ASH AND TRIP'S THIRD BATTLE!
"Lunchtime - or more like Standing Up The Chef Time!"
Score: 6/10
Ash and Iris are screwing around while Cilan makes lunch, when they run into Trip. Trip is using a Vanillite to catch a Palpitoad, but Ash's interference accidentally costs Trip the pokemon - and we also learn that Iris is afraid of ice pokemon, apparently even of the suckiest ones. Be afraid of Weavile, I’ll understand that. But Vanillite is literally a glorified ice cream cone. Ash asks what her deal is, and while explaining that dragon-types are weak to ice, she mentions the Village of Dragons, which impresses Trip.
Assuming that the would-be Dragon Master Iris owns many more pokemon than just Axew, Trip challenges her to a battle. She refuses because she's not in "top form today," obviously not wanting to rely on Excadrill or Emolga, so Ash asks for a battle. Trip refuses, but when Iris calls him a little kid, he accepts. Yeah, show her how mature you are by being taken in by extremely mild insults. Three-on-three battle time, best two out of three.
Trip's Servine versus Ash's Snivy. After a lot of insulting each other, they finally start battling. Servine has "been leveling up" and can now "block status moves," and with the mighty power of cut, defeats Snivy handily.
Trip and Iris mention Alder, the champion of Unova. Ash has never heard of him, however, but Trip’s actually met him. Trip has a flashback to when he met Alder as a kid, narrating to himself because apparently people do that. As a kid, he told Alder that he wanted to defeat him, to which Alder basically said “grow up and try it, lol.”
Trip sends out Timburr, so Ash counters with Oshawott. Oshawott's aqua jet is still inaccurate, but Trip takes a picture of it while it's aqua jetting around - Oshawott keeps closing its eyes while using aqua jet, so that's why it keeps missing. Even Ash seems kind of annoyed at Oshawott about this, but they continue, and Oshawott actually defeats Timburr pretty easily.
Ash sends out Tepig, and Trip Vanillite. Trip then says he's been inspired by Ash's off-the-wall battle style and wants to try it out - after exchanging some hits, both pokemon are exhausted and collapse at the same time, and Trip decides Ash's battle style doesn't work for him. Trip agrees that this was a draw, and walks off. Yep. It was indeed a draw.
Although my write-up of this episode is pretty bland, it actually is a decent episode. I still don’t like Trip, but he at least has a real backstory and motive now. Granted, it’s “I wanna be the very best like no one ever was,” which we’ve rather seen before in the past, and it doesn’t explain why he’s such a dick, but it’s something, which I can appreciate. If there is a problem, it’s that there’s not really a lot left to the imagination with Trip’s battles against Ash. We know how they battle, we know their relative strengths, we know how they interact with each other during battle. Ash has battled Trip three times in like thirty episodes - for comparison, he battled Gary twice and Paul four times over the course of five and four seasons. There’s just nothing left to the imagination with Trip, and to add to that, he doesn’t even come off as that great of a trainer like Paul did, he just comes off as another trainer who’s kind of a dick.
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Started: July 6, 2005