>>55751831God damn you.
Whenever people bring up that Pikachu versus Snivy fight, they always conveniently leave out the part where Pikachu was "sick" during that fight.
In the same episode, Ash and Pikachu met Zekrom and Zekrom zapped Pikachu, which short-circuited it. Professor Juniper evaluated Pikachu, but initially couldn't find anything unusual. Pikachu's cheeks sparking was the only hint that something was wrong, until Pikachu tried to battle. Pikachu used Quick Attack just fine, but when it tried to use Thunderbolt and nothing happened but sparking, the confusion over a failed move gave the Snivy a free Tackle. Pikachu tired to Thunderbolt again, and again it failed, and Pikachu was exhausted even attempting to use electricity. Pikachu was just straight fatigued by the time Ash asked it to use Volt Tackle. It was at that point Ash figured out that something was wrong and called for Iron Tail, which worked fine.
Then Snivy used LEAF TORNADO, which it doesn't learn until level 16, which completely kills the argument that the Snivy in question was level 5 or a baby or whatever nonsense people throw in when trying to present the Snivy to be as weak as possible. The Leaf Tornado left Pikachu in a crater.
Professor Juniper and Professor Oak re-evaluated Pikachu and determined that Pikachu had suffered "an electrical overload of some kind" and it had absorbed to much electricity from Zekrom. Zekrom came back and was shocking the hell out of Pikachu even indoors.
Pikachu got nerfed and nerfed hard by Zekrom and it had to slowly build up its strength throughout the Unova adventure.
I'm sick to death of that Snivy versus Pikachu fight being used as an example by inconsistent power levels when it was abundantly clear in context what was happening.
Fuck you.
