hours and hours without rest. They already had a gymbattle today.

Clemont's machine makes perfect webs and they practice dodging them. But dodging them wasn't the problem before, Fletchling did that fine. The problem was getting stuck in it. If they wanted to practice dodging then they could have done that with anything, and that would have been more believable then Clemont being able to make a machine that could perfectly create and spit out the same webs as a pokémon can.

Clemont's device explodes and they continue training with Froakie. After a while Ash calls it a day and Bonnie, who was fine a couple of second ago, is now sleep drunk so Clemont brings her to bed.

Serena says ''it takes an awful lot of time and effort to earn yourself a gym badge, doesn't it'' Well, yea, it took Ash here a whole day of shouting at his pokémon to not give up. Have you ever seen someone work so hard? Okay, really, Ash did barely anything. It would be like me, winning a swimming competition because I swam laps for a day, it is ridiculous.

So, it is the next day, and the rematch begins. Both trainers start with the same pokémon and Surskit begins with using Sticky Web on the floor, though they only stay on the floor for that shot because after that they are gone.

When Viola asks Surskit to make an icefield Pikachu jumps on top of it and Ash tells it to do Thunderbolt. And I understand that Pikachu might have difficulty staying on Surskit as it is trying to shake it of. But it is not difficult to use Thunderbolt while holding on, so I don't understand why Pikachu is not able to do it.

Surskit makes the ice field and Pikachu is having difficulty getting up. Making me wonder why he didn't practice this with Pikachu yesterday. Pikachu is already good at dodging, he could have learned Pikachu the basics of ice skating.

But the way Ash solves it is letting Pikachu just smash his tail right through the ice, he is not even using Iron Tail!

Pikachu is able to defeat Surskit and Ash lets Fletchling battle Vivillon, but Fletchling gets defeated easily, so now it is between Vivillon and Pikachu.

Pikachu suddenly has trouble on the ice field again and now he DOES use Iron Tail on the ice, while before that wasn't necessary.

Vivillon uses Sleep Powder and of course Pikachu is the only pokémon in the world that does not fall asleep, even though it is all around him, and can continue using attacks. Ash gets some encouraging words from Serena to get his focus back (since when is that necessary?) and he orders Pikachu to use Electro Ball on himself to get fully awake. It works and even causes the ice below him to go away, something non of the other attacks have been able to do seeing as the rest of the ice field is still intact.

Pikachu attacks with Electro Ball and Thunderbolt and they win the match. Ash gets his badge and they go on their way to Cyllage City.

My opinion:

We start with Serena join the group and her showing off a automatic guide thingy (that she for some reason didn't use to find the PokéCenter right in front of her at the end of episode 4). They decide to go through Lumiose City and Serena tells them about a boutique there and a bakery with ''the best pastries you have ever tasted'', causing Bonnie to drool. But Bonnie and Clemont live in Lumiose City, so they should already know about them.

After some chatting they notice there are Rhyhorn racing towards them, they get out of the way on time and Officer Jenny tells them they are standing on the race course. But why is there nothing that shows that? A couple signs or a rope tied between the trees could make it clear people shouldn't go there.

Officer Jenny brings them to the start of the course and Serena tells a bit about Rhyhorn racing. Then Officar Jenny says there is a special race tomorrow that everyone can compete in. Really? You have a race for people that have never been on a Rhyhorn in their life? That's like being at a horse race where they let people, that have never learned to ride horses, gallop around to see who will stay on the longest.

Ash wants to compete and they go to a paddock filled with Rhyhorn's. As Ash tries to walk behind a Rhyhorn, Serena tells him that this can cause the Rhyhorn to panic(so yeah, they are pretty much horses) and shows him how it is done, amazing everyone. To be honest I think a group of Rhyhorn that are specially for people who have never done anything with Rhyhorn's should be trained well enough that they won't spook like a normal Rhyhorn would. Everyone is impressed at how Serena handles Rhyhorn's while it probably just behaves good because it has been trained to. You can even see a small girl ride one in the beginning.

Serena says that Rhyhorn racing is fun but there might be something she would like even more, but last time we saw her on a Rhyhorn she 1. was not racing it the slightest. And 2. did not enjoy herself.

The training of Ash starts and it just gets ridiculous. The boy that can make somersaults and will climb cliffs is not able to calmly step onto a Rhyhorn. Why doesn't he just simply swing his leg over, instead of jumping on it. And I already know that he is just going to learn to ride and control it in like a minute or something. Why not just take out this idiocy and replace it with him taking more time to learn to actually ride it. It makes it more believable and also raises his IQ a little. I mean he fails like 4 times and keeps slamming into the ground for no reason. Clemont is like ''there's gotta be a trick to doing it right'' YEAH THERE IS. Just don't be stupid! Why is it special to be able to sit on it. It's not even high! I know they want to show Serena knowing more about Rhyhorn racing but you can do that by actually giving her more knowledge about it, not dumbing everyone else down so it looks like she is smarter than anyone else.

Serena gets more confident and asks the Rhyhorn to walk, what is does, making me wonder why she wasn't able to do that in the very first episode. But then suddenly the Rhyhorn rears up and throws her down on the ground. Remember, these are Rhyhorn specially for people who have never ridden on a Rhyhorn before!! Serena says that it really hurt and before she can stand up the entire paddock of Rhyhorn swarm her. And well, they start to lick her making it seem more nice. But these are big rock-like animals that weigh more than 250 lbs. even if they don't mean it like that, it can be very dangerous.

And then one of the stupidest things all episode!!!! Serena thinks, hmm that Rhyhorn that kept throwing me off while I was screaming at it to stop and that has hurt me many times, might just have been playing.

That is just bullsh*t. Playing isn't throwing someone off who wants to ride you. Have you ever thrown off your niece who wanted a piggyback ride and said ''hey I was just playing, stop crying''. Also, even if it was playing, it shouldn't be. It is a race-Rhyhorn. How are you ever going to win with it, if it in the middle of a race just feels like playing and throws you off. It even was the Rhyhorn of Serena's mom, who had already won multiple times with it. Why would it then not let Serena race but only play with her till she runs away hurt. I would expect a Rhyhorn who has won multiple times to know when it is time for playing and when it is time for working. Also, her mom kept saying ''be one with the Rhyhorn'' but that wasn't the problem, so why didn't Serena's mom see her Rhyhorn wasn't listening to Serena and just playing with her what made her scared, and tell him to stop.

Then we get the same problem with Ash, who for some reason is able to stay on even though he has way less experience than Serena, the Rhyhorn who is used for people who have never been on a Rhyhorn before is continuously trying everything to throw him off. Serena then screams the exact same thing her mom screamed at her at the beginning of the season. And for some reason that makes it stop jumping and run forwards. So Serena, who has been doing this since she was little, is still not able to stay on it and 'be one', but Ash, who is a complete noob, can do it.

Serena is thinking about how Ash ''tries his hardest at everything he does'' and thinks that she herself might not have really understood Rhyhorn racing. And I must say if she doesn't understand it at all, after all those years, than that can only be the fault of her mom. She is the only source of Rhyhorn knowledge that Serena has.

It is race day and the Rhyhorn are all at the start. They get the signal to go and indeed, Ash's Rhyhorn first jumps around a bit before starting. Wonder why he is the only one as the other riders are beginners as well. Why do people use Rhyhorns to race if they want to throw you off 90% of the time. They are never focused on running.

Team Rocket is sabotaging the camera's and no one knows what is going on, but do they not have any people standing along the course? These are beginners, the chance of people falling off or other things going wrong is quite big.

Ash gets caught in a net and Rhyhorn and Pikachu in some weird kind of box. Ash sees that the other participants are caught as well(and they also look unconscious?) Team Rocket do their motto and then try to get away with all the Rhyhorn's and Pikachu, but Bunnelby stops them by attacking the train of cages(possibly injuring the Rhyhorn). It turns out that in the time it took Team Rocket to catch a couple of Rhyhorn, out of shape Clemont was able the run the entire way to the exact place they were. Not only that but Serena and Bonnie also ran the first part of the course because they come from behind Ash. Clemont brakes the remote thing with a rock which causes only the top part of the cages to disappear for some reason.

Officer Jenny arrives on possibly the slowest motorcycle ever, as Bonnie was here minutes before her simply running, and everything gets sorted out.

Ash, Bonnie and Clemont meet Serena's mother. Ash tells her that Serena told him to be one with the Rhyhorn and that this helped him the most. I don't understand how it helped him so much, I find is a very vague advice. Good advice is something that is clear, so you know exactly what to do: don't slouch, stay relaxed, don't keep the reins to tight, move your body in the same rhythm as your Rhyhorn. That is way better advice.

Everybody gets ready to go away and Serena gives Ash some cookies, only telling she has way more of them for everybody when Bonnie starts to get annoyed, and the episode end with them all enjoying it.

My opinion:

We start with a girl who is trying to brush her FurFrou at the park. Not sure why she does it at the park and not somewhere inside so it can't walk away and will stay clean after brushing. The Furfrou runs away and she goes after it instead of, like, recalling it?

Then we go the Ash and co. who see other Furfrou going by, but this one has been to a groomer. Serena explains what a groomer is and Bonnie gets knocked over by the Furfrou from before. The girl finds them, apologizes and after Bonnie gets her knees fixed, we learn her name is Jessica. Bonnie does her annoying 'thing' again and they start walking. Jessica tells them that she is not able to groom her Furfrou, and says that Furfrou, as a species, won't listen to their trainer until they see them as their partner. But if this is true, then why does Jessica still try to brush it instead of working together with it to create a bond? Do some battles, or just work and get to know each other.

Jessica brings them to her workplace, what turns out to be the exact grooming salon they talked about before. Also, why were Serena and Bonnie talking about that groomer Sherman like it was impossible to meet him? It is very easy to meet him, just walk into his shop.

Jessica starts to tell them things about pokémon grooming. They start with giving them a health check. They are, for some reason, able to see if it is healthy by only feeling its coat, nothing else. And we also learn that the amount of fur cut depends on how healthy it is. But, if you cut a Furfrou less because it is less healthy, you are still taking fur away from it. Shouldn't it be that a Furfrou must be healthy to cut it? Not, ''well its not that healthy so I will just cut a little less.''

Then she talks about berries and how they can help with appetite and other things. I actually liked this bit, but I already know that they are not going to remember it in the anime itself, so that makes it kinda useless.

Ash shows us how small his brain is because after about three sentences of simple information, his head is full and he is done. Again, they do this to make the girl seem smart, because she knows so much that other people have trouble keeping up. But instead of letting her actually say a lot of things, making it also hard for us to keep up and making us relate to Ash, she only says a couple things that we can all understand easily, making Ash seem really stupid.

Sherman asks Jessica to get the two Furfrou he has done for other clients, because he wants to shows them to Ash and co. But how is he able to do other peoples Furfrou? They need to see you as their partners first, so how does Sherman make these Furfrou he probably has for like a couple hours, maybe a day max., feel like they are his partners?

Sherman says that Jessica's Furfrou is quite stubborn because it won't let her groom it at all, but wasn't it common groomers knowledge at the beginning of the episode that no Furfrou will listen to their trainer until they see them as their partner? So, in what way is Jessica's more stubborn than the average Furfrou?

He also says ''It is my wish that Jessica's and Furfrou's hearts will become one, one day''. Why is that necessary? He just needs to see you as his partner, that's all you need to groom him, no need for your hearts to combine in any way. And isn't hearts becoming one like the most special and intimate thing you can have with a pokémon? Wouldn't that be something many people work towards but few ever reach? If everyone can do it, it doesn't really mean much.

Sherman asks Ash if it is his first time in the City(on which he says yes even though he has already been in Lumiose before, even if it was a short time) and Sherman tells Jessica to give up her free time and give them a tour of Lumiose(even though Clemont and Bonnie live here, so it is not really necessary).

On their walk they run into Team Rocket, who are disguised as stylists. Jessie and James show their (terrible) styles in hopes of persuading Ash to give them Pikachu to style. Pikachu doesn't want to but Serena is willing to give Fennekin and they get thrown out because Team Rocket likes to 'work in private'. I kinda understand that she is very trusting but I wouldn't dare to leave my pokémon with someone I didn't know. What if she is a great stylist but very mean to pokémon, that she has no patience and screams a lot or treats the pokémon like an object instead of a living being. Even if it wouldn't have been Team Rocket, it still would have been a bad idea. They see a Officer Jenny and Serena talks about the gag again -_- Officer Jenny tells them there are fake groomers that steal pokémon and we see the flyer she put up. On it are Jessie, James, Meowth and Wobbuffet, looking exactly how they looked when we last saw them. So they don't even change their outfit so they don't get caught(who took those pictures of them by the way?), but we also see the building that Ash and co. just left! How do they not know where Team Rocket is but they do have a picture of the location they are right now.

Team Rocket has already left the building when they get there, but Furfrou is able to smell them and they follow the pokémon to a park nearby. Here we see Team Rocket, opening the bag with Fennekin, with this risking the escape of it, while still wearing the clothing they did before. Why do they not change into different clothing so they won't get recognized by everyone who walks by? Also is Fennekin's bag fireproof? And why doesn't Fennekin breath fire as soon as the bag is opened so she can escape?

Furfrou finds them and we see Ash, Bonnie, Serena, Clemont and Officer Jenny(without Jessica for some reason?) run to them. Officer Jenny sends out a Manectric and lets it do a couple attacks but returns it as soon as it is confused. Ash takes over because Officer Jenny has been hit by the attack, though people get hit by attacks many times in the series and most of the time they just shake it of no problem, and it becomes just another personal fight between Ash and Team Rocket. Why is the police so incompetent and why does Officer Jenny only have one pokémon? I wouldn't feel safe there if a random 10 year old is stronger than a specially trained police officer.

Pikachu gets a bit of ink on his face during the battle and Ash just lets it continue. Again this is not being brave, you have the possibility to get help from your friends, or your other pokémon, you could also just quickly try and clean his face, but you rather showoff the thing Pikachu and you are able to do so everyone will be impressed. Then Ash gives some vague commands that Pikachu follows without problems. I mean he just says 'Jump and dodge' but where does Pikachu need to jump to? Does he need to jump up, or forward or back? And how high does he need to jump?

Ash says he needs to roll but in what detection? There is no way for him to stay in the exact same direction if he is not able to see. And Ash says turn around and use thunderbolt, but how does he know where to aim? He doesn't say like, ''aim at a 20 degree angle'' or something, so how come Pikachu didn't just fire it into the sky but aims perfectly at Inkay.

Then we get another moment of 'Look how amazing Ash is, the other characters say it as well'. Because when Jessica says she's impressed and surprised at it, Clemont tells her he used to be surprised at it too but ''but now I know this is something only they can pull off'' and Bonnie adds ''because they trust each other''. And yes, of course you need trust to do this. But does no other pokémon trust its trainer is this world? I am sure there are many, many trainers that are able to do this as well. Stop making Ash special! He isn't and that is fine, he doesn't need to be.

This makes Jessica think about her and Furfrou, but I'm pretty sure trust wasn't the only issue. To see someone as your partner you need more than just trust.

Then Jessie tries to catch Furfrou and Furfrou pushes Jessica away to make sure she doesn't get caught. While he's in there we see some flashbacks, Jessica getting him, giving him food, walking with him. So it makes me feel like she probably has the Furfrou for a couple of months at best, that is not a long time so I completely understand that she doesn't have a strong bond with it yet. They all expect way to much, way to fast. Give it some time!

Jessica hurts herself trying to break the cage and Clemont finally sends out a pokémon. He tells Bunnelby to do Mud Shot and Dig as an attack, to be honest I would have done dig to get Furfrou out as the cage has no bottom, and Ash lets Pikachu do another attack that is again perfectly aimed. Jessica is able to break the cage by hitting the top with a branch and the cube it originated from explodes but only Jessie gets hit.

Now that Jessie is as good as dead because of the explosion and Inkay is defeated, Bonnie cleans Pikachu's face, something I think they should have done at the beginning. Furfrou is mad at Team Rocket and Jessica asks it if it want to have a battle with them. But it is a bit late for a battle now, they are already defeated and no point kicking a man when he's down. But Furfrou doesn't want to fight, it just wants to attack Team Rocket, instead of letting Officer Jenny do her job and arrest them so they can't pull the same stuff next episode.

Team Rocket blast off and the bag gets dropped, revealing Fennekin and the other stolen pokéballs, which they all took with them every time apparently, instead of hiding them somewhere else. And why did they not ask Fennekin's pokéball as well when they took her? Would have been easier to put in the bag.

Clemont says that Furfrou might see Jessica as his partner now because it listened this one time. And indeed, Furfrou says she can brush it now. This was all that was necessary, just put him in a cage, take him out again and all problems are gone. If the bond is made so quick, it can't be a strong one, real one's need time to develop, this one is just created because something dramatic happened.

We go back to the salon and Jessica starts brushing it(against the grain for some reason) and after a while she comes out with a perfectly cut and dyed Furfrou. But wasn't this the first one she has ever done? How did she do it so flawlessly? Also, something that has been bothering me all episode, the Furfrou fur styles don't make sense! You can take away fur but you can't place more! Look at the heartshaped tail, there was not that much fur on it, how did she make it this big. Also the dye color on its butt changes from pink to white.

When Jessica thanks everyone for their help, Serena says ''it because you connected with Furfrou's heart'' Really? Is it so easy to connect hearts? I just need to brake them out of a cage someone puts them in, or protect them in any other way, just once, and it's done? Connecting hearts really means absolutely nothing.

Ash and co. leave and promise to stop by next time they are in Lumiose City, a promise I'm sure they won't keep, and Serena says that she would like something to be passionate about herself. The episode ends with her saying she can't wait to get to Lumiose City, but they already are in Lumiose City!

Lumiose City is the only place with a Furfrou salon. You can even look up the episode description on Bulbapedia, it says this exact sentence: Meanwhile, Ash and his friends have arrived in Lumiose City, and Bonnie is enjoying the fountain.

My opinion:

Ash, Clemon, Serena and Bonnie have reached Lumiose City.....again, and Ash talks about the time he got electrocuted because he didn't have four badges. Clemont's and Bonnie's dad happens to drive by and they find out Clemont is the Gymleader of Lumiose City. Isn't Clemont like, 15, 16 at most? I know there are many young Gymleaders, but I think this is a bit too young. Gymleader's have lots of experience, knowledge and are pretty self aware. How much experience and awareness can Clemont have at his age.

Clemont tells them he made Clembot so he could have more free time. But why does Clembot not explode? Every other thing Clemont makes does it. The whole thing about Clemont's inventions is that he keeps trying to make them work but sooner or later they blow up. Why is Clembot an exception?

It turns out Clembot had wrong programming or something and Clemont couldn't fix it because it doesn't let him and throws him out every time he tries. Serena and Ash suggest going to the Gym to find out if they can help.

At the Gym they encounter some annoyed trainers and Clemont tells Ash, Bonnie and Serena that even if he would know the password, he wouldn't be able to win with his inexperienced Bunnelby. And there are a couple of problems I have with this. First of all, why the frick did Clemont even program it like this?! Why do you have to defeat him in battle before you are able to reprogram it, in what way would that be useful? I just can't think of any reason this would be necessary! It would be like me making a prototype of a machine, meaning I know there will probably be some small problems as there always are because it is a prototype, and then make it so every time I find another mistake, it first makes me answer a very hard riddle. If I would do that it would take me twice as long to perfect the machine. Also, why doesn't Clemont just borrow one of Ash his pokémon?

Ash shouts at him that he might not be able to win, but he could at least give it his best shot, and this gives Clemont the confidence to do it. But it just doesn't make sense. Clemont will now let Bunnelby, his good friend and pokémon, get the sh*t kicked out of him, making him try to win a fight everyone is quite certain he is unable to win, just because then Clemont can say he did something and didn't give up.

Clemont tells them he became a Gymleader because he wanted to become a great electric type trainer. And Ash tells him that taking back the Gym will make him grow stronger and that they will help him. In what way will you help him then Ash, or do you just mean moral support?

The gang break into the Gym and they encounter one of Clemont's pokémon, a Magnemite. It is happy to see Clemont but has been ordered by Clembot to get rid of intruders so he tries to shock them. But isn't Clemont still his real owner, even if he temporarily gave them to a robot, and don't these pokémon have free will and can decide to not attack, and ignore Clembot's orders if it means hurting their trainer?

Ash asks Clemont if it is okay to fight back and Clemont tells him they don't really have another choice. So, it is okay to do it to a small Magnimite, but not to a rampaging Garchomp? Also how weak is that Magnimite it if faints as soon as it is hit with Frubbles? That is not even a real attack. The same for the Magneton they come in contact with later, that thing has to be at least level 30!

They reach the battle field, Clembot asks for the voice code, and Clemont suddenly knows it. Not only instantly, but also by remembering something he has no way of remembering because he wasn't there! He had already walked away!

The fight begins and poor Bunnelby gets send out. Clemont says his reputation as a Gymleader depends on it, and well, no, not really, that's just something you say now to make it sound more dramatic. Winning, whether it is now or later, is necessary for stopping the electrocution of trainers. If you talk about the fact that it damages your reputation that the Gym has been taken over by a robot you no longer have control over, you are already to late, because it has been like that for probably at least a couple of months now.

And then he also tells Heliolisk to give it all he has, why do that? You are already pretty sure that Bunnelby is not able to defeat it, and so much depends on you winning, why make it even harder for yourself. What if you would have won if he had not given his all? Would Clemont rather have it that they lose a hard battle, meaning Clembot will still be ruling the Gym and electrocuting people, then that they win an easier battle and are able to make the Gym functional again.

They battle(Ash does nothing by the way, so much for helping), and Clemont gets surprised by the move Bulldoze, causing Bunnelby, who had used Dig, to be catapulted upwards. This happens a second time but now (after of some inspiring words from Ash, because no one can think up a solution without Ash having something to do with it, because he is soooo awesome) Clemont orders Bunnelby to use Double Team while still underground before Heliolisk throws them all out again with Bulldoze.

I still don't really get Double Team, it used to mean a pokémon creates copies of himself, and then it turned into a pokémon moving so quickly that it seems like he is at multiple places at the same time. I always go with the first one.

There are many Bunnelby in the air and Heliolisk uses Parabolic Charge again destroying the copies, just like the first time but now we see that the real Bunnelby is still underground. How did he not get thrown out? That is not something the copies would have helped him with, he would still have been thrown out by the force of the move.

