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[harmonize]

Kanto and Unova Ash is dumbAsh. Now he's okayAsh.

Brandon had to scale his team down just to give Ash a chance to win in the frontier, and the guy was too mentally encumbered to remember that he had a proven legendary-defeating Charizard when he decided to face the guy who used nothing but legendary in the Sinnoh league. Dude was still pretty damn dumb.

He was alright in the Orange Islands and Johto, and as close to "okay" as he's ever gotten. Still could introduce my nephew to Pokemon and have his team wipe the floor with Ash by the end of his first game.

 

[JoeM86]

Brandon had to scale his team down just to give Ash a chance to win in the frontier, and the guy was too mentally encumbered to remember that he had a proven legendary-defeating Charizard when he decided to face the guy who used nothing but legendary in the Sinnoh league. Dude was still pretty damn dumb.

He was alright in the Orange Islands and Johto, and as close to "okay" as he's ever gotten. Still could introduce my nephew to Pokemon and have his team wipe the floor with Ash by the end of his first game.

I dunno, aside from Gible and Heracross, the team he chose had faced up against legendaries before

Heracross was chosen because it had the advantage and just learned Sleep Talk
Gible...urgh
Swellow had a decent battle against Deoxys
Sceptile held off against Deoxys and did favourably against Regirock before losing
Torkoal faced off against Registeel
Pikachu has faced many a legend, and defeated a couple.

I'm sure they'll use this as a platform to reveal new mega evolutions.

Like the two we know of that haven't been officially revealed yet. I came to the same conclusion

 

[harmonize]

I dunno, aside from Gible and Heracross, the team he chose had faced up against legendaries before

Heracross was chosen because it had the advantage and just learned Sleep Talk
Gible...urgh
Swellow had a decent battle against Deoxys
Sceptile held off against Deoxys and did favourably against Regirock before losing
Torkoal faced off against Registeel
Pikachu has faced many a legend, and defeated a couple.

I understood the rest of his choices besides Gible and Torkoal, but it's just a huge aberration that he didn't build his team around arguably his strongest Pokemon. He can't win a league due to how the show functions, but even when he loses, the writers tend to go out of their way to make him look stupid in ways independent from the actual loss. Charizard, while taking out an Articuno and going toe to toe with an Entei and tons of other strong Pokemon that Torkoal hadn't, wasn't going to win him the match against somebody who likely had four other legendaries, which is why its exclusion was even more silly. The writers didn't have to temporarily forget about it to logically explain why Ash would lose, so there wasn't much of a point of making him look inexperienced with his own team.

 

[Boss Doggie]

Brandon had to scale his team down just to give Ash a chance to win in the frontier, and the guy was too mentally encumbered to remember that he had a proven legendary-defeating Charizard when he decided to face the guy who used nothing but legendary in the Sinnoh league. Dude was still pretty damn dumb.

He was alright in the Orange Islands and Johto, and as close to "okay" as he's ever gotten. Still could introduce my nephew to Pokemon and have his team wipe the floor with Ash by the end of his first game.

I thought he was kicking ass in the Frontier League, and while he was dumb using Gible in fighting Tobias, he actually used strategy. It's more of bullshit writing just to prevent him from winning (he should have won).

You might be referring to Johto in his league self but throughout the episodes he has moments of dumbAsh levels. Right now in XY he hasn't shown any stupid yet save for trying to friendzone Serena.

With that said, I think him beating Tobias's two legendary mons using his then-veteran mons (like Heracross and Sceptile) is an achievement compared to losing to a Meowth with boots, a guy only brought 5 Pokemon, and Lazyzard. I like the Johto fight the most (if only because Blaziken).