On Olden Pond
"He's an artiste. And an artiste just cannot be rushed."
Score: 3.1/10
Pikachu still can’t pull off volt tackle consistently, so Ash is training it to master the move. Because the training is so intense (though as far as I can see, it just involves shouting “Pikachu, use volt tackle!” over and over again), the heroes decide to take a break by fishing. Ugh, I’ll never understand people who like fishing. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a necessary evil to get fish to eat, but not something I would do to relax.
They head to a “famous fishing spot,” a lake, but find it’s nearly empty. When they reach an abandoned boathouse, a Crawdaunt appears and attacks them. Even though he’s seen Crawdaunt before, Ash pulls out the pokedex, which tells him that ponds inhabited by Crawdaunt tend to become desolate, as they bully everything else away. Uh... what? I can see them bullying Psyduck and stuff away, but a good amount of water pokemon are fish that can't ah screw it.
Ash sends out Corphish, and realizing that Crawdaunt is physically stronger, Ash orders Corphish to use the exact same moves as it, so its crab hammer impacts with Crawdaunt's and so on, so as to ensure Corphish's failure by playing to its weaknesses. Unsurprisingly, Crawdaunt defeats Corphish, destroys their fishing poles just to be a dick, and a girl named Tiffany shows up and chases it off. She's the boathouse owner, and tells the heroes that the lake used to be popular a year ago. Sadly, a luxury day spa company demanded she leave so they could take over the lake, because luxury day spa companies are literally made out of Satan and cancer.
They introduced a crazy Crawdaunt into the lake to drive everything in it away and ruin the fishing, and Tiffany can't get it to go away. Tiffany's grandmother shows up and tells the heroes that Crawdaunt is tougher than they think, and literally says nothing when Ash says his Corphish can defeat it while Pikachu literally stands on his shoulder. I mean, sorry, Ash, but bigger things are afoot here than your Corphish's ego. Just have Grovyle or Pikachu kick Crawdaunt's ass, either of them would take like two minutes to solve this problem.
The heroes follow Crawdaunt to the head luxury day spa guy, Mr. Saridakis (?!?), who has hired Team Rocket, disguised as artiste architects, to design the spa, even though you would assume that he already has architects specialized in this kind of thing since he literally owns a luxury day spa company.
Tiffany Mr. Oddly Greek Name, and he accepts Ash's challenge to a battle on the condition that if he wins, he gets the boathouse and the lake. Tiffany agrees to this even though she's never seen Ash battle, she knows Corphish lost the earlier match, and she must know that Corphish has a significant disadvantage. Even Ash tells her this is stupid, but she insists that they battle tomorrow because.
As they leave, Mr. Saridakis reveals that he hates this lake because as a kid, he nearly drowned in it, and he still doesn’t know how he survived. Thus, he wants revenge on the lake by turning into a day spa. I would complain, but this is a better motive than half of the villains on this show have had, so, alright.
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Not changing this sig until I decide to change this sig.
Started: July 6, 2005