Early in the episodes, you see real life animals..cackles, You see fish in Misty’s aquarium, you also see fish in the bottom of the ocean when S.S. Anne sank, You could also hear bird calls in the distance and there was a worm being eaten by a pidgeotto, and then there are all the pokedex references. I’ve heard stuff like “oh they didnt have enough pokemon back then”, and “the pokedex are like that just so you can relate, but wouldnt it be cool if we could claim that the animals were secretly

This question has fallen afoul of Tumblr’s arbitrary 400-odd character limit, and was supposed to end:
“…going extinct, and noone gave a crap about it cuz pokemons obviously the "superior species”, what if a field inhabited by wild boufalants was once a home for regular buffalos or something like that. idk, i get curious about these things cuz the creators are so vague in these areas"

Anyhow, I shall answer thus:
Well, yeah, the out-of-universe reason is probably more or less as you suggest. Bear in mind that, when Red and Green were released, no-one at Game Freak had any expectation that there would ever be more than 200-250 Pokémon if that, and they certainly didn’t anticipate that Pokémon would become the global phenomenon it has. I think that, in the early stages of the franchise’s development, they probably did assume that there were a bunch of regular animals filling all the ecological niches that Pokémon didn’t… fish, birds, insects, in the second episode Ash even mentions cows. It’s only in the last generation or two, I suspect, that they’ve consciously begun to think they can build an entire ecosystem out of Pokémon alone.

This is all very well for the designers, but we the fans now need an in-universe explanation for the disappearance of those animals.

Your interpretation is… rather dark, and also confronts us with the question of why the real-world animals haven’t already gone extinct long ago. Pokémon are basically animals that can defy physics in one or more ways, so there really shouldn’t be any contest there, regardless of human activity. I think it sort of implies, actually, that Pokémon are relatively recent additions to the ecosystem and are replacing the other animals one by one as their foothold grows, which might be a fun basis for a total reinterpretation of the setting, but can’t really explain the version of the world we have.

I guess if I had to explain it, I’d tell you that the real-world animals are there, all right, we just don’t care about them because they only fill the less eye-catching ecological niches (in short, there are no buffalo or giraffes, but there might be mice and snails). Whenever a particular area lacks the Pokémon necessary for filling a particular niche, there’s a real-world animal there to take its place, but no-one wants to hear about those. I have no explanation for the cows, because it stands to reason that farmers would import and export Miltank all over the world while regular cows would be herded only by a few die-hard traditionalists in the regions they originally came from.

I think for me the big question is whether Pokémon are a monophyletic group or not – that is, whether they share a single common ancestor with no descendants outside the group. The whole issue would actually become a lot simpler if we assume Pokémon are paraphyletic, like fish (that is, dog Pokémon are more closely related to dogs than they are to other Pokémon, and so on) but that seems to be at odds with the way scientists in the Pokémon world talk about them. So, yeah, I don’t know.

Greetings!!!! Before I begin… Love the blog! Anyways… Just a suggestion… Since your so opinionated about pokemons… Why not do a post or two about some original ideas of yours? I personally would like to see you design a elite 4 champion idea… You could talk about his personality, his pokemons and all that good stuff. (of course after I’ve heard what you think of iris in BW2) Thanks!

You know, I keep meaning to do that. I mean, not designing a champion, specifically, but do a series of entries on how I would run the games if I were in charge. I just keep coming up with *other* things I’d rather do first. So, er… it’s in the pipes. So to speak.

Anime Time: Episodes 42, 45 and 47

Showdown at Dark City – The Song of Jigglypuff – A Chansey Operation

Ash’s Location: Somalia

I’m slowly learning that whenever I try to stuff three episodes into a single entry, the length of my synopses quickly becomes unmanageable. This isn’t going to stop me from doing it, but I am going to make an honest effort to cut down on that stuff, so I have time to… y’know… actually say stuff about the episodes. This is another one of those entries where I’ve just thrown three episodes together because I can just about cram them all into my vaguely defined “Pokémon and Society” heading. Without further ado… "I am so inconspicuous right now. Yep; Joy, you are one badass master of disguise. If my identical twin cousins-in-law could see me right now, they'd look right through me." Screenshots from filb.de/anime.

