>>44643841Speaking of this, I'm still mad about the Kalos loss. What a massive narrative disaster it was. It's not as insulting as the Unova one, but it is the worst written of them all.
XY Ash was different from all previous incarnations because he was being portrayed at the peak of his career. He was also a static character, though I do not mean that in a bad way. I mean that he may have been the driving force of the plot, but XY wasn't really about Ash so much as it was about how Ash changed the people around him. XY is about Serena, Clemont, Sawyer and Alain and all of them experience significant change due to their interactions with Ash. But XY Ash himself changes little - because he has little to change, he's already THERE.
It is this sensation that "he made it" that the series sells us that makes BURASTO feel so painful. It is the realization the series lied to us; they sold us a complete Ash that wasn't really there when the time came. It is made worse by the fact that he loses to Alain, a character who, by the time of the final showdown, is firmly in the wrong side (even if unwittingly). Alain is a tool of Team Flare and doesn't get punished by it, doesn't actually face any consequence for his role in causing Mairin's suffering. Narratively, this is just a cocktail of awful conclusions that all happen in the exact same moment.
At least we got the amazing Kalos Crisis to make up for it, but fuck me if I'm not still seething.
