Dang, Justin, way to school the teacher! Although I don’t expect Jon to fall for the same tricks again. I foresee a Trick Room in Regieleki’s future. XD

Also, that battle between Victini and Metagross was wild. I was rooting for Victini and was glued to reading until the very end. Just when I thought I could predict how these battles would go, nope, you sir have mastered the art of getting me thinking I can predict how things are going to turn out and then you pull the rug out from underneath with these clever and unexpected occurrences just as things are coming down to the wire.

Going to be interesting to see how things change with so many more students showing up to the academy and how the original Season 1 cast is going to step up in terms of leadership and responsibility. I’m also curious to see just how many of these newcomers will be diligent in their studies and training, and how many will be slackers and get into all kinds of trouble. And how will the original Season 1 crew deal with that? See, this is the kind of stuff that keeps me reading this. :3

Overall, the way you handle the strategies in these battles and pair them with individual character styles is really clever and you do a lot of stuff I never really considered doing in Pokémon battles. It definitely makes the way battles are handled in the games seem so unbelievably bland and linear in comparison to the way you implement more of the environment, emotion, strategy, and intensity. Considering how easy it is to cruise through the games just knowing the type chart, this is honestly a welcome change and seems a LOT more akin to what actual competitive Pokémon battlers do in tournaments than what goes on in the PvE environment of the games, but with all those extra flavorful twists in terms of storyline, character development, and emotion. The big message I get from this again and again is “type chart be damned, there’s way more that can go on in Pokémon battles.”