#so it would be so goddamn funny if his breaking point was Rocket being smarter than him and/or generally pulling some loony tunes ass bull

[ohfugecannada]

I think the comics should synergise a tiny little bit with the movies in regard to High Evoloutionary and Rocket being enemies. Not that I think it should be exactly like the messed up abusive creator/creation dynamic of the film (lord knows Rocket’s comic backstory is enough of an inconsistent mess already), but instead more like “this powerful, 1000+ IQ smug intellectual man who basically sees himself as/is pretty much a god-like being, gets shaken to his core/royalty pissed off when he’s out done intellectually by a fucking 3-ft tall furry abomination”

[animebw]

Binge-Watching: Pokemon Orange Islands, Episodes 25-27

In which Ash’s first big loss blindsides him out of nowhere, a friend in need is a friend indeed, and it’s time to finally break out the sun lotion.

Every Single Step

Ash is kinda legendary for being a perpetual loser. Over 22 years of being 10 years old, the kid’s competed in countless different Pokemon Leagues and only just recently managed to actually win one. So I had no illusions that he was gonna come out on top by the time the Indigo League was all said and done. But man, what a crushing first defeat this was. He didn’t even get to go out battling on his own terms; he lost because his last Pokemon in the line-up outright refused to battle and forced him to forfeit. Sure, it was his choice to gamble on Charizard in the first place considering all the shit this prideful fire drake’s put him through (side note, I love how much personality Charizard has; you can tell from his lackadaisical body language and half-hearted gust attacks that the dude’s a haughty little shit), but do you wanna be the guy who doesn’t even get to go down fighting? I can’t imagine a more humbling experience for anyone. And yet it also kinda makes sense; as Professor Oak points out, Ash spend to much time goofing off when he could have been training even harder, it’s no wonder Charizard still doesn’t respect him. Relying on his natural talents has always been Ash’s Achilles heel, and this loss forces him to comfront the fact that strength and intuition can only bring you so far if you don’t put in the effort to actually improve. It’s not every show that’s willing to let its protagonist actually suffer the consequences of their weaknesses like that.

And yet, as far as he has left to go, Ash has grown over the course of his journey. Just look at his interactions with Team Rocket over the course of these episodes! He is so nonchalant about the would-be criminals that he can drop from the sky right into the midst of them and strike up a conversation with them as if they hadn’t just gate-crashed his party minutes earlier. And he’s got an escape plan ready whenever they try to Poke-nap his Pikachu; he’s so used to their bullshit that it’s basically like dealing with traffic on his morning commute at this point, and it’s goddamn hilarious to watch him act so casual with them (”Okay, you can have the bike back!”) Hell, he even gets one over on them by shaking them out of a goddamn tree and into an angry pack of Spearow as easy as dusting lint off his jacket. Fucking Christ, that left me in stitches. This isn’t the same naive kid he started out as, blind to his shortcomings and barely managing to stumble through. He’s regularly remembering that he’s got a whole team of Pokemon at his disposal to call into action when things get hairy, and he’s making use of all of their talents to his advantage. He’s revisiting all the callbacks to his greatest shame in the first episode- the angry Spearow flock who terrorized him, stealing Misty’s bike- and this time facing them head-on and conquering them. He’s built enough of a bond with Pidgeotto, one of his first Pokemon, that it’s finally evolved into a Pidgeot. He’s smarter, quicker-witted, more perceptive, a better strategist, a better trainer. Ash Ketchum still has a long road ahead of him, but step by step he’s making his way down it. And that’s something to be proud of.

Bros For Life

Of course, it doesn’t hurt that he’s able to share this moment of growth with someone just as dedicated as him. And i was kinda joking last time, but man, I really ship Ash and Richie now. Listen, forget the tender looks they give each other, forget how Richie 100% trusts Ash to fulfill his promise, is they’re anything more romantic than swooping in from the sky fashionably late to your Pokemon battle and salving any potential hurt feelings with a reference to A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum? Tell me that’s not how you want your wedding to go. Plus, the contrast between how they handle their losses is a really poignant moment: they’re both sad at their failure, but Richie’s determination to learn from his mistakes and do even better next time shows Ash that there’s still hope on the horizon. They’re so similar in so many different ways, and now, they get to share the frustration of not being quite good enough, processing the pain together and reaching for even greater heights. Look, Ash and Richie are just really freaking great together, and I hope we get a chance to see him again before all is said and done. They deserve the world.

Citrus Level: Existent

But for now, it’s time to move on. Because at long last, almost halfway through the season titled Adventures in the Orange Islands, it’s finally time to have some adventures in the goddamn Orange Islands. For real this time. What awaits us on our tropical quest I don’t know, but it sounds like we’ve got a mysterious Pokeball to track down that could house any number of secrets inside. Is it a Legendary Pokemon? A Johto Pokemon to transition us into the next generation? Maybe it’s finally gonna be that Ho-oh Ash saw all the way back at the start of the show? The possibilities are endless, so let’s sit back and see what awaits us upon the surf and seas. Adventure Ho!

