"Will Ash be successful in his quest to power up his pokemone?!"
Score: 6/10
I’m going to guess… yes.
Lenora and Hoz take the heroes through the museum's library, and ask Ash if he wants to study about Unova's history before the battle, and despite dropping a ton of hints that he should read a particular book, Ash just wants to battle. Cilan and Iris just flat out tell Ash that Lenora is testing him, so he agrees to read the book. When he touches it, it trips a secret staircase to the gym arena. Lenora then explains that it's all a test (duh) to see what kind of trainer you are by what book you try to read. Eh. Still better than Lieutenant Surge’s gym test.
Lenora introduces her pokemon: Watchog and Lillipup. Careful, Ash, I suggest you go ahead a bit, catch a Sawk or a Throh (I went with Sawk), and come back. In any case, Lenora talks about how awesome normal pokemon are for gym battles because they don't have an element. Now, putting that aside, I've gotta tell you, Whitney and Norman are not among Ash's more impressive battles.
The battle will be two-on-two, so it's Lillipup versus Tepig. I do enjoy how Lillipup instantly stops acting cute and suddenly starts scowling and growling, but as a result, looks twice as cute.
Lenora makes the odd call of starting out with roar, sending Tepig back to its pokeball and forcing out Oshawott, then sends in Watchog and has it use mean look. So, uh… there are so many ways this strategy could go wrong that I don’t even know where to begin, but the ultimate point of it to make her challenger go off balance as a result. I do like, however, how Cilan takes Brock's place as the guy who comments on every single thing that happens in every single battle. Oddly, Oshawott is extremely upset at having to battle earlier than it wanted to.
Oshawott and Watchog battle for a bit, but it eventually loses its shell (I hope this doesn't become a thing, because it’s happened before), which causes it to lose. In the ensuing Lillipup versus Tepig battle, Tepig gets its ass kicked and quickly loses. Ash feels bad for sucking, and at the pokemon center, Nurse Joy tells him to visit the Battle Club for special training and tips. He does so, and Don George agrees to give him special training… next episode.
That night, Team Rocket steals the museum's meteorite and replaces it with a fake with absolutely no difficulty whatsoever, leading me to be unable to make jokes at their expense.
Overall, a decent episode, I guess, but I don’t really like Lenora.
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Started: July 6, 2005