So I realized I'm kind of late saying this, but Aotrs: you NEED to watch the Mega Evolution Special of Pokémon XY.
This side story is more than just that, it in fact integrates into the main story with the final episode tying into XYZ.
If you don't watch it, then you might be confused and asking questions once you reach XYZ on certain things and characters.
If you want to know just how important the Mega Evolution Special is; it's basically a starter for a major arc in the main story.
Serendipitously, I saw this as I was just coming to post my quick wrap-up of the first XY season.
Hmm. Can't see whether or not those apparent four episodes are included on the DVDs (unless I missed something, there wasn't on the forst season). When I start Kalos Quest, I'll have a good look; sadly, neither product description nor packaging have an episode list. (Maybe they will on the XY&Z DVDs...?)
(Actually -
how many of these fucking specials have I missed over the years? (And why in the merry hell apparently was the one where Brock meets Cilan not dubbed into English?) I got the DVDs of Pokémon Chronicles back in the day, but it looks like a frack-ton have never been released.)
Looks like I might have to track those down on teh internets, rather than on DVD. That's... REALLY annoying. Thanks for the warning, though or I would have had NO idea.
How important are these to watchin Kalos Quest? If it's not that critical to that seaspn, I might try and wait and see if they do come on the third season DVDs (you;d have though if they were that important, they would...)
Anyway, on to the main event...
XYThe Aura Storm! Lucario goes Yampy.
Calling from Beyond the Aura!In the near future, Ash Ketchum and his twerpish companion Pikachu, unleash their forces to not conquer Earth.
Only one force can stop this good. A handful of brave 'mon, in specially created exo-frames, they can be transported anywhere (by balloon) to fuse with incredible assault weapons systems, becoming 'mon machine, Power Xtre- oh, nope, they got blasted off again.
The Bonds of Mega Evolution! I'm pretty sure Mabel was just trolling them the entire time. Or she had a big floral display put on, an' she wasn't going to do it.
The Forest Champion! Ash walks right into a martial arts movie. Also, wow, even by Ursaring standards, that Ursaring was a dick. (This was actually pretty fracking hilarious.)
Battles in the Sky! Fletchling gets an episode! They spend the whole episode saying size doens't matter - only for it to evolve into a bigger form to win the day! (Yeah, it was still a form below the opponent, but I fet it still kinda defeated the episode's moral point...)
You have to wonder how many people die horribly when those wingsuits fail...
Also, this episode had some very odd sound balance on the DVD. Normally I think that I can't hear the music over everything else, but this episode, the music - and the sound effects - nearly drowned out the voices. I was three-quarters convinced something had gone wrong with the telly until I watched the next episode. Unfortunately, this took some of the edge of this episode.
The Cave of Mirrors! Bahahahaha! Oh, this was glorious! Really, this could have been a two-parter. I
love mirror universe episodes. Copwdarly and useless Ash, aggressive Serena... At first, I thought that Bonnie was the genius and Clemont was the dumb jock... But then the episode went in a much more hilarious direction, because of COURSE Mirror!Clemont was a magic-user! Mirror!Pickahu and Mirror!Hawlucha were hilarious too. I was afraid until the very last moment we weren't going to see mirror!Team Rocket... But my goodness, that short sequence at the end was SO WORTH IT! I cracked up so far, especially at Mirror!Wobuffet's heroic deep voice.
Clemont... you SERIOUSLY had a device rady in case someone got dragged into a mirrior dimension? Ye gods man, you're in the wrong business. I think you should be giving BATMAN lessons in preparedness...!
I liked the fact that they actually didn't go to exact opposites, but just very distorted versions of the heroes. It took me a while to realsie why everything was slightly faded - because from our (the viewer's) perspective, they were reflections of the main universe. Clever touch. Cracking episode.
Forging Forest Friendships! I was seriously ready to makr Treeveant on the "proof Pokémon an be outright Evil" list for half this episode.
This brought a good dose of some much-needed strife between the protagonists and their Pokémon as well.
Summer of Discovery!, Day Three Blockbusters!, Foggy Pokémon Orienteering!, Battling into the Hall of Fame! And, suddenly, Summer Camp Arc! That came as out of the blue as the one in Diamond and Pearl (which was superior, sadly, between Conway's perving, Angie's angry crush on Ash and them nearly being outroght murdered by an actual ghost).
Still - rivals. Finally. This was a bit late in the series, honestly for this to come in and could have done with being much earlier. Still, they are a fairly inoffensive lot. A bit front-loaded in all coming at once, but I think that's sadly a facet of the games doing that to you as well. Tierno was actualy pretty cool, though - I like him much more than his game counterpart. (Why they had the G1 starters handed to them though, was a question never adequately explained...)
It really took this long to get Serena to have a proper battle? No wonder Pikachu and Chespin had to do all the heavy lifting. No surprise they won though: how fair is it to put a gum leader and a regular league participaint/Battle Frontier champion in the same crowd? No disprespect, but they could have replaced Serena and Fennikin with a cardboard cut-out and rock and theyd still have creamed them, Tierno's Squirtle's valiant efforts nothwithtanding.
