If Leon vs. Alain, or the Tournament in the anime is not your cup of tea, why not read another version of the Masters 8?
The story continues from Pokemon Journeys ep 109, with a brand new bracket from the anime. Ash has finally entered the Masters 8...
This is not part of the story. I am here to talk about how disappointing the matchups in the anime are, and how they could have made this a whole lot better.
They are doing Bracket 1: Leon vs Alain, Lance vs Diantha; Bracket 2: Cynthia vs Iris, Ash vs Steven.
I don't understand what kind of arrangement this is. I am still mad. I will talk about my ideal match-up below and I want to share the way I think with all of you.
First of all, what are the major settings of Journeys?
- Leon is a world champion who has been undefeated in the World Coronation Series.
- Ash aims to defeat Leon: a goal he had set early on in Journeys and he had been working very hard to achieve this goal.
Do these settings have problems? No, they are fine. Leon really has not lost any matches against other trainers that are shown in the anime. Ash finally has a concrete SMART goal that he can achieve, compared to his dream of becoming a Pokémon Master. So far, Ash has been working very hard to try to defeat Leon eventually, we all see his effort and the rank climbing activities.
If we consider this being a single-elimination bracket, then we can easily put Ash vs Leon as the final match, just to show how strong Leon is, and how far Ash has come in his 25 years of journey. Their match can only happen in the finals so that it would not destroy all the settings Journeys had made. I think most people are fine with this. As a result, we have something like this.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
In 16 squares, we easily filled in 6 of them just by considering the settings of Journeys. I am assuming that there will be a third-place battle happening before the finals because most tournaments have this round. When this is considered, whoever wins in the quarterfinals can have 3 battles. The easy part is done. Now the hard part, and that is where the debates are open. Tell me what you think will be the ideal matchups. There is no such thing as a perfect matchup considering so many people and battles. Each arrangement has its own perks and flaws, so we aim to find the lesser evil.
In these 4 quarterfinal matches, 2 semi-final matches, finals, and the 3rd position match, we audience would want to see as many meaningful matches as possible. How do you make things meaningful? The characters need to have some relationship and history with the others so that their stories can be as complete as possible. This is very important from a narrative standpoint. We want to see battles that matter! And with everyone in the Masters 8, I am sure all the matches will be exciting, even though some we may already know who would win.
So how connected are these trainers with each other?
Leon: Ash, Lance, Iris. Ash aims to defeat Leon. Lance has lost to Leon before in the show. Arguably Iris if we consider content in the Pokémon Masters EX that she was related to Leon, like her cousin or something. But if Lance is to lose to Leon again, it will be repetitive, and it will do Lance dirty. So Lance vs. Leon should be avoided.
