Episode 98 Review

It’s been a while, but The Guardian and Bushido have finally made their return. Sometimes it can be a little hard to properly space things. I try to be careful not to overuse characters like the Guardian, and spread out their appearances, but before I know it, it’s been 50 episodes since their last appearance. Sorry about that.

Anyways, as was probably clear from the episode, this was meant to act as a sequel to the original Guardian episode, and also opened up the possibility for future episodes. This is indeed a series of interlinked episodes. This episode, like other Guardian episodes, was meant to replicate the feeling of a superhero TV Show or movie. For this episode, that meant using the standard format of hero fights villain and is forced to retreat, hero regroups and figures out the villains weakness, and then the hero and villain have their final confrontation. A superhero origin story was even thrown in for good measure. The other result of going for the superhero feel was the fast paced action of this episode. Instead of writing the battles in this episode as Pokémon battles, I wrote them as fast-paced superhero battles. This escalated further when Guardian and Bushido went head-to-head. It is, for obvious reasons, rare to see humans fight humans in Pokémon, so this was certainly something different and interesting. I felt the need to push the superhero action further, and I wanted to show Guardian was more than just an expert Pokémon trainer. Sure, he’s on his own level when its comes to his skills as a trainer, but that alone doesn’t make him a superhero. I had to justify that he himself is special too. That’s why there was the origin story and his hand-to-hand fight.