AmourShipping (Ash x Serena) Discussion Thread [SPOILERS]

*Greninja! Use Fly!* xD

Definitely. That's obvious, especially given the episode title and all. And going by the reception of this, I think that we'll see another one sometime- maybe some 40-50 episodes from now?

Anyway, I have to head to class now. See you in a few hours!

The new preview's translation?

So they're showing a unique ad for this episode on TV these days.
No actual new animation, but the narration is cute and reuses the same misinterpretation joke from XY13 regarding the word "tsukiau", which literally means "to accompany", but which is practically never used to mean anything other than "to date, to be boyfriend and girlfriend", especially not hen it comes to younger people.

So the dialogue goes as follows:

Satoshi: Hey Serena, be with me. (tsukiau, see above)
Serena: "B-Be with"? Y-You mean...
Satoshi: Come on, let's go!
Serena: I...
Satoshi: Here goes!
Serena: W-Wait!
Satoshi: Look forward to Pocket Monsters XY!
Serena: Oh... THAT's what you meant.
Satoshi: That's what I meant.

(yeah, it doesn't translate too well due to the joke being about a word that has multiple meanings, but you get the general idea)

Source:

http://www.serebiiforums.com/showthread.php?637930-February-5th-XY059-Ash-and-Serena-s-First-Date!-The-Vow-Tree-and-the-Presents!!/page76&p=17603516#post17603516 (Enter at your own risk, people are calling us gullible for that translation)

So, this translation of the preview makes me very concerned. Although, I do wonder... Potamuggle, how did it make you hyped? It seems like a bad sign to me, though...

And of course its mailing everyone laugh at us apparently, so I Dont know... What's your thoughts? O can't wait for the episode, its just that seeing this translated, it kind of males me a little worried.

Quoting our own RobSp1derp1g from the serebiiforums:

I think these lines, in some form or another, show up at the beginning of the episode, when he invites her to go shopping.

I agree with this. IMO, Serena misconstrues what Ash says to her, then is disappointed when she realizes what he meant. Maybe Serena thinks for a moment that Ash is asking her on a "date" or something, then Ash clarifies, oblivious to what Serena is thinking, causing Serena to be disappointed.

I personally am not worried about it.

When I first saw that ad on the tubes, I thought it was fake. A quick check with reliable sources quickly dispelled that notion.

Holy crap the writers are definitely having fun promoting this episode for what it's worth. And the choice use of the Laverre City music as BGM? Official Amourshipping theme song confirmed! Icwutudidthar

Incredibly stupid oneliner question.
Pokémon airs at 7 AM or PM?

RobSp1derp1g wrote:Incredibly stupid oneliner question.
Pokémon airs at 7 AM or PM?

FYI, it airs 7PM Japanese time.

For the peeps in the U.S. (and Canada!), here's the exact times by time zone:

Pacific: 2AM
Mountain: 3AM
Central: 4AM
Eastern: 5AM

Wth man? Seems like the US has time zones like the Kalos Pokedex. Mountain, Central...LOL.

Anyway, I believe that we wont be seeing the dialogues at all in the episode. That was simply for the narration. That's how I see it anyway. Nevertheless, bottom line is that there's no reason to worry

I thought that we could see something similar in the actual episode when I first saw the preview. I kinda changed my mind now. The main thing that got me hyped is the fact that the VAs did a nice and shippy dialogue for the preview. It's something you don't see very often in the pokemon anime.

Well the episode would sort of go in those lines I think. though we won't hear those words from the characters, we will still see the episode go on like it. It will definitely be a fun episode.

And to those who feel pessimistic, just rewatch the first preview and take a look at the screenshots once again. You won't feel pessimistic anymore

Only a few more minutes till it actually airs in Japan,my body is not ready for what's to come
I'll be off from the forums till I watch the episode to avoid spoilers

This post will be updated throughout; check back frequently for the latest updates. BE WARNED THAT THESE IMAGES WILL SPOIL YOU HARD.


Update: All images have been uploaded. Enjoy!

IMAGES FROM THE EPISODE:

Episode wasn't a world-beater, nor was it an outright disappointment. Had its share of hints, but that's about it.

