I'M CAPTAIN KIRK

and i don't even say that in a mean way lmao because wow he sure does behave... differently... in the anime...

 

plumeria: guzma... you're what gives [the members of team skull] hope... there's so many people who ran away after losing some kind of challenge, who don't know what to do... optimism doesn't come easily to some here... but you gave them somewhere they could be themselves...

why is plumeria the only one on-brand here?

 

apparently kukui used to battle guzma all the time and always win, and be his usual cheerful self like 'you'll get much better once you and golisopod can be more in sync!' and guzma took consistently losing to Kukui super badly to the extent of kneeling down in the middle of a thunderstorm in a forest to repeatedly punch the ground and yell about 'why can't i beat him?'

 

like, the show has still given no indication of why he does this, he just is apparently that sort of guy, and i'm. still unsure how the show wants me to feel about this? it seems to be trying to shoot for 'look he's sympathetic after all' but like. weirdly.

 

me: allow me to dissect pokemon's writing and characterisation decisions
someone else who i don't know: yes i will also do that
me, rearing away in terror: no sir please don't i will do a whole panic

 

plumeria: he stays undefeated because he only takes on battles he can win. he and golisopod are both like that. he hides in the shadows so he won't get hurt. but how long does he want to live like this?

i see plumeria is Characterisation Mouthpiece today

 

I mean, wrt kukui and guzma, they apparently both trained under the same kahuna but kukui was The Favorite and went on to become a professor and blah blah blah, leading at least in part to guzma's disillusionment with The Man™ and the island challenge, but like............. that's...... that can't be it, there's more motivation there...........

(horrible thought: the writing is going to keep being Like That to try and foil him to Ash's Never Give Up Even When You Lose Every Single League thing :/)

 

guzma don't be all like 'what's happening' you know perfectly well what someone doing z-poses looks like

 

golisopod: [withstands Gigavolt Havoc]
guzma: golisopod...? you... you can still battle?
golisopod: goliso!
guzma: i get it. you're not running away. not ever again.
me, in the stands: [squints dubiously thru my opera glasses]


honestly i don't know if it's just because i'm watching it very piecemeal, constantly pausing to do other things and ramble here, that it seems a bit disjointed, or if it actually is just like that. but i guess guzma's Found His Spirit now?

 

hey, he used the 'what are you doing, guzma!!!' line!

after a rapid reiteration of all his backstory flashback scenes and scenes with him from earlier episodes which i guess were supposed to make them look somehow cohesive but just reiterated that apparently He Was A Guy Who Ran Away A Lot and Now He's Decided Not To Be

 

okay, well, whatever i have to say about the general quality of guzma's writing the scene where he walks up to the team skull grunts after losing to Ash and is like 'the undefeated guzma is no more, you all go do whatever you want' and they all crowd round him like DUDE YOU WERE AWESOME WE LOVE YOUU while he's like ??? ...???????? was really fucking cute

i think that's the last we'll see of him at least until the end of the league plotline because plumeria said something about team skull taking their next big step and then they got a dramatic ending still; he might show up in one of the like. five or six episodes between the end of the league and the end of the series, but now the show wants to move on to banging ash and gladion together until they kiss i guess. so on the plus side they didn't make his characterisation any worse, but they also didn't really make it any clearer or anything either.

 

...OKAY WE'LL JUST HAVE MELTAN EVOLVE INTO MELMETAL THEN I GUESS

no more sleeping in ash's backpack for you

 

meltan: [evolves]
ash: !!!!!!?????
oak: o lol that's just melmetal it's in all these ancient texts

oak how the fuck

 

Spoiler: big img

this is why lana is the best character in the entire show

 

after all that, ash actually winning the league was pretty cool, and i'm not mad about it. though tbh i think gladion is still probably the better trainer and ash mostly won via Power of Protagonist. but Power of Protagonist is par for the course in pokemon, so like i said, not even mad.

 

oh look it's guzzlord maybe the dystopian alternate alola ash saw half a season back will come true after all (it won't)

 

that'd be a hell of a turnaround for pokemon, though. 'we let ash finally win a league tournament because we're going to turn the entire region post-apocalyptic!'

 

bewear is the real mvp of this series

 

is that... a shiny guzzlord?

maybe they can make the guzzlords fall in love and kiss rather than eat everything

 

let the guzzlords eat each other (out)