Bunnelby defeats Heliolisk with Mud Shot (really? A inexperienced Bunnelby defeats a well trained Heliolisk after only three attacks)and Clembot recognizes Clemont. Clemont starts reprogramming it(I hope he just adds face scanning for the future instead of battling) and after a couple of hours everything is fixed.

Clemont then goes to his father and finally tells him the truth about the Gym and that he wants to travel because Ash(of course it is because of Ash again) helps him gain more courage. He says that even if it is 'only till' Ash gets to the Kalos League,(only till? That is something that is surely going to take months, maybe even a year) he needs to do it and Bonnie says she wants to go too. Their father says it is okay, and we end on Clemont promising Ash that when the times comes, he will fight him instead of Clembot.

My opinion:

It starts with Ash and his friends going to Professor Sycamore. Serena tells the Professor that she made macarons for everybody and a assistant starts preparing tea. But as soon as the tea is ready, the macarons have disappeared! It turns out a Chespin, that for some reason is allowed to just run around free, has been eating them. Clemont approaches it nicely, telling it that if it wanted a macaron it could have just asked for it (I understand he doesn't want to be mean, but this is not a miscommunication, it was deliberate, the Chespin stole!), and Chespin stabs him with one of its spikes. It then grabs a really big amount of macarons, though it still seems the basket is completely full, and runs off. Almost everybody shakes it off, like there has not just been a pokémon that stole and attacked a human, and Serena suggests to go to Prof. Sycamore.

In the meantime Team Rocket drive their truck right through the building, luckily not hitting a single pokémon, and kidnap Sycamore. Bonnie and Serena see it happen and instead of calling for help, using Fennekin to burn the tires or asking the other pokémon to defend their master, they just go into the back of the truck as well. And Team Rocket doesn't even see it! Serena is standing right at the place the side mirror would show! They see Professor Sycamore all tied up, both girls go in very slowly and the door closes behind them, trapping them in.

The trucks starts moving(I also noticed there are suddenly way more boxes in the back then before) and Chespin tries to keep up but falls. Ash sends out Fletchling to follow the truck and a assistant says she will inform Officer Jenny. I'm not sure how that is going to help, as the police officers in the pokémon world can't really do, like, anything, but o well.

Suddenly Chespin smells something and sees a piece of macaron on the floor. Apparently Serena made a trail with them, making it easier to find them. But first of all, the maracon piece is way to close, they were much further away when Serena got the idea by looking at the basket. Second, there is no way they are enough macarons left, after Chespin's stuffed himself and Ash and co. ate from it, to make such a long trail! I mean there are like every 5 feet or so.

Team Rocket have figured out Serena and Bonnie are in the truck as well and because Serena doesn't let out Fennekin or tries anything else to defend herself, they get tied up. Meowth drags his claw across a, uh, I want to say mirror? causing a screeching sound. We see Denenne waking up because of it, but it still doesn't help Serena or Bonnie. And why is Meowth not bothered by the sound? Everyone else is and he has big ears.

For Prof. Sycamore the sound is to much to handle so he tells them the data they want is in his pocket. I would have though it would have falling out of it ages ago as he lies sideways and has been thrown around by Team Rocket and while riding in the back of the truck.. He could have even lost it all the way back at the lab, when they captured him and he fell over.

We go back to Ash and Clemont, still following Chespin. Chespin find the last piece of macaron, and for some reason they only see the very big building in front of them, after they look at Fletchling who is flying above it. How did they not see the building immediately? While Ash and Clemont stay outside, Chespin sneaks in because he saw the basket that surely can't have anymore macarons inside it, right? As Chespin sees Serena, Bonnie and Sycamore, he trips over a big powercord , making lot of noise. But no one seems to hear it.

Jessie sees Chespin as it is climbing up to the basket, causing them to quickly start defending themselves. But what was Chespin's idea? Meowth was using the desk he was climbing on, there was no way he wouldn't be caught. And how did Bonnie not see him? He is right in front of her!

As Team Rocket do their motto, Ash and Clemont are busy untying their friends. I really liked this, it is what I've always been screaming at the screen, why would they wait and listen to them, use the time you have been given to find a way out!! I also like Clemont being impressed by the Team Rocket robot, fits with his character, not so much with Prof. Sycamore's though.

While running away Chespin trips, again, and drops the basket, showing there are still A LOT of macarons in there. It is just ridiculous, can that basket hold like 60 macarons? Is it a magic basket that, no matter how much you take out of it, will always stay just as full?

Chespin tries to save all the macarons and Clemont has to risk his own life to save it from becoming flat as a pancake. Chespin is willing to share now, and instead of saving their friends who are about to be blown up or run over, they decide to first enjoy some macarons together. Those have falling on the dirt by the way, their eating dirty macarons.

Ash tries to fight the giant Meowth machine with Pikachu's Thunderbolt, but the coin on its head absorbs the power and shoots it back, making me wonder if they would have had the same issue if Pikachu simply hadn't aimed at the coin. Then Chespin remembers he tripped over the powercord and they try to unplug it. I would have thought they didn't need Chespin's memory, you can see the cord quite easily, also why do they try to unplug it, why not just destroy the whole machine? It is also a bit weird as most of Team Rocket's machines have never needed a powercord, like their giant Kangaskhan, or that enormous Zapdos robot. And doesn't this mean that Ash and co. can just keep walking till the robot reaches the end of the cord?

It then turns out that the robot DOES have a energy supply, why did they not just start with that? Why first use a cord and later the supply, if they would have started with the energy supply they would have had Pikachu by now. Also, if Meowth has to ask what he has to do now, then that means he doesn't know about the energy supply and shouldn't know how to activate it.

Clemont tries to fight the robot with Chespin, but his Pin missile doesn't help and his Tackle doesn't even make a scratch, still Chespin keeps tackling it, even though Clemont tells it to stop as it's no use. This is once again a 'never give up'' moment, as the anime loves these. And it takes quite a while for the rest to start helping. I mean, why does Chespin need to take so much damage tackling a robot(I know in game it won't take damage from tackle, but he is slamming his head into a massive machine repeatedly, that has got to at least give him a headache), why can't Serena let out Fennekin to help, and Ash has 3 pokémon with him, send one out to help, or all three maybe. It is not heroic for someone to get hurt trying to save everyone, only because no one would help him.

Ash finally tells Pikachu to help Chespin and the two continuously attack the robot while Team Rocket for some reason don't do anything anymore. Didn't they want to catch Pikachu? Why wait so long, why doesn't Meowth just grab them with the machine?

Suddenly a Mega Blaziken comes and uses Flamethrower to BBQ Meowth, showing it was pretty useless that Pikachu and Chespin kept attacking. And meaning that if Blaziken wouldn't have come, they would have been easily defeated by Team Rocket, so their plan of just keep attacking is a really bad one.

Chespin and Pikachu attack the power source, causing a explosion that for some reason only hits Team Rocket and no one else. Ash says ''we did it Clemont!'' what I find a bit of a weird thing to exclaim, yeah you attacked the robot while it was no longer a threat, but Blaziken was the one to save you. You didn't really do anything.

Then Clemont tells Chespin he deserves a reward and opens the basket to show it is still COMPLETE FILLED WITH MACARONS! Chespin now finally shares with everybody,(though to be honest he has already eaten like 20 of them and the others only one) and Clemont tells him to ''be careful or there won't be any left for you''. Really? First of all the basket showed there were at least 12 macarons in it, so I'm sure there are enough left, but second, this is the very first time that this pokémon shares(not counting the one with Clemont). Why would you tell him this, if he thinks the consequence of sharing is something negative, he will not do it anymore.

The episode ends back at the lab. We see the side of the lab is still damages with glass all around. They notice Chespin has been staring at then and wants to join, Prof. Sycamore just happens to have his pokéball in his pocket(?) and Clemont ends up a pokémon richer.

Also, it is the end of the episode and we have not seen Officer Jenny once, so I was right, the police are absolutely useless.

My opinion:

We start in a forest were the gang is eating their lunch while Team Rocket spies on them. All the pokémon sitting on the floor eating what seems to be the same food, and Ash and his friends are eating their food on a picnic table-like contraption.(how do they take that thing with them?)

All the pokémon notice a rustle in the bushes and Froakie throws his Frubbles, making two Pancham step out. After getting their faces cleaned, the Pancham behave 'very cute', walk over to Chespin who is busy eating and start talking to him. Ash and co. can't understand what they are saying but not to worry, Clemont has a machine that can translate! Because, well yeah, that is really easy to make or something?

I mean how the heck did he do that? He says it analyses vocal tone, movement and expression. But it can only analyze that if it has any reference material. Did he record the noises of every pokémon in the world for this? I can't remember him recording any pokémon we've come across so far. And did he film ALL pokémon doing ANY movement and having EVERY expression? And why did he never show it to anyone, why is this suddenly the moment you need to use it? Why don't you use it all the time so you are able to perfect it quicker? And why, if a boy as young and inexpedienced as him is able to built it, has no one else ever done it! I'm sure there are other, more experienced inventors that are able to make one that doesn't explode.

The Pancham tell them that what is theirs is everyone's, something I would have seen as a red flag immediately. Both Pancham get a big bowl of food but they eat it really quickly, then continue with everything on the picnic table and finishing with the bowls of the other pokémon. But for some reason, no one is really upset about it! They are children, still growing, having a journey, walking for most of the day, they need that food, and their poor pokémon as well!

But even if they would have been really upset it wouldn't have mattered, because Team Rocket steps in so they can focus their anger at them. All the starters and Pikachu get caught and Team Rocket fly away. The gang follows them, presumably leaving the picnic table, all the food bowls and everything else behind.

Team Rocket celebrate their victory while flying off in their balloon and it could have actually ended here. Ash, Bonnie, Clemont and Serena can't do anything, Team Rocket just has to keep flying and they win. But of course, this can't happen, this is Pokémon, Team Rocket can't win. So, suddenly, out of nowhere, we get a problem that just screams ''we didn't know what else to do to make Team Rocket lose, so where just going to make a problem out of something that has never been a problem with them before'' and start to fight about who gets the credit(while in every other episode they just share the credit no problem).

Their stupid fight causes the balloon to explode and releases Chespin, Froakie, Fennekin and Pikachu. This has the result that people and pokémon both start to plummet to the ground. The gang see this but don't run forwards(as they saw where the explosion was and know where to go), no, Clemont wants Dedenne to tell them where Pikachu and the others are.

We then see Meowth being thrown into the air, Froakie and Pikachu finding each other and Pikachu and Froakie finding Chespin stuck in the ground. And nobody is hurt! I kinda understand Froakie, because he landed in the water, but all the others landed on the ground.

They run into Meowth and help him down, even though I'm pretty sure Meowth could have done it himself. Pikachu shocks Meowth while he tries to thank him, something I find not very Pikachu-like, and then we suddenly get to hear Meowth's thoughts, he only wants to be in a team with them to use them as a shield. I don't really like this. Of course Team Rocket are the bad guys of the story, but we have seen many moments of them having a conscience, or being nice. Why does Meowth have to be so mean immediately? Why not make it that if they run into the Pangoro, he runs away or just doesn't help them, why does it have to be his thought out plan from the beginning, instead of just a spur of the moment idea.

The group of pokémon find Fennekin, who's tail is slightly dirty, so Froakie uses his frubbles to make it clean again. What is kind of weird, first of all that it is fixed so easily and quickly, and second, that Fennekin is alone, without her trainer, somewhere she doesn't know and the thing she is most focused on is having a clean tail. And why didn't she just wash it herself, she sits right next to water.

Fennekin, Pikachu, Chespin, Froakie and Meowth get into trouble as Chespin throws away a small stick, which hits a nearby Pangoro. Everybody runs away except Chespin, who uses Pin Missile and hit the Pangoro on it head, destroying the small stick but also the Pangoro's bamboo shoot. This causes the Pangoro to become sad and it sits down, looking depressed.

Ash, Serena, Clemont and Bonnie finally find their pokémon and are a bit surprised to see Meowth, the Pancham and sad looking Pangoro. Meowth explains that it is probably sad because Chespin 'broke' his bamboo shoot. But isn't that a bit weird? Pangoro looks like a pokémon that fights a lot, has his bamboo shoot never been damaged before? Those things can be disintegrated by the smallest fire attack.

Chespin feels bad about it and Clemont as well, he wants to help find a new one and even says ''Since I'm Chespin's trainer, it is my responsibility.'' But he himself explained that Pangoro's ''will keep searching for that kind of bamboo until they find it'', so why isn't Pangoro trying to find it now? Why is it just being sad instead of trying to find another. Also they try to make it seem like Chespin make a big mistake and that he now has so fix it. But he only defended himself, if he wouldn't have attacked it, it would have attack him, and way worse. And the Pancham have been horrible as well, none of them are nice. The Pangoro is an aggressive hothead, the Pancham are mean thief's, and Ash and co. act like they did nothing wrong, like it is all Chespin's fault.

They get to the rock with the tree on it and Ash says he will go and get it, which it stupid because it is bloody dangerous and can easily be done with a pokémon move or by sending out Fletchling. They realize that as well and use Vine Whip to get one, finally they are getting smart. When they get back they see Team Rocket has tied up Pangoro and Pancham. But why don't they just catch Pangoro with a pokéball?! Why with a rope what it can easily break when it becomes motivated again? If you had caught it, it would have been yours and Ash and co. wouldn't have been able to get it free anymore.

Jessie sends out a Pumpkaboo she just caught and orders it to use Leech Seed. I've always found it a bit of a weird thing that the move is so different in the anime. In the games it just takes HP but in the anime is also stops them from moving.

Then Ash decides to just run to Pangoro with the bamboo instead of sending out Fletchling to help them, or at least ask Pikachu to use an attack. Pikachu eventually does it, but this is only after Ash starts running and because he thought of it himself. The Pangoro also just stays where it is, while it can easily walk towards Ash. Only itsarms are tied, it can still walk.

Ash just runs through all the rumble and smoke with no problems, then jumps four times his height and aims the bamboo perfectly so it lands into the Pangoro's mouth. Pangoro breaks its ropes and sends Team Rocket flying off.

The episode ends with them waving to the Pangoro and Pancham, then realizing they haven't eaten anything. And it is already sunset, so they have spent the entire day running and climbing and fighting, on absolutely empty stomachs. How did they not notice this? Your stomach doesn't only growl when you pay attention to it, it growls when it wants to.

Also, it is sunset and they are still in the middle of the woods, so that means Serena will have to sleep in the woods for the first time and she doesn't say anything about it, wasn't that something really problematic before?

My opinion:

The episode begins with the gang almost being run over by a guy and his truck. The guy is followed by Officer Jenny and Clemont thinks that this must mean the man is a wanted criminal! How did he come to that conclusion? Why wouldn't Jenny just be following him because of his extremely dangerous driving? Then, instead of being a normal people, they go after them to 'check it out'. If there would be someone riding around like a madman, being chased by the police, would you even think of following them?

As the man is escaping, a crate falls of his truck and immediately opens as it hits the ground. Is that thing not even locked? Ash, Clemont, Bonnie and Serena find the crate, and the Scatterbug that was inside it, and take it to a Pokécenter as it seems hurt. At the Pokécenter, Ash gets caught with a lasso and he gets dragged to Officer Jenny who wants to arrest him. Ash tries to fight it by pulling back, something I don't think is a really good move if you are trying to proof you are innocent. I also wonder how she found them in the first place, as she was in the woods at the time the gang was walking to the Pokécenter. And how she know this Scatterbug was one of stolen ones, as we later hear she didn't even know a crate had fallen off and there is nothing else that points to it being a stolen pokémon. Or does this Officer just harass anyone who happens to have a Scatterbug?

As they are talking about the pokémon smuggler, Scatterbug start running around and it evolves, for like, no reason. Did their talking give him experience? Ash uses his pokedex on the Spewpa and it tells him that it 'scares its enemies away by stiffening and spreading its fur like wings', and then right after Spewpa does it. I understand it can be fun to see him do it, but this would actually mean that it still feels threatened by either Bonnie, Clemont, Serena, Ash, Jenny or just all of them.

Ash tells Bonnie about evolution, but it is so bad its not really funny but just makes Ash seem like an idiot. I mean he has seen many, at least like 30 pokémon because it were his own, evolve. He should know a bit about it.

Clemont suddenly notices something in the Spewpa's fur and it turns out to be a chip used for tracking. But how did they not see that on him when he was still a Scatterbug and didn't have any fur to hide it?! Even the Wigglytuff who examined him apparently didn't see it.

Ash promises the Spewpa that he will help get his friends away from Dolan. But who says they are even his friends? Pokémon always acts like everything and everyone is friends with each other, just because they live close to each other or are the same species. I live close to my neighbors, and they are humans, just like me. But they are not my friends, not at all. He probably doesn't even know them, as I doubt all the stolen Scatterbug have the same trainer.

The Spewpa just casually jumps on Ash's shoulder, may I remind you this pokémon weighs around 18 lbs., and Serena has the idea to leave the tracker on and put the Spewpa back into the crate so they can follow him back to Dolan's hideout and save the other pokémon. But why can't they just put the tracker on the crate itself, as Dolan will probably take that back with him, even if the Spewpa is not inside it. Or just use the frequency of the Spewpa tracker they have, as the trackers of the other pokémon probably have the same frequency, so they can find the others that way. But no, they just use Serena's plan, though they slightly adjust it, because of course they can't use the Spewpa as bait, that is too dangerous.

So they first try Ash(?). Serena makes a costume in what seems a minute or so, because by the end of the dress up Dolan is still busy with driving back to were he lost the crate so it couldn't have been hours. She just magically has all the fabric she needs and nobody stops to think that Ash is of course way to big to be a Spewpa, till the costume is done. Then they try Dedenne, because for some reason it is not dangerous for Dedenne(or later Chespin) to do this, and when Dedenne turns out to be too small, Clemont offers his Chespin. Though you shouldn't really offer your pokémon like that, you should ask your pokémon if they are okay with it first, before promising someone their services.

They put Chespin it the crate, hide themselves(very poorly) and wait for Dolan. He returns with his truck and seems only mildly suspicious of the Spewpa with weird eyes, who keeps saying ''Chespin''. Didn't Officer Jenny say he specializes in Scatterbug, Spewpa and Vivillon? How are they able to deceive him so easily?

As they follow the truck from a distance, we see the gang running and Officer Jenny riding behind them on her motorbike. And they are following a fast moving truck. So are Clemont, Bonnie, Ash and Serena running like 40 miles per hour?

Then Clemont's device explodes, like always, and they finally do something smart and send out Fletchling. Ash gives a very vague command but Fletchling is still able to find the right truck and comes back to tell them were to go. But as we see the gang run towards Fletchling, Clemont is suddenly back to having trouble running, while he was constantly running at the front of the group with no problem before.

They find the hideout, are in no way silent as they try to stay hidden and Ash sends out Froakie to see if there is anyone inside. Froakie goes inside the building and we see only Spewpa trapped in cages. Did all of them evolve at the same time? Nothing stayed a Scatterbug or evolved into a Vivillon? Froakie tells them it is safe, but it turns out there was a net on the ground and it traps everyone but Ash. Dolan appears out of nowhere and shows he found out that the Spewpa was actually Chespin. He sends out his Diggersby and Ash fights it with Froakie. Bonnie, Clemont, Serena and Pikachu are still stuck in the net and seem to just enjoy the show instead of trying to find a way out.

Froakie gets beat up pretty bad and Ash, instead of just sending out Fletchling to help them, just picks up Froakie and tells the Spewpa he will keep him safe. The Spewpa probably thinks this is a stupid plan as well and decides to just fight the Diggerby himself, sending it flying back with Tackle. After a couple more moves are used, the Spewpa gets restless again and evolves into a Vivillon. It now easily defeats the Diggerby, and Dolan gets caught by Officer Jenny.

Now everything is good again, as Bonnie, Clemont and Serena are magically out of the net, except that the Spewpa are still inside. They breakt them out but by the time they're outside is already sunset. How long did it take to open four cages? The Vivillon flies to the Spewpa and that is enough experience for ALL OF THEM to evolve. They just all evolve, together, for no reason. And then............they all just fly off! Didn't Officer Jenny say that Dolan stole these pokémon? Don't they have trainers? Why do they just let them fly away, into the wild?

My opinion:

We start with a battle between Ash and a girl, who introduces us to the new eeveelution, Sylveon. Ash learns that Fairy type is a thing and then sends out Froakie. Before the battle really begins, Penelope asks Ash to promise to go with her if she wins the battle. This is a bit special but okay, I just find it very weird that she says '' If I happen to beat you in our battle, you are coming with me sweetie''. Didn't she meet them like a couple of minutes ago? What a weird way to speak to someone you've just met.

After a pretty okay battle, Froakie loses and Ash and co. follow Penelope. She leads them to a kindergarten, and we find out she is a teacher there and brings pokémon with her to teach the children. After Ash lets the children pet Pikachu, Clemont and Serena tell them they can play with their pokémon as well. But I doubt every single pokémon they have wants to, or can, do this. Children can be difficult, they can be rough while playing or or just very hyper, some pokémon just don't have the patience for that. But for some reason their pokémon, of which some were wild not to long ago(Bunnelby, Fletchling, Dedenne), have no problem at all.

All the children run after the pokémon to go play, except a boy named Randall, who Penelope calls ''a little shy''. We see a girl carefully pet Fennekin, then Bunnelby, who is ruining the the backyard of the kindergarten with his Dig, a boy who is a little nervous because Chespin 'might be prickly', to be honest, he's not wrong, and then lastly a couple of girls feeding Dedenne and Fletchling. Something I find a little weird is that the teacher says ''Chespin really loves to be petted'', but how would she know? It is not her pokémon, you can maybe assume it, but that doesn't make it the truth.

As Ash tries to make Froakie feel better, the professor shows up with Randall. Ash asks Randall if he wants to be friends with Froakie and holds the pokémon in front of him, something I find very dumb because 1. The boy is nervous around pokémon so don't shove one in his face, and 2. why not give him a calm and happy pokémon to be friends with, why give him one that looks sad? And then Bonnie makes it even worse by pressuring him to feed it. Why not just let the kid do it at his own pace?

