>>50745792So why wouldn't people feel aggravated by it? You don't need to like Alain for it. Most people don't particularly care for him, no matter what your ex-why boogeyman says. People got mad at the battle because it was OVER-THE-TOP COMICAL when they were expecting DRAMA.
People were expecting a battle among two of the best trainers in the world. They got Alain's Pokemon being wrecked with only Chesnaught putting something up resembling a fight. I'm not even sure if Malamar lasted for more than literally ten seconds.
So we're back at the matter of managing expectations. If you set up your audience to expect something, you NEED to deliver it. It's the whole "if you put a loaded gun there, you have to fire it" broad rule of writing. Only with very good reason you can avoid your audience's expectations, and Pokemon is not a sophisticated enough work for that.
The Masters tournament sets up the expectation that all the trainers there are REALLY STRONG. So when people go and see M8 fights, they expect to see two REALLY STRONG people battling. And a battle between two REALLY STRONG people is expected to play out completely different from the Leon vs Alain fight today. The Leon vs Alain fight played out as one between someone really strong and a shitter.
Now, it's clear that they didn't INTEND to have Alain come out as a shitter. They intended to use him as someone strong to make Leon seem even stronger. But there are expectations for how someone strong will be portrayed, expectations which weren't satisfied because they overplayed their hand with just how strong Leon was.
So, even if inadvertently, Alain came out as a shitter. Expectations set up and subverted without good reason. Audience gets mad. If they like Alain, they probably get even madder because the knife twists, but there is plenty of reason to get mad regardless.
There are other bad aspects for the episode (rushed, wasted interaction between characters etc) but this is the major one.