In the first of today’s episodes, Ash and his friends have the misfortune to stumble into Dark City, where the locals hate and fear Pokémon Trainers because of a violent gang war between the city’s two unofficial Pokémon Gyms, the Yas Gym and the Kaz Gym. Each Gym has ambitions to become the sole official Gym of Dark City, and is desperate to destroy the other before the arrival of a Pokémon League inspector a few days hence. They’ve given up on formal battles, and mostly just brawl in the street, trainers and Pokémon alike. The kids run into some of the Kaz Gym’s trainers – who turn out to be Jessie and James – forcing a restaurant to supply their Gym with food, and Brock roasts them with Vulpix, which prompts one of the Yas trainers to recruit them. Misty insists that they use false names to keep their reputations from being damaged, so they enter the Yas Gym as Tom Ato, Ann Chovy, and Caesar Salad (I kid you not) to speak to the Yas leader. He tries to test Ash with his Scyther, but Pikachu uses a ketchup bottle he picked up in the restaurant to squirt Scyther in the eyes, driving him berserk and forcing the leader to recall him. Ash makes a big dramatic speech about how both sides are dreadful, ruins the effect by slipping on some ketchup, and gets chased out of the Gym. Ash learns from the Pokédex that both Scyther and the Kaz Gym’s strongest Pokémon, Electabuzz, are enraged by the colour red, so when the Yas and Kaz trainers meet up for their final showdown he and the downtrodden citizens drop barrels of ketchup all over both sides to sabotage the battle. The Gym Leaders unite to destroy Ash, but Pikachu smites them with Thunder, and the Pokémon League inspector is revealed to have been in Dark City the whole time, hidden behind a trench coat and a surgical mask – none other than Nurse Joy #1, the Supreme Joy. She declares both Gyms utterly reprehensible and orders the leaders to submit to Ash for instruction, forcing Ash to explain his theory of Pokémon training. “Sure, you try to win, but you don’t try to beat each other! Um…”

Electabuzz and Scyther attack... not each other, but... their own reflections in each other's eyes. Yeah... it's kinda like that. Dark City is a dreadful portrait of just how badly wrong this setting can go. The worst part is that it seems like an entirely realistic scenario. If it comes to a fight, very few people will have any hope of beating an experienced Pokémon trainer without Pokémon of their own. The only thing stopping the whole world from dissolving into chaos is the fact that, as a rule, the most powerful trainers tend to be decent people, since most Pokémon respond better to kindness than abuse. Sure, the ketchup strategy was clever and caused the gangs no small amount of pain, but if Ash and Pikachu hadn’t been there, the civilians would have been toast once the Gym Leaders decided to join forces. In fact, let’s put some thought into how this situation could have deteriorated without Ash’s presence. Nurse Joy seems to have no weapon in this conflict besides her authority. The anime has never portrayed Chansey, her only Pokémon, as a powerful fighter, and it should have been obvious to her within minutes of arriving in Dark City that both Gyms were nauseating stains on the honour of all trainers. Had she been able to end the fighting, she would already have done so. If either Gym had lost interest in winning official status, Joy would have been powerless. One hopes that she could have called in reinforcements from the Pokémon League, but given their conspicuous failure to deal with a powerful rogue Gym Leader in the past, it is difficult to be optimistic. The civilians might eventually have become organised; they might even have developed the same plan as Ash did to set the Yas and Kaz forces fighting amongst themselves, but they would have been crushed in short order once the two Gyms decided to join up. Eventually, one Gym would win the street war, unless they chose to unite permanently. Either way, Dark City would be ruled absolutely by violent robbers. They might even start handing out badges, claiming to be an official Gym, and reaping many of the benefits of being one without paying lip service to the Pokémon League. This is all prevented solely by the fact that, with Electabuzz and Scyther out of the picture, the highest-level Pokémon left in the town happens to belong to Ash. Hooray…?

Later, they go to Las Vegas!

Part of me actually thinks the series would be improved if they were like this in every episode. Someone must have agreed with me, because that's pretty much what the Go-Rock Quads in Pokémon Ranger are. Well, the show calls it Neon Town, but… it’s a big city in the middle of the desert filled with bright flashing lights and casinos. Trust me, it’s Vegas. Everyone in Vegas is a misanthropic sociopath because they’re all massively sleep-deprived, so the kids stay there for as little time as possible before returning to the woods, where they find a wild Jigglypuff. Misty wants to catch her, of course, so she summons Staryu and has it whack Jigglypuff, who bursts into tears (they all find this really bizarre for some reason). They realise that this Jigglypuff can’t sing. Misty says she’s still cute – which cheers her up a bit – but who wants a Jigglypuff who can’t sing? – which starts her crying again. Then this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fpoq_fcMixc happens (and ends exactly the way every other fight with Team Rocket ends). Misty and Pikachu try to teach Jigglypuff to sing and fail (and Jigglypuff is a real bitch to Pikachu about his singing, too), but Brock finds a rare fruit that can be used to soothe an inflamed throat, which works. Jigglypuff can sing at last! Unfortunately, no-one can sit through her song without falling asleep… not even Psyduck. Jigglypuff is enraged and scribbles on everyone’s faces with a marker as they sleep. The kids decide to take Jigglypuff back to Vegas with them, since those jerks never seem to sleep. Team Rocket disguise themselves as a rock band and offer to let Jigglypuff use their outdoor stage, planning to stay awake using earplugs and rob everyone blind, but the earplugs fail and they fall asleep, along with every other person in Vegas. When the kids wake up, Jigglypuff is nowhere to be seen, but the people of Las Vegas have suddenly become halfway decent after their first proper night’s sleep in decades. That, in a roundabout way, constitutes the kids’ good deed for the day, so they return to… whatever it is they were doing, now with Jigglypuff following them, ready to resurface whenever it’s most inconvenient for everyone.

