Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-27810039-20160217103443/@comment-27810039-20160221134052

Blaziken rjcf wrote: Why a character chooses not to do something in any given situation is up to the writers. It has nothing to do with retcons. There are many instances in which we, the viewers, having a "bird's eye view" of the situation, as well as the benefit of hindsight (on occasion), can see how a different course of action would've been better than the one chosen by the characters. However, if you take them to be real people, the fact is, they didn't see things our way. Why didn't Ben use [insert transformation name here] to fight against [insert villain name here]? Maybe because he didn't think it was a good idea. Maybe he just didn't think of it. Maybe it would've taken time to scroll through the 60+ aliens to get to the right one, and he couldn't do it.

EDIT: Yes, her mana shields are almost always broken. What's your point? How is that an inconsistency? In the original series, she could barely raise a mana shield without verbally casting a spell. ??? It's up to the writers? Who didn't know this? This isn't about semantics, or the clandestine technicalities. Writers are the ones that enforce and effectuate retcons, and proceed to adhere to them as well--doing whatever they can amidst those parameters but abiding by them nevertheless. You knew that, but that's not what this is about. It's about the fact that her powers were retconned as evinced by the fact that there was no direct delineation between the two capabilities and no comprehensible correlation between them either.

I'm not zeroing in on one occurence in which she would have benefitted from switching gears, I'm talking about the entirety of the show in which, at least 95% of the time, one was used in favour of the other as if there was some unspoken edict, or as if the writers were figuring out whether or not they wanted to maintain the retcon that they had established.