Pokemon the Series: Ruby & Sapphire

With such a roster of talented Coordinators, it's no surprise that the competition at the Grand Festival is particularly fierce! Emotions are running high on all sides...

Ash and May have just finished a blistering battle in the finals of the Terracotta Pokemon Contest, and when time runs out and the smoke clears, they both have an equal number of points. The judges declare them both winners!

Ash's Frontier Battle journey has come to a successful end, but before our heroes part ways, they learn of an unofficial Pokemon Contest in Terracotta Town, and Ash and May both decide to enter! When May takes the stage, the crowd goes wild, recognizing her from her semi-final finish at the Grand Festival.

At the Battle Pyramid, Charizard has fallen to Brandon's Dusclops, and Ash calls out Bulbasaur. Dusclops again uses Confuse Ray, but with a heartfelt pep talk from Ash, Bulbasaur snaps out of it and defeats Dusclops!

For his rematch against Brandon at the Battle Pyramid, Ash decides to gather four of the Pokemon who have been with him the longest: Bulbasaur, Charizard, Squirtle, and of course Pikachu! To get reacquainted, he takes the four of them camping in the mountains, and after some training, they spend the evening sitting around the campfire as Ash tells the story of how he met each of them.

Ash and friends--including Professor Oak--are staying at the Fennel Valley Pokemon Center when Nurse Joy comes down with a bad case of the flu and has to stay in bed. It's bad timing, because a Pokesitter named Matt has just gotten into a bus accident on a nearby mountain road, leaving several Pokemon injured.

As our heroes await Ash's next rematch with Brandon, it appears both Ash and May are having trouble coming to grips with their recent defeats. They get support from Max and Brock, of course--and from some surprising sources as well!

When our heroes and Brandon arrive at the Battle Pyramid for Ash's final Battle Frontier challenge, they meet Nurse Joy, a big fan who knows absolutely everything about both Ash and May's Pokemon careers and has a scrapbook to prove it! She offers to help Ash train for his battle--and ends up beating him with her formidable Chansey, who also blasts the Team Rocket villains off as soon as they show up to steal it.

Ash's Aipom runs away in a forest and is attacked by a Weavile. Kerrigan, a member of the Wilderness Guard Corps, rescues it and tells our heroes that the Weavile is a stray who's abandoned its group.

Our heroes meet a Chatot, a fascinating Pokemon who can mimic anything it hears, and its Trainer, Audrey. Audrey tells them that she and Chatot have formed a stand-up comedy duo called the North Sea Chat-a-lots, and when Ash and the others beg for a demonstration, they happily launch into their routine, much to the delight of our heroes!

Ash and friends find themselves in a village with a most unusual annual ritual: choosing a king who will rule for the next year! The candidates compete for possession of the crown, and whoever is holding on to it at sundown wins the royal title.

The Grand Festival battle between May and Drew is really heating up, as the two Coordinators pelt each other with sizzling combinations, each pecking away at the other's score! The lead keeps changing at a dizzying pace--and then May's Combusken learns how to use Overheat, a move that buys her just enough time to run out the clock and squeak past Drew on points!