the whole thing with golisopod’s emergency exit activating and throwing scizor into the line of fire has me wondering whether or not guzma really understands what his ace’s ability really means or if he’s genuinely clueless.
that’s not the face of someone who expected golisopod to suddenly switch into scizor in the face of a fire blast. he’s even questioning it - it wasn’t even something he considered. golisopod would take neutral damage - logically, it’s guzma’s best bet against torracat, with scizor vs pikachu - and guzma knew that scizor would struggle against fire type moves due to its 4x weakness (hence why he u-turned at the start).
but nobody on the battlefield seemed to expect it, either. ash and torracat are equally horrified by scizor fainting - there’s no celebration, no joy, only this sort of stunned terror. because ash doesn’t know what golisopod’s ability is - and i don’t think guzma does, either. not entirely.
we all kinda presumed that in this scene, guzma was just covering for golisopod and trying to write off its ability as a declaration of a lack of interest, which would make sense - why would guzma want to admit that ash had successfully sapped half of his precious partner’s health? why would he want to give anybody the impression that golisopod was anything other than indomitable?
and i’d be inclined to believe that if it weren’t for plumeria. throughout guzma’s arc on the anime, she’s the only person within his inner circle to be shown doubting his abilities / warning him to be careful and to not be so cocksure and certain of his own victory. she didn’t seem nearly as confident after guzma and ash’s first match, and she hasn’t seemed completely confident at any point during the league so far.
plumeria reminds guzma that ash is no pushover - and that could because of his record in the league (i.e. his rowlet beating its fully evolved self). but i think it’s a reminder of how ash and guzma’s first battle played out, with ash successfully activating golisopod’s emergency exit - not that he knew that. if guzma understood the significance of that at all, i feel like he’d have made some nod to it. maybe even some slight hesitation before boasting about his winning streak.
but he doesn’t. guzma truly believes that he’s undefeated in every way, when technically, he forfeited his match against ash. pikachu hasn’t yet fainted when golisopod returned to its ball - which means that if you want to look at the specifics, ash won his first battle against guzma. and that’s pretty damn significant, because guzma doesn’t acknowledge it. in fact, i don’t even think he sees it as a loss, which hammers home my original point:
guzma doesn’t fully understand how “emergency exit” works, and that’s why he was caught off-guard when it activated at the wrong moment and put scizor in the path of the fire blast that knocked it out.
the skull grunts are equally clueless. they, too, believe that golisopod’s emergency exit is really just it signalling disinterest and claiming the battle already won. they’re so enamoured with guzma that they’ll believe just about anything he says - and equally, they’re 100% committed to the idea that nobody will ever be able to defeat their leader in battle.
but plumeria knows. for whatever reason, she’s worked it out: emergency exit is a bad thing, one not as under golisopod’s control as guzma and the others think it is. and for that, she’s worried that it’ll play up at the wrong moment and cripple guzma when he least needs it.
and that’s exactly what happened.
titsay
vaporwave
jbbartram-illu
andulkaphoto
