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Damn, poor Chimchar has PTSD. DP is real shit. An interesting point came up in the previous episode, that Paul's from Veilstone City. It makes sense he started in Sinnoh, since Torterra is his starter, but he earlier told Cynthia that he'd competed in the Hoenn, Kanto and Johto Leagues, but implied this was his first go around in Sinnoh. Did he just decide to wait until his fourth League to try his home region? Were the others just warm ups for him?
Since my post originally started the Snowbelle shit, I figured I'd do due diligence and see what I could find. I looked back over my notes for the episodes surrounding the episode, and downloaded a subbed version of XYZ 28 just to make sure I wasn't under some dub misconception (answer: no, it's a fairly straightforward translation). So about five episodes prior, Clemont starts doing synchronicity testing with Ash and Greninja. Whenever Ash-Greninja triggers, Greninja becomes powerful, but the synchronicity is wacked, so Ash either fails or keeps passing out during it, losing battles with Alain, Diantha, Sawyer and Wulfric. After losing to Wulfric, Ash is sad that Greninja got hurt, and he and Greninja go off into the woods to do some serious black guy thinking. As best as I can interpret, Ash's conflict is mostly centered around being unable to use Greninja's power to the fullest extent, although the loss to Sawyer and in front of Sawyer are certainly the inciting incidents. What the original anon who responded to me said about Ash secretly blaming Serena isn't a bad implication, but it is headcanon rather than anything the show leads us to believe. It seems like Ash snaps because Serena's optimism is annoying him when he's doing serious black guy thinking.
I'll concede that Ash's conflict in XYZ is a bit more complicated than I gave credit for, but I think Serena's involvement is still a pretty weak part of it.