We then see a flashback in which the boy gets pushed back a few feet by a Hoppip trying to scare a Beedrill away, and this is the reason he doesn't trust pokémon. I do think he is overreacting a bit but okay, it is still somewhat believable. Ash just tells him not to get scared so much, which is of course just horrible advice, because you can't just 'do' that. I would advice giving him a pokémon, preferably a Hoppip as that is were it went wrong in the first place, and let him get to know it, and learn to trusts it that way. You need to give it lots of time, as with these things there is no quick fix. But this is the pokémon anime, and that means there are pretty much only quick fixes. Nothing takes more then max. a day to fix so yeah, this will probably be the same. Just another dramatic moment were someone has to get over there fear immediately, because they need to safe something or someone, or it is the only way to get out of a trap or something. No time for real healing, just press through it.

Team Rocket come in with a big truck and pretend to be performers, telling everyone to go on the stage. Ash takes Randall to it, even though he doesn't want to go, and the rest of the kids follow as well. No a single kid stays on the ground, not one? Everyone gets a ball to play with, that releases smoke as soon as they are thrown in the air, making it impossible to see. The kids start running off the stage but nobody counts them or check the stage itself to see if there are any children left. For some reason the pokémon have stayed on the stage, even though there is a lot of smoke so it should be hard for them to breath there, making it easy for Team Rocket to catch them. The truck closes, revealing Team Rocket on top. Ash demands their pokémon back, but Team Rocket drives off, so Ash runs after them and grabs on to the back of the truck. Only now to the teachers realize that Randall is not there.

Randall sits in the dark truck and watches Froakie as he tries to break the glass cages Sylveon and Pikachu are trapped in with Bubble. Ash gets in as well and because Bubble didn't work, Ash tries to break the cages by slamming into it. I understand the idea that if something is made strong against Special attacks, that is might be weaker to Physical ones. But Ash could also just let Froakie do Pound, which is a physical move, instead of both of them slamming into it with their backs. And why doesn't he tell Pikachu and Sylveon to attack their cages from the inside as well?

Ash slams into the cage a couple of times but it doesn't have any effect, so he asks Randall, a small lightweight child with barely any muscle, to help as well. Randall really isn't going to help much, the only difference between him helping and him not helping is that if he does help, he will hurt himself and be covered in bruises, and you shouldn't demand that from a child. Also if they are able to break the glass just by hitting it with there body, the glass isn't very strong, and I don't understand how Team Rocket thought that would be able to hold a pokémon.

The kid just gets over his fear like that *snaps fingers*, and after just one hit the glass almost completely breaks. I mean really? How strong is that child? It did nothing when Ash and Froakie hit it.

After one more hit the cage of Sylveon breaks and instead of falling on the pokémon and people around it, the glass just jumps away from Sylveon while breaking, the same with Pikachu later. What kind of glass is that? Also Randall's hat falls off and he start smiling and relaxing, so, was the hat the problem all along?

Team Rocket park the truck and open it and discover the pokémon are free and Ash is inside as well. Ash overpowers them easily and sends them blasting off.

As Ash and his friends are saying goodbye, Ash promises Randall to battle with him when he is a trainer, something I don't think will even happen, but it sounds nice. And then they start walking towards a mountain as the sun sets, so that will be another camping trip for Serena how is she suddenly okay with this?

My opinion:

Thunder flashes and rain falls down as we see an old mansion appear, inside the mansion we see the painting of a woman wearing a pendant. Suddenly we hear the gang, who are outside in the storm. They run the porch for cover and as Bonnie jumps away from the thunder and lightning, she notices the door she is leaning on is open. Though it is a little weird the door didn't go open any further as she did lean on it trying to get away from the scary thunder.

Bonnie runs inside and asks if anyone is home and no one answers, but we(the audience) do see a mysterious pokémon on the top of the stairs wearing the same pendant as the woman on the painting. The gang decide to stay in the mansion, but are spooked when they light suddenly turns on. Clemont says that it might be motion sensors that made them turn on, while Serena says it could be a haunted house, afterwards covering her mouth and exclaiming ''did I say that?'' Ash tells them they better wait outside but the door slams shut, locking them in. Serena says the mansion is going to eat them, and then again covers her mouth and says the same thing. I'm not sure why they found this necessary, I find it incredibly annoying that she keeps reacting this way.

While Ash and co. are trying to find a way out, we see Team Rocket, who have found the mansion as well and go in through the window which closes behind them. They are scared by the lights as well and notice the window is now locked. We go back to Ash and co. who are spooked by a lightning flash revealing the painting of the woman (all but Bonnie of course, cause it's so funny if the youngest are the bravest or something?). And when they realize it's all okay, Serena thinks up another scary story, freaking out the others and covers her mouth, saying her new catchphrase AGAIN!

Both parties are scaring each other with their sounds as they think they are the only ones there, causing Serena to cover her mouth again(!), and Team Rocket get scared by another portrait of the woman being revealed by lightning. (we also see that apparently Team Rocket is on the first floor while the gang came in on the ground floor. How was the window Team Rocket went through so close to the ground?) Ash, Serena, Bonnie and Clemont can hear them scream and while everyone else freaks out, Clemont desperately tries to explain away, saying its probably a draught. And I understand he is a man of science and logic and everything, but come on, it just becomes stupid. How is it possible for a bunch of kids who are all familiar with pokémon, to see strange things happen and not immediately think it could be a ghost or psychic, or heck even just any type of pokémon doing this.

But the rest of the group doesn't believe Clemont and is sure they heard someone screaming, making Serena cover her mouth a g a i n. Team Rocket see the Espurr in a corridor playing with a ball and run away screaming, alerting the gang with their voice but for some reason not with themselves, as the gang see Espurr right after so Team Rocket should have been only feet away. Bonnie, being the somewhat dumb but also fearless kid of the group, runs after the pokémon with the rest following her. But as soon as they turn a corner, the find a dead end with Bonnie nowhere to be seen. I understand the pokémon is psychic but it doesn't mean it can change the layout of the house. It might be changing the perception of their surroundings in their brain, but then I don't understand why it didn't do the same with Bonnie.

The group walk around looking for her when Clemont suddenly let out a way too loud and somewhat unnecessary scream, explaining that he finally figured out the thing they saw was a pokémon, who is probably responsible for all the weird things that happened to them. Bonnie has reached the pokémon and, before she starts playing with it, asks if is is a ghost. But in the future we will see this pokémon and its evolutions multiple times, so I don't understand why Bonnie and Clemont(Ash isn't from around there and Serena is still quite a noob so I can believe them not knowing it)don't know this pokémon and their very first guess is it must be a random ghost, not ghost type, a ghost.

Bonnie keeps playing with Espurr and Dedenne and the gang find Team Rocket, who do their motto but then run away after hearing another 'scary' sound. Dedenne asks Espurr about the pendant it is wearing and it motions to the painting of the lady but while it tries to explain, Clemont, Ash and Serena barge in. Bonnie tells them she can't understand what Espurr is saying but not to worry, Meowth is only seconds away. Team Rocket walk in, suddenly fully understanding what is going on and Meowth translates that it used to be friends with the woman that lived in the mansion and she lend it that pendant that is way too big for it, but when it wanted to return the pendant to her the mansion was empty(and the woman probably dead). The Espurr says it wants to find out where the lady is now, but why did it stay it the mansion all that time, why didn't it travel around? And what does trapping people inside the mansion do to help achieve that goal?

Team Rocket feel the fastest way out of the mansion is to catch Espurr, but they pretty much lose before they begin and are thrown out of the mansion by Espurr's psychic powers. Seconds after we see a car pull up outside the mansion and the young woman who steps out, she immidiatly walks right to the upstairs room the gang is in. The woman is a granddaughter of the lady on the painting and seems completely unsurprised to find some strangers inside the old house of her grandma. She hears the story, changes her mind about demolishing the building and takes Espurr to the cemetery to say goodbye to the old lady in a way too computerized car. And well, the end, that's the story, the gang just go away after that.

My opinion:

We start in the woods at sun down. Serena is worried they will not be at the Pokécenter before the sun sets and Ash says they can just camp outside, earning a surprised look from Serena, who says she never expected she'd had to camp outside and doesn't have any gear. But like I said at the end of episode 11 and 13, they have already ended some episodes with the gang outside, in the middle of the woods at sunset, so this can not be the first time they have to sleep outside.

Once again they have a table and even chairs that are way to big to fit in their backpacks. Maybe the campfire cooking thing is somewhat foldable and the tents just look bigger then they are and are able to fit inside the backpacks, but no way with the table. Clemont makes a ridiculous amount of food with a quality that is not reachable with the equipment he has. After they are done eating everything(literally there is nothing left on any of the plates) Serena offers the macarons she made the day before. But oh no, Chespin ate them all, and he has a big belly to prove it. Everybody just lets it go, Ash suggests a battle to give Chespin some exercise and Clemont agrees. But just look at your pokémon, he just ate so much, you should never do heavy exercise right after you ate a big meal, everyone knows that! And with that, exercise makes your digestion go slower because all the energy and blood goes to your muscles not your bowels, so he'll never get his food digested like this.

The battle begins and Chespin is not able the to a single move right because of its full stomach so it loses, Bonnie jokes that even Dedenne could win from it now. Clemont doubts that so they battle as well. And I understand it is your little sister's pokémon, but since when is Dedenne weak and Chespin very strong? Clemont only has Chespin for 5 episodes and hasn't really trained it yet, and as a starter it is probably around lvl 5. Dedenne has already helped defeat Team Rocket. And also, Chespin has just been defeated by Froakie, if you battle with it now without letting it heal first, it will lose for sure. Clemont orders a Tackle but Chespin trips and lands right before Dedenne who shocks him and knocks him out immediately.

While the rest is in their tents, Clemont is outside working on a machine to help Chespin. He tells Chespin that they can't have him battle like that just because he ate too much. But that makes no sense. He should not try and find a way to make sure Chespin can still battle alright after eating too much, he should be a responsible trainer and make sure his pokémon doesn't eat too much to begin with.

Chespin smells something and follows the scent into the woods, just as Clemont finishes his exercising gear. He decides to tests it himself first and let Chespin use it if it works, but the gear itself is made specifically for Clemont, so it is way too big for Chespin. Clemont can't get it to stop and it explodes, but looking at the sky is almost sunrise. So did he run on it the entire night before it exploded? Because he had finished it while Bonnie wasn't even asleep yet.

Everyone gets out of their tents to examine the noise, they find out Chespin is gone and start to search for him. Chespin has followed the smell to a small house in the middle of the woods and gets taken inside by the woman who lives there. The gang is still searching for Chespin but can't find him and Clemont is certain Chespin doesn't like him anymore because he 'forced it to battle', but he didn't force him and all, he simple asked him if he wanted to for the first one and Chespin himself wanted to defend his honour in the second one. There was no forcing! And also, Clemont is afraid he might not have been very nice to Chespin, but Chespin himself ate all the macarons, which he knew he wasn't allowed to, and showed no remorse.

In the small house Chespin gets woken up by the smell of food once again and we can see he still has a big belly. But how can that be, not only has it been hours, so it should have been digested by now, he also walked for many of those hours, so he should have digested them even quicker once he laid down afterwards. Clemont finds Chespin at the house just as it sits outside with the lady feeding it macarons, and because it looks happy eating he thinks it is better to leave him there. But it is not good to endlessly let your pokémon(and normal animals)eat, it will make them sick, or fat which can effect their health and mobility in the long run. You, as their owner, are responsible for making sure they get exactly as much as they need, as many animals(like horses), will just keep eating because that is in their nature. This originates from the time they were in the wild and not sure when they could get their next meal so they needed to make sure they used what they had. Tamed ones don't need that, because they get food every day.

The woman also shows she isn't that great a owner because she, other than Clemont, DOES force Chespin into a battle after fattening it up first. And she doesn't even know if it is a wild pokémon or not. So either she is took in an owned pokémon and uses it in a battle without it's trainers consent or she just picked up a wild pokémon from outside her house, gave it some food and now makes it feel obligated to fight with her.

Her husband asks her if she found a pokémon that can defeat his Delphox(why doesn't she have any pokémon of her own?)and she says she has a secret weapon. Chespin. So her plan is to defeat this third stage evolution fire type of at least lvl 36, with a lvl 5, first stage evolution of a type it is strong against. Does she know nothing of pokémon? The first thing everyone learns is that water is weak to grass, fire is weak to water and GRASS IS WEAK TO FIRE!

Chespin, who was unable to dodge any of Froakie's attacks when fat, is now able to dodge all Delphox attacks while being even fatter. Clemont and the rest notice the explosions and quickly go to the house. The woman tells Chespin to counter attack but doesn't say with what or really guides him in any way, so I'm not surprised the woman has lost every battle she had with her husband. And she blames her bad performance on Chespin saying it doesn't know how to battle. Though I will say, that that is a good point, you randomly grabbed a pokémon off your porch, without knowing if it can battle in any way, and immediately let it fight. That's pretty stupid.

The fight is almost over and the gang is worried about Chespin. Ash tells Pikachu to go and defend Chespin, but Clemont runs forwards and stops the fire attack with his robotic hand. And I don't get it, it is still your pokémon. If you feel it isn't safe, go and step forwards, scream that they should stop. Why do you need to be dramatic and place yourself in harms way? And Clemont even apologizes for interrupting their fight, while she is using his pokémon and would have just let him get hit by the attack!

The Clemont wants to fight the battle so the woman doesn't have to lose and you know why? This is his reason: ''I'm going to think about Chespin's feelings more, by doing that somehow I think it will help me grow as a person and a trainer''. What kind of bullsh*t is that? We had already concluded that if anyone has been inconsiderate it has been Chespin himself. And that you didn't force him when you battled him. So in what way are you thinking about his feelings more now? And that thing about it making you grow as trainer is pretty obvious, of cause it will make you grow as a trainer, nothing 'somehow' about it.

So the battle starts again, and Clemont tell Chespin to dodge all the attacks by rolling, and the weird thing is that is works, that a high level fully evolved pokémon is not able to hit a low level first stage pokémon with a full stomach, just because it rolls around a little bit. But not only that, rolling around for 6 or 7 times made him lose all the weight! Walking all night won't do it, but rolling around does itinstantly? To be honest I think the rolling around just made in nauseous and it just threw up, that's the only way it could have lost the weight that fast.

Chespin is able to Tackle it once before being thrown back by a fire attack. We get another 'I believe in you' what just fixes everything always, and Chespin is able to use his Vinewhip, which is slightly stronger because of Overgrow, to knock the branch out of Delphox's hand. The man for some reason feels threatened and says he going to use a move his wife calls 'dangerous'. And it turns out the danger in it is that the old man leans too far backwards and hurts his back, but why doesn't he just order the move without leaning back, problem solved.

They go back inside, and explain why they fought, the husband gives his wife an apology cake they all eat and then the trainers go on their way. Having to sleep outside again, but now Serena doesn't care anymore for some reason.

My opinion:

We start in the woods were Clemont is telling Bonnie she shouldn't give Dedenne so many snacks.(and Fennekin is eating a stick, why? How is it a weapon but also food?) When Clemont tells them a little bit is probably okay just not to much, Ash gives him a compliment saying he knows much about pokémon and Bonnie says that it's because he is a Gymleader. But there are a couple things wrong with that: 1. The advice is clearly more about humans than pokémon, 2. There will be many pokémon who won't fit in that category just like animals, horses for example need to eat all the time as their bowels need to be kept active, it's not healthy for a horse to only have food 3 times a day, that's why many people give them unlimited hay, 3. Clemont really doesn't know thát much, because he is not even sure himself about whether snacks are okay or not, he just says it is 'probably' okay. And lastly 4. Bonnie says he knows much about pokémon because he is a Gymleader and even though I would expect a Gymleder to indeed know a lot about pokémon, Clemont has not really shown much knowledge about them at all. He knows quite a bit of machines, but not pokémon. And I think it's kinda special Clemont is lecturing Bonnie about feeding Dedenne while only last episode Clemont himself was not able to make sure his Chespin ate a healthy amount.

For some reason Bonnie did not feel Dedenne jump out, even though that thing is supposed to be like 4.9 lbs, and they find out it ran away to a tree with berries in it. So Bonnie giving it snacks was actually a good thing if you think about it, otherwise it would have run off a lot sooner. Also if Dedenne's stomach is indeed as Serena calls it a 'bottomless pit' why did Clemont feel Bonnie was feeding it too much.

In the Pokécenter Bonnie does her ''thing' again, embarrassing her brother and her friends. The woman she is talking to goes away together with her little sister who just happens to have the exact same bag Bonnie has and for convenience the bag with Dedenne in it is closed even though it was fully open when Bonnie left it.

Ash and Clemont have a battle and lots of screaming happens before the Pichu that is now in Bonnie's bag wakes up. The pokémon is understandably startled and tries to run away but then suddenly turns around and attacks them. Clemont and Ash are surprise by the attack and we hear Clemont say 'Bonnie's over there' but why does he say that? Everyone knows they are there and they are really close to you, also how did he not see the Pichu walk onto the battlefield.

To stop the Pichu , as it is still engulfed into the electricity himself not hurting anyone anymore, Ash orders Pikachu to use Thunderbolt on it. Not even Electro ball which is at least a little weaker, no just Thunderbolt. So Ash doesn't want to attack a final stage evolution very powerful pokémon that is destroying a City because he feels bad about hurting it, but has no problem attacking a tiny baby pokémon. Also Clemont says to Ash 'Pichu can evolve into Pikachu isn't that right?', Dude, you are a Electric pokémon Gymleader! You are supposed the know this yourself without having to ask Ash for confirmation!

They go back to the Pokécenter to ask Nurse Joy for information about the girl. Nurse Joy, who sees hundreds of people every day, doesn't only remember them but can also recall that the girl indeed had a similar bag, that the girl she was with was her older sister(that 'happens' to be a trainer. Why the emphasis of Happens?) and that she had a red ribbon in her hair.

The little girl and her big sister are seen walking on the sidewalk and though it is very realistic and sweet her sister moves her away from the road as a car passes, we can see in the next shot she was no where near the road. The girl finds out Dedenne is in her backpack and runs away from her sister, and the gang is running around trying to find someone with a red ribbon in their hair. While in a park the little girl buys her and Dedenne a doughtnut because they are hungry, but how does the little girl have money for that? The only bag she owns normally has a Pichu in it. And even if there would be money in this bagit wouldn't be her money as it is not her bag. After eating the doughtnut she leaves her garbage on the bench and runs to the Pokécenter, just as the gang runs into the park. They stop right at the bench the girl sat but it no longer has the small doughtnut bag on it.

On her way to the Pokécenter the little girl sees in the reflection of a window that her bag is empty again. How is it that she also doesn't feel Dendenne jump out? It's quite some weight being removed. She randomly runs past stores and finds Dedenne inside a shop laying between pokémon plushies. But how did Dedenne get inside that shop and why did it even go away? If it just wanted a place to sleep then why didn't it just continue sleeping in the bag it always sleeps in. In the park Clemont has finished his 'Radiowave Amplification Device', and when he turns it on Dedenne picks up the waves and runs away, presumably to the park, and is for some reason the only pokémon to do this. I would think a large amount of electric pokémon would react to it, and honestly a whole lot of people should react to it too. Also Dedenne runs away from her, but goes forwards in the direction the little girl was already going, shouldn't the way to the park be behind them?

In the park Clemont for some reason thinks the machine needs more power to function properly, even though it is functioning fine now and the meter shows it's already nearing the red so it would be best to stay the same or even a little less. The machine explodes, as always, and creates such a big cloud of black smoke that there is no way that didn't leave a big amount of damage. But no, only frizzy hair again. And other then the little girls sister, nobody responds to the explosion, no police, fire brigade or even worried pedestrians.

The Pichu runs to the girls sister we now know is named Lena and they go looking for the Lyn, and they don't alert the police or anything else, they are going to look for a small girl in this enormous city themselves, which is in vain anyway because Dedenne ran out of the city instead of following Pikachu's shockwaves. There it steals some grapes out of the vineyard and both of them gets chased around by Beedrill. Just as she trips and all seems lost, they gets saved by Pikachu, but how is it possible that Ash and co. who said they were going to search the entire city, are now immediately away from the city and in the vineyard.

The group of Beedril has become an entire swarm and Clemont and Ash order their pokémon to attack the Beedrill(now that I think of it, they could just be guard pokémon that belong to the property), and cause another explosion which surely damaged many, many of the grapes, costing the owner of the land thousands.

Now that everything has calmed down and is safe, the little girls are able to process everything that happened and begin to cry(what is quite realistic, that's how young kids work).

It ends with them all sitting around a table on a field ready to eat dinner, but both Pichu and Dedenne aren't hungry and the two little girls get scolded because they gave them to many treats. And this is also something I have a problem with. First of all in the beginning Serena said Dedenne's stomach is a bottomless pit so how is it not hungry, secondly Dedenne ran for a very long time before it got to the vineyard so it should have exercised enough to be hungry again, third, Dedenne only got half a doughtnut so that shouldn't be enough to fill it up completely as I have seen how much food is in that big foodbowl it eats out every day. Maybe it is different with Pichu who did eat a whole apple about the size of its head and didn't really do much afterwards, but Bonnie wasn't the one giving the apple, Pikachu was. And everyone saw Pichu getting that apple and didn't see anything wrong with it then.

My opinion:

Ash is in the woods training Froakie, when he suddenly hears a voice telling him he still has much work to do. It turns out the voice was from a young 'ninja' who disguised himself as a tree with help of a brown colored sheet. The boy kneels down and summons a ''ninja leaf shroud'', making a whole lot of leaves fly up, and disappears. And I understand the sheet thing and the fact that he is a ninja, but the leaves are bullsh*t he is still a normal human boy. So how is he not only able to make leaves appear but also make then turn into a small tornado. That's like a pokémon move, is he a hybrid?

They find the boy again and Ash asks him for a battle. We get another ugly vs. screen, that isn't even right because it shows Pikachu, and the battle begins. But Froakie is not able to get a hit in because is opponent is too quick. And I understand the games and anime are different things but Frogadier's speed is really not that high. Furfrou, Talonflame, Hawlucha and even flipping Dedenne have higher speed stats.

Frogadier hides itself and Ash tells Froakie to ''concentrate'' and ''use your instincts'' and because of that he can suddenly see a presence behind one of the trees(which doesn't make any sense). He attacks it but turns out this Frogadier has the same idea as Froakie himself had in episode 3 and a decoy falls down. Frogadier leaps out of the lake and attacks Froakie, hitting hard. Serena wonders if it is maybe stronger than Froakie because it is the evolved form and that would of course be logical. It is probably a higher level, as it has already evolved so that would make its stats higher and the evolution gives the stats a boost as well. But Ash doesn't agree with that and says that evolution has nothing to do with it, but than the only alternative is that Froakie is just weak.

