Ash's Kalos League Final Battle

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Editor's Note: This entry contains spoilers for the Pokémon anime series.

Overview

Ash's Kalos League Final Battle was a pivotal Pokémon battle between Ash Ketchum, the main protagonist of the anime series, and Alain, a major recurring character, in the 925th episode of Pokémon: XY&Z. Upon its airing in August 2016, the episode was met with many fan reactions at the outcome of the highly anticipated final match.

Background

The event was notable in spite of having occurred many times previously in the series because of several breaks in the usual formula. This time around, Ash reached the final of the tournament, which had not occurred prior to the "XY&Z" arc of the series. He had a more typically "powerful" team featuring popular Pokémon from the recent games, and a member of his team, Greninja, gained a special form. Additionally, many other previous series traditions had been broken this time, and the next games in the video game franchise on which the series is loosely based, Sun and Moon, will not feature a typical Pokémon league. This led many fans to speculate that Ash would finally achieve his goal of winning the Pokémon league before the series moves on to follow the next set of games.^[11]

The series built towards the league tournament's climax which would be resolved in the 131st episode (of the XY series only). The Japanese episode title for this episode was revealed ahead of its airing as "Kalos League Victory! Satoshi's Ultimate Match!!" which fueled speculation yet further due to use of the word "victory" and the allusion to the fact that thus far, this is Ash's greatest progress in the league tournament. Ash was set up to meet new character Alain, popular in his own right for being a different kind of character to the more typically "shonen hero" style of character in Ash, in the final round.

Notable Developments

The episode aired on the Japanese network TV Tokyo on August 18th, 2016. Bulbapedia summarised the events of the episode on their website, referring to the episode as "XY131" in accordance with their reference system, noting first and foremost:^[1]

The Full Battle between Ash and Alain ends in Alain's victory, making him the winner of the Lumiose Conference and Pokémon Champion.

The episode received negative reactions across Pokémon-related fan sites, including r/Pokemon,^[2] where one user decried the writing:

Ash is probably the only main character that will never win because of motherfucking plot armor

The comment received around 600 upvotes within 10 hours. Further discussion was seen in their later "Anime Discussion Thread".^[3]

Discussion on popular Pokémon fansite Serebii.net featured a thread querying the reaction of Japanese fans compared with Western fans. Many repliers agreed that reaction was negative on both sides of the world, although the reactions could be difficult to gauge as the video was not region-blocked.^[4] Fans also discussed the episode on popular competitive battling site Smogon, where reactions were generally mixed. Some viewers were more forgiving of the decision than others.^[5]

Promotional videos for the episode on YouTube garnered a high ratio of "dislikes" on the Japanese web. One video managed to gain over 18,000 dislikes compared to a measly 400 likes.^[6]

Reactions on Twitter were mixed, and saw much discussion under the hashtags #KalosLeagueFinals,^[7] #PokemonXYZ,^[8] and #anipoke.^[9]

4chan's dedicated Pokémon board, /vp/,^[10] also reacted strongly with a mix of negativity but also the usual trolling and shitposting.

Some /vp/ reactions to the episode as seen on August 18 2016.