Training is over and it's time to leave Paldea. Liko, Roy and Dot are stronger than they ever have been before, but now it's time to resume the journey to find Laqua. But first we need to find the remaining of Lucius's Pokémon, including the Black Rayquaza. All of that sounds really exciting right? So why does half of this batch of episodes feel so boring?

Maybe this is on me for getting too excited and attached to the Terastallization test that was going on for the last two batches of episodes. I was originally worried that getting away from Pokémon Horizon's originally established formula would hurt it, and instead we got some of the best moments in the entire series so far. Now, after going back to what we originally had from Pokémon: Horizons with our trio going on adventures with the Rising Volt Tacklers, things honestly feel kind of slow by comparison. It's not bad necessarily, but it really does feel like the story just went back to the way things were without really progressing the overall narrative structure of the show.

It's back to unraveling the mystery of Lucius and there are some really good episodes in here that go all in on that mystery. These are arguably the most important episodes of the entire series thus far, because it fully goes into confirming major details about the past and even pays off some theories that were felt throughout the show up until this point. But the foundation by which this information is delivered has to be one of the most mind-boggling and borderline frustrating aspects of the entire series thus far. It loosely makes sense if you've played Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, as a narrative component from those games is built into the show itself. There is actually a lot of game fanservice here for Pokémon: Legends Arceus and some of the game's DLC, but the integration of these ideas feels very lackluster. They feel more like footnotes rather then actually built up lore.

We get more of Lucius's legendary Pokémon, but the way that they are handled feels way too bland compared to how they're built up and I'm trying to figure out why. Arguably things aren't much different from how they were in the early seasons, and that's the problem. There isn't anything new or exciting about the actual journey at this point. It's more of the same of what we had before, and that's not good enough for me anymore after the show kept raising the bar with hype and character. There are even some episodes here that would just straight up feel like filler if it wasn't for the fact that they randomly pull in a plot point at the last minute. Even when the show is trying to follow up on the things that it does best, it ends up tripping over its own feet and face plants into the ground.

It really does feel like a majority of the animation spotlights and character development was reserved for the early parts of this season and now it feels like it's running out of steam. They could have truncated a good chunk of these episodes and not lost a lot of major information. The Explorers don't even get a lot of things to do, which feels very strange considering how involved they were previously.

This also applies to the animation quality, which isn't bad, but we don't really hit any of the major highs that the series had kind of become known for before now. We're starting to see a few segments of repeated animation, the choreography feels a bit slower, and some gags just overstay their welcome. The music is about the same, and while there are some really strong dub performances here, I can't even give them that much proper attention because some characters aren't specifically listed next to a cast member in the credits. For some reason, Netflix is listing some new actors as additional voices and that makes it very difficult to determine who is playing who. I even had to double check Bulbapedia, but some actors just aren't being credited properly.

Seriously, almost everything about this batch of episodes feels like the show is losing steam. I had feared we would get to this point a while ago, but Pokémon: Horizons was always good at capitalizing on this strong sense of momentum. While there were some episodes that felt slower than others, they were at least entertaining or tied into a character's personal development, even if it didn't focus on the main story. But some of these episodes just felt like a drag to get through, and that's a shame considering that we are on our way to reaching the overall climax of this arc. For the first time since the beginning of the series, I'm genuinely concerned. Hopefully this is more of a speed bump instead of a new status quo.