Best of Team Rocket

-”I should have my own show!” You do, it’s called Pokemon.

-”Yeah, but if he’s brainless and he beats us every time, how brainless does that make us?” kjashdkajsdh FUCKING CHRIST MY SIDES

-”And we’re very tire-d of you trying to escape!”

-”Those crazy contraptions can’t create the kind of classic catastrophe one can cause by cleverly concealing a calamitous crater!”

-”Yes, we decided to be friendly, but only to the environment!”

-”We’re blasting off with a beautiful bang!”

-”Bone Appetite!”

Odds and Ends

-”It must be nice to dream when you’re wide awake.” Her sass game is so good, god damn.

-”Here, Ash, Prince Charming wants to talk to you.” EVEN MISTY SEES IT OH MY FUCKING GOD

-Man, sleep powder is way overpowered in real life.

-”I’ll invite Charizard next time.” aksjdhasd good call

-”Let’s eat fast so we can eat again!” OKAY SURE JUST CALL ME OUT WHY DON’T YOU

-Not gonna lie, seeing full-on yakisoba and takoyaki stands in this show in contrast to all its dopey localization attempts is a hoot and a half. You can’t scrub the Japanese off this franchise no matter how hard you try.

-And that, my friends, is why you don’t piss off Charizard.

Onward ho, folks. See you next time!

[rantsaboutponies]

Season 8 Retrospective

This... Okay, Season 8’s final W-L-T score was 0-11-15, which means that, quantitatively, it should have been the worst season yet. But...I dunno, this season just kind of...came and went. It might partially have to do with the fact that this is the eighth season of a show that should have ended with Season 3, but I think there’s a bigger factor at play here. Yes, it’s that most baffling of poor decisions, the School of Friendship!

I still cannot figure out why they thought this was such a good idea to build the entire season around. Maybe the voice actors for the Mane 6 are trying to move on from the show and are minimizing their future commitments? If it’s just trying to sell toys of the New Mane 6, they wouldn’t need to focus on them so heavily (people will buy figurines of background characters, for god’s sake), but phasing out the original Mane 6′s toyline also seems like a dumb idea. I think it’s just that corporations still haven’t gotten over the collective concept that they all seemed to have in the 1980s that kids love school and will watch anything set at a school. You know which cartoons I watched the least (or just flat out never watched) as a kid? Recess! Teacher’s Pet! Braceface! You know, the ones that spent a large chunk of time at school! School is by far the least interesting part of any child’s life! If the characters were school-age, you maybe showed a scene or two an episode just to establish that, but that’s it! A good example is Kim Possible; sure, she went to school every episode, but the majority of each episode was all the spy shit. Because no duh! (For the record, as a kid, I was also incredibly bored by any show that was just about kids doing normal shit all the time, school-related or otherwise: Doug, Rocket Power, The Weekenders, Hey Arnold!, Pepper Ann, As Told by Ginger, every single live-action laugh-track Disney sitcom...come to think of it, is that all that late-’90s to early-2000s Disney Channel and Nickelodeon shows were? Jesus Christ, I miss when Cartoon Network was fun.)

Anyway, I don’t know what kids watch these days. Maybe they don’t even watch this show; I have no idea. I haven’t kept up. Why am I even still talking about this? On with the list!

#1. “Road to Friendship”: Like I said, this one was the closest to “good” we got this season. Starlight and Trixie tend to have good dialogue together, and this was no exception. Did anyone notice that Starlight was barely in this season at all, though? They really need to deal with their constant problem of adding characters to the main cast and then not knowing what to do with them in future episodes.

#2. “Sounds of Silence”: If not for Autumn Blaze being so goddamn annoying (and the moral being fairly lame), this episode might have been better. At least I now know why I’ve been seeing kirin fanart for a few months now.

#3. “What Lies Beneath”: This was probably the only halfway decent episode involving the New Mane 6 because it actually gave us a bit of insight into their characters besides “like the Mane 6, but children”. The Tree of Harmony’s way of thinking is still super fucked-up, though.

#4. “Molt Down”: Puberty episode? Sure, why not. Still better than Big Mouth.

#5. “Father Knows Beast”: This one goes right next to the other Spike one because, like all Spike episodes, it really left little to no impact. The fact that Spike is still being written to be dumb enough to fall for some random dragon showing up and saying that he’s his father is pretty grating, though.

#6. “The Break Up Break Down”: Miscommunication storylines annoy the shit out of me, especially since Modern Family became 90% “I heard a thing and I’m going to assume the worst instead of just confirming it with the person I heard it from” episodes. At least Discord finally got a couple funny lines again.

#7. “Non-Compete Clause”: I don’t know why Applejack and Rainbow Dash thought a rehash of “Fall Weather Friends” would be a good idea if they mixed in a bit of child endangerment. Thank god the kids turned out to be smarter than them.

#8. “A Rockhoof and a Hard Place”: Still hard to believe they couldn’t find Rockhoof any digging or demolition jobs anywhere in Equestria. I do like that the ending basically acknowledged that they still don’t know exactly what the point of making Twilight a princess was or what she even does anymore.