Alternatively, this works too. In The Song of Jigglypuff, Ash and his friends use a Pokémon to cure insomnia. I just want to point out that the last time someone tried that, a whole bunch of kids went insane and ran away from home to live as Pokémon in the city park. Just so we’re clear on that. Anyway. Jigglypuff is a weird little Pokémon in the anime. Although her Doubleslap is useful against other small, physically weak Pokémon, she can’t really fight. Her trump card is her song, which Team Rocket try to capture on tape in this episode. I can’t think of anything that’s ever managed to stay awake through the whole thing and thus avoid provoking Jigglypuff’s fury. Strangely, even though she continues to follow Ash around for years, after this episode both Misty and Team Rocket seem to lose all interest in catching her, possibly because they’re all terrified of her. How anyone ever manages to train a Jigglypuff is beyond me; if their songs will put everyone within a good twenty metres to sleep, using one would surely put an end to most battles by rendering both trainers unconscious, as well as any spectators. They’re extremely rare Pokémon, it’s true, and tend to live far away from humans, but presumably trainers must bring them into towns from time to time. In order to maintain some semblance of sanity, you almost have to assume that the Jigglypuff Ash meets in this episode has an especially enchanting voice, and that a typical Jigglypuff isn’t quite so soporific. The kids clearly don’t anticipate the sheer power of her song; they go back to Vegas fully expecting that many of the citizens will be able to shake it off, and haven’t given any thought to what might happen if anyone happened to be driving a car during Jigglypuff’s performance.

A Chansey Operation, my last episode for today, begins with Pikachu swallowing a whole apple and nearly choking to death. Ash panics because there’s no Pokémon Centre nearby, so they rush to a hospital instead. There is exactly one doctor in this hospital, and he refuses to do anything because he’s off duty, until Misty uses her cute girl powers on him. Dr. Proctor (for this is his name) sticks his hand down Pikachu’s throat and retrieves the apple. Once Pikachu is saved, the emergency phone line rings. Dr. Proctor, however, is still stubbornly off duty, so Ash answers it. Jessie and James have caused a horrible accident on a highway by means of their massive incompetence, badly injuring a truckload of Pokémon. The Pokémon Centre in the next town is overwhelmed, so Nurse Joy #29 is pressing Dr. Proctor into service as backup. Since he is still the only doctor in the entire hospital, he gives lab coats to Ash, Misty and Brock and declares them to be doctors. Medicine is easy, right? Especially as Dr. Proctor’s solution to every injury imaginable is copious amounts of superglue. When Arbok and Weezing come in for treatment, Ash gets a crash course on the Hippocratic Oath (from this guy? Mr. “screw that, I’m off duty”? I get the distinct impression he was “off duty” when his class swore the damn oath) and Jessie and James join the team. At some point Dr. Proctor accidentally anaesthetises himself trying to get close to an angry Dodrio, and goes to sleep for several hours, leaving Ash to figure out how to calm the thing down himself (Ash’s panacea turns out to be “Pikachu, THUNDERBOLT!”). Team Rocket, inevitably, betray the kids eventually and attack them with evil hospital equipment, but Arbok and Weezing are unwilling to fight the Chansey who helped to heal them. Dr. Proctor wakes up and reveals that his lab coat contains a veritable arsenal of scalpels and syringes, which scares off Jessie and James quickly enough. All the injured Pokémon have been patched up now, so Dr. Proctor says goodbye to the kids – but not without suggesting that they stay and be doctors at the hospital. Medical school? Pfft. Dr. Proctor got his MD watching reruns of Doogie Howser.

By some appalling mischance, this episode was my very first direct exposure to Pokémon as a child.

You can imagine my reaction.

I… I would comment on this episode but I honestly think it speaks for itself. It’s one of those delightfully mad episodes you get from time to time which reminds you that, really, everyone in this universe is just a little bit nutty. I don’t think A Chansey Operation really tells us anything meaningful about how the Pokémon world works, but if nothing else, it’s a lot of fun to watch.

I think conkeldurr looks like a clown cause he’s supposed to be like a circus strongman. That’s why he has the nose thing. It really doesn’t come across that well, though.

(For reference, this comment is in response to one of my older entries: http://pokemaniacal.tumblr.com/post/17760667917/timburr-gurdurr-and-conkeldurr)

That… would make sense. I suppose if that is what they were aiming for then Conkeldurr is… shall we say… less awful than I made him out to be.

I still think the whole clown thing makes him look unbelievably stupid, and I still think they haven’t really done anything with it – that is, if you take away the clown noses and the funny hair, it would do nothing but improve the design; he has no traits or abilities that would stop making sense without them (I mentioned Mr. Mime in the entry, and you might make a comparison with him; his powers are way more specific than “this Pokémon is physically strong” – do you see what I mean?).

So, yeah. I still hate Conkeldurr, but I hate him less now. Good job. 🙂

Anime Time: Episodes 40 and 51

The Battling Eevee Brothers – Bulbasaur’s Mysterious Garden

Ash’s location: central Anatolia.

