>>28906679All this talking about how Greninja tends to heavily rely on its tongue in battle got me thinking about wasted potential and what we've had in the past. If we backtrack to D/P, battles were exciting because they were blooming with creativity. We had cool out-of-the-blue shit like Counter Shield; Infernape getting rid of poison spikes by burning the field from underground; among many other more detailed battles.
In comparison, the only time Greninja used a clever strategy was with the Kunai skates. Every other match was simply attacking, and doing a more powerful version of that attack later on. For example, it would've been interesting to see Greninja fail to land a heavy hitting attack on a speedy Pokemon, only for it to improvise a strategy: Charging his attack while leaving him apparently open, and when the opponent got cocky, materializing Shadow clones behind him that tongue-bind it in place allowing Greninja to finally dish out a devastating blow.
The fact that we got none of this makes the disappearance of frubbles hard to bear. Hell, even in the manga Greninja uses both Frubbles AND Tongue. The end result in the anime was heavily unsatisfying.