#9 & #10. “School Daze”: I was technically right. Neighsay did return to be a villain in the season finale; he just wasn’t the real villain. The fact that they could have arrived at the solution at any time and just chose not to was really annoying. Remember, kids love storylines about legal loopholes and technicalities!

#11 & #12. “School Raze”: Yet another episode that required everyone involved to be as stupid as possible to get the plot going. Nothing like going with your first assumptions and ignoring all evidence to the contrary, eh, Twilight?

#13: “Marks for Effort”: This was just dumb. Twilight wouldn’t let the CMC into the school because they already knew enough about friendship? Yeah, sure. If anything, the episode proved just the opposite. Cozy Glow intentionally failed the test because she thought it would get them in? Uh-huh. Given her secret ultimate evil goal was to make everyone friends with her, I can only assume that she did in fact think that that plan would work, since getting them kicked out definitely wouldn’t endear her to them.

#14. “The End in Friend”: I don’t think this episode accomplished what it was attempting to. No, Rarity and Rainbow Dash don’t have anything in common. No, they don’t have to hang out together if they don’t have any activities they both enjoy. No, that doesn’t make them enemies, nor does it mean they can’t still hang out with their other friends. Sheesh.

#15. “The Washouts”: More child endangerment! Why a dangerous stunt team was able to hire Scootaloo I still don’t know, but apparently no one in the audience had a problem with that. If the lesson was to teach children not to be so fickle about picking their role models, that’s probably a good idea.

I’m not sure there’s all that much difference between these two parts of the list, but whatever.

#16. “Fake It ‘Til You Make It”: Seriously, though, Fluttershy’s only mistake was not telling those raccoons ahead of time that she was going to be using different personae. It was working!

#17. “Grannies Gone Wild”: This episode beat out Book Club by a whole month for its message of, “Old people are people too!” The Wonderbolts are assholes, Applejack is an asshole, and everypony loses! Hooray!

#18. “The Mean 6”: At least Chrysalis was still kind of intimidating in “To Where and Back Again”. This episode just made her look like a joke who had no clue what she was doing (more than “A Canterlot Wedding” already did, I mean).

#19. “The Parent Map”: Remember “Parental Glideance”? That was last year’s, “God, my parents are so embarrassing!” episode. This is this year’s. Joy.

#20. “Friendship University”: Someone was confused that I complained about Twilight apparently hating competition, even though she was trying to shut down the Friendship University because she clearly knew that Flim and Flam were untrustworthy. This person apparently missed the fact that Twilight was upset that somepony was opening a competing friendship school BEFORE she found out it was Flim and Flam who were running it, and she in fact went to the Friendship University specifically to find something wrong with it. That’s the part I was objecting to: the fact that Twilight is still so neurotic that she can’t handle not being in control of everything. In fact, that raises an interesting point. Has there ever been an episode where Twilight has had to learn the lesson of, “Other people are capable of things, too. Not everything has to be run by you first”? It certainly wasn’t this one.

#21. “Surf and/or Turf”: Hey, another episode where the conflict made no sense! And, as an added bonus, another one where just talking to the other people involved would have resolved it instantly! Huzzah! Old El Paso managed to make “Why not both?” the lesson of a 30-second commercial. I don’t know why this took so much longer.

#22. “Horse Play”: COM-MU-NI-CA-TION. “You’re a bad actress. You can have a surprise cameo at the end of our play to make the crowd happy, but that’s it.” Jesus.

#23. “The Hearth’s Warming Club”: What exactly was the message of this episode? “Don’t lie”? No, because they never told Twilight the truth; she just happened to be standing behind them when Gallus told the other kids. “Don’t wreck shit”? No, because Gallus never faced any consequences for that. Honestly, the lesson should have been directed at teachers, and it should have been, “Don’t try this shit. It never works; it just pisses everyone off, including you.”

#24. “The Maud Couple”: Worst new character of the season. Hands down. I hope we never see him again, especially if the only way we get more Maud is if he comes along for the ride. What a prick.

#25. “A Matter of Principals”: Speaking of episodes that teach the lesson to the wrong person... Remind me again why Discord wasn’t the one who learned the lesson here? Because he’s unteachable? Because he’s “reformed” and therefore has already learned all the lessons he needs to? Also, this is a rare episode where the characters do actually communicate properly (Starlight does tell Discord to knock his shit off), and they try to pretend they didn’t! Twilight gets mad at Starlight for not talking to Discord, even though she did! You can’t do this, writers! You just can’t!

#26. “Yakity-Sax”: Talk about not knowing what fucking lesson they were trying to teach. You know what? I bet this actually happened. I bet Michael P. and/or Wil Fox were practicing their electric guitar or drums or bagpipes or whatever for days on end at all hours of the night, and all their neighbors called the cops on them. This was their way of sticking it to everyone. “No! You should let me do whatever the hell I want! It doesn’t matter if it disturbs you! Fuck the system! It’s my passion! You can’t stop me from living my dream!”

There’s a holiday special next week, and near as I can figure, it hasn’t been aired in another country ahead of time! We’ll actually get to watch this one together! Yay!