Evolution is one of my favourite themes. It’s apparently a very simple concept, but the way it’s treated in the anime has all kinds of fascinating implications that you can draw into an extremely complicated and morally nuanced vision of how this world works. As usual, much of what I have to say here is totally made up, but regular readers will know by now that I’ve never let that stop me before…

Yes, they are wearing colour-coordinated tights. Hey, don't look at me; I'm not going to be the one to say it. Screenshots from filb.de/anime.

In the Battling Eevee Brothers, Ash, Misty and Brock find an Eevee tied to a tree in the woods with a bowl of food next to it. Brock suggests that the Eevee has been abandoned, at which Ash and Misty are horrified. They notice a gold tag on Eevee’s collar with an address engraved, in a place called Stone Town (at the foot of Evolution Mountain, claims Brock – three guesses what this episode’s going to be about…). Misty is tempted to keep Eevee, but they agree they should try to find Eevee’s owner first. Following Eevee’s tag leads them to an opulent manse with a spacious garden, where three triplets and their Pokémon – Rainer and his Vaporeon, Pyro and his Flareon, and Sparkyand his Jolteon – are hosting an evolution party, with free evolutionary stones for all comers. Eevee, who belongs to their younger brother Mikey, is the guest of honour; today is supposed to be the day he chooses his Eevee’s evolved form. Mikey himself is less than thrilled, and confides to Misty that he doesn’t care about battles, doesn’t actually want Eevee to evolve at all, and hid him in the woods to keep him out of sight, just until the party was over. Ash and Brock, meanwhile, argue with Rainer, Sparky and Pyro, who have offered them a Thunder Stone and a Fire Stone to evolve Pikachu and Vulpix. Team Rocket crash the party, have Weezing lay down some smog cover, and steal a dozen Pokémon, including Eevee and Misty’s Horsea, and as many evolution stones as they can carry before hightailing it out of there. Horsea, however, is clever enough to leave a trail of ink for the heroes to follow. While Jessie, James and Meowth are arguing over how to evolve Eevee (they eventually decide to use all three stones at once, just to see what happens) the good guys show up, and Vaporeon, Jolteon and Flareon give Arbok and Weezing a thrashing. Remarkably, though, Jessie and James manage to turn things around… until Mikey’s Eevee enters the fray and slams Arbok and Weezing with a powerful Take Down. As Misty had suggested, Mikey finally admits to his brothers that he’d rather just keep Eevee – and, after seeing what their brother’s Pokémon is capable of, they’re pretty cool with that.

Pikachu and Bulbasaur having a bromance moment.

Some weeks later, Ash’s Bulbasaur collapses, quivering, after winning a difficult battle against a hiker’s Rhyhorn, and his bulb starts glowing softly. Ash rushes him to a Pokémon Centre, where Nurse Joy #292 concludes that there’s nothing wrong with Bulbasaur at all: he’s preparing to evolve. It’ll soon be time for him to journey to a place called the Mysterious Garden, a semi-mythical grove where Bulbasaur gather every year to evolve into Ivysaur. Ash is overjoyed. That night, Bulbasaur slips out of the Pokémon Centre to brood. Pikachu follows him, and they talk for a while (Pikachu seems to be comforting him, and offering support). Without warning, a gang of wild Bulbasaur seize Ash’s Bulbasaur with their Vine Whips and carry him off. Pikachu runs to fetch Ash and the others, and together they track the Bulbasaur through the forest, even as the plants themselves try to keep them from following. They narrowly manage to slip through a solid wall of vines as it knits itself together, and find themselves in the Mysterious Garden. They see hundreds of Bulbasaur in the valley below them, singing, as the plants around them grow and blossom in moments. An ancient Venusaur emerges from within an enormous hollow tree in the centre of the valley and roars. The Bulbasaur roar in response, and all begin to evolve… except for Ash’s Bulbasaur, who seems to be struggling not to. Venusaur is furious, and Ash runs to Bulbasaur’s side to block a Vine Whip. Ash apologises to Bulbasaur for getting so excited about his evolution without considering his feelings, and tries to convince Venusaur that he shouldn’t be forced to evolve. Venusaur responds by demonstrating his miraculous abilities, causing a bare cherry tree to burst into bloom, and Misty wonders “don’t you want to have that kind of power, Bulbasaur?” As they argue, Team Rocket once again crash the party, floating over the wall of vines in their balloon and sucking up as many Ivysaur as they can with one of their ridiculous vacuum devices. The situation looks dire… until the sun rises. With a tremendous battle cry, Bulbasaur blasts Team Rocket with his first Solarbeam. The balloon is destroyed, the Ivysaur fall back to earth, and Venusaur finds it in his heart to forgive Bulbasaur for disrupting the ritual. Bulbasaur leaves with the kids as the wall of vines shrinks away, and they realise why no-one has ever been able to find the Mysterious Garden: once the ceremony ends, it simply ceases to exist.

