The latest episode of Pokémon Sunday, The Forest of Kimori! Protect the Giant Tree!! / Grand Festival Anticipation Cosplay! (キモリの森！巨大樹を守れ!! / グランドフェスティバルをなりきり大予想！), aired today in Japan.

This week featured the continuation of the rerun theme 'New friends! Get Pokémon!' and The Forest of Kimori! Protect the Giant Tree!! was this weeks repeat episode. The episode features Kimori and how he is captured by Satoshi. A full summary of this episode is available in the episode guide.

To celebrate the upcoming Grand Festival arc on Pocket Monsters Diamond and Pearl, the Pokémon Sunday crew decided to hold their own Grand Festival and cosplay some of the main characters from the show. Akiyama dressed up as Nando (Naoshi / ナオシ), Yamamoto dressed up as Jessie (Musashi / ムサシ), Baba dressed as Zoey (Nozomi / ノゾミ) and the special guest for this episode, Yutti (ゆってぃ) was Dawn (Hikari / ヒカリ).


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The event started with the appeal part of the Grand Festival each person pretending to be a certain Pokémon that was associated with the character they were cosplaying. The appeal segment required each person to peddle on a bike that was hooked up to a television. The person who was able to generate enough power to run the television for the longest amount of time would be the winner. A video clip of that character was displayed when they generated enough power.

The next phase had Baba as Nozomi's Nyarmar faced off against Yutti (ゆってぃ) as Pochama. Each person had to use one of the Pokémon's attacks to break a line of balloons. The first person to break all the balloons and reach the finish line would be the winner. Baba as Nozomi's Nyarmar used Iron Tail and bounced on the balloons. Yutti (ゆってぃ) as Pochama used Peck and wore a beak on his face to pop the balloons. Both had trouble popping the balloons but Yutti ended up winning to eliminate Baba.

Yamamoto dressed up as Musashi's Habunake faced off against Akiyama as Naoshi's Korotok/a> in the other tournament bracket. Yamamoto used Habunake's bite attack to pop the balloons. He wore vampire Halloween teeth and bit into the balloons to pop them. Akiyama did a karate chop like move to portray the X-scissor attack but it didn't prove to be very effective. Yamamoto easily won the match and eliminated Akiyama which setup the final of Yamamoto (Musashi) vs Yutti (Hikari).

The final round was an obstacle course that required Yamamoto and Yutti to race through it to the end. A stuffed plushie was on a table at the end of the course and the first person to pick up their corresponding plushie would win the Grand Festival. The obstacle course featured a balance beam with Baba and Akiyama throwing things at them and a spin the bat phase that required them to put their head on the bat and spin around. The two were very close all the way to the end but Yutti was able to grab the Pochama plushie first by being coherent enough after the bat spinning to win the tournament.