#sm036

We didn't manage to finish Akala arc yesterday, but we will now! Satoshi's trial done, still an awesome trial, time for the Grand Trial and then Dusk doggo debut 👀

Okay, you know what...I’m actually mad now. I expected the trend of “SM is great whenever it’s a random episode I’m not looking forward to and disappointing for the most hyped battle stuff” to continue but this was down right garbage imo.  First of all, Satoshi 100% should’ve lost that. ROCKRUFF KO’d IT’S OWN TEAM MATE, AND THEN WON ALONE, THAT DEFEATS THE WHOLE POINT OF A DOUBLE BATTLE. I mean sure there was some team work previously, Rowlet carrying Rockruff around is standard good stuff and Rockruff using one of Probopass’s mini noses to shield Rowlet was cool. But when it came down to it, there was no real cooperation needed to actually beat the opponents, Rowlet blew Probopass away with Bloom Doom and Rockruff just 1v1′d Lycanroc, it wasn’t even an intense 1v1. Z-moves are absolute trash, at least whenever they’re used against Satoshi. Against both Hala and Lychee the counter he came up with was “dodge” like WHAT, HOW IS THAT IMPRESSIVE? You can not have all these characters praising Satoshi’s genius for DODGING. That just makes Lychee look like an idiot, she blew away her own Stealth Rocks for nothing. Satoshi’s use of the Z-move wasn’t interesting either. It looked really cool, sure, but that’s ALL Z-moves are good for, and the over the top animation they have detracts from the rest of the fight, which gets to my next point: TERRIBLE animation for pretty much every part except the Z-moves and the final clash between Rockruff and Lycanroc. Extremely slow and stiff movements, no cool angles for attacks etc etc. Even most of the “stock background” era fights felt more dynamic than this. Like I know where SM’s priorities lie and I can appreciate it when it comes to those other episodes, but it’s still disheartening to see when I’m looking forward to something like this.  Something good: As much as I hate the fact that Satoshi won, I did love the way he interacted with Rockruff, the whole butt wiggle throwback thing (lol). Also glad to see Litten out and about, cheering on its friends. So yea the character stuff is still strong. I’m sure next episode will be good, I’m interested to see where Rockruff goes, and happy that Gladio is back and that Type: Null is appearing already. Hopefully they will make up for this episode with a strong rival battle soon, because this fight was indeed terrible and that makes me sad. Not sure if I’ll go through with the drawing either. :[