"Evolve your Pokémon or we will continue to shout at you!"

Let’s look at some quotes from Eevee Brothers. The conversation Ash and Brock have with Rainer, Sparky and Pyro makes it plain as day that their views on evolution, particularly on induced evolution, are wildly different to the brothers’. Ash is asked “one of these days you’ll turn that Pikachu into a Raichu, won’t you?” in a very matter-of-fact tone, to which Pikachu reacts with obvious worry. The brothers also ask Brock “why don’t you just make [Vulpix] evolve?” as though it would be the easiest thing in the world – and, well, they’re offering him a free Fire Stone, so why not? After all, “evolution is what Pokémon are all about!” If you’ve been playing the games, this makes a lot of sense. If there’s a move you want your Pokémon to learn, you might hold off on evolution until it’s learnt it, because most Pokémon stop learning new attacks after using stones. In the long term, though, there’s no downside. If you mean to use a Pokémon for fighting, you will eventually evolve it, no ifs, no buts. That’s not how Ash and Brock see it. Ash tells the brothers, somewhat defensively, “we just don’t evolve our Pokémon that way,” while Brock says firmly “you like your way of evolving and we like ours.” You can read this either as making sense or as being utter bullshit. Personally I would rather read it as making sense but, y’know, to each his own. It makes sense when you think about what actually happens when Pokémon evolve; their physical bodies grow and change their proportions, sometimes drastically, and their mental state often undergoes a profound shift as well. Normally in the anime this seems to have some kind of psychological trigger; Pokémon evolve when they’re ready for it, and sometimes seem to be able to forestall evolution on their own – but when a trainer uses a stone, the Pokémon simply evolves on the spot, without any choice in the matter. It’s not really unreasonable for Ash and Brock to think that using these things is a little bit morally questionable, especially if it’s done for the sole aim of making the Pokémon in question better at battling.

Eevee, Vaporeon, Jolteon, and Flareon, in all their glory, by Creepyfish (formerly IceandSnow, http://creepyfish.deviantart.com/). Where the argument breaks down – and where Ash and Brock’s position starts to make less sense – is that, for Pokémon like Pikachu and Vulpix, there is no other way to reach their final forms. If Ash and Pikachu aren’t willing to use a Thunder Stone, Pikachu’s never going to become a Raichu; no two ways about it. Brock’s statement suggests that he believes there is some other way for Pikachu and Vulpix to evolve, but if so, no-one ever hints at what that might be. Moreover, Ash’s statement suggests that refusing to use the Thunder Stone Sparky offers him is not simply a matter of waiting for the right time; he has absolutely no intention of evolving Pikachu at all, now, later, or ever. Surely Pokémon are supposed to reach their final forms eventually? Why else would they even have them? On the other hand, clearly evolution isn’t actually necessary for Pikachu to become an ‘adult’ since, as we just saw in Pikachu’s Goodbye, a community of wild Pikachu can get along just fine without a single Raichu. Obviously they’re capable of surviving without the protection of their more powerful cousins, and presumably they also reach reproductive maturity without any hiccups (indeed, if we can trust the games, there are very few Pokémon that do need to evolve before they can reproduce – only the ‘babies,’ such as Elekid and Bonsly). My newest pet theory on this is that Pikachu’s ability to evolve into Raichu is actually vestigial. At some point in the history of their development, for one reason or another, they stopped needing to evolve (maybe Pikachu fill an ecological niche that Raichu are less suited to, or maybe some kind of Ground-type predator made speed and small size more valuable than greater electrical power). They still have all the genes they need to become Raichu, but they’ve lost the genes that tell them when and why to evolve, so unless they’re triggered by some outside influence, they just don’t. Basically, what I’m suggesting is that Pokémon like Raichu, Ninetales and Poliwrath are throwbacks – forms that have become extinct in the wild, because they’re no longer suited to a changing ecosystem, but can be recreated via human intervention. That definitely leaves Ash and Brock plenty of room to feel a little bit uncomfortable about evolutionary stones, especially if the Pokémon have no choice in whether to use them.

A Venusaur readying a Solarbeam, by Maquenda.

The degree of choice Pokémon have in when they evolve is another tricky question that the anime implies things about, but rarely explains outright. Most of the evolutions we’ve seen in the series so far have happened at moments of high emotion; it’s often implied that they’re triggered by strong desire or need – most notably, Ekans and Koffing evolving in Dig Those Diglett, in response to their trainers’ uncharacteristic outbursts of affection. Bulbasaur, it seems, are very different. They have little freedom to decide; evolution, for them, is an extremely ritualistic thing that all of them go through together – to the point that, when Ash’s Bulbasaur decides he doesn’t want to evolve, he provokes the outrage of the entire community. That isn’t merely because his refusal somehow disrupted the ceremony either. The scene between Bulbasaur and Pikachu is a little tricky to interpret because, y’know, they don’t speak, but I’m pretty sure that Bulbasaur is explaining to Pikachu that he doesn’t think he really wants to evolve yet, but doesn’t want to disappoint Ash either, and Pikachu is telling him that it’s okay and Ash will be cool with it. The other Bulbasaur who overhear the conversation are apparently so discomforted by the whole idea that they immediately kidnap him and drag him to the Mysterious Garden. Venusaur isn’t just upset about the ritual; he and all the Ivysaur are actually somehow offended that Bulbasaur doesn’t want to evolve. For them, it’s the most natural thing in the world, the way they attain the powers that are their birthright, and trying to deny it is just asking for trouble. Of course, if that’s how they do things, where the hell does Ash get off trying to stop them? Or, conversely, if we do let the Bulbasaur get on with their strictly enforced mass evolution ceremonies in peace, what kind of ground are we standing on if we say that Mikey’s Eevee shouldn’t be forced to evolve?

