"Even bad guys eat sometimes."
Score: 7.5/10
Ash practices with Charizard for a bit, and it quickly establishes itself as even more powerful than before.
Scott takes the heroes to the Battle Factory arena, which looks like a regular gym arena, and mentions that "the construction and the lighting were designed specifically for that purpose," so... I'm not really sure what's going on here. Aren't all arena lighting systems designed for arenas? Is there really a gym so cheap that it repurposed a garden lighting system for its arena? What's extra weird is that the ceiling can open for flying pokemon, so the lighting system is of no value here since the sun drowns it out, but they went out of their way to draw attention to the lighting.
Articuno shows up and Max mentions that he's "never seen a more awesome pokemon," yep, you remember the talking, telepathic Jirachi Max swore he would always be friends with? Forget that ****. Brock mentions that he's never seen "these two battle," but since he actually has seen Charizard battle and an Articuno battle, I guess he means literally a Charizard versus an Articuno. Well, okay, I've never seen a Cobalion fight a Manectric before.
Team Rocket attacks, and you can just imagine what Charizard is thinking.
They're defeated in short order, and the battle begins.
Charizard's flamethrowers are more powerful than Articuno's ice beams, but while Articuno has trouble tanking the attacks, it can recover almost instantly and it can dodge most of them because Articuno is well known for its amazing speed.
Noland boasts that legendary pokemon are just plain more powerful than regular pokemon. Hey, remember when Celebi got its ass kicked by an ordinary Scyther and Houndoom?
Articuno lands a direct ice beam, but Max explains that it should have no effect on a fire type, because Charizard is definitely not part flying. Articuno then lands a steel wing, which knocks Charizard to the ground even though it's more resistant to steel than it is to ah screw it.
Articuno then starts busting out water pulse, one of the weakest of all water attacks, but this is treated like a huge deal. Scott explains that Noland is always a move ahead, because you need a direct hit for water pulse to be effective and he's been predicting Charizard's movements this entire time. Charizard gets hit by another ice beam, and although it deals no damage, it freezes its wing to slow its flying, which we learn was Noland's plan all along.
Ash realizes Charizard is too weakened to continue battling for much longer, and he has a flashback to when he was practicing with Charizard that they didn't bother to put in the episode itself. That's like-- that doesn't count as foreshadowing, guys. I don't even know what it counts as.
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Started: July 6, 2005