AG 153 "Battle Dome! Fusion of Fire and Water!!" Preview Thread

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Zhen Lin

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Well, yes, this is a bit jumping the gun, but lo, the manga which more-or-less depicted the Battle Arena episode correctly has already reached Battle Dome:

Scan 1
Scan 2
Scan 3
 
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Wow, two very big details were revealed by those scans:

1. Ash wins. YES, no losing and training saga like Dewford Gym! There were only 3 fillers between this and the last facility...the writers do seem to be picking up the pace.

2. Ash doesn't use any old Pokemon in this one. Shame, it's just Corphish and Swellow. Oh well, I was hoping Squirtle or Kingler would return. Guess Ash may not be using an old Poke in each Facility then. :/

3. Arcanine and Swampert eh? I was hoping for Salamence instead of Arcanine, as that was just in a filler.
 
YAY! a double battle. And it looks like he battles in front of an audience. I bet the writers are going to have to stick in some contests now or have a big block of filler later on to make up for this small set of episodes between Arena and Dome
 
Well, he has seven facilities and May's contests, and he has to fit it all in before D/P is released next year. The writers need to pick up the pace with less filler!
 
I'm really surprised at the way they're pacing this. If Ash wins against Heath he'll have half of his Frontier symbols already (not including Brandon's, which is obviously going to be a/the boss battle of the region), yet so far May only has one of her five ribbons. Either they'll have to focus like mad on contests for a while, or they're going to introduce a mini-arc for Ash.
 
Well Ash has 4 Frontier Brains left, including Brandon, and May has 4 contests left, so they could just alternate from now on. And unless the Battle Pyramid is a tournament, I'll bet they will do the Kanto Grand Festival after Ash battles Brandon, since they usually end a saga with a tournament of some kind.
 
But if May gets a Grand Festival, then she's left with more to do than Ash. She'll need four ribbons plus the Festival, while Ash will only have three symbols plus the final match against Brandon. If they alternate from now on, then May's GF will be the big tournament to finish off the region with, which feels wrong to me. Unless there are going to be a couple of contests in a row, or Ash is going to get a free pass into the Kanto League once he's collected all seven symbols or something.
 
May's Grand Festival will probably take place before Ash defeats Brandon.

The writers want each saga to end with Ash, since he is still the more important character between Ash and May.

And I really hope May doesn't just get 4 more easy contests and that's it, she really needs another loss.

She had two losses in Hoenn, but this time I'm not sure they'll even be time for 2 losses. I'm hoping for one loss though, May needs it badly. She should have lost against Harley...oh well.
 
His Gym badges should be enough to get him into the Indigo League. After his humiliating defeat in the last one, it would be nice to see him at least get further. Of course, we know how the writers feel about seeing the Kanto of season one...
 
Ash needs to finally have that rematch with Richie. It would be funny if Ash used Charizard against Richie's Pikachu in a league match, only this time Charizard would obey him and wipe the floor with Richie's Pika.

Their rematch is LONG overdue.
 
Scott85 said:
Their rematch is LONG overdue.
Click to expand...
...which means that it will never happen. D: A shame, too. I want to see Richie get his butt handed to him for once, that's the only way he can make up for his over-perfectness.

And although another Indigo League would be nice...sadly, it probably won't happen. But we all know that the BF is a huge pile of wasted opportunities, right? :/ Pidgeot would probably come back before we see the Indigo League again.
 
She only needs two more ribbons. The Kanto grand festival only requires participants to collect three.
 
If they made Drew win a Contest once, chances are they'll make Harley win one as well. But what I'd like to see is Jessie somehow pull it off. :p

Another Indigo league would have been nice... chances are they'll visit another Gym. Did they say what City the battle dome is in, btw?
 
Unregistered said:
She only needs two more ribbons. The Kanto grand festival only requires participants to collect three.
Click to expand...

Wuh?! Really?

That's the first time I heard that, which episode did they say that in? I always assumed it would be the same as Hoenn, with 5 ribbons required. :O

OMGZORS/
 
Unregistered said:
She only needs two more ribbons. The Kanto grand festival only requires participants to collect three.
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure she said 5. Source?
 
And didn't Drew's new funky ribbon case have five slots in it??

I don't see any problem with them having the Kanto Grand Festival after Ash beats Brandon. May is just as important as Ash and they need a finale for the saga, if Ash can't provide it then May will have to. Having him re-enter the Indigo league would be cool, but is probably unlikely. But we are assuming that the Battle Pyramid is going to be just another "gym leader" type match like the other BF facilities have been. Scott said Ash has to earn the other 6 symbols before he can challenge the pyramid, so maybe it will end up being a tournament, where the winner gets the privalege of battling Brandon,...or something.
 
I highly doubt Ash would be able to compete with the same badges as last time. I'm sure he could if he acquired other badges, such as the ones Gary did.
 
But that doesn't make much sense. Ash still has his old Kanto badges, they're probably at his house somewhere.

Also, why would the Pokemon league force trainers to get all 8 badges all over again when they have them already? It's not like the Gym leaders change the designs of their badges, so they all look the same anyway.

if Ash ever wanted to re-enter the Indigo league, I don't see why he can't just get his old 8 Kanto badges from his house and use those to enter. It's not like they've become obsolete or anything. The leagues only take place once a year or so anyway, so I don't see why he can't use his same 8 badges.
 
The badges prove that he is strong enough to enter the league. Should he ever enter it again I'm sure his old badges will be enough. A repeat of the league is probably unlikely for this saga, though, since he has to beat Brandon before D/P land. But it would be neat if he did do it again in the future and that was the league he won.
 
That reminds me, I wish the Leagues had more structure. It makes sense that Ash wouldn't have to go through the same old collection routine if he wanted to participate in the Indigo. But then that applies to everyone else. With only one winner each time, it makes sense that most Trainers would want to return for a second shot. That must make the turn outs incredibly large (hence pre-lims and all that).

But then you could say not every single participant has to return. Which is true. Ash does his little other league quests and so does everyone else. Or people just choose not to come back to the same league. But that brings up another puzzle: Some league tournaments MUST have occured while Ash was partaking in his journey. The anime does a really a bad job at describing this, doing almost the exact opposite by making it seem like the Leagues nearly sync up exactly with Ash's final badge+then some. Kind of annoying if you ask me.

So, what this gets down to, I guess, is... how will the BF be portrayed? After ripping it out of its Theme Park element, the anime has been trying to give it a Gym Badge Quest Lite approach. The trouble arises, and will continue to rise, when Ash is apparently the only one who knows about these. Does that mean it's for him only? Dotting the Kanto landscape with these facilities for a single trainer is an extensive overly complicated idea. So then, does that translate into wider participant approach? Will we see a BF Tournament at the end? I don't even think the BF lends itself to a tournament quite well.

And speaking of that, what happens after Ash kicks Brandon/Jindai's butt? Will it be just, "Wellp, I defeated the last Brain and earn 7 shiny symbols. Time to go home!" Will he win a prize? Or will the prize consist of previously mention Tournament?

AND YET ANOTHER POINT. Since they've turned this into another generic 'Quest for the Badges' epic, how is this exactly being set apart from the already present Indigo League? Thrown in that Tournament and it's too similar. Take it out and it's too pointless.

Seem they really did wrong but making the BF out to be something it wasn't.
 
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