Froakie gets thrown against a tree by Frogadier's Quick Attack and Sanpei says that the fight is now over because no pokémon has ever been able to continoue after being hit by his Quick Attack. And it could be that he says that because Quick Attack is always his finishing move what he only uses when his opponent is already badly damaged, but if that isn't the reason it is total nonsense.

Froakie is able to stand up and even though we will in a second learn that Froakie is pretty much fainted, but for some reason he is just able to stand, we hear Ash scream ''we're just getting warmed up'', meaning he is in no way able to tell that his pokémon is badly damaged and nearly beat. How can it be that he is going to have a special bond with Froakie, were they are completely in sync and pretty much share a body, but he is not able to understand the most basic things about him now.

Sanpei orders another Quick Attack but as his Frogadier runs towards Froakie he sees Froakie is not able to defend himself and uses his nonsense leaf trick to get it away in time. So Frogadier is ridiculously quick, but even when it is literally doing a Quick Attack from very nearby, Sanpei, a 'normal' human boy, is able to out speed him and even has time to scream ''NOW, ninja leaf shroud'' before doing it.

Sanpei criticizes Ash about how he fought and says ''you are fortunate Froakie didn't take more damage'' but what does that mean? He is only able to take damage till he faints, as soon as he faints it's done, that is all the damage that can be taken. It is normal in battles that the pokémon take damage, I don't understand why sometimes Ash does very dramatic about a pokémon fainting and then another time his pokémon is pretty much blown to pieces and he just recalls it, says good job to the pokéball and sends out another to continue the fight. Ash asks Sanpei to teach his Froakie to do Quick Attack, afterwards saying to Froakie'' you want do learn how to do it don't you?'' which earns him a surprised sounding ''Froakie?'' making me feel like Froakie has no clue whats going on.

Serena gives Bonnie, Dedenne and Pikachu some ninja outfits that she is of course able to sew before in like a minute, Clemont shows his of course flawed machine and then we finally start training. First Froakie has to jump from branch to rock to other rock and so on. Froakie is slower that Frogadier but that would be logical as this is the place Frogadier always trains so he knows the area and his muscles are used to the movement while everything is new to Froakie, but still he is criticized by Sanpei for being too slow. This is his first day of training and he has started less than a minute go, how quick do you expect progress? But then Froakie starts running as fast as Frogadier and is able to keep up and so is Ash, that is not how training works, you are not suddenly great after one training session! Then they go to the next exercise, but Froakie has just used all of his energy with the first one!

Here Froakie has to learn to WALK ON WATER! I understand that there is a real basilisk lizard that can walk on water but that is because it is very light and small, and Frogadier is in no way walking fast enough to not go with his feet beneath the water. Froakie tries it too but moves very slowing and with his weight to much on one place, but still, he doesn't fall in immediately, he actually stays above water for more than half the distance. Sanpei says that the key to getting across is to move your feet quickly(Duh) and Froakie demonstrates this by only moving his back feet and still nowhere near quick enough. After a couple more tries Froakie gets frustrated and Ash tells him to use that frustration to get to the other side. And of course you can use your frustration productively, but running across water is not a thing of power, so it will only work negatively if Froakie slams his feet down even harder. But no, he just gets across no problem now, meaning this very special, scientifically impossible thing that probably cost Frogadier a lot of time to learn, is something that Froakie can learn in about a minute. And if a low level Froakie can learn it, I would think many other pokémon will be able to do it as well. And it may be a cool thing he has learned, but I doubt we will ever see Froakie use this technic.

They all eat something and after talking about Sanpei's family, they begin with one of the most stupid training technics I have even seen. They going to jump from tree branch to tree branch. Those branches look like they're sometimes 9 feet apart and we later see Sanpei even jump about 20 feet. This is incredibly dangerous and impossible to do if you have not trained this beforehand, except for the 20 feet thing, that is just impossible by itself. But it is not the jumping that almost kills them, it is just that Ash didn't notice he had run out of trees and jumped straight of a cliff.

Sanpei saves him and they continue like nothing happened. They go to a field and here they are actually going to start on training the Quick Attack because for some reason there is still hours left in the day and Ash and Froakie are not exhausted. Frogadier demonstrated it by breaking a rock and Clemont comes with this astounding discovery ''I get it, Quick Attack generated so much power because it is done with so much speed.'' Yep, that are really the words of a educated Gymleader.

Froakie tries it but doesn't leave a scratch on the rock, and I understand he is not able to break it like Frogadier did as he hasn't mastered Quick Attack yet, but I'm pretty sure Froakie has already broken things before like this, the most resent one probably episode 13 where he did the exact same thing but with less speed on the glass cages. Froakie tries again and even though he is using a whole lot more speed now, it still doesn't leave a single scratch.

Team Rocket comes and catches both Frogadier and Pikachu. And what does Ash do? Well, instead of using all his pokémon or the help of his friends to make sure he gets his pokémon back, or even just fights with Froakie and uses the moves he knows Froakie has a good chance of winning with, he orders Froakie to use Quick Attack. A MOVE IT DOES NOT KNOW!

Instead of Quick Attack Froakie uses Double Team(I kinda liked that though, was a nice surprise), and they are now defeated easily. The group says goodbye to Sanpei and walk into another sunset.

My opinion:

Ash and co. arrive at Camphrier Town, as soon as they walk in they hear a horrible noise. Clemont asks a lady nearby who, instead of just telling them, says 'follow me' and then keeps silent for the entire way. It turns out the sound was a snoring Snorlax and the lady explains why it's here. It is supposed to eats the old dead roots of their crops, in the mean time plowing the fields, and then they give him some food as a thanks, a dude plays the flute and the Snorlax goes back to the top of a mountain where it lives. The lady says the problem is that the festival is ready, but the man who plays the flute refuses to play so they can't wake him up. And I know the use of a pokéflute is to wake up pokémon, but the lady said they don't play the flute till he goes away, after he has eaten. So if the festival has not started yet, then he has not eaten yet, and the flute is not yet necessary.

Snorlax snores again and this time everyone is effected by it, but how come the lady had in earplugs but everyone else in the town, even those who live close to the place Snorlax sleeps, don't have any ear plugs in? Clemont tries to use his fancy new machine, that is just pretty much an alarm clock, but it explodes so they decide to go to Shabboneau(what a name, I had to look it up) Castle, and convince the Lord to play the flute for Snorlax. But when they get there the Lord makes up all kinds of excuses for why he can't do it. After his butler tells him he should tell the truth, the Lord admits that the flute has been taken by a princess of a neighboring castle and he does not dare ask for it back, so the gang has to go and fetch it for him. But pokéflutes are not that rare right? I understand it is a family heirloom and he really wants it back. But why doesn't he just buy another pokéflute as a replacement for today. The Snorlax problem could be solved a lot easier and quicker.

Team Rocket are also in the room hidden in a piece of armor for Arceus knows why, and react like they have forgotten every interaction they have ever had with a pokéflute, thinking that it controls the pokémon and that they can use it to make an Snorlax army.

Ash and friends make it to the next town in pretty much no time and instead of knocking on the front door and asking to speak someone, they sneak into the garden, probably damaging the hedge. They are immediately found by a Furfrou, which is called back by the princess. And I understand that Ash isn't very happy about the fact the princess calls them thrash, but as far as she knows he is just a guy who broke into her house/garden, that'snot really someone your going to be nice to.

The first thing Ash says is not 'sorry we snuck into your garden and damaged your hedge' or 'dear princess, I have a request', no just ''give us the flute back, alright?''. The princess, of course, refuses and as she laughs, we see her shift her attention to Pikachu. She says Pikachu, who of course is not special enough yet, has absolute amazingly symmetrical, good shade of red, and perfectly round cheeks.(And we just take this as fact but what does a girl, that is like 7 and never leaves her house, know about Pikachu's?) Ash doesn't want to give his Pikachu to her, not even after she tries to bribe him(to be honest he would have been a horrible trainer if he had).

The girl then says they will only get the flute if Ash has a battle with her, winner getting both Pikachu and the flute. Of course Ash can not accept that without sounding awful so the writers of the show bypass that by making Pikachu accept it. But not long after the battle started Furfrou's hair gets messed up and Princess Allie sends her pokémon away to get it's hair fixed. Allie forfeits but then says that she never specified that whether the person who wins the battle would also be the one who got the flute and Pikachu, and orders Ash to give her his pokémon.

Clemont tells her the truth, not really hash but with a raised voice, which makes Allie cry, but only for a second as she sees his reaction as care for her which makes her somewhat attracted to him(also I'm getting really annoyed by the girl's caregivers, I understand the girl is young and spoiled but why are all her caregivers behaving the same?)Allie changes the offer, saying she will give them the pokéflute if Clemont stays with her. Bonnie and Serena whisper to each other and Bonnie accepts the offer. They go back inside and Ash gets handed a enormous pokéflute, like way bigger than any other seen before. It turns out Bonnie and Serena had made the plan to exchange Clemont for the flute and then come back for Clemont as soon as the Snorlax problem is fixed. But to be honest that isn't their choice to made. They leave Clemont there to face whatever she might have planned for him without any help.

Before the sun goes down they are back at Camphrier Town(how close are those towns?) and give the flute back to the Lord. But before he can play the flute, it is snatched away by Team Rocket. Jessie plays the instrument but it sounds really bad and makes Snorlax wake up cranky. The Lord says only he can play it, but that can't be right, we have seen enough people play on pokéflutes, as long as you have a basic knowledge on playing a flute it is fine. I understand Jessie doesn't know anything about playing a flute so that's why it goes wrong, but I doubt it is some magic flute that only the Lord can play. Snorlax attacks Team Rocket and sends them flying off, but of course not the flute Jessie was holding. No, she politely dropped it so that we can finish the episode happy. Ash is even able to catch the flute, even though it fell no where near the balcony.

The Lord plays the flute and Snorlax is happy again, eating his fruit and starting the festival. And even though they have JUST fixed everything, Bonnie acts like they forgot Clemont. You didn't, you were planning on getting him AFTER you fixed he Snorlax problem, you have literally just fixed it. But not to worry, Clemont randomly appears behind them wearing only his underwear. He explains that he, in the very short time he had before he went away as he has to have left about 20 minutes after Ash, Bonnie and Serena did to get here at this time, made a robot that looked like him and gave it his clothes to trick Allie. But if she has left him alone long enough to built an entire robot, why didn't he just escape then, with his clothes? She only goes to find him after Clemont has already reached Camphrier Town, so there was no need for the robot or the stripping.

My opinion:

We start in a dark cave, were Team Rocket is looking at clips(how did they get those angles?) of Pikachu's moves. They suddenly hear a voice and see a figure standing above them. She introduces herself as Madame X and her Malamar attacks Team Rocket with something....not sure what, looks kinda like a bright rainbowish light.

We go to Ash and co. who walk around in the woods and see a 'radio observatory'. Meowth comes out of a bush before them and says he needs their help. And to my surprise they do! There have been many times in the past that they have just left them for dead and even more times that they were the ones that attacked them.

They help him and give him water but then Bonny tells him she thinks it's just another trick. But if she really thinks that, why did she help him? And if it really was a trick, would Jesse and James not have come by now? And they use potions and such, because you can see Clemont put one away in his back after Meowth wakes up, so does Bonny really think that Meowth would let himself get beat up so badly just so he could trick them? He never has before.

Meowth tells them about what happened in the cave, where Madame X used her malamar to hypnotize Jesse and James and how he used an attack in himself to stay in control, before running away. But if that is all what happened, he should not have had that much damage just from giving himself a couple scratches. It's also really weird that he immediately wants Ash and co. to turn around before Madame X gets Pikachu. Since when does he care about their well-being and why does he not ask them to help save Jessie and James?

Jessie and James appear behind Meowth and when they try to get away Madame X and her malamar stop them. This seems just as good a time as any for Ash to hold up his pokédex and check this new pokémon. But what we then hear ''possessing the strongest hypnotic powers of any pokemon, malamar can compel others to do anything it wants them to do'', How is anyone allowed to keep this pokémon? Why would anyone ever want this pokémon? How is this pokémon not banned or something. How is not the entire Kalos region controlled by malamar?!

The Malmar tries to Hypnotize them too but everyone somewhat shields their eyes and Pikachu is able to scare it away momentarily with an electroball. But the attack seems to have absolutely no effect as long as you don't look directly at it. So first of all why don't they just look down and run away, and secondly, if malamar is so incredibly powerful why are his attacks so easily dodged?

Malamar uses Psychic which lifts Pikachu of Ash his shoulder and flies away with Madame X, Jessie and James, but why didn't it do that any other time before? It's so much quicker and easier.

Clemont has another random robot specially for Pikachu retrieving, and it ends pretty much as it always does, though it does first bring them to Madame X's hideout and doesn't even alert her with the explosion. The gang plus Meowth go into the building and we see Pikachu get hypnotizes by malamar. But this is because he is looking up at it, Pikachu closed his eyes the first time malamar used the move, why does he just let it happen now?

Madame X sees, on a just preposterously large screen, that the kids have entered the building and James tells Madame X about the three starters they have, but not about the other pokémon she could steal as well...since when are starters better or stronger? The group searches the building but Clemont and Bonnie get hypnotized by Malamar and start helping him, malamar tries to Hypnotize Serena, Meowth and Ash but they dó look away and the attack does nothing. They then try to run away but are stopped by Clemont and Bonnie....who just stand there....and don't really do anything.....and Ash can easily walk around them...or like.... just go to the right or left as this is a pretty big room. Meowth scratches Ash and his own face again, but Serena doesn't want her face to be scratched so she just immediately turns to malamar and gets hypnotized. And I understand that the idea is that she gets hypnotized because she didn't get scratched, but looking away work fine the entire episode, so it's just ridiculous that they suddenly made the scratching the only way not to get hypnotized.

Ash and Meowth distract the malamar and run away, till they reach the room where Madame X sits on a uncomfortable and frankly dangerous pile of randomly stacked equipment. She tell Pikachu to attack them, but throughout every attack we get the special ''you're my friend'' and ''can you hear me'' things that Ash has done many of in the past and will surely do more of in the future. I understand that the mind is a complicated thing, so I believe a pokémon or human could be snapped out of a hypnosis if something else gets triggered in the brain, like an emotion, as this is an area hypnosis normally doesn't interact with so it is able to activate side by side and if strong enough can intervene with the hypnosis. But the thing is that one, it happens so often in the anime that is loses its magic and two, it pretty much always happens with Ash and Pikachu, like they are the only ones with a strong enough bond to do it.

Of course it works, though not completely, but as soon as Clemont's broken machine rides into the room and hits malamar the hypnosis disappears for everyone. It even causes Madame X to scream and fall of the very high, dangerous tower. The weird thing is that we realize Madame X is actually Officer Jenny who was hypnotized by malamar, but then why did she scream and fall? No one else, person or pokémon screamed, fell or fainted when the hypnosis stopped.

They all run to Madame X who sits in front of the pile of stuff, even though we saw her fall backwards and not forwards, and she tells them how she got there and was overpowered by malamar, who then, translated by Meowth, thanks her for doing all the work for him. But what kind of work did she do? The only use I have seen her have, is that she functioned as a translator for the audience. Everything that was going on would have been harder to understand if malamar just said his name the whole time and Meowth had to translate every word he said. They fixed that by having Madame X, who talked normal English so no translating necessary to understand the story they were telling us. But other than that, she didn't do anything. She didn't collect anything or fought or even cleaned, she did nothing of use.

Malamar runs away when they attack it and leads them to a weird room filled with...I don't know? Looks kind of organ like? Or a bit conoon-ish? Which is the new weapons it had made. But then instead of activating this evil machine, he just destroys it because they have now seen it. But what does that matter? It is not like it won't work anymore now that they have seen it, and he can just use an attack or his Psychic to stop them going away so they are not able to tell anyone. What is also weird by the way, is that as soon as malamar starts destroying the weapon, Ash says ''Malamar! Stop!'' Why? Why do you want him to stop? He is destroying a dangerous machine, you should be happy about this.

They run away as the building explodes and see malamar fly away. But that is also pretty weird, he might be evil and strong, but he is still a pokémon. Ash and co. should have been harmed by the explosion as they were nowhere near far enough away, but malamar was right in the middle of it. Since when are psychic pokémon bombproof?

My opinion:

We start in a pokécenter where Serena tells everyone they should go to the Battle Chateau. They are approached by two guys, Nico and his little brother Chester, who's only real characteristic seems to be saying ''Yo''. They explain that you can gain noble titles if you win a battle at the Battle Chateau and Ash thinks this will be a good warm-up for his gymbattle, so they follow the guys to the chateau. Ash and Chester ask for their 'debut battle' and the owner of the place leads them through the house while explaining how the titles work. They reach the salon where Nico gets introduced because he is a baron, and Ash and Chester try to find someone to battle with. But then Pikachu looks up in shock and we see a man, named Grant, hang from the ceiling. And I understand that that is his ''Gimmick'' but even professional rock climbers fall. And if he slips he can fall down on top of people, crushing them. This isn't very safe.

Nico asks if anyone want to battle with him and a guy named Farrell throws some white gloves against him, signaling he wants to. Honestly I think this is hilarious, I'm pretty sure it is based on the fact that if you slap someone with a white glove, you're challenging someone to a Duel to the Death.

The doors open automatically and everybody goes outside to watch the battle. Both barons put on white cloaks and the owner of the chateau explains to Ash and co. how the battles here work. Because they are not just normal battles, they are based on chivalry. But, maybe it's just me, but I have seen all the battle chateau battles, and none of them seemed any different from a gym battle or a trainer battle. None of the moves seemed more sophisticated and none of the battle strategies reminded me of a real knights duel. Certainly not Ash’s, which reminded me more of a little kid hitting its wooded sword against stuff repeatedly.

The battle starts between Fletchinder and Dusknoir but is over in like three moves(though it might seem longer because the dustcloud created by dusknoir hitting the ground stays for like 20 whole seconds!) , and Nico wins. He is awarded the title of Viscount, and then happens what I already said would happen, Grant falls. Think about what could have happened if someone was walking there at that moment!

Ash walks up to him and asks him what his title is, as he can only battle those that are the same rank as him. But Ash heard multiple people say how strong Grant is, meaning they have seen him fight, meaning that there is no way he still needs to do his debut battle. Cause remember, that is the only rank Ash can battle, his own complete beginner rank.

After Grant says his title is Duke, Chester tells Ash it's time for their debut battle, but if they are going to fight each other, why were they busy finding someone to fight with when they first got to the saloon? And then the two hold their pokéballs against each other, just like the others did the previous fight, but this time they do it with the front of the pokéballs instead of the sides. That is where the buttons are that make the pokéball shrink or enlarge when pushed, so why don't the pokéballs change size?

The fight starts and Ash first orders a bunch of thunderbolts, followed by multiple electroballs that fly hectically through the air missing their target. But what about this is chivalry or knight like. It seems like an uncoordinated mess. The Flechtling uses Featherdance followed by Steelwing and Pikachu uses Irontail against the second. Then when Ash orders a second Irontail Pikachu suddenly looks really tired. He got damaged by ONE move!

Pikachu and Fletchling hit each other with Steelwing and Irontail a couple times as they hover above the ground(I understand Fletchling can do it but Pikachu should not be able to stay up in the air like that), till Pikachu hits Fletching against the ground. After one final Thunderbolt the battle is over and Ash becomes a Baron(and that is all he will ever because I doubt he'll ever come back here).

Viola wants to take his picture but gets challenged by Grant for a battle, so the cloaks go back on and the fight starts(while once again bumping pokéball buttons first, you can literally hear them click as they do it!). Ash lets out his pokémon, and he says it is to cheer them on, but I just hope it's also as a learning opportunity cause I'd really like that. I also like the battle Onix and Surskit have, except for the end where Onix traps Surskit with Rockthomb again and even though Viola has already shown multiple times that she knows ways to get her Surskit out of there in time, she just gives up this time and doesn't order any moves. I'm sure Surskit could have easily tried Protect again.

So Grant wins and is now Grand Duke Grant, and before he leaves the Chateau Ash tells him that he's going to try to climb his way up the ranks so that one day he will be able to battle him. But Grant says is also a Gymleader so Ash will probably battle him a lot sooner.

And that is indeed a kinda weird thing about the Battle Chateau. You need to win a lot of times to climb higher and higher, with that showing how good you are, but Ash will probably win his gymbattle with Grant on his first or second try because that is how it always works. But if Ash is able to beat Grant, he is higher or equal to him, even if the Battle Chateau says the one is Grand Duke and the other only Baron. So that will in no way say anything about how good they truly are. It only says how many times they won battles in this very specific location.

My opinion:

We start with the group looking at videos at a pokécenter, and Serena explaining what Pokévisions are(simply just random youtube videos but then with pokémon). They get motivated to make their own, except for Ash who want to do some special training for his next gymbattle. When they rent the equipment the man tells them that they can just film everything and he will do the editing and soundtrack. And even though that is great service, he has no way to know how they want the video to be, or which shots they want edited out, or which music they like.

They begin with Clemont's video, even though he is very uncomfortable with it all and just wants them to start with Serena's. Luckily for him they stop after a few takes, but Bonnie still wants it to be edited. Serena has it planned out a little so that is good. She wants to start with her and Fennekin running through a field while wearing matching hats. Clemont tells her that he has a machine that is perfect for this, and shows them a camera machine with legs and everything. But if he already had this made, why did they rent a normal camera? Why did he not just tell them he already had a walking camera so they didn't need to go and rent equipment? And of course it goes wrong, the machine goes haywire and instead of telling Fennekin to use Ember or something they just continue to run away from it.

Ash comes across them while he is busy with his special training, which just seems to be running, and helps them by making Pikachu attack the machine, something any of his friends could have done as well. The machine explodes and as always they are covered in black stuff with their hair puffed up. But this time it is only Fennekin and Serena, and it stays really long. So they just pretty much changed the rules of that for this one episode because it came in handy. Fennekin shows no appreciation at all and attacks Pikachu, though the later jumps away so it hits Ash, burning him. And what does Serena say? Does she try and educate her pokémon, telling it that it should never attack people or that it could convey its emotions it a different way? Does she apologize to Ash for not having her pokémon under control. No, she thinks that her pokémon in fully in the right and puts it all on Ash.