Anyway, the preview of XY060 showed a woman in a car. Seemed like a movie producer to me. Do you think she might be impressed with Serena? Think she's trying to poach that talent? And do you think that affects Serena's stay in the series at the end of the XY saga?

The episode went about as I expected, the only thing that disappointed me was the fact that Ash and Serena were separated during most of their "date".

Ash giving Serena the gift was the best part. It was sweet of him, and you can tell it meant a lot to her.

I woke up hoping there would be some sort of major hints. In fact, one of my last thoughts before falling asleep was "maybe Serena is kidnapped by TR and Ash has to save her". But from what you guys describe, major letdown *salutes* is an understatement...

Well Rob, seems like I am finally disagreeing with you on something. This episode was far from a letdown. Now yes, the first time you see it- thinking of the title and such stuff, it may not exactly live up to the hype. But the hints that you see in the episode are, in fact, huge.

The beginning part has some good hints. Serena finishes registering for her Tripokelon, and looks at Ash and nods. They then have a small exchange of words where I believe she says, "I will do my best, and I won't fail you" To which Ash replies, "You are doing good enough Serena".

Then of course, the hints slow down a bit. In the end, Ash gives Serena a gift, of his own accord. When she asks him why, he replies that he felt obligated to give her the gift since it was because of her that he managed to get something for his Pokemon, while rubbing his nose (sign of nervousness). Note that this is the last scene of the episode, and Ash is the only human to directly give her a gift. Her mom gave her a gift too...a dress, indirectly. And Ash gave her this gift after that. She accepts the gift with a blush and a smile, and says that she will always treasure it. The episode ends, showing just the two of them in a frontal view, looking at the fireworks.

That was actually a major hint. remember that we are still in the 59th episode of what is probably a 180+ episode long saga. Giving an incontrovertible hint from Ash's side at this point may not be that big an idea because it practically gives away their intentions about making Amour canon. That would mean the anticipation and hype for it dies down prematurely. We will see something big, I hope, later on in the series- when the episode numbers hit triple digits. Until then, this was a huge hint, and developed AmourShipping without rubbing itself on the faces of the OtherShippers, or by making Ash seem too much out of character.

pokesrini wrote:Well Rob, seems like I am finally disagreeing with you on something. This episode was far from a letdown. Now yes, the first time you see it- thinking of the title and such stuff, it may not exactly live up to the hype. But the hints that you see in the episode are, in fact, huge.

The beginning part has some good hints. Serena finishes registering for her Tripokelon, and looks at Ash and nods. They then have a small exchange of words where I believe she says, "I will do my best, and I won't fail you" To which Ash replies, "You are doing good enough Serena".

Then of course, the hints slow down a bit. In the end, Ash gives Serena a gift, of his own accord. When she asks him why, he replies that he felt obligated to give her the gift since it was because of her that he managed to get something for his Pokemon, while rubbing his nose (sign of nervousness). Note that this is the last scene of the episode, and Ash is the only human to directly give her a gift. Her mom gave her a gift too...a dress, indirectly. And Ash gave her this gift after that. She accepts the gift with a blush and a smile, and says that she will always treasure it. The episode ends, showing just the two of them in a frontal view, looking at the fireworks.

That was actually a major hint. remember that we are still in the 59th episode of what is probably a 180+ episode long saga. Giving an incontrovertible hint from Ash's side at this point may not be that big an idea because it practically gives away their intentions about making Amour canon. That would mean the anticipation and hype for it dies down prematurely. We will see something big, I hope, later on in the series- when the episode numbers hit triple digits. Until then, this was a huge hint, and developed AmourShipping without rubbing itself on the faces of the OtherShippers, or by making Ash seem too much out of character.

When you put it that way...

I co pletely agree with Srini. Of it was too obvious, it would be a big middle finger to the other shippers. They kept it subtle to the point we had to think about it, once we did, it turned out to be a huge, HUGE hint.

TV Tropes calls it Fridge Brilliance.

pokesrini wrote:Well Rob, seems like I am finally disagreeing with you on something. This episode was far from a letdown. Now yes, the first time you see it- thinking of the title and such stuff, it may not exactly live up to the hype. But the hints that you see in the episode are, in fact, huge.

