>>23023064>it doesn't count as a gym battle unless I say soThey were in a gym, there was a battle, and Team Rocket was officially given charge of that gym. You can say the battle was shitty or whatever if you want, but it doesn't stop counting just because you say so. (It's pretty obvious they did it because they didn't want Ash confronting Giovanni at that point in the show)
Team Rocket interrupted the Koga fight at first but Ash beat him afterwards.
>>23023071I don't get where you're getting any of that from what I said, if anything I'd love the opposite, because Ash never ages and you know he never wins the league because the show can't end. But I know asking for that much is unreasonable. The problem with the show isn't that Ash is a smarter battler now, it's that they lost what made the show really good when it began, which was adventure.
Within the first 30 episodes of the show, they met a giant Dragonite, nearly drowned on the St. Anne, had to stop a Pokemon from destroying a city because humans destroyed its home, met a crazy gym leader who turns people into dolls if they lose, and saved a power plant from a group of living sludge monsters.
The introduction to XY was fantastic, with Ash risking his life to help a berserker Pokemon and saving Pikachu. The gym battles are fine because they are what they are. The problem is that most of what you get in between is one bland filler after another. There's an occasional good filler sure, but it's far less frequent now (FTR even the first season of the show already had this problem not far into its run). For what claims to be a show about adventure, there's very little actual adventure. They feel more like tourists.