Serena and Fennekin change their outfits into one that doesn't have to be a somewhat fetish like thing, but it kinda is. Ash agrees to help them with filming for a while and they go back to the field. After we hear her Fennekin impression the episode skips to the next part, baking. But other than Serena and Fennekin, Pikachu will be helping as well. So it is indeed nonsense what Clemont said to his sister earlier when she wanted to have a video with Dedenne and Clemont told her she couldn't because it was not her pokémon, Pikachu is not Serena's pokémon and no one makes a problem of that.

Pikachu trips and both pokémon get covered with sugar. Fennekin once again indirectly attack Ash in her anger, and no one tells her she’s in the wrong. Fennekin might not like getting dirty, but her response of violence whenever it happens, mostly by accident, is very bad and Serena should raise her pokémon to be better than that. After filming some shots on a street with Serena wearing a dress, they go back to the man who will edit the video. (I just thought of something, they rent all those customs, so that means that they get worn by most people coming there to shoot videos, meaning everyone that sees the video will recognize the dress from dozens of other debutsvideos and know that she put it on just for show)

Sadly the editing machine is suddenly broken but not to worry, Team Rocket in disguise are here to edit it for them. They even show them examples of what they can do, even though that is in no way necessary as Serena has no other choice so she would have probably taken them anyway unless she really doesn't like their examples, meaning they have nothing to win and everything to lose by showing them.

Serena agrees to let them edit the video as, like I said, there is no one else, but Team Rocket tells them that they want to reshoot it all and grab all the pokémon without any real explanation as to why they only need the pokémon, even Dedenne who isn't supposed to be in the video at all. They realize this after Team Rocket has already left with their balloon and Ash sends out Fletchling to go after them.

Team Rocket stop to shoot another video of Jessie of course because otherwise they would succeed, while the box that is probably specially created to hold Pokémon gets easily destroyed by Pikachu and Fennekin. But now comes a big problem, the pokémon are free and run out of the cave only to see that a big puddle has been created by the water used in Jessies video. Dedenne and Pikachu cross it without problem but as Fennekin doesn't want to get her paws dirty and isn't smart enough to realize that there is a dry path around it, she stays where she is.

Ash and co. get to the hideout and Pikachu and Dedenne run right into their trainers arms, but Fennekin stares from a distance. And instead of using Fennekin’s pokéball to recall her pokémon and calmly teaching it to not be afraid of dirt in a safe location, Serena chooses the dramatic option. Which means she runs through the water and gets thrown in the mud as James and Ash start to battle their pokémon.

But this is when I get really annoyed. While lying in the mud she had these thoughts: ''who cares about dirty clothes, Fennekin has always been there to protect me'', and ''I don't care if I get dirty or not, this time it’s is my turn to protect you'', but Serena has never shown any sign of having an actual phobia of getting dirty. Of course she doesn't like getting dirty, most people don't like it. But most people don't let it get in the way of their life, people who have an actual phobia will scream if they get dirty, will do anything so stay clean. This means that if they, for whatever reason, choose to get dirty to accomplish something, it means something. It is something special, something that took much energy, willpower, sacrifice. Serena has none of those things, so her setting her dislike of getting dirty aside to SAVE HER POKÉMON, is not something to be applauded, it is something to be expected. If she would have let Fennekin get taken away, just because she didn't like getting dirty, she would have been a terrible trainer. They also try and make it more special and emotional by showing a short montage of moments they had together, even though they barely had any real moments together and the friendship is still very much in the early stages. We only see three shots: them stretching, Fennekin jumping in her arms one time and Serena choosing her as a starter. And none of these are in any way emotional or special. It is way too early for them to have a montage of memories.

So….. Fennekin gets over her fear of dirt and learns flamethrower, Pikachu blasts Team Rocket off and they go back to the pokécenter where the man has finished the videos. We see many shots that weren't filmed at all, like with the cooking scenes, but everyone likes the video. We end on seeing Clemonts video for a laugh.

My opinion:

The group arrives in Ambrette Town and after playing in the ocean, they decide to go to the aquarium. In the aquarium they see many different water pokémon from different regions, but for some reason almost all the fish-like pokémon are in the exact same tank. Wouldn't some be natural enemies, like the basculin that bullies every other fish out of its territory? Or is used to different conditions, like huntail which thrive in deep dark seas? They are from different regions, different climates. None of the others have this, the woopers have their own tank, same with the clamperl and lanturn. I understand that it is good to put similar species together if they can co-exist, like with giraffes and zebra's, because it isn't very natural for an animal to only even see its own kind, but I see like eight very different species here.

As they stand near some magikarp, a man walks up to them and tells them facts about water type pokémon. He says there are so many different types of water pokémon because they have adapted ''to the many different environments that are found in the ocean'', so the man pretty much supports my point here, they should not be shoved into the same tank if you want to show the water pokémon at their very best. The man shows them a golden magikarp statue and tells them that if they want to know more about it they should ask the director of the aquarium, who is right now fishing by the sea instead of doing his job.

They go to the man, who tells them the story about the giant golden magikarp, that it saved someone from drowning. And now, instead of being happy there is a pokémon that wants to help people and leave it alone to live its own life and treat it like a protector of the beach or something.....he want to catch it and lock it up in the aquarium so kids can stare at it. He doesn't even want to catch it and then leave it in the ocean so he can just call it when necessary. Also he is fishing really close to the shore, if the magikarp is really that gigantic, it would not live in such shallow water. He would have a better chance on a boat, or like a lapras or something.

The man gets something on the end of his line but it is a normal magikarp that he releases, even though he doesn't really release it because it already let go of its line and he has no way of keeping it with him. Ash and his friends decide to help the man catch the magikarp and start fishing, but only Serena is able to catch something. It is a Corsola, which she does try to battle but Fennekin runs away when it attacks so Serena gets a face full of water.

Bonnie and Dedenne try to play with the man’s Clauncher even though it has shown time and time again it doesn't want to. When Dedenne notices the Clauncher is getting really annoyed, it purposely uses its tail to irritate it further, causing it to fight back, though it immediately gets scolded. And I understand that what Clauncher did was a bit much, but he has shown them where his limits where and they didn’t respect it.

Clemont shows another one of his machines, which is supposed to send out soundwaves to attract magikarp, but it only attracts hostile sharpedo. One explosion later we can see Team Rocket, who have painted their magikarp submarine gold in order to attract the golden magikarp, swim around near the beach. Clemont has remade his machine and as soon as it is in the water their lines all get hooked on something. Up comes a golden magikarp, but it’s the metal one from Team Rocket, making me wonder how three children and an old man were strong enough to stop this submarine from moving.

The group quickly find out it is Team Rocket. Jessie and James try to steal their pokémon but as the submarines arms grab Dedenne, Clauncher jumps up and uses Watergum, Crabhammer and Bubblebeam, defeating them. Ash interrupts the man’s battle so he can be the one to blast off Team Rocket, Clauncher gets his moment and we skip to the end of the day. The man tells them they can keep the fishing rods he gave them and suddenly, for no real reason, the golden magikarp leaps out of the water in front of them, so we can end the episode on a high note.

My opinion:

Ash is training Froakie and Fletchling, but abandons this after Alexa tells him she's going to a Fossil Lab to see their recently made discovery. They all go with her and first get to look at old pokémon fossils stuck in stone, before the researcher tells them to put on special clothing to keep them warm. The discovery turns out to be an Amaura and its evolved form Aurorus, which they have been able to create from a frozen carcass(they call it a fossil).

And though this is pretty standard stuff for most Fossil Labs in the pokémon games, to create living breathing copies of the fossils they find, I am quite surprised that they are so careless with them. These are heretofore unknown pokémon, they are not made to live in this time and could become deadly ill from anything they come into contact with. Also, there is no way for them to have learn its entire behavior pattern by now, making the creatures very unpredictable. So why do they let random people and pokémon near their prehistoric pokémon with have probably cost thousands to create?It is dangerous for the pokémon themselves as well as the guests. The researcher later tries to explain it away a bit by saying they used to live in an area with few enemies, so that's why they are now so calm and trusting. But I know enough animals that live with pretty much no natural enemies, that would still not react friendly if you randomly run towards them screaming for a hug.

After some playing they go to warm up outside the exhibit and Team Rocket grab their chance to steal the special pokémon. They use a weird laser thing on the door, and lure the Amaura into their truck. When they try the same thing with Aurorus it doesn't work and it starts jumping and crying out, so researchers come running into the enclosure. Team Rocket rides away with Amaura and the researcher hold back Aurorus from going after it.(How actually, isn’t it supposed to be really big and strong, how could two people hold that back?)

The Amaura is able to create an aurora that they can follow, so on go Aurorus, the gang and Alexa. Sure, why would any of the researchers, some of which probably worked with these pokémon since they started to exist, go and help find their precious pokémon. No, better let some people they met today handle the job, they will probably be better at it.

Ash and co. continue to follow the aurora but after Team Rocket puts on the heater, the Amaura starts getting weaker and the aurora starts to fade. Team Rocket suddenly gets a flat and have to stop to change the tire, and we see Ash and co. lost in the forest on the other side of a river. They can no longer see the aurora but after Aurorus lets out a loud cry, the Amaura creates one a final time and we learn that they are actually pretty close. But how is that? Team Rocket ride away in their truck in the middle or near the end of the day, as the sky is clearly still blue with clouds, then we see that they are still driving when the sun is going down, and they only stop when it is already night. So they have been driving for hours in a truck which can surely drive quicker than Ash and his friends can run, and which is able to continue at that speed for hours, while Ash his body would have probably already gave up before the first hour passed.

So.....they reach the truck, they fight with Team Rocket, they go blasting off again, and we can put our full focus on the special pokémon. Amaura's temperature has become too high but Aurorus, who is apparently immune to any of the problems his little buddy has, cools the air around Amaura making both of them completely healthy again for some reason. Suddenly the researchers pull up in a large truck, even though they shouldn't know where Ash and co. are, they go back to the lab, hug some more and we end on them all playing in the snow like humans.

My opinion:

For some reason episode 24 is banned so I couldn't find it anymore, so we continue with 25.

We arrive at Cyllage City, where Ash immediately heads to the Gym to find Grant. Grant is busy climbing some giant wall and invites them to do the same, though luckily it isn't mandatory. Of course Ash likes the challenge and climbs the very high walls with no equipment or harness or even powder on his hands, Grant uses a harness and powder, so why doesn't Ash? Just because it is dangerous and reckless doesn't make it cool or special. Why can't it just be about Ash wearing a safety harness like a sensible person would wear. The fact that he doesn't wear one and trips later on doesn't make him seem brave, but makes the Gym look neglectful.

Ash makes it up to the platform safely and even with such speed that he arrives before the elevator carrying his friends does. Clemont asks why Grant makes trainers climb the walls and Grant response that it helps them achieve inner peace, and while that sounds very nice, I think the very obvious side effect of this is that all his challengers are absolutely exhausted. Luckily he kind of balances this by letting his challengers use all the pokémon they have to beat his two pokémon.

Serena is nervous because, as she tells Clemont and Bonnie, she now understands how hard it is to earn a gymbadge, that Ash has constantly been training and how a victory here would mean the world to him. But even though it could be that we skipped over some of his training, the previous episode themselves are enough evidence that he hadn't been constantly training since he saw Grant. He helped Serena with her video, spent the entire day fishing for the golden magikarp and spent last episode running after a truck and playing in the snow. Also, he has fought many Gymsleaders, I'm sure he will be very happy if he wins but it wouldn't mean THE WORLD to him.

The battle starts and after only two moves Grant already orders his strongest attack, Rock Tomb. But Froakie uses the rocks to climb up and doesn't get hit by the attack, and I know that this is a technic thought up by Ash based on what happen in episode 24, but honestly I'm pretty sure he has already used a similar move in the past. Froakie uses Waterpulse, which hits this time, and after another missed move from Onix, Froakie end it with a third Waterpulse. This unevolved starter has downed a highly trained giant rock snake with two water moves.

Grant sends out his second pokémon, Tyrunt. Tyrunt first uses Rock Tomb but after Ash uses his special climb move again, Tyrunt switches to Draco Meteor. This instantly knocks out Froakie so Ash switches to Fletching. But as we all know this is a severely undertrained little bird, so it gets knocked out after one move as I predicted. Now it's Pikachu's turn, so we can be pretty sure Ash is going to win, as it works that way most times. I've seen other pokémon being used as a final pokémon in such a battle but that is only if they are supposed to evolve that battle or had an important role in the story of that episode, with that making the fight ''mean more''. But pretty much every other time they make Pikachu the last pokémon so he can be the ''real winner'' and make him more special.

Pikachu uses Iron Tail on Tyrunt and as Tyrunt uses Draco Meteor everyone starts stressing except for Ash. He simply tells Pikachu to do Draco Meteor Climb, and Pikachu immediately understands that Ash means to use his still bright white tail to touch the rocks. Even though there is no way Ash could have taught Pikachu to do this as he didn't even now that Grant's pokémon knew that move(also, with this one I'm really use Ash has used it before, I can't remember when, but Pikachu has used Iron Tail to climb up an attack this way before!!)

Grant says he will finish it with Rock Tomb, though the attack suddenly works very different from before, but Pikachu is able to hit one of the rocks into Tyrunt’s mouth. Tyrunt can of course use Crunch to simply destroy the rock in his jaw, but Clemont says that he can't so........o well. And with one thunderbolt the pokémon is defeated. Ash gets glorified by everyone and they head on to the next city, Shalour City.

My opinion:

The gang is in a park somewhere and Serena walks to her Fennekin saying she made some poképuffs for her. She also gives one to Pikachu and Ash decided to try one himself. When Bonnie asks Ash if Dedenne can have one,(though Bonnie should ask Serena, Ash shouldn’t give permission as it is not his to decide, I know Serena is probably fine with it but still) the poképuff floats out of his hand and into the mouth of a nearby pokémon. Instead of stopping the pokémon Ash uses his pokédex as it steals another. Only then does its trainer appear, a young girl with no manners, though for some reason no one but Serena seems to mind, and no one ever thinks of standing by her side even though they have been Serena's friends for a while now and they don't even know this girls name yet.

Luckily there just happens to be a poképuff cookoff this very day and you can still register, so Serena decides to run against Miette. The cookoff starts with a big group of people, including Jessie, making their own original poképuffs. Serena has some weird frosting which glitters when she puts it on, and Jessie makes her oven explode. The head judge comes on to tell which people continue to the next round(though the poképuff behind her look untouched, do they not judge taste?), but first does an introduction. ''Hidden inside each poképuff is one thing, the hope that it will bring the hearts of people and pokémon closer together than ever before'' wow, that's a high expectation for a sweet snack. No need to bond with your pokémon, just fatten it up with these poképuffs and you're golden.

Miette is announced first and Ash actually looks quite annoyed at her. I would understand why cause she has behaved pretty bad, but he has been nice to her the entire time and even let her sit with them, it’s a bit late to take Serena's side. A team of young kids and Serena are named as well, so they stand on the stage together where they hear what is expected of them tomorrow. They need to think up a new poképuff recipe (what is seen as new actually in this game? Is it just something that you haven't used yet or really something that doesn't exist, because that is quite a tall order), and also collect the ingredients they will be using. The only problem is that all vendors are sold out, so the group and Miette go to the forest to see if they can find beries there.

But the forest doesn't have any berries as well, and it also looks damaged. Clemont picks up a stick and tells them ''this wasn't from natural causes'', but what is seen as natural causes? A pokémon fight between two wild pokémon can do just as much damage, just as a group of wild pokémon could have eaten all the berries, that all sounds pretty natural to me. Serena goes to investigate the missing berries but runs into a horde of wild Swirlix. The group follow Serena's scream as the Swirlix just seem to rub themselves against her or something, it doesn't look very painful or scary. Pikachu uses a thunderbolt that hits only the Swirlix even though they are making contact with Serena, and after a Flamethrower, the Swirlix run away. Miette tells them to follow her Slurpuff, which she calls 'it' by the way, not really a strong bond there if she doesn't even know if it is a male or female.

They eventually find some berry trees but run into Team Rocket, who is pretty much deforesting everything to get all the berries.(though the vendors said they were sold out, so that means Team Rocket didn't steal that and actually paid for all those berries.) They also suck up Pikachu and the Swirlix nearby, causing them to go round and round in the machine. Ash jumps to the vacuum to try and block the airflow of the machine, and the sucking isn't even strong enough the rip off his shirt, or at least make it baggy afterwards. How is it able to lift up everything else if the suction is so weak? Ash being stuck to a machine which doesn't hurt him in any way is very brave and this has to be said by pretty much every character nearby, I'm surprised Team Rocket doesn't mention it.

The machine almost self-destructs when Serena orders a Flamethrower, so Meowth puts it in reverse and all the pokémon get thrown out of the machine. Ash quickly catches Pikachu as the Swirlix hit the ground around him. They blow up the machine together and we skip to the next day, Serena and the other two participants are already done making and it's time to announce the winner. They all got their own special Poképuffs (Miette has a cotton candy/whipped cream one with a spicy tomato berry slice though, seems like a horrible combo), and the winner ends up being the small kids, yeey. We get another fine closeup handshake signaling they have become friends or at least don't hate each other anymore.

We end on Miette pressuring Serena into telling Ash how she feels and warning her that if she doesn't do it quick enough, Miette will take the chance herself.

What a great start to a beautiful friendship!

My opinion:

When Bonnie struggles with her hair, Serena helps her by combing it and gives her a special flower clip. A Flabébé lands on the clip, looking very sad. Bonnie wants to feed it some nectar and gets very possessive when she finds out it already has a trainer, what I do find a realistic behavior for her age. When they are walking to the pokécenter, a man notices the Flabébé. Instead of taking his pokémon and hugging it or just being joyful next to Bonnie, the man thinks it is appropriate to hug Bonnie tightly even though this gesture doesn't even let him touch his Flabébé.

The group introduces themselves and the man tells them why his Flabébé(who he calls 'it' aswell by the way, why do so many trainers do that? All Flabébé are female, he can just say her)doesn't have its flower, it got run over by a car. But I'm sure other Flabébé have had these problems as well, a flower is very fragile, so I'm sure she can just choose another one. The man tells them that his wife, who is in the hospital, won't get fully better till she has seen Flabébé, but they need to get Flabébé a new flower first because it will get weaker without one. The man says he wants both his pokémon and his wife to get better, but he is at a loss. But why is he at a loss? The solution is very simple, go to an area where the flowers it likes grow, I doubt they're that far away.

The group offers to find the flower for the man so he can go to the hospital and spent time with his wife, but they first go to the pokécenter to get it healed. But if they can heal it like that, why doesn't the man keep the Flabébé and brings it to the pokécenter when necessary, while the group finds the flower? The Flabébé feels better and so does the wife.

They ask Nurse Joy if she knows a place where they can find fairy flowers and Nurse Joy literally says that they grow in a field close to town! So why did that man act like they are miles away, doesn't this guy live in this town, shouldn't he know the surrounding area? Team Rocket hear their plan, disguise themselves as tour guides and lead them to the flower field without any problems, even though they have never been there either. Still, they can't find the flower anywhere because it if out of season.(I will say it has been shown multiple times that grass pokémon are able to accelerate the growth of most plants, so why doesn't Clemont sent out chespin?)

Suddenly they find an single flower growing either on a side bit of a cliff or inside a cliff, depending on the animation. Ash wants to climb up and get it, but Clemont tells him the plant has to stay rooted till Flabébé is on it. Now, I can think of many different ways to fix this. 1. Ash takes Flabébé and climb up the cliff, 2. They put Flabébé on Fletchling and tell it to fly to the flower, so nobody has to take any risks, 3. Chespin/Clemont uses his vines/robot arm to bring Flabébé/Bonnie and Flabébé to the flower, 4. Climb up the hill from the other side and gentle drop the Flabébé down to the flower.

But of course they won't use any of my ideas and let the, I don't know let's say 6 year old, climb the dangerous, sharp, high cliff. Bonnie is able to do it with minor scrapes but just as Flabébé lands on the flower, Team Rocket grab Pikachu. The group uses their starter pokémon to fight Jessie and James but they are losing. Flabébé, now with its new flower, uses its pollen in a way similar to Sweet Scent and Team Rocket and their pokémon become calm and happy. They let Pikachu go by making the glass ball he was in disappear into thin air, and the group quickly runs back to town.

The woman is very happy when she sees Flabébé and thanks Bonnie. Flabébé floats over to Bonnie to say goodbye, while making the sound of a pokéball moving around. Really, listen back to it and tell me it doesn't sound like a pokéball which has just sucked in a pokémon who is trying to get out.

We end on Bonnie being sad she lost Flabébé but then remembering she still has Dedenne and being happy again.

My opinion:

Ash and his friends find out that Diantha, the champion, is having an exhibition battle. Ash want to challenge her and they go to stadium where they hear that she is not accepting meetings or interviews(by the way, how did they get in, if she really is that special and famous she should have better security). Just as they plan to leave, Prof. Sycamore motions them to get into his room. He tells them he is at the stadium to research the mega evolution of Diantha's Gardevoir. Diantha comes into the room and Sycamore immediately asks her if she has thought about his request, as he wants to borrow her keystone(are there no other people with a keystone to exam that live closer by, like the grandfather of Gymleader Korrina, Gurkinn. They are already acquaintances). Diantha says she can't do it because it is part of her bond with Gardevoir, but she could come by his lab when she is in the neighborhood so he can examine it. Her manager appears to tell her that her schedule is full and that will not be possible. But Dianthe does have time to eat a piece of cake later and even battle Ash in a forest. If she really wants to do something, she can máke the time.

Diantha tells them they can stay to watch the battle, meaning they got in without a ticket, and when they sit in the stands Sycamore tells them a bit more about Mega Evolution. The trainer needs a keystone, the pokémon needs a megastone and they need to have an exceptionally strong bond between them. I'm not sure what that means as that is quite a vague thing in the pokémon world, remember episode 8 where after one rescue mission 'Jessica's and Furfrou's hearts become one'.

The battle starts with Absol against Gardevoir and we learn that Diantha is able to tell Gardevoir what to do by simply blinking. That is just a little bit too much for me, Gardevoir is a Pyschic pokémon, so I will very much believe that if they have a strong bond, they can simply use a form of telepathy. But the fact that Gardevoir, from a great distance and with its back to her, is able to tell with movements her eyes make and what she means with that movement is ridiculous. Clemont says that they are able to communicate by using eye contact, but they are not looking at each other’s eyes! And why does she only need her eyes to make the pokémon dodge but needs actual words to say which of its moves it needs to use?