The beginning part has some good hints. Serena finishes registering for her Tripokelon, and looks at Ash and nods. They then have a small exchange of words where I believe she says, "I will do my best, and I won't fail you" To which Ash replies, "You are doing good enough Serena".

Then of course, the hints slow down a bit. In the end, Ash gives Serena a gift, of his own accord. When she asks him why, he replies that he felt obligated to give her the gift since it was because of her that he managed to get something for his Pokemon, while rubbing his nose (sign of nervousness). Note that this is the last scene of the episode, and Ash is the only human to directly give her a gift. Her mom gave her a gift too...a dress, indirectly. And Ash gave her this gift after that. She accepts the gift with a blush and a smile, and says that she will always treasure it. The episode ends, showing just the two of them in a frontal view, looking at the fireworks.

That was actually a major hint. remember that we are still in the 59th episode of what is probably a 180+ episode long saga. Giving an incontrovertible hint from Ash's side at this point may not be that big an idea because it practically gives away their intentions about making Amour canon. That would mean the anticipation and hype for it dies down prematurely. We will see something big, I hope, later on in the series- when the episode numbers hit triple digits. Until then, this was a huge hint, and developed AmourShipping without rubbing itself on the faces of the OtherShippers, or by making Ash seem too much out of character.

Yeah,I have to agree with you.While we didn't get what we were expecting out of this episode,it still had its moments and its actually a pretty good episode.The only letdown I had in my opinion was they weren't together most of the time

I have yet to watch the fabled episode. After reading these posts, I know where my expectations should be. Didn't expect much out of this but I love getting some more hints. I'd like to think that Ash giving Serena a present is hinting at the possibility that he likes Serena but I'll have to look into it first.

The OtherShippers may live another day, but they may not be so lucky come the next date episode.

Hey all, long time no see. I keep forgetting to log in here, but I'll try to remember more often from now on. I finally got around to watching the episode a little while ago...here are my thoughts:

I honestly thought this was a solid episode. Overall the preview definitely oversold the shippiness of the episode, but I think that was to be expected at least to some extent. The episode had some cute shippy moments in it, but it didn't go too far with it. Like many other people here, I didn't like Ash running off from Serena so many times. But at the very least it sort of helped set up that cute ending of the episode where Ash gives Serena that blue thingy in the box. On the whole, the writers gave us a small hint from Ash, the usual spaghetti spillage from Serena, and a very cute shot of Ash presenting the gift to Serena while fireworks go off in the background (gave the scene a quasi-romantic feel), and I think that satisfies my expectations.

I realize that some people here are disappointed because they expected more. I had long argued that we shouldn't place firm expectations for what might happen in this episode, especially given how little information we had about it for such a long time. The reason being that it was entirely possible that the title and preview could be overhyped or subject to misinterpretation. I think this serves as an important lesson, to keep expectations in check no matter how convinced we might be that things will go the way we want them to go. But in the end, there are some other positive things to take away from this if you were disappointed in the episode:

1. Amour DID take a step forward, and there's still plenty more things the writers can do with it since they didn't go all-out this time: Frankly, the anime team had a difficult situation here...The right balance to strike to give this episode plenty of hype all while leaving plenty of room for Amour to progress in the future. If the writers had gone full speed ahead with the shipping stuff in this episode (say, by having Ash show some major hints), it would have created some serious pacing problems down the road for Amour. There would be almost no fuel left to feed the ship, even though we're only about one-third of the way through the series right now. If you think about it, they gave us quite a bit here: by showing that Serena's feelings are still strong, by having her ONCE AGAIN give Ash some inspiration (how many times has she done this now?), and then on top of that by having Ash show a nice gesture to her. They even had the camera zoom in on just the two of them as Ash gave Serena the present while fireworks played in the background; that was a really cute (almost kinda romantic) scene, and it served as a direct juxtaposition to the scene where Serena gave Ash a bag of cookies back in XY007:





So I think that the way they played it here — giving us cute scenes from Serena and a nice gesture from Ash (that was a nice homage to the past) but not suddenly showing Ash as super lovey dovey — moves the ship another step forward while still maintaining an element of mystery and not going too far too fast. It's true that the marketers could have tried not putting all the shipping stuff in the preview, but then not as many people would have watched the episode. So the anime crew had a very difficult balancing act to achieve here. I kinda sympathize with them, actually, even though I don't agree with putting so much shippy stuff in the preview.