I could go on, you understand. It’s just that this entry is clearly getting far too long.

Anime Time: Episodes 37 and 41

Ditto’s Mysterious Mansion – Wake Up, Snorlax

Ash’s location: Czech Republic, or thereabouts.

For today’s show… two weird-ass episodes about two weird-ass trainers and their two weird-ass Pokémon!

Ditto shapeshifting into Pikachu to prepare for battle, by Travis Orams (http://trezhurisland.deviantart.com/).

In Ditto’s Mysterious Mansion, Ash, Misty and Brock take shelter from a sudden, violent rainstorm inside a worn-out, creaking old mansion, which appears deserted until they see a teal-haired boy wearing clothes exactly like Ash’s standing in the shadows. “Yeah, except it’s a girl,” Brock notes. How does he know? “Men’s intuition.” Indeed, the ‘boy’ is a young girl named Duplica, who has an incredible gift for imitation, and lives in the mansion with her Pokémon partner, a Ditto. Ash is disdainful when Duplica explains that Ditto’s only power is Transform; he doesn’t see the point in a Pokémon that can only ever be a cheap imitation of something else. Duplica shows him his mistake by challenging him to a battle and having her Ditto block Bulbasaur’s Razor Leaf with Vine Whip, then use its vines to restrain Bulbasaur. Ash surrenders and sulks for a little while, until Brock points something out to him: Ditto may have been imitating Bulbasaur, but Duplica wasn’t simply imitating Ash; she used another of Bulbasaur’s powers to counter what the real one was trying to do. In order to battle like that with Ditto, Duplica must have encyclopaedic knowledge of all Pokémon species and their capabilities. She isn’t really the battling type, though; Duplica wants to be a performer. When travellers stop at the mansion, Duplica entertains them with her Pokémon cosplay and Ditto’s transformations. Unfortunately, Duplica’s Ditto can’t mimic faces, which has wrecked their act on more than one occasion. As she is telling Ash her woes, Team Rocket make their obligatory appearance and nab Ditto. They want it to Transform into a mythical Dratini so they can present it to Giovanni, but Ditto, presented with a picture of Dratini in a book, can only Transform into the book. They also quickly learn of Ditto’s inability to mimic faces, but eventually succeed, using threats of physical violence, in getting it to Transform into a perfect copy of Meowth. When the kids arrive – wearing Team Rocket costumes from Duplica’s stash and reciting the Team Rocket motto, just for the hell of it – Duplica is overjoyed and even thanks them for helping Ditto learn to Transform properly. Jessie and James try to give Meowth to Duplica and fly off with Ditto in their balloon… but she isn’t fooled for one second, and lobs him at the balloon, causing Jessie and James to drop the real Ditto. Furious, they deploy a cannon from the balloon’s basket, but Duplica has Ditto Transform into the cannon and blast Pikachu at them, with predictable results. Duplica goes back to her mansion to re-open for business, the kids get on with whatever it is they claim to be doing, and Jessie and James attempt to stuff Meowth into a Dratini costume…

This is the kind of thing you want to see when you stop for a rest at the side of the road, right? Screenshots from filb.de/anime.

