>>55358986To be fair, it is really hard to see if he's smiling or scowling or whatever with the native resolution and no AA on the Switch (and screenshots/videos compress quite a lot too). I also wasn't sure what exactly his face was supposed to convey until I saw his upscaled, anti-aliased psycho grin for myself on emulator
I love that they implemented this, it's really hard to catch, it's very unlikely to even occur in a moment where it's visible if you battle normally. But they made sure to put in lovingly crafted little details to convey what a weird schizo he is at times
>Also he makes this face every time his Pokemon take damage. Is he happy to be beaten by us or something?The animation starts with him looking normal and scratching his head (which looks thoughtful or a little frustrated), then his hand stops moving and his face suddenly changes ti that. So it's either his ego psyching himself up, thinking he can still beat you or what
>>55359023 said. Or it's not even really about the battle, he's just (secretly) extremely excited to interact with (You) because he's utterly obsessed. It would make sense because the first fight is more or less right after Carmine tells you that he literally couldn't stop talking about (You) last night.