Also, you just gotta laugh at Ash going "right! My plan to save Bonnie is not, in fact to, I dunno, use eiother of the two flying types at my disposal to either ask the Drimblim for help or find an alternative route, we'll just scare them and I'll ridiculouslyt dangerously but badasserly just use them like stepping stones like I was Legolas or something." And at how he just goes "oh yeah, I just did my foot. I'll be fine," (I think he was just humouring Serena) and then next day be like "yep, walked it off, I'm good." Because he's Ash Motherfucking Ketchum.
Ash is going to try learning rhythmic battling.
This cannot end well.
Origins of Mega Evolution! It did not end well.
Showdown at the Shalour Gym! There we go, THAT'S the Pikachu that single-handedly took down a legendary! That's more like it! (Also, Korrina, duck... Maybe train some of your other Pokémon aside from Lucario a bit so they don't suck so much...?)
This series is definitely at its best when doing battles. Which is why it is odd there are so few of them. Ash has fought very few trainers this series. I mean, almost anything is better than BW's dull endless streams of one-on-one, but a few more wouldn't hurt...
Splitting Heirs! Yeah, there we go, get a bit of tensions and infighting among the twerps for a bit! Nice!
also, we MUST get Chespin in a room with Piplup and Oshawatt - preferably with tsome pretty female to parade past them, because it would be glorious. It's okay, though Chespin, Brock feels your pain...
The Clumsy Crier Quiets the Chaos! I was thinking, "how in the heck is Wigglytuff going to...
ohhh, right, Fairy, of course it can kick dragon arse nowadays." Just goes to show, not all Salamences are bonkers homicial nutters. Not all of the time, anyway.
Dreaming a Performer's Dream! Oh, FINALLY three episodes from the end of the series, Serena decidesd that to do with herself, sicne she appears to have more-or-less stopped drooling over Ash (seriously, we haven't had a funny moment like like in ages) and decides what to do and gets a second Pokémon.
Gotta say, though, the performances are okay, but they're no contests.
A Campus Reunion! So, did the writers go "oh shit, we're coming to the end of the season and li,e, no-one has caught anything, quick, we gotta do something. (Seriosuly, this must be the longest time ever Ash has gone without a full team, nearly, ain't it?)
And the mayor is clearly some sort of child-kidnapping nutcase.
(I think Bonnie may be right about the lass with the foreign-y name I can't be arsed to look up. I think you may be in there, Ckemont, mate.)
Okay. Clemont is like a proper certified genious or something. He graduated from a place full of adult students (because none of the folk we saw were kids) at like, eight or something and his thesis was a revolutionar new technical thign that they apparetnly use to power the whole town. What the fuck, man? I mean, maybe I shouldn't be surprised, given you accidently made actual mechanical life and whatnot, but forget what I said earlier about Batman, I think you ARE Ironman. Just give yourself a couple of years, have Team Rocket use one of your inventions against you again and have someone slightly hurt by it a little bit and you'll be wearing flying armour with electric lasers or something in no time.
Bonnie for the Defense! A full-on Bonnie episode. Showing that apparently Bonnie is actually much brighter than most kids her age (given her brother, this is not surprising. Sure, tow geniuses in the same family would not be likely, but she stood a fair chance of being pretty bright on genetics). (Ash is once again the mature, responsible one. Whe the fuck did that happen? Not that I'm complaining.) Otherwise, this was a fairly generic episode - but was redeemed by the first real major shake-up to the motto Team Rocket did this season and it was totally worth it.
Bit of an odd way to tend the series on, though... Even BW closed out on some sort of important thing.
XY season 1 overviewI'm having mixed feelings about this one, honestly. It started really strong and it's unquestionably gorgeous - especially when battling and I ewas really enjoying it.
But... I dunno. Partway into the season, it started to feel like something was missing and I can't quite put my finger on what that is. I think it's a combination of it being so SLOW to start (slow to get Pokémon, slow to develop Serena, slow to introduce the rivals), relying on filler and Team Rocket a bit too much. (That said, it's not BAD filler and some of is, while definitely filler, just such enormous fun). A bit like BW, I think it would have done better with contests (or at least performances) coming in much earlier (we haven't even seen on properly yet), given how thin it's spread. I don't recall there being much of a "Pokémon get seperated from the trainers" episode - which is always fun - and the quartet are a little bit to harmonious. I think that without Bonnie (who skates a fine line between being childlike and annoying and I can imagine for some she goes right over) they would be even worse off.
The fact that we've seen neither hide nor hair nor an inkling of Team Flair means there's no foreshadowed plot looming over the preceedings. DP only did, like, one ro two episodes with
Plasma Galactic
1 in the first two seasons, but it was enough.
The lack of a proper rival surpised me. From last season, with too many (nearly al of who were lame-to-awful), this time we don't get any until the series is three-quarters over and then three at once. It means Ash hasn't even got someone to grind against (metaphorically, get yer minds outta the gutter) or work towards beating.
So it's not that I'm not enjoying it when I'm watching - and the implications (like the clips I watched that got me started on all this catching up again in the first place), but... Maybe it's just not living up to the expecations at the moment.
We'll see how it all carries on in Kalos Quest! fairly soon!
At the same time, I bought the BW movies with my birthday money, so they can now be added to the queue (after Zoroark, of course). I'm sort of curious about Victini and how watchable two movies that ostensibly are pretty similar are and what the differences it makes. I am thinking it might be worth watching one, watching the next movie and watching the other, unless anyone thinks that they are best viewed back-to-back.
1 Good, no one nticed my deliberate mistake...
