Right… where was I?
So, Ash has just won his Soul Badge. This marks the beginning of a stretch of nearly 30 episodes in which, as far as I can tell, he achieves nothing whatsoever. In fact I’m not even totally sure where he is for most of that time. I know they go to Las Vegas at one point, but for all I know they spend the rest of the time wandering around Belgium. I will do my best to track Ash’s party as they weave across the face of the planet during that time. Anyway, I’m not bothered by having no idea where they are this whole time, because this block also happens to include some of the most interesting episodes of the Kanto series, which I’m really looking forward to reviewing.
The other thing about this chunk of the series is that the order of the episodes is a little confused for some of it. This is because of episode 38, the infamous Porygon episode (which, no, I have not seen and will not be reviewing… this time…), which caused the show to be cancelled in Japan for a brief period and seriously mucked up the episode schedule. As a result, Jessie claims at least once to have a Lickitung several episodes before she actually catches it, Togepi is conspicuously absent from Princess vs. Princess, and no-one is completely sure when Snow Way Out is supposed to have happened. I’m not going to fight it; I’m just going to accept it. I plan to jump around a lot more in this block of episodes than I have in the past, so I can put episodes together that seem to have themes in common (or, in one or two cases, entirely at random).
This round of Anime Time is going to cover everything up to episode 63, the Battle of the Badge, when Ash returns to Viridian City to earn his Earth Badge… so, tune in tomorrow and we’ll jump right into these suckers!
Pokémaniacal 