Diantha wins with two moves and the crowd cheers. Ash wants to challenge her again but hears she has already left for a movie. Serena suggests they go and try the chocolate cake the town is famous for. For some untold reason, the shops barely have any of their cake, so the group is only able to get a very small slice that they have to share. Just as Clemont wants to use his new invention to cut the cake in equal slices(an invention that doesn’t explode by the way, but he will never use it again), they hear a woman nearby whining about not getting a slice of cake and comparing it to the end of the world. Ash offers her a part of their cake(without first discussing it with the rest of his friends), and they find out it is Diantha. But really? The champion of Kalos, who travels everywhere, has never been here before to get a piece of cake? And even if she hasn't, she has lots of money and is very popular, I'm sure she could have them reserve a piece for her, either by paying or just because they like her. She could have also asked one of her assistants to just go and stand in line for her earlier that day.

They all enjoy their piece of cake and Dianthe tells them that, whenever she visited a town for work she always looks forwards to sampling their most popular desert, whether she is busy or not. But if she travels so much, how can it be that she has never ever been in this town? Ash challenges Diantha to a battle but, rightly, gets scolded by Serena to not bother her in her private time, something she has little of. Ash seems to think for a second but then continues anyway, and it is really quite rude. Ash can choose to fight people near his skill level and improve, but choses to start a fight he knows he can't win as she is clearly much better than him. So he asks her to spent what little free time she has to fight with him, hoping he might learn something from it. He feels what he wants is more important than what Diantha wants to do and somewhat egotistically asks her do adjust herself to him.

She accepts it because he gave her some cake and they go to a nearby field, accompanied by Sycamore. Dianthe uses her Gardevoir and Ash his Pikachu. It starts with Pikachu using pretty much every move it has while Gardevoir dodges them all. And once again they make it seem she does it because of Diantha's silent commands, but wouldn't Gardevoir be able to dodge Pikachu's attacks in its own? Why does it need the eye movements, it’s quick enough on its own and it is able to see Pikachu run towards it. Gardevoir uses Shadowball and Ash catches Pikacu, falling against a tree in the progress. And this is meant to show Diantha ''how much he cares for his pokémon'', but it is once again a bit stupid, first of all he isn't going to die from hitting his head so he didn't really risk that much, but also the nonsense that he is fine with Pikachu being hit by literal fire or pieces of ice, but he can't hit a tree because that could hurt him.

On come Team Rocket. They steal Gardevoir by putting it in a weird special box that's immune to pokémon attacks and fly off. Daintha tells them she can feel where Gardevoir is and they run after her. While running she tells them about a time she got lost in a fog while shooting something(making we wonder why she would walk away alone under these conditions and why not one person paid attention to the very important, famous, expensive person they were shooting that day), and that Gardevoir was able to find her. Sycamore thinks it can be because of some kind of connection between the stones, which seems like a logical deduction, but Ash needs to go the emotional route and tells them it was probably their hearts calling out to each other. Because of course this ten year old boy who has only been in Kalos for a few weeks will know more about mega evolution than the Professor who has lived there his entire live and specifically researches mega evolution.

As soon as they find Team Rocket, Diantha orders Gardevoir to Mega Evolve. And even though the box had no problem handling the attacks of this highly trained champion pokémon before, it now immediately breaks to pieces. Team Rocket gets blasted off and Gardevoir devolves back to normal. Right after a helicopter arrives with Diantha's manager inside to come and pick her up. But then we suddenly gets a time jump to sundown, even though it was the middle of the day before. Diantha says she sorry that they were not able to finish their battle, but looking at the time jump we made there was more than enough time, you just didn't use it.

We end on Diantha leaving and the group continuing to the next city.

My opinion:

We start with Team Rocket and the gang already busy fighting. Clemont shows off another one of his machine's, with this one being able to suck up all pokémon moves that hit it. What is of course very handy, but the obvious flaw here is that any time they don't aim specifically for the machine, it doesn't work.(it's not sucking them in from a distance, during the episode you can see a straight line from the pokémon to the machine) However Team Rocket is not that bright and repeatably aim or the machine, physical and special, which leads to their eventually loss. Team Rocket flies off while Clemont’s machine, having had its purpose, explodes. Team Rocket come up with another plan and disguise themselves as Ash and his friends. They battle a kid who is too young to be a trainer anyway, and steal food and money(how are they able to get away every single time, and if they know how to do that why don't they do that more? They have complained about being hungry so many times in the anime, and now they steal food without problems). When the real Ash comes into town, he gets accused of all the things Team Rocket did when they looked like him and his friends, even though they are clearly a lot smaller(except Bonnie who is a lot taller)that the real culprits, something that people should notice right away.

When they are at the pokécenter, they are asked to come to the entrance, where an Officer Jenny and some angry shop owners wait. The Jenny is luckily pretty professional in her behavior. Jenny asks them if they could come with her to answer some questions and Clemont gets left behind. Team Rocket pretend to be scientists and ask Clemont to help them with a machine, and Clemont agrees, leaving a note behind for his friends. He fixes their robot in mere minutes and continues with a transporting machine they weren't able to finish either. Clemont goes back to the pokécenter and meets up with his friends. There he gets told about the people that were pretending to be Ash, Bonnie and Serena, for the second time...Bonnie had already called her brother to tell this right?

The next day Team Rocket continue stealing food and getting away with it. Ash and co. find Team Rocket in a field, where they drop their disguises and show their robot. Clemont exclaims that he worked on that robot and Serena realizes that they were the scientists that ask Clemont to help them. And even though Bonnie should have clearly heard these things, she still responds surprised when Team Rocket tell her that Clemont made the robot and thought up the name. Ash, after hearing that this machine is specifically made to be able to take and absorb electric attacks, he sends out his electric pokémon and only orders electric moves, instead of asking anyone else to help him or using any of his other pokémon. They catch Pikachu and put him in the transport machine, when their robot starts to malfunction. It explodes, sending Team Rocket flying. Clemont uses Bunnelby to figure out which way the tunnel Pikachu got transported through goes, presuming it goes in a straight line, and follows it. They find Team Rocket with Pikachu, Clemont grabs a second move absorb machine and once again all Team Rocket's pokémon only aim for the machine. Pikachu escapes and Jessie, Jmaes and Meowth are blow up...again...again. Clemonts absorption machine explodes again, and they continue their journey.

My opinion:

While walking through a forest, the group meet a roller skating girl named Korrina who asks Ash to battle her. The fight starts pretty okay, but as soon as Korrina's Lucario starts to attack, Ash stops giving any orders to Pikachu and just lets it get thrown around by four consecutive attacks. Pikachu loses and Korrina shouts it's her 99th victory before hearing her stomach growl, so they decide to lunch together. Here Bonnie sees Korrina has a keystone attached to her glove and tells her that it looks just like Diantha's, to which Korrina responds ''Diantha? Wow, you met the champion?'' But how did she realize that? I think many people know what Diantha's keystone looks like because: 1. They know she has a keystone and they all look alike, 2. She uses it in battles which are either with an audience or broadcast on tv, 3. People make constant pictures of her so the keystone should be on some of them, 4. They might have just seen her walk by somewhere in the distance. There is no reason why knowing what someone's keystone looks like should mean that you personally know them.

Korrina tells them that her ancestors were the first one to even megaevolve a Lucario(meaning there is no reason for Sycamore to know so little about it and for it to still be this special), and we see a flashback of her getting the keystone from her grandpa, who tells them to work on their bond. Korrina had decided that she would be ready as soon as they had 100 consecutive victories, but an important thing about that is the 'consecutive', meaning that as soon as she is at victory 75 and losses, she has to start all over again. So that nice little book she has where she puts the names of the trainers she battled together with the print of the pokémon she fought should be a whole lot thicker, or she starts with a new book every time she loses. Team Rocket listen to their conversation and make another plan, successfully stealing Pikachu, Lucario and the Megastone before flying away with their balloon. Tash and his friends run after the balloon, leaving their table and food behind. Team Rocket discuss Pikachu's possible megaevolution as the balloon sometimes does and sometimes doesn’t respond to the movement of the pokémon below it. Really, sometimes it sways around after a attack and other times it flies perfectly while they are still using attacks.

After they reach a bit of a dead end, Korrina closes her eyes and does pretty much the same Diantha did, so that might just become the norm in megaevolution episodes, though for some reason Serena and Clemont don't seem that convinced this time. Korrina tells them that she and Lucario grew up together, like siblings, which is why they have such a strong bond now. In the mean time we see Lucrario and Pikachu not being able to break through their prison, until they do. Ash and co. find Team Rocket and they battle, earning Korrina her 100th win. Korrina and Lucario think they are now good enough to go to Geosenge Town where she will find the Lucarionite, and Ash and co. decide to travel with them, wanting to see the megaevolution as well.

My opinion:

After a short recap we start the episode at Geosenge Town. Korrina tells them she doesn't actually know where the Megastone is, but that her grandpa said she would know where it is once she arrived at the town. They decide to split up and search for the stone in the shops, though that kind of takes the special moment away from Korrina and Lucario, their special search for the stone that they have been training for all that time. But to their surprise none of the shop owners have ever heard of the stone! I mean really? Korrina's ancestors used the stones there to Megaevolve their Lucario, but the people here don't even know that it exist?

A man named McGinty offers to take a picture of them and tells them about a cave inside the mountain which is said to hold a special evolution stone. He warns them that it could be very dangerous, but Korrina is determined to go. Team Rocket, who are standing nearby, hear about the cave as well and quickly climb up the mountain to get to the Megastone first. They push two rocks, which are way too big for them to be able to push, in front of the opening leading to the cave so the gang won't be able to find it(though it could just as easily be the wrong entrance, or no entrance at all and just a dead end, I doubt they checked the whole mountain for caves) and go into the cave. The plan works at first and Ash and co. walk right past it, but when they walk back after presumably having walked the entire path down the giant mountain, Lucario, for no reason at all, is suddenly able to sense the Megastone and finds the blocked entrance.

And now it gets a bit special, because Team Rocket have gone into the cave and opened the doors before Ash. and co had even found the hidden entrance. But only after they walk up and down the entire path, find the hidden entrance, walk the whole way to the cave, talk about Lucarionite, say that it is dark inside the cave and Clemont walks in using his light, do they hear Team Rocket screaming. So that means that Team Rocket have probably been there for at least a ten minutes before they were thrown out, why did it take so long? And also, we later learn that the pokémon that throws them out belongs to Korrina's grandfather and this whole thing was just a test for Korrina, but why did he tell is pokémon to be so aggressive whenever someone who isn't Korrina goes inside the cave? That pokémon doesn't know who Team Rocket is, it could have just as well been some hikers or nosey kids, and this pokémon just attacks them.

The group go into the cave and they reach a large chamber, with a path leading up to a pedestal, with on that pedestal is a big piece of rock containing the Lucarionite. Korrina and Lucario go down the path but are stopped by a Blaziken, and Korrina says that if they want the Lucarionite they first need to defeat the Blaziken. And though that is probably true, I would be wondering whether that pokémon could be there to guard it because it already belongs to somebody else, the place it is held is clearly made by humans. The fight starts and Lucario is barely able to hit the Blaziken, while the Blazikan hits every move. As Lucario lays motionless on the floor Korrina tries to get close to him but for some reason she is not allowed to do that and the Blaziken stops her by almost burning her with its Flamethrower, which has the sad side effect of burning the photo taken this morning.

Blaziken then picks up Lucario by the head and throws it into a wall a second time. All seems, and should be, lost, but they all encourage Lucario and it is able to stand up again. And now, just because, it is able to hit every time, with every move. Just as Lucario want to do its finishing move, a voice to the side tells him to stop. It turns out to be Korrina's grandfather, who tells her she has won. But that is kind of weird, Blaziken seemed to have no such honor when he grabbed the badly damaged Lucario by its HEAD and threw it aside! The man tells her this was meant as a final test(still not explaining why she was not allowed to get near her damaged Lucario and was almost burned), and that she can now grab the Lucarionite, which she does. Back in Geosenge Town they find out the photographer had a part in it as well. Korinna's grandfather, Gurkinn, tells his granddaughter that he GIVES her the stone as proof that she overcame her trails. But I'm pretty he told her to take what she had EARNED, when she defeated Blaziken. So why does she suddenly get the same stone a second time, in a less special way?

Korrina gives the stone to Lucario and it Mega evolves, but we're only able to see it in the next episode.

My opinion:

We start where we left off last episode, Lucario mega evolves and, as well as change form, becomes a lot more powerful. Clemont wants to use another one of his machines to calculate exactly how much more powerful Lucario has gotten, but then says that the machine uses ‘preexisting pokémon data as a reference value'. Which means that even thought it might be able to figure out how much stronger Korrina's Lucario has become compared to the average Lucario, it won't be able to figure out the power change in her Lucario specifically, as it would need to have measured his power before he evolved to have the precise numbers.

Korrina and Ash have a battle to test Lucario's power but Lucario accidently misses an attack. Korrina assures her pokémon that it just needs to get used to its new power and that she believes in him. Then Lucario tries another move, but suddenly his eyes start to glow red and he seems to lose control, attacking Pikachu relentlessly. For some reason Gurkinn waits till the very last second to intervene but then finally sends out his own Lucario to block Korrina's Lucario, and then waits as Korrina's Lucario falls to the ground exhausted.

The group quickly go to the Poké Center to heal their pokémon, Pikachu is healed up quickly but Lucario is still exhausted and needs more time. Gurkinn tells the group that he is not surprised by the exhaustion and that ''the power of Mega Evolution can be too much to handle at first.'' Korrina feels really bad about what happened but Ash and co. comfort her, and after Korinna gets the special Megastone arm band, they sit down together and talk about the Mega Evolution. Though they for some reason compare the behavior of a Lucario that just Mega evolved for the first time, with the highly trained champion pokémon Gardevoire, and then wonder why they behave differently. I can give you two reasons right of the bat: 1. One has just evolved for the first time and the other one has done it dozens of times, 2. They are literally completely different pokémon!

After Korrina gets Lucario back and gives him the arm band, her grandfather challenges her to a battle. Korrina is a bit too eager and thinks they will surely master Mega Evolution this time, but instead of just calmly explaining that with hard work he doesn't mean one battle, but probably weeks, months or years of it, her grandfather just looks angry and commands her to come. The fight starts but it is pretty clear that Gurkinn's Lucario is stronger, this should not come as a surprise as it has had a lot more training and has learned to completely control itself when it is Mega Evolved. Korrina's Lucario is actually able to stay in control much longer than before, so I would already consider this a win, but eventually loses control again and is defeated.

And this would honestly be the moment I would have wanted her grandfather to give her some advice or help. To acknowledge that his own Lucario had problems as well in the beginning and that Lucario is surely be able to learn to control his power, but that that can take a long time and a lot of work. And maybe a line about that he has faith in her or something, give the girl a bit of compassion, she's like 15 or so.

But no, he doesn't do that and what he does do makes me incredibly annoyed. He start with saying that one of the problems is that Lucario is arrogant and overconfident. Okay, that can be, that is something that can be trained now that you have mentioned it to her. Every Pokémon has its strengths and its flaws and Lucario’s happens to be that it can be overconfident, so that’s something for her to keep in mind. So okay, not necessarily bad advice but could have easily been said in a nicer way.

Then he says that Korrina is wrong because she lets him be arrogant. Though it honestly doesn’t surprise me, as a few episodes ago she said that she has been raised together with Lucario, so they have more of a brother-sister relationship than that of a trainer and their pokémon. Gurkinn pretty much just set her up for disaster by raising her in such a way that she is not able to see her pokémon as a pokémon anymore. That is on him, not her, as I’m pretty sure he raised her, they never mention a mother of father. (also I rewatched the battles from the last two epsiodes again to confirm and yes, Lucario listened to everything she said and didn't make any moves of his own before. It is literally a problem that originated in this episode)

He then tells her that they have been spending too much time together and because of that think that they truly understand each other, and don’t do any training to make themselves stronger. But this again makes no sense, first of all the ‘you are too much together ‘thing. I would understand it if he means that they are so connected to each other, that they have not developed anything of themselves, that is a real problem that people can have, but it is not what Gurkinn is talking about, so it falls flat. Then secondly that he says that they are no longer training to get stronger because they think that they already understand each other enough, but we have seen Korrina train in every single episode she’s in.

Gurkinn scold Korrina for being immature and after she tells him she doesn’t get it(you and me both girl), HE JUST SCREAMS AT HER! Yeah, that will help, just yell, foam at the mouth while your at it. Don't try and help your granddaughter with compassion and understanding. I think it is so weird that in pokémon one of the biggest moral lessons they try and hit us over the head with is that you should be kind to your pokémon, treat them with love and care, friendship is magic and all that stuff. But when it is about people, it doesn’t seem to carry that much weight. Could you imagine that whole interaction between them, with the screaming and the scolding, but Korrina would have been a pokémon. Ash would have swooped in to defend her immediately.

The episode ends with Gurkinn sending his granddaughter off to a friend, and Ash inviting himself and his friends along.

Ps. Gurkinn also gets mad at her when they are battling because ''aura pokémon don't fight that way.'' But normally in the show that is the way to win, to think outside the box and do different then the norm.

My opinion:

After getting a short recap from the narrator, we see Korrina and Ash in the middle of a battle. When Pikachu is about to hit Lucario with an Iron Tail, Lucario counters it by using Power-Up Punch, something Korrina is first excited by but then realizes that she didn't order him to do that. And I understand that her grandfather said that was one of their issues, but the anime is filled with moments like these, sometimes a fight goes really quick and a trainer doesn't have time to give a command, so their pokémon will dodge or counter on its own. Pikachu has done it hundreds of times. Pokémon, just like real life animals, are living being with their own thoughts, you can't expect them to do whatever you say like a robot. If Korrina is not going to give him an order, he will have to take it into his own hands to make sure he doesn't get hit.

They stop the battle to have lunch and Ash asks what kind of training Korrina has done with Lucario so far. As Korrina talks we can see her memories: Battling with Riolu against her grandfather lots of times, pulling heavy weights in the snow(while wearing shorts and a short sleeved shirt) and doing pull-ups in a tree. All that time her grandfather has been with her and has been training her on strength alone, so I don't get why he is surprised that his granddaughter isn't very busy with the spiritual side. I'm not seeing them meditate or something.

After we see Team Rocket think up plan to steal Korrina's stuff once again, we meet up with the gang as they get to a big cave, which Serena says is a shortcut to Pomace Mountain. While inside, Team Rocket scare some Noibat, causing them to fly to and attack Ash and his friends. Korrina, Clemont and Pikachu get split off from the group as they run away from the Noibat, and though they try and find each other for a bit, the sun is going under and they are afraid to get lost in the cave. So they decide to set up camp and look for the others tomorrow. Though I don't understand why Lucario and Korrina aren't able to find each other, like they did in episode 30 while they were a lot further away from each other and didn't even had their matching stones yet. And why can't Ash just send out Fletchling to look for another campfire on the mountain, shouldn't be too hard to find.

Pikachu, Lucario and Korrina have trouble eating and sleeping because they are worried, and Korrina once again mentions how she grew up with Lucario(like how they used to sleep in the same bed), and tells Clemont that they have always been together so now she is not able to sleep unless he is there with her, which Clemont likens to Ash and Pikachu's relationship, even though Ash seems to have no trouble eating without Pikachu there. This seems to get somewhat near what I said the previous episode when Gurkinn tells them that that they have been spending too much time together, and I said that it can be a real problem because if you are raised together without ever being apart, you are never able to develop yourself and be able to stand on your own. But the way Clemont reacts makes it seem like it is a GOOD thing that Korrina is not able to function if she is not together with Lucario.

Clemont then says something about the reason that Lucario not listening might be because he wasn't able to hear her at all. Now this seems plausible to me, Mega Evolving is quite intense and can overstimulate his brain so much that he might need to get used to the feeling of Mega Evolution before he is able to focus on the things going on around him. Except that is not the conclusion at all, or at least not what Korrina makes of it. She just says that that he was suffering so much that he couldn't hear her and that her grandpa was right, they thought they understood each other but Korrina had no idea how Lucario felt. But they are like siblings right? If this was really a feelings thing, then why didn’t Lucario just tell her how he feels?

Ash sends out Fletchling to search for Korrina, Clemont and Pikachu as soon as it's day, meaning he was smart enough to think up what I said but felt he had to wait till now to do it? But as Korrina and Clemont get ready to search as well, they get attacked by Team Rocket, who try to steal Pikachu and Korrina's Keystone. Fletchling comes across them and flies back to get Ash and co. but suddenly it isn't really necessary anymore because for no reason, Lucario's stone begins to glow and he is able to lead them to Korrina. Lucario 'saves' Korrina at the last second but even though the group is back together again, they are not able to fight Team Rocket's mechanically powered-up pokémon. Lucario signals that he wants to try Mega Evolution again and Clemont tells her that this might be their only hope, even though Ash and Serena are now here was well and could use every pokémon they have together to try and beat Team Rocket. We get a weird Tap, rewind, Tap , rewind, Tap sequence as Korrina activates her Key stone and Lucario Mega Evolves, but even though he is able to get some good hits, he loses control almost immediately(meaning his control has gotten worse, cause he was able to last much longer against Gurkinn last episode). He also loses control very differently than before because instead of being hyper focused in his target and not stopping even when it's down, meaning he should have continued fighting Team Rocket’s pokémon, he suddenly turns around and starts creating new targets, including his own trainer.

The problem seems to be solved pretty easily as Korrina just shouts Lucario's name for a while till he starts to listen, and he easily beats Team Rocket. But luckily it isn't really an easily fix because as soon as Team Rocket is gone, he loses control again till he passes out from exhaustion, meaning they still have a lot of work to do and they continue to Pomace Mountain.

I am really happy the episode ended this way, because all too often things are magically fixed with the smallest bit of effort and a bit of love. So, let's see how Korrina is going to solve this next episode.

My opinion:

The group has reached Pomace Mountain and meet an old woman named Mabel, who lives in a giant treehouse/mansion hybrid. Mabel wants to start with a battle right away and both instantly Mega Evolve their pokémon. Lucario is not able to make any contact with Mabel's Mawile, and after being scolded by Korrina for not listening to her(even though she didn't give him an order?) he loses control again and Mawile knocks him out with one move. Meanwhile Team Rocket make another plan to steal stuff.