2. This may not be the last episode where Ash and Serena have alone time: It's clear to me based on the slow, but steady, progress the ship has made that we could possibly see more episodes where Ash and Serena are alone (whether or not they have their Pokemon with them). Even the title of XY059 is suggestive of potential future episodes like this. Should we get those episodes, we'll need to see whether Serena can break out of her shell to be more forthright about her feelings, and whether she can continue inspiring Ash until he slowly begins to realize how important Serena is to him (even if he doesn't start spilling noodles like crazy, which is kind of ridiculous to expect from a shonen hero anyway).

3. There's some symbolism here that I think may be overlooked a bit. The whole idea of the vow tree is that people give gifts to their Pokemon to strengthen their mutual bonds. Part of me thinks that same logic could very well apply to the gifts that people gave to each other. Grace gave a gift to Serena, symbolizing the strenghtening bond between mother and daughter. And, even though that blue ribbon thingy seems a bit underwhelming, the fact that Ash decided to give it to her at the vow tree suggests to me that his bond with her is strengthening. This doesn't mean that Ash is ready to tie the knot with Serena, don't get me wrong, but I would argue that it was a nice thing for the ship. He clearly values Serena quite highly; it may not be in the romantic sense (at least not yet), but the fact that Ash is going out of his way to show this kind of concern and kindness toward Serena is interesting to me.

Excellent points raised by Science. I think this episode is grossly underrated by its own target audience. And that is pretty unfortunate. In fact, I would say that it even lived up to the hype of its title to an extent. See...in the end, it is still just 1/3rd of the saga. Ash is only slowly warming up to the idea. And there's still plenty of time!

It begins this way. He holds Serena in high regard. That much is confirmed right now. Next up, we should see him realizing that she is special in some ways. That might be seen around XY100-XY120. At the end, around XY150 plus, we should see the final sprint. Remember that this is a marathon race, not a 100m dash. The hints need to be sustained throughout the saga, and the pacing needs to be taken care of delicately.

All in all, I reiterate that it is unfortunate that some AmourShippers have begun to complain so much about an episode that really did make the ship progress. This episode, especially Ash giving her a gift, has been grossly underrated and its value badly underestimated. If any of you are still not convinced, I want you to calmly let two points sink in:

1. AmourShipping is still the most heavily pushed ship in the series; and it is the only canon ship which includes Ash in it.
2. Ash Ketchum, the King of Obliviousness gave Serena a gift- much like she gave him in XY007. So if she gives a gift that's a hint, and if he does it isn't?

To me, it seems very much on track. In fact, it seems more on track than before. We got our first really high quality Ash hint. And if we see any more hints in the next 12 episodes, my stand is vindicated.

In my case, the episode was somewhat disappointing because most of the hints were shown on the promos.
Now, if someone who didnt see the promos sees the episode and goes crazy for the ship, my work will be cut for me.
I'm gonna test this with my brother. No guaranteed results.

Does your brother also know what Ash was like? Because unless he knows that, I doubt you will get reliable results.

To me, I felt that if I just watched the dub, if I stayed away from forums, and I knew nothing about spoilers, previews or whatever, I would've thought that the episode was incredibly shippy, and progressed Ash's side.

Note, this also includes the point that I have watched the previous sagas. So if he watched up to AG, then you would need to show it to him from the beginning of XY. Or you won't get reliable results.

Tbh Ash leaving Serena isn't that bad. Look at this that way. We would see hints but probably from Serena's side. That ribbon is the greatest surprise we've got. I think Ash's giving her a gift is something new and actually pushes amour forward. Hints from Serena we have already plenty. They're nothing big for amour (I mean it's nothing we haven't known yet).

Another thing that disappointed me, like RobSp1derp1g said, was that all the "good stuff" was shown in the previews, leaving myself and others thinking/hoping that there would be more hints or what have you still to come.

That said, XY59 was a positive episode for amour. I have had an optimistic outlook for this ship from the beginning, and continue to do so. Which is surprising for me, since I am overall a pessimistic person.

pokesrini, I just want to say how much I admire your upbeat attitude.