Let’s talk about Ditto. Ditto is one of those Pokémon who’s gotten something of a raw deal in the games, because Ditto in the games really is just a cheap imitation of whatever it Transforms into. It’ll probably have less HP, it can match but not exceed its opponents in all other respects (including, most importantly, speed), and it’s overwhelmingly likely to be at a one-turn disadvantage because of the time it takes to Transform. Contrast the way Ditto’s Mysterious Mansion portrays this weird-ass little Pokémon. The way Brock and Duplica describe how Ditto battles seems to imply that Ditto can imitate any technique a Pokémon is physically capable of, even if the opponent doesn’t actually know it – if they had been fighting outside in fine weather, for instance, Duplica might have had Ditto hammer Ash’s Bulbasaur with a Solarbeam. What’s more, Ditto’s ability to imitate inanimate objects is something entirely unique to the anime (and with good reason; it’d be merry hell to add something like that to the games). Whatever it’s imitating, though, it seems clear that – as in the games – Ditto can only Transform into what’s actually in front of it. A picture of a Dratini won’t cut it; Ditto can only manage a copy of the picture. However, when Jessie shows Ditto a photo of her old school crush and asks it to show her what he’d look like aged up a few years, Ditto is able to accommodate her; it can still only Transform into a photo, and it fails, as usual, to imitate his face, but it does manage to age the boy in the image as Jessie asks. Clearly, then, Ditto can take some licence with its transformations (for instance, it could probably Transform, if it chose, into a ‘shiny’ version of a Pokémon standing in front of it, or make other superficial changes); it just can’t create a whole three-dimensional form from scratch, or from memory. The other fascinating thing Ditto is able to imitate is Meowth’s ability to speak, which is an extremely unusual skill that Meowth learned only with incredible effort. When Jessie and James present Duplica with two identical Meowth, Ditto mimics everything Meowth says, though it doesn’t appear to be able to add anything (suggesting that it’s just parroting the sounds without understanding them, but even that is beyond the abilities of most Meowth). Clearly, then, Ditto has some degree of access even to complex learned abilities, but may not be able to use them effectively without some sort of instruction. Some questions to ponder, then: would Ditto be able to speak if it Transformed into a different Meowth? What if Team Rocket’s Meowth had been there with them to show it how? In short, does Transforming actually allow Ditto to take knowledge from the template Pokémon’s mind? More importantly, why isn’t this the kind of thing Professor Oak and his ilk are researching?

So much for Ditto… now for a distinctly more vexing Pokémon.

Snorlax reaching up to grab a Leppa Berry, by theMerce (http://themerce.deviantart.com/).

After a brief run-in with an old hobo, who plays them a song on his Poké-Flute before demanding food (which they do not have) as payment, Ash, Misty and Brock wander into a town, delirious with hunger, and find that no-one there has any food either. Luckily for them, they run into the mayor, who is generous enough to give them a meal from his family’s private stores. The mayor explains that the river that flows through the town has dried up for some reason, ruining their farmland and causing massive food shortages. “No-one dares go upstream anymore. There’s no telling what you might find.” Luckily, Ash and his friends are random wandering Pokémon trainers – the best people for any dangerous and loosely-specified task! They follow the dry riverbed for some time, hacking through the oppressive tangles of thorny vines in their path, and find what seems to be the problem… a Snorlax blocking the river (where… is all the water going, exactly?). Ash tries to capture Snorlax, but his Pokéball just bounces off. As the kids puzzle over his monstrous bulk, Team Rocket arrive in their balloon and declare that they have come to take Snorlax. Ash is reluctant to let them steal the massive Pokémon, but- wait, steal? Isn’t it a wild Snorlax? Surely it’s fair game? Clearly, as far as Ash is concerned, there is a definite ethical distinction between battling a wild Pokémon to capture it in a Pokéball and simply carting it off in its sleep, as Jessie and James mean to. Regardless, Ash has to admit that getting rid of Snorlax is more important. The balloon can’t lift his fat ass, though, and nothing they try can wake him up. When he shifts his weight, though, they find a “Do Not Disturb” sign underneath him, with the instruction “in case of emergency, please use a Poké-Flute to wake.” The kids remember the hobo, rush back to find him… for some reason, get into a battle with Team Rocket for control of the hobo, which of course they win… and lead him to the Snorlax. The hobo claims that the Snorlax is his, and that he wakes it with his flute once a month. He does so now, but it turns out that Snorlax was never the problem… the stream is being blocked by another dense thicket of vines. As the kids scratch their heads, Snorlax takes matters into his own hands and devours the entire thicket, releasing the river and restoring the town’s lifeblood, before going back to sleep. Finally, the hobo’s Snorlax-shaped pager beeps and flashes “No. 7,” to tell him that he has to go and wake up another Snorlax.

Wait, what?

Okay, guys, I know you probably meant that as a throwaway joke, but… you do realise you just implied that this hobo is responsible for travelling around Kanto regulating the sleep cycles of at least seven different Snorlax?

Because that is AWESOME!

Snorlax saves the day.

Seriously, though, let’s put a little thought into this. Snorlax is an interesting Pokémon, from an ecological perspective… by which I mean, the damn thing eats everything. Luckily they also sleep for months at a time, giving the ecosystem time to recover from their onslaughts. However, in an episode from the Orange League series, Snack Attack, we see how absurdly destructive a single Snorlax can be when it gets peckish in the wrong place at the wrong time; these things can devour forests in a matter of days. The flip side of this, though, is how Snorlax fit into ecosystems that are used to their presence. Snorlax presumably don’t often move very far. One imagines that the one Ash encounters in Wake Up, Snorlax has been living in the area for quite some time. Its presence is probably what has been keeping the thorn weed under control and stopping the river from turning into an overgrown swamp long before now. The removal of such a major consumer from an ecosystem could only be disastrous; if Ash actually had captured the Snorlax, and then found a way to clear the vines himself, chances are they would have grown back within months, choking the river once again. There are probably many grassland and meadow environments in Kanto that can exist in their present state only because of Snorlax living in the area and regularly trimming back more aggressive types of flora. Think about that for a moment the next time you’re playing Fire Red or Leaf Green and decide to catch that wild Snorlax. The hobo’s role in all this is a little harder to guess at, unless you’re prepared to accept that Snorlax will actually sleep indefinitely unless disturbed. It might be that their natural sleep cycle is easily disturbed by human activity, or that they’ve been moved from their original territory (maybe to make room for a city, or maybe as a deliberate attempt to alter the environment) and need to eat more or less often than usual because of the different vegetation. In spite of their size and power, I could actually see Snorlax being tremendously vulnerable to environmental disturbances because of their massive energy requirements, and perhaps being a very high-maintenance species to protect, like the giant pandas they vaguely resemble.