Mabel leads them inside and tells them all to make flower arrangements together with their pokémon, much to Korrina's annoyance. Serena makes one that matches Fennekin’s colors, Ash makes the biggest, Bonnie uses so much you could call it a deforestation and Korrina tries to make the 'best'. Clemont uses another one of his inventions, and even though everyone's flowers are destroyed by the explosion, they are able to show perfect copy’s to Mable that evening. Mabel says that she can tell from Ash his piece, that his and Pikachu's heart have become one...because...they both like tall flower arrangements? She then skips over everyone else and only gives her opinion about Korrina and Lucario's piece, with exists out of two separate ones, though Mabel still feels it shows they have similar personalities.

Mabel sends them off the next day to collect more flowers(what if some of them are rare or poisonous? Ash and co. won't know), evaluates their arrangements and asks them to do it again tomorrow. What does stand out to me is the fact that the arrangements are much more similar to each other this time, similar height, colors, presentation. After at least four days, Korrina and Lucario are out to gather flowers again and Korrina spots some white flowers on top of a cliff. She tries to reach them but the rock she holds breaks off and she falls down. Lucario tries too but nearly falls as well. Then Korrina gets a plan, but it is ridiculous. She will help Lucario reach the flowers, by telling him which direction he has to climb, even though she has absolutely no way of knowing which parts of the cliff are sturdy or not. If she would know, she wouldn't have fallen herself. Still, she is able to direct him by screaming Left and Right, at the 'appropriate' time and they get the flowers.

At night, the gang complains about the constant flower arrangements and Korrina stands outside with Lucario, doing the same. They look at the moon and say it looks the same as it did when they got separated, meaning it's been about a month since last episode! How far away does that lady live? Mabel walks up to them and tells them they will master Megaevolution soon because their only problem was that they have different viewpoints and as soon as that is fixed the problem is solved. Meaning that everything Gurkinn mentioned as reasons why Korrina was failing were wrong.

Then Team Rocket disrupts everything and steals Pikachu and Mawile. Korrina and Lucrio try Megaevolution again, but Lucario still losses control. Though this time he stays fixed to his opponents, so maybe just let him fight and try to get through to him later? Or in the mean time? Because Korrina literally stops the fight and stands in front of him. (she also gets bit, shouldn't that damage her arm at least a little?) Korrina repeats what Mabel said about the two viewpoints and while for some reason the flowers on Korrina's wrist make a bell sound(?) Lucario stops biting her and starts defending them against Team Rocket, having regained control of his aura. I still don't really understand in what way their viewpoints have become the same, but o well. Team Rocket blasts off and Korrina leaves together with Lucario the next morning, so Ash can have some more time to train.

So yeah, I still don't understand the flower thing, or it what way it helped. Their viewpiont needed to come together, but did Mabel mean that after they had pretty much already used every flower, they both chose for that white one?

My opinion:

Ash and co. are once again traveling through a forest and see three pokémon collecting berries together. They walk away as to not to disturb them, but then come running back when they notice an Ursaring is stealing the berries. The pokémon themselves don't use any attack moves on the Ursaring for some reason, even though that would be more logical, but Ash does plan on doing that. And while I can understand his motives, these are wild pokémon, and this is pretty normal behaviour. He might be able to fry the Ursaring this one time, but as soon as he is gone the Ursaring will continue doing the same, as is his nature. In the long term, this makes no difference. But it turns out Ash doesn't have to, a Hawlucha jumps out of a tree and fights the Ursaring, pretty much knocking it out. It then climbs back on a tree and poses, before doing his finishing move, even though Ursaring already lies on its back with its eyes closed, not very sportsman-like. However, even though Ursaring is clearly out, it is still able to wake up and move away in the last three seconds before Hawlucha's attack. So, yeah, it is all not very logical, cause I can't imagine that this was Ursaring's plan and he faked being unconscious. The man, who is a caretaker of the forest, tells Ash and co. that opponents always dodge Hawlucha's final move, because it takes to too long, but that’s not what it looked like at all. He might have started far away, but he went pretty fast. I have seen enough flying Pokémon this season start from as far away and still hitting their target. And why did he get so damaged from hitting the ground that he seemed near to passing out himself?

Ursaring comes back, looking completely unscathed, and holding a big rock to knock out Hawlucha. Ash doesn't agree with this and instead of asking Pikachu to attack or at least distract(he does eventually but at the last second), Ash goes and stands in front of the pokémon he knows doesn't fight fair nor is very friendly. By the way I noticed Pikachu does a little show as well before attacking, he jumps up way too high, does a somersault, sways his tail from right to left and only then hits the Ursaring. That would have given the Ursaring more than enough time to either dodge or hit Ash with the rock.

Ursaring runs away this time and, after Ash helps Hawlucha up and Hawlcuha flies away, the gang follow the caretaker to his house. The man, called Keaton, tells them that there are many strong fighting types in these woods and Hawlucha has beaten them all, earning him the nickname 'Forest champion'. But how did he beat every strong pokémon in the forest and also lose each time because his finishing move is too slow. It either one or the other.

Keaton offers to show them where Hawlucha trains and they see Hawlucha trying to perfect his attack. Ash wants to help him and how does he do that? By offering to be a living punching bag of course!(he at least puts a piece of wood in front of him as protection) But no matter how many times Hawlucha tries, Ash is always able to move away right before he hits. Now I would think that the problem would be either one of both of two things. He is either not fast quick enough and needs more speed, or he needs to become more agile and practice changing direction at the last second so the attack can't be dodged by simply moving slightly backwards. But everyone keeps saying the problem is that he poses, but why would that do anything? They only dodge while he is nearly at its target, they're not moving away while he is standing still op top of a tree.

Suddenly the Ursaring and a Conkeldurr show up together with a Machamp who was the previous Forest Champion but was defeated by Hawlucha, so it went into the mountains to train. Hawlucha and Machamp start battling, though it all looks a bit weird. First Hawlucha hits Machamp multiple times in a row and we can see Machamp reacting to the punches like they hurt, and then right after Machamp is suddenly smiling and isn't hurt by them at all. Ursaring and Conkeldurr interrupt the battle and try and knockout Hawlucha(by the way, right before they do that we can see little punch partials on the back of Machamp while he is being hit on the front). Machamp figures out what they are doing and knocks them out before grabbing them and telling Hawlucha that they will finish their fight later. But this whole part makes no sense if you put everything together. When the gang go to Hawlucha's training area, we see a short moment where the forest bullies go to Machamp and lie to him that Hawlucha is stealing things, with that convincing the Machamp to fight. But if Machamp was the forest champion before, then he has surely dealt with them before and should know that they are the forest bullies, so why would he just suddenly believe them enough to immediately fight Hawlucha and not even try and talk it out, as we know pokémon can do that as well.

Now that Hawlucha's battle with Machamp has ended somewhat abruptly, Ash tells him that he wants to battle with him and would also like him to join his team. The battle starts and we see Hawlucha can be pretty fast and agile, so he shouldn't have so much trouble with that finishing move. When Hawlucha wants to try his finishing move on Froakie, we learn what Ash had told him, to go down while spinning with his arms close to his body, and though that will help with speed, it would make it much more difficult to aim right and it would be even harder to change direction if the opponent dodges. I mean, the idea is that he would be too fast to dodge, but the only reason Froakie didn't get away was because Ash was too busy looking at Hawlucha. Hawlucha decides to join Ash's team as Machamp can take over his duties, but I will say that the capture feels weird to me. Hawlucha behaves a lot like a person and the way he looks keeps making be feel like he is a 4 year old in a custom next to Ash. He doesn't feel like a pokémon that much.

And so, they continue on.

My opinion:

The group come across a Canyon and decide to take a break and let their pokémon meet Hawlucha, becauses apperently they haven't done that yet? Don't they normally feed all their pokémon together every day? Suddenly someone flies over them and they learn that there are a lot of Skytrainers who battle there. And the consept of it is pretty interesting, but it anooyes me that the trainers can pretty much make any movement, or stand upright for long periots of time and still hover in place, that is not how wind works! Their suits are also way too small, notmally these kinds of suit also connect at the legs, those people(and our protaganists later) are too big and long to be pushing up by air that only hit the little arm thingies.

The group finds the consept very interesting as well and goes to a place nearby to get the flysuits and try Sky battling themselves. When Clemont, Serena and Ash have their suits on, they get brought to a simulator to practice. Ash and Serena are almost pro's at it even though it is their first time and this would in real life be very hard, but o well, par for the course. On of the instructers sees Ash fly and challegdes him to a battle. She says her last battle, the one the group saw in the canyon, wasn't much of a challege, but does she really expect a small Fletchling to be a bigger treat than a Skarmory? Her Talonflame seems to understand that and refuses to battle Fletchling, but agrees to fight Hawlucha. Fletchling is hurt by this but Moria pormises that if Hawlicha wins, Fletchling gets to battle. They go to the Canyon and both Moria and Ash jump into it. I would find this rediculusly dangerous for Ash and something most places never allow because they would fear the lawsuits, but okay... Hawlucha tries his best but as he can't really fly and only glide, he loses the battle. Bonnie tries to convince Moria to battle Fletchling anyway, though Moria wasn't the problem, they need to convince Talonflame. Luckily that will be a whole lot easier as Team Rocket trap it in a net, meaning that there will surely be a moment of 'you saved me so now I owe you.'

As Team Rocket try to escpe, Ash, Serena and the instructors use their wingsuits to fly to the ballons and release Talonflame. But this is another example of wingsuit not working as they should, as we see no gust of wind, nor do we see them ask their pokémon to make one. Meaning they should not be able to fly upwards to the baloon the way they do. They go staight up, in a neat line, exactly to their target, in full control. Then Serena makes a bit of weird choice which looked to me like it went wrong, but that's not how they treat it in the episode. Pretty much eaveryone has reached the net and they can strat to free Talonflame, and then suddenly Serena sends out Fenniken and tells it to use Flamethrower on the ballon. The ballons gets destroyed, through off everyone who has hanging on to the net and the ballon, together with Talonflame, crashes onto the hard rock below. So it seemed to me that Serena had made the wrong decition, but no one acts like it don't go to plan, so it was their plan to let poor Talonflame get slammed into the rocks instead of getting him out of the net in the air?

Ash and the others land and a short battle begins, Fletchling uses Razor wing on its foes and then steelwing to break the net. But why didn't he use that same more while the ballon was in the air? And if something as simple as that can break the net, why couldn't Talonflame just use a move while inside it? Team Rocket gets blasted off and Talonflame respects Fletchling a bit more now so they go and battle. Fletchling thinks back to Bonnie saying that being small isn't so bad because there are things only they can do because they are small, and as we see him dodge Talonflame's attack, Bonnie spells it out for us screaming 'it's easier to dodge 'cus your small!' We got it Bonnie, you don't have to say it. The battle continues and after getting one hit with Bravebird, Talonflame chases Fletching till he has him 'cornered', even though Fletchling can pretty much every way except straight back or forward. Ash tells him to dodge and then fly up, but them Fletching just dodges BY flying up, so that whole part doesn't really make sense. Then Moria gets more serious and Talonflame is suddenly able to hit Fletchling every time, which every move, even though we had just establised that Flethcing could use its small frame to dodge attacks easier. Fletchling gets trapped inside a fire attack and then, as is the most dramatisch of course, evolves so it can win the fight.

And that's it, they win and they continue on, telling the people they will come back again even though everyone knows that Ash most likely will never set foot there again.

My opinion:

The group reaches Reflection Cave and go inside. They are all amazed that in Reflection Cave, there are reflective surfaces, and Ash keeps running off like an idiot instead of staying with the group, causing him to eventually get lost. When he finally stands still and looks in one of the 'mirror's', the mirror seems to open up and we can see a sad looking Ash, who reaches for Pikachu and pulls him into the mirror. The original Ash jumps into the mirror to get Pikachu back and the rest of the group gets to Ash just in time to see him disappear.

We see original Ash run out of the cave and into a weird looking forest(it doesn't look mirrored though, just different). There he finds his friends again, but they are clearly not his real ones. Not only are they all slightly lighter in color, their personalities are different as well, though in a kinda weird way. Clemont is a tech guy and a bit slow, so now he is into magic and runs fast, okay, that's kind of mirrored. But Serena is just mostly rude and serious, something the original Serena can also sometimes be to an extent and this should then mean that the original Serena is always polite? Cause she isn't. And Bonnie has a different accent and seems a lot nicer, but the original Bonnie wasn't necessarily mean? And why does anyone else keep their normal accent?

The alternate Serena challenges Ash to a battle, which he easily wins, so is the mirrored thing that original Fenniken is strong, so alternate is weak or something? Because I haven't seen any proof of the former. Also Serena is nice to Fenniken after she loses and is a gracious loser, is that then also mirrored? That's the problem with a mirror episode as this, what is mirrored and what isn't, not all of them have different voices or interests, but some of them do, there is no clarity. Like, alternate Ash really cares about his Pikachu, shouldn't that mean that original Ash doesn't?

The group now believes original Ash is not just their own, and the alternate Ash appears from behind a tree with Pikachu in his arms. He explains that he lost his own Pikachu when he ran into the cave, and original Ash offers to help him find it. At the same time we see the alternate Pikachu, fighting with Team Rocket. But those look like the original Team Rocket, how did they get there?

We then switch back to original Clemont, Bonnie and Serena in the caves, where Clemont takes out a random machine of his called the 'Other Dimension Converter'. And I understand it is a joke, but come on, this is just ridiculous, no way he expected them to ever be in this situation and no way he has just simply created something that can warp space and time. Even if it just explodes right away, the idea is just stupid. Alternate Clemont uses a 'spell' to find alternate Pikachu and, as this is the opposite world, it actually works. After Team Rocket captures Pikachu a fight breaks out, where both Ash's sent out a Hawlucha, meaning that isn’t mirrored, but the pokémon have different personalities, so that is mirrored. While their fighting, Clemont steals back the Pikachu's. Though instead of simply opening the balls, he throws them high in the air so that Serena can blast them open. Why does it always have to be big and dramatic, why can't it be safe and logical?

So, Team Rocket gets defeated, all the alternate people are friends again and original Ash hurries back to the cave to go back to his reality. That ends up being a bit harder than expected, but after some wishing, wanting and dangerous leaps, which are normal with Ash, everyone is back where they should be...except Team Rocket, who are still in the alternate world. So, well, I guess they will randomly show up next episode without explanation?

My opinion:

Ash is busy training for his oncomming battle with Korrina, and Froakie learns Cut while defending Pikachu(from something that Pikachu could have handled on his own easily), so Ash wants to see what happens if he has a double battle with them. Oh wait no, he doesn't let Froakie battle together with Pikachu, but with Hawlucha...so why were they gushing about his bond with Pikachu before the intro if they aren't going to use that? The battle begins and Hawlucha doesn't really listen to Ash his commands because he likes his fights to be dramatic and take lots of damage, which annoys Froakie. When Ash orders Froakie to attack Bunnelby, who to that point had only been Hawlucha's foe, Hawlucha gets angry at Froakie for interfering, even though Hawlucha has surely heard that Ash commanded him so he should be angry at Ash. After Froakie also knocks out Chespin while dodging his attack, Hawlucha gets even more angry and attacks Froakie, even though the reason for all this is Ash, not Froakie. Froakie fights back and while they fight Ash tells them to stop, but doesn't do anything logical like return them to their pokéballs for a second, or even order Pikachu to shock them, a technic he has used dozends of times. No, he jumps right in the middle of them, risking injury. Ash scolds them both for fighting and though Hawlucha and Froakie first look sorry, Hawlucha walks right up to Froakie and hits him in the face! And then Ash comes in and says ''I told you two to quit it!'', Froakie didn't do anything you idiot! He just got hit in the face and didn't even hit Hawlucha back, this is just unfair! And then when Ash wants to teach them a new move and Hawlucha tries to 'make up', Froakie doesn't accept it and Ash feels like Froakie should just forgive him. I wouldn't forgive Hawlucha like that if he hit me in the face! And it is so clear that the problem is with Hawlucha who not only was the one who attacked first, but is also the one who can’t double battle unless his ally doesn't interfere, something which is quite common in double battles. The problem is with Hawlucha, not Froakie, so that special training with them is useless cause if Ash sent out Hawlucha to fight with any other pokémon during a double battle he will have the exact same problem.

We get a short moment when Serena finds out all the pokepuffs are gone and wonders who took them, and like...really? Everyone knows it's Chespin, it has always been Chespin and you know that so the fault is yours for not doing anything to prevent it like putting it in a more secure box or something. And Clemont also doesn't do anything to teach Chespin to stop doing it, so Chespin is not the wrong one here, if they teach him no alternative and make it really easy to do, he will do it and you can’t blame him. Hawlucha and Froakie try the new move Ash wants to teach them, but when Froakie tries to jump on Hawlucha he lands wrong, obscuring Hawlucha's vision and causing them both to fall. This seems like an easy fix to me: Let Froakie practice jumping on objects that aren't moving, when if that goes well let him practice jumping on Hawlucha while it runs on the ground, and only if that also goes well try and do it while he's flying. In the mean time they can also give Hawlucha a backpack to wear while flying, so he gets used to having moving weight on his back.

But no, as always, Ash has a plan but doesn't know how to actually teach his pokémon it correctly, so he just lets them do it a bunch of times hoping they will figure it out for themselves. Suddenly, Ash gets grabbed by some vines from a wild Trevenant and dragged into the forest. Froakie and Hawlucha try and help him but get trapped in vines as well, and even though they could just attack the vine that is wrapped around their feet, they instead swing around till the thing snaps by itself. They find Ash his hat and get a flashback about Ash telling them to work together, which they then do, it is really that easy. They find Ash and, of course, use their move that they have practiced about two times and has failed every time(and not because they didn't work together, but because it was something they had never done before). I mean, at least it didn't work immediately, cause that is something what happens most times in the show, but it is still really stupid that Ash wants them to do it now, knowing they haven't even mastered doing it in a calm environment.

Ash jumps in front of the attack from Trevenant, as usual, and this amazes his pokémon, while it shouldn't because he always does this. And Ash also screams ''If that's how it is, battle me! Cause I'm going to protect my friends.'' while the only reason his pokémon are in a bit of a problem now(though not really much of a problem, they are slightly damaged but should easily be able to fight back still), is because HE wanted them to try a unfamiliar move instead of just fighting normal. He created the problem, not the Trevenant, and by the way he could have also just used Fletchinder. Trevenant stops attacking and it turns out he actually just wanted Ash his help setting free his friends who are stuck in a net, so why did he kidnap and drug Ash exactly? He could have just asked as he does now, or lead them to the pokémon in the net, how is this the superior way to do it in Trevenant's mind? The rest of the gang finds Ash, who tells them what happened, and Pikachu cuts the net. But then another net flies through the air and catches Pikachu. They fight Team Rocket and this time the new move is used again, this time successful. I guess that one other failed try with the Trevenant was all the training they needed.

They win, Team Rocket gets blasted off, because of this one succes Froakie and Hawlucha are suddenly friends, and they continue on their journey.

My opinion:

The group has arrived at Prof. Sycamore's annual summer camp, were they will be staying the whole week. Team Rocket is there as well, showing that they really should not be part of Team Rocket and simply chose one of the many jobs they seems to excel at. Everyone group gets their own ginormous luxurious cabin(why did I always have to sleep in a small tent at summercamp?) and are, of course, part of team Froakie. When they notice a Squirtle and Conkeldurr are battling outside, they all go to the beach to watch. The squirtle jumps around a lot, which they call 'dancing' in this episode, and everyone is impressed. The squirtle wins with Skull Bash and Ash runs in to ask for a battle as well. The boy with the squirtle is part of Team Squirtle(shocker), and recognises Serena from her pokévideo so he brings in his friend Shauna. Shauna is a 'fan' of Serena because of that one small video, which is kinda weird because even if Shauna is just a fan because she think Fennekin is cute, Fennekin is one of the starter pokémon of that region, so there will be thousands of video’s of people with Fennekin as their partner. Shauna shows her own video's, of which she has a lot more than Serena, though Serena's video has for some reason double the views? Shauna even mentions that she makes video's when she gets new ribbons, meaning she has already competed it some performer contests, and she is STILL not as popular as a girl that started traveling a month or two ago and made one simply video with lots of borrowed props and outfits.

Shauna then lets out her bulbasaur, and Clemont calls it snooty after it doesn't immediately want to be friends with their pokémon. Chespin let's itself out and then Ash throws out Froakie as well, so we're just a charmander short of a full starter party. Serena gives all of them poképuffs, but aren't poképuffs made somewhat depended on the pokémon? There is no way she has poképuffs already made for all these different kinds of pokémon she is now feeding them too. And there it is, a charmander racing through the building and landing right in the middle of the group, and I don't know if it is just me, but all these kanto starters look a lot smaller than normal. The trainer of the charmander is a boy named Trevor, and though the apologises for the trouble charmander is causing(trying to bite other pokémon, setting Chespin on fire) he doesn't acutally do anything about it, why doesn't he return it to its pokéball? Or why doens't he just ask someone there if they want to battle him to blow of some steam. I think that chamander just really doesn't get enough exercise and he will be much easier to handle if he does.

The group talks a bit till a woman announces that everyone need to go to the beach for introductions. There Prof. Sycamore explains how this camp works. They will be competing against each other every day, 1st get 10 points, 2nd 7 points, 3rd 3 points and everyone else gets nothing, but they still encourage you to help each other. Sure, sounds nice but if you actually want to win this then that would be a very stupid thing to do. I mean it is bad to purposely hinder your opponents, but to not help them is something completely different.

For the first day, they will just have one-on-one battles to get to know each other, with no points awarded. Ash battles Tierno, Serena battles Shauna and Clemont will battle Trevor. Poor Bonnie will not be allowed to battle at all, no bonding for her. Clemont and Serena have some trouble as both their pokémon are not very experienced fighters, which I can believe, but the only reason Ash has trouble is because of the 'dance moves', because they dodge in a rhythm, but that honestly sounds more like a disadvantage, meaning that as soon as Ash figures out the rhythm, they won't be able to dodge well anymore because they use a predictable technic. Tierno orders a Rapid Spin while Froakie counters with Water Pulse, but for some reason Froakie doesn't use the attack right away and the squirtle is able to touch him. Yes you read it right, he doesn't use Rapid Spin, he just TOUCHES Froakie, and then Tierno is declared the winner, which is really unfair. When they are eating a little later, Bonnie asks Serena how her battle went and Serena says that it was a lot of fun, she learned a lot and Shauna showed her a lot as well. But why didn't we SEE any of that, we only saw both of you use one move and Fennekin getting hit by energyball.

