Abilities apply in lots of different places depending on how they work. You'll need to make your animation and then call it from all those different places accordingly.
I know a lot of time passed, but were you able to use ho-oh's mysql trade system for online essentials? I'm getting the exact error that you posted in his thread (I know it was a lot of time ago). But if you remember would you mind telling me how to fix it?
Not yet. The whole throwing/absorbing/landing animation is currently just one group of commands, and I'll need at some point to split it into two and stick the "show burst animation" call in the middle. I don't know when I'll get round to it.