What I like about the anime is that it often gives more detailed portraits of particular species of Pokémon than the games are capable of providing in their current state. I think there’s actually plenty of room for the games to do this as well, but that’s neither here nor there. Ditto and Snorlax are both very interesting Pokémon to think about – Ditto because of the unanswered questions about the extent of its powers, Snorlax because of his unusual lifestyle and needs – and, in keeping with the spirit of learning and discovery that’s been part of the point of Pokémon from the beginning, such portraits are a tremendously important part of the franchise as a whole. Or… that’s what I think, anyway.

Anime Time: Episodes 36, 48, and 53

The Bridge Bike Gang – Holy Matrimony – The Purr-fect Hero

Ash’s location: San Francisco. I assume.

We’re more than thirty episodes into this series and I haven’t had an entry about the villains yet. Clearly this will not do. Jessie, James and Meowth of Team Rocket are quite possibly the least threatening villains ever. They certainly manage to cause the heroes harm from time to time, but they never accomplish anything. I don’t think a single one of their plots ever bears fruit. Luckily, the show’s writers understood that, gods bless them, and wrote Team Rocket as comic relief characters. We often see them in brief asides, discussing how desperately they need to get something right, and they frequently break the fourth wall for comedic effect. Anyhow, that’s enough of their general portrayal – these episodes all reveal things about the specifics of their characters, so let’s take a look.

Admit it: you wish you could be half this badass. And/or ridiculous. Screenshots from filb.de/anime.

In The Bridge Bike Gang, Ash, Misty and Brock come across an epic bridge leading across an inlet to a place called Sunnytown, but sadly the bridge is not complete and they can’t walk across… only the cycle track is finished. Because bicycles are by far the most valuable objects in the entire Pokémon universe, they can’t just go out and buy one, let alone three… but, luckily, Nurse Joy #148 needs someone to deliver some medicine to Sunnytown, and is willing to let her couriers borrow some bicycles. The kids immediately agree and race off down the cycle track. On the bridge, they are accosted by a gang of miscreant cyclists, who demand a Pokémon battle. During the fight, Team Rocket arrive in their usual dramatic style to mix things up… and it turns out that the gang leader, Tyra, recognises them. Apparently Jessie and James were once members of this very bicycle gang, after flunking out of Pokémon Tech, and were known as “Big Jess,” who would always swing a chain around her head as she rode, and “Little Jim,” the only member of the gang who still used training wheels. They were, and are, regarded as the absolute height of badass. For some reason. Anyway, the gang members think they’re even more awesome now that they’re hardened criminals, so they’re more than happy to help Jess and Jim fight Ash and his friends… until Officer Jenny #270 arrives and scatters them. The kids keep riding, even as a terrible storm gathers. Meanwhile, Tyra encourages Jessie and James to ride out themselves, to renew their… er… legend… and show the gang what real riding is. They do so on unicycles, because this will earn them unimaginable street cred. Team Rocket and the kids, coming from opposite sides, both reach a drawbridge being raised to allow a ship to pass beneath. Ash, being Ash, decides to jump it, in the middle of a violent storm, at the same moment as Team Rocket. The kids… somehow bounce off their heads and narrowly make the jump, while Jessie and James plummet into the water below.

To be honest, all things considered I thought this was kind of a ‘meh’ episode, but it does have certain bright points; notably, we get a little bit of insight into what motivates Jessie and James in their life of crime. They crave respect, anything to let themselves forget what failures they normally are, and will do blatantly insane things to cultivate the worship of Tyra and the others. More importantly their dialogue in this episode suggests that they, like the bike gang, resent rules and value freedom above all else. Jessie and Meowth can be genuinely spiteful at times, but Jessie at least often seems to be driven at least as much by a burning desire to flip off ‘the system,’ probably on account of her childhood spent in poverty. Ironically she’s now part of a system anyway, being ‘evil’ apparently for no better reason than because it’s her job, making her something of a ‘punch-clock villain’ (James plays up this aspect a great deal more than she does, but Jessie has her moments too; when things are going particularly badly for them they seem like nothing so much as downtrodden nine-til-five office workers). She claims to enjoy being villainous, but like James it takes precious little to distract her, and she takes to honest work surprisingly quickly in the episodes