It ends with Serena brushing Fennekins tail and wondering what she will chose as her own goal to persue.

My opinion:

We start with seeing the gang jogging on the beach in the early morning, Serena at the front, which is quite a difference with how the first episode this season started. Apparently it is already day 3 now and we quicky see some flashbacks off the day before, they had a fishing competition and Trevor was able to catch a wailord. Though Prof. Sycamore says ''team Squirtle ended up with quite a catch, and they did it in a creative way. They earned every one of those 10 points'', but the flashback just shows us Trevor holding on to a rod and a wailord jumping out of the water, so what is creative about that? Don't tell us things happened and then show us footage that doesn't support it.

Now, on day 3, they will be making their own pokévision video's. To help them ‘'make exiting video's '', a woman has laid out all the things they need to make poképuffs. But what a weird decision, of the thousands of things you can do and film, they choose cooking? I don’t think many people would be interested in doing that for a video, even Serena's first video only had the cooking part as a small percentage of the entire thing, and Serena loves cooking puffs. It's a weird thing to put all the focus on.

The group go back to their cabin and Serena shows them her idea for the video. She wants to call it 'Friends' and shows a drawing of their pokémon playing in a field. But is that her whole idea, that is going to be what beats every other video? Just some pokémon playing in a field? Serena and Bonnie go and make some poképuffs while Clemont and Ash work on perfecting the camera, and we see Fennekin help with the baking, except she doesn't bake, instead Fennekin uses a small flamethrower to lightly burn the top part of the puffs. Shauna walks in to tell them that Pokémon performer Aria made a new video showing her Fennekin evolved into a Braixen. Bonnie doesn't know what that is so Shauna explains that a Pokémon Performer a 'cute' individual, who cooks poképuffs, grooms pokémon, performs with props, honestly just kinda sounds like a variant of a beauty pageant. They also perform with their pokémon attacks, kinda like how a Pokémon Contest works, and the one that wins the master class is called the Kalos Queen/King, and right now that is Aria.

Ash and Clemont come back with the camera and they start searching for the best place to film, even though Serena's drawing had the pokémon in a green field so I don't know why they are looking around at the beach, we saw more than enough green area's around the academy. The group goes looking around in the woods as well, and after a long time Serena spots a field with flowers. Serena enthusiastically start running towards it but Ash runs after her, shouting at her to wait. And yes, it turns out that there was a cliff, but there is no way that Ash knew that! He never shouted at her to wait before, and even if he did he never did it sounding this distressed with no clear danger in sight. Both Serena and Ash fall down the cliff, which is a really weird one by the way because it changes to something with columns around and a thin roof even though there are very big trees on top of it, and Bonnie and Clemont go search for help. Instead of, you know, using that robot arm which has been shown picking up people before.

Serena gets a wet cloth to put on Ash his foot and mentions that ''Pikachu is so awesome, coming to find you because he cares so much about you'', really girl? Pikachu didn't come find him, he literally followed Ash while he ran, and I'm sure Pikachu cares, but let's not forget that Pikachu is pretty depended on Ash for food and other care as well. Serena randomly lets out Fennekin and feeds her a twig while exclaiming that they are a team as well. Ash tells Serena that they have done a lot of camp stuff(dude it is day 3) and that he going to use all of it while he is battling in the future. And yes, nothing is truly a waste of time because everything can have some use or lesson in it, but not everything has a lesson or use for one exact topic, like battling. The fishing won't necessarily help his battling, but might be useful for another reason in the future, like if he enters a another fishing competition because then he has some experience. Serena asks Ash what his dream is, even though she has surely heard him say it at least a dozen times, and then once again mentions that she isn't sure what her dream is yet. Why do they lay it on so thick? Prof. Sycamore finds them and they get rescued by Team Rockt in disguise. They find another field that looks just like the other one, little pretty much copy and paste, and start filming their video. So....they first baked some poképuffs, spent a good portion of the day looking for an area, fell in somewhere so Clemont and Bonnie had to walk all the way back to the academy, then people had to find equipment and walk to the cliff, then Ash has presumably gone back to the academy to have a quick check of his foot so the academy doesn't get a lawsuit, and now they still have time to film and edit their video?!

In the evening the videos get shown and we see the last two, which happens to be the only ones that matter because we know the makers, Team Squirtle and Team Froakie, Team Squirtle has a simple introduction video, and then we see what the gang has been able to put together at the last moment. Everyone stands on the field, a poképuff rolls away, all the pokémon chase it, Chespin eats it and the rest of the pokémon pretty much attack the basket to get a poképuff. Not a bad video on its own, but not really..., what did Prof. Sycamore say again ''poké vision lets trainer and pokémon show what makes them special'', so what makes them special is that Serena bakes things, Chespin eats a lot and the rest of the pokémon can get pretty pushy if their hungry, and Bonnie, Clemont and Ash don't matter.

While Serena and Shauna sit together at the docks, Serena tells her that the idea to use poképuffs in the video came from what they went through today.But how can that be? Making poképuffs was the first thing you did when you started preparing, I'm pretty sure the poképuffs were always meant to be in the video in some way or form. Serena expresses interest to go and watch a showcase some day and they all go inside to hear who won. Number 3 had a nice video centred around water pokemon, second place had one centred around flying pokémon(why are they all centred around one type?), and the winner is.....the random short video about pokémon misbehaving. I mean, Prof. Sycamore says that ''the way you brought out the unique character of each pokémon'' is the reason they won. So, let's look again:

Fenniken get on a flower crown and misses the poképuffs, what wonderful characterisation. Then the pokémon run after it and Chespin eats it, cause his whole character is that he eats a lot, and then everyone tries to get to the basket so abruptly that all the puffs fly everywhere. The only one with a tiny bit of characterisation is Chespin, and it's the laziest of all, eats a lot. So no, I don't feel they should have won. Maybe they would be able to get up to 3rd place because people can vote for things they find funny, put being number 1 because of characterisation is nonsense.

My opinion:

The episode starts on the end of day 4, what happend on day 4 itself we don't know. But, as both Team Squirtle and Team Froakie are tied with 13 points, and we know that Team Squirtle has won 10 points with fishing and Team Froakie got their 10 points with their video, we can conclude that Team Froakie had gotten 3de place while fishing, and that Team Squirtle has gotten 3rd place on whatever activitey has taken place on day 4. On day 5, there will be a Pokémon Orienteering competition, meaning that they'll have to find some checkpoints around the area and put the stamp that belongs to that checkpoint in their book, fastest wins. Prof. Sycamore has two small screens on which he will try and observe the 'bond' between trainer and pokémon(good luck buddy) and has contact with two women that are at the, I would expect, most risky checkpoints.

Both Team Froakie and Team Squirtle reach checkpoint A and they learn that one person of each team needs to climb the mountain with one of their pokémon to reach the checkpoint. Tierno and his Squirtle start and Ash with Froakie begin soon after, but Tierno and Squirtle slip and start to plummet down. I would expect this to be the reason they have that woman from the camp on this location, as a safety feature, but no, the woman does nothing and the only reason Tierno doesn't have to be scraped off the rocks is because Froakie used his frubbles. If Ash hadn't been there, Tierno had died, what a fun, safe, happy camp this is. From this point the logic and continuity will stay pretty bad. The logic is weird because why would they let Serena go across the rope bridge if she is clearly too afraid, why is there a woman standing by the maze-like challenge and not by much more dangerous ones, like where we see Ash dangle from a tree? But the continuity is worse. First we see Team F and Team S are equally fast, Ash goes back down the mountain while Tierno is still climbing so now Team F should get a good head start, but when we then see them run to the next checkpoint, Team S is running a few feet IN FRONT of Team F, then they do the rope checkpoint which Shauna is able to do quickly but Serena takes forever so that should set them back a bit, but when Team F reaches the maze and Clemont goes in, we can see Team S running up behind them, and we know Team S isn't just at the maze later because they did another checkpoint first, because when Prof. Sycamore gets the message that all checkpoints have been cleared, he is told that Team Froakie completed their stamps first. I also find it annoying that they once again make whole point of it that Clemont is so very slow, but it means nothing because Team Froakie is the fastest anyway. But let's continue...

As both teams are literally running right next to one another, fog appears in the forest and the teams lose each other. Then Bonnie gets lost as well, even though Clemont is always at the back of the group and should have been able to see her walk away, the fog is not that deep. Bonnie sees a new pokémon that is able to make flowers bloom and follows it further away from the group. We go back to Ash, Serena and Clemont, who notice Bonnie and Pikachu are gone. And I still stand by what I said, it is nonsense that Clemont didn't see Bonnie leave, 'but Clemont wasn't with the group!' I hear you say, and indeed he wasn't. Do you know where he was? He was a few feet behind it, as you can see when they call his name, he runs two steps and yells out ''I'm back here'', meaning he could have at any moment picked up his pace and he would have been with the group. Team Squirtle hears them call out for Bonnie and Pikachu and decide to help them look instead of going back and winning the race, and while that is a good thing to do, they lay it on a bit thick here with Clemont's reaction. Trevor looks down and is able to see subtle paw- and footprints on the grass, even though we had just established that people aren't even able to see a whole person if it is only a few feet away. Trevor isn't even close to the ground when he sees them!

While walking around Bonnie accidently angers a beedrill, then falls on top of a amoonguss and gets hit by its Spore. She sleepily walks quite far till she falls of a cliff and lands on top of a drifblim. She then slides of the drifblim and lands HEAD FIRST on the other side of the cliff after falling at least 13 feet! Fletchinder finds Bonnie and flies back to the group, Ash and co. SEE Flechinder even though he is surely 30 feet away so now the fog is suddenly not so thick anymore. The group angers the same amoonguss and it uses Spore again, and even though nobody is correctly covering their mouth no one gets sleepy. They also use water attacks to remove the spores, but why not an air attack to remove it? Water will only help encase it if it touches it and there is no way all of it will get hit, even with the pretty explosion effect.

They find Pikachu on one side of the cliff and then Fletchinder directs them to Bonnie, who is either a corpse or has a severely broken neck. They think up the plan to use the drifblim as a bridge to reach Bonnie, and thought Clemont originally wants to do it Ash assures him that he has much more experience in endangering his own life. They choose to attack near the drifblim to wake them up, but do that after first going down into the cliff where the pokémon are sleeping. As the drifblim are flying upwards, Ash wastes precious time by first placing Pikachu down and giving Froakie some direction before starting to run. But Ash makes it anyway and the drifblim don't even attack him as he continues to jump 15 feet from pokémon to pokémon. He then jumps down at least 40 feet to Bonnie, landing without even bending his knees. Seeing as Bonnie is now no longer alone and there isn' t really a hospital nearby or something, I would expect Ash to simply wait for the rest to come back with help, or, if there is something nearby, for Ash to take Bonnie on his back and run all the way through the woods to it. Though, as we have seen, I don't really think there is much wrong with her as because of her behaviour we can rule out a broken neck, she might have a concussion but that isn't really life threatening. Never the less, Ash comes up with the most stupid plan: Jump back across the drifblim! Ash thinks it is so risky to just let Bonnie lie down, he rather jumps across living beings 300 feet above the ground, WHAT AN IDIOT. Not even risking his own life, but poor unconscious Bonnie's as well, and without even discussing it with his friends.

The jumping goes kinda okay till a gust of wind moves him away from the edge he was about to jump to, so what does he do? Well we can clearly see he is very far away from the edge, too far to ever make it, so of course he will just mindlessly jump forward. Ash plummets down with Bonnie, but Pikachu jumps down to grab him and then Pikachu gets caught by the Aipom Arm so they are saved, cause Pikachu for some reason has the strength to hold both Ash and Bonnie's weight with his little arms. But just so everyone is aware, had any of Pikachu's or Clemont’s actions been a second later, Ash and Bonnie would have been dead! Ash should have just left her safely on the other side while the rest got help.

We get a little time skip and Bonnie is just upright and talking again, nothing wrong with her, and tells them about the pokémon she saw. The pokémon appears on the other side of the cliff for a moment before running away, and we go back to the camp where both teams don't get any points because they are the last there.

My opinion:

It's day 6 of camp and it is time for the final event, the battle competition. We skip pretty much all the battles though, and only see the battle Team Froakie's has right before they reach the finals. The battle itself doesn't really mean anything as the members of Team Froakie all use one move and easily knockout the other teams pokémon. So now Team Froakie and Team Squirtle are in the final together, what a surprise. The teams get time to have a strategy meeting and Team Rocket thinks up another plan to steal pokémon. They tell Team Squritle that they can perform a health check and the team places their pokémon in the cart Team Rocket is pushing, but why wouldn’t they just asks for the pokéballs? It's always my pet peeve with them, they could easily ask for the ball so they can control the pokémon, but always catch them in such a way that the pokémon can simply break out or defend themselves with little trouble.

At the pokémon center Team Squirtle realizes that something doesn't add up and together with Team Froakie they go and look for their missing pokémon. Team Rocket are in the middle of the woods with the stolen pokémon, but are still quickly found by their boss and right after by the gangs pokémon. How far away did they take that cart? It has been long enough for Team Squirtle to expect their pokémon to be ready, so at the very least Team Rocket should have been pushing that thing for a half hour or something, how are they still so close?

The pokémon in the cart are revealed and everyone sends out their pokémon to fight, though it only lasts a few seconds, with both Inkey and Pumpkaboo being defeated because they had some frubbles thrown at them, but that is probably so they can spend more time on the final battle so I'll let it slide. Team Rocket are blasted off and the pokémon are saved.

Back on the beach it is time for the finals. The fight start pretty good, but for some reason Team Froakie repeatedly doesn't tell their pokémon to dodge, so now they are all damaged and Ash and co. talk about how strong their opponents are, but they aren't that strong, it's just that they have dodged your attacks and you haven't dodged any of theirs. They also make it a point that Squirtles rhythm is the reason that their losing, but, just as I said before when Ash battled Tierno on the first day, that should be a disadvantage. If you do everything in a certain rhythm then that means that it is predictable.

Fenniken get knocked out after once again not being told to dodge, and Pikachu just narrowly avoids the solar beam because Chespin helped him out. Then Pikachu uses Thunderbolt on Charmender, who is suddenly unable to dodge himself and get one hit KOd. Proofing one again that it was true what I said, them saying that Team Squirtle's pokémon are strong has no foundation. Fennekin, who has had barely any training, only fainted after having been hit three times, twice by super effective moves, Charmander and Bulbasaur only gets hit once, not even by a super effective move, and faint right after.

Squritle gets one hit KOd as well, at least with an super effective move, and the battle is over. Though Ash did nothing to 'break their rhythm', so I'm not sure why that got so much focus. Serena is a bit sad because Fenniken fainted before the battle was over, so she doesn't feel like she deserves it. And instead of telling her that that isn't true because it wasn't like she hasn't done anything and Fennekin blocked the flamethrower that was about to hit Pikachu, so her and Fenniken deserves it as much as they do, Ash simply tells her that Fennekin might have lost today but she can use that to get stronger. It is so weird, whenever Ash has a double battle and one of his pokémon faints but he ends up winning, he never tells the fainted pokémon that it has lost. If Serena put it effort and added to the fight, then she has won as much as they did.

When they're all looking at some firework at night, Ash asks Tierno if he can teach him his weird battle style because that would make him 'stronger', so Ash and his pokémon spent the entire night dancing. The next day the camp officially ends and as everyone says goodbye, we get a whole load of flashback to moments that happened max. 4 episodes ago, which makes it feel really out of place.

My opinion:

The gang has arrived at Shalour City. Ash wants to go and challenge the gym, but when he finds out it is surrounded by water he suddenly becomes a whiny child, kinda like in the first episode when he also had to wait a while to battle a gymleader and he suddenly had a big personality shift. Korrina hears him whine and shows up together with Lucario. Korrina explains Ash will have to wait a bit longer for the battle and mentions the family motto she and her grandpa live by ''those with the desire to battle must wait patiently'', which is all well and good, but I have never seen her or her grandpa really follow that motto.

As they will have to wait, Ash does a bit more training with his pokémon and even tells Korrina that she can stay and watch because he has nothing to hide. But this once again just sounds stupid. If he hasn't seen Korrina train, but she has seen his training, than that makes that she has the advantage. It has nothing to do with facing people 'head on', he is just making it more difficult for himself for no reason. All Ash’s pokémon have at least a little bit of timing, but Ash has no rhythm at all so his friends try and help him, but he probably trained this with his pokémon every day since camp, so how did his friends not notice this before? Clemont uses one of his stupid experiments which blows up and then Serena offers her help. Apparently she can dance really well, even though we have never seen it and will never see it. They practice dancing till sunset, and only then does Ash decide that this strategy doesn't work for him. So that means that he will now fight Korrina with pokémon that have diligently been practicing a style they will not use.

Korrina calls them down to the beach where the path appears as the tides part, I kinda like this idea but real water doesn't just go away in a few seconds like that, it moves away slowly, gradually. They are let in by Gurkinn, who first wants to tell a story about how one of his ancestors and his lucario found the first keystone and lucarionite here on this island. Though the weird thing is that the lucario grabs the lucarionite out of the ground in perfect orb from, not the way that Korrina found it, where it was part of a big block and needed to be turned into the small orb. Korrina mentions she wants to be as good a gymleader as her grandfather and ancestors, but her grandfather tells her she isn't good enough yet for ''Scroll of Secrets'', some family treasure which lists all a gymleader must know. Though I would expect it will only tell what a good lucario-gymleader must know, as there are many different types of gymleaders which all require different knowledge.

As it's getting pretty late Korrina invites them for diner and to stay the night, so they can battle first thing tomorrow. Which is all well and good, if it hadn't been that Ash started the bloody episode freaking out about having to wait, and now suddenly he is fine with it? I have seen this boy battle in the middle of the night if it's required. And why don’t they just first eat dinner and then battle?

Meanwhile we get Team Rocket hearing about the scroll and wanting to steal it, as per usual. They search the entire building at night, even Gurkinn's room while he is sleeping in it, and eventually find it in the mouth of the lucario statue. As they try to get in the mouth of the statue it helpfully opens, but as soon as they actually take the scroll an alarm goes off. I would expect that if you don't want it to be taken out while you’re not there, hench why the alarm is on there, that you would make it so that the mouth closes if you try and take the scroll out without permission, instead of opening wider. Team Rocket try and get away, partially destroying the building in the progress, and Korrina and Ash go after them to retrieve the scroll. And I will say as someone who knows what is on the scroll, Gurkinn shouldn't let his granddaughter risk her life for it.

Korrina battles Team Rocket and of course wins, with Ash constantly exclaiming how strong and great she is. As a reward for saving the scroll Gurkinn will read it to all of them, even though only Korrina saved it but o well, but it turns out to be some simple rules he made up himself. Like go to bed early, eat in moderation and keep things organized. And though I understand it is somewhat meant as a joke, it doesn't really make any sense. If Gurkinn made it himself then the part of it being an ‘family treasure which only the chosen can see’ can't be true, second, if these are the rules written, why couldn't Korrina read then before now? And why aren't these things that Gurkinn taught her since she was a child anyway, if he believes there are so important. Also, he thing was that the scroll was supposed to list EVERYTHING a gymleader must know, so it should still have more on it then simple life tips.

We end the episode with the battle between Ash and Korrina nearly beginning. I wonder how Ash will do with no preparation and no sleep.

My opinion:

We start the episode with Ash saying that he is going to use the rhythmic battle style even though they had established last episode that the style didn't fit him. Though Clemont makes it a whole other story, saying that Ash stopped perfecting his rhythmic battle style as soon as he saw Korrina and that that’s the issue. But there was no perfecting, Ash just couldn't do it, and he practiced the whole day yesterday after seeing Korrina, so Clemont is talking nonsense.

Ash sends out Hawlucha and the fight begins, but Hawlucha keeps failing to attack or dodge, probably because Ash his only advice is ''use you rhythm to [insert action here]''. That is not how Tierno used his style. I will say it is quite realistic, I have seen countless examples of people using certain training techniques on animals without understanding how it actually worked, just coping the movement or sounds without understanding the meaning. But this should also mean that the battling style might work very good for Ash, if he would only use it right.

As Ash is losing the battle, he looks at Serena and thinks about the dance lesson she gave him yesterday, where she apparently told him that he simply has his own unique rhythm, so Ash decided to just stop dancing and continue the same way he has always battled. Now, Hawlucha easily knocks out his opponent. Next is Fletchinder against Machoke and even though we know Fletchinder has had pretty much no training he still easily knocks out his opponent as well. And I understand that this is done so that when Lucario comes out he can quickly defeat most of Ash his pokémon to make him looks strong and give the battle some tension, but having Fletchling wins so easily just makes it feel fake.

Korrina sends out mega lucario and he, as predicted, quickly defeats Fletchinder. While having some weird blue filter over them, Korrina tells Ash that she and Lucario have trained a lot. We get a short moment where Team Rocker appear near Clemont, Serena and Bonnie, but they are defeated before Ash even notices them.

Hawlucha gets defeated as well and now it's all on Pikachu. Ash tells Pikachu that Korrina and her pokémon might have gotten stronger because of special training, but that they have done that as well. But what does he mean, is he referring to the rhythm training? Cause that is the only special training I know of, and he isn't using that.

Battle goes pretty well, tough for some reason everyone is freaking out over Pikachu using Iron Tail to knock away Lucario's Auro Sphere, like they've never seen a pokémon use a move to counter another move before. Pikachu uses a final thunderbolt and Lucario is defeated. Ash gets his badge and they continue on to Coumarine City.

Generation 6

XY

Episode 1

Episode 2

Episode 3

Episode 4

Episode 5

Episode 6

Episode 7

Episode 8

Episode 9

Episode 10

Episode 11

Episode 12

Episode 13

Episode 14

Episode 15

Episode 16

Episode 17

Episode 18

Episode 19

Episode 20

Episode 21

Episode 22

Episode 23

Episode 25

Episode 26

Episode 27

Episode 28

Episode 29

Episode 30

Episode 31

Episode 32

Episode 33

Episode 34

Episode 35

Episode 36

Episode 37

Episode 38

Episode 39

Episode 40

Episode 41

Episode 42

Episode 43

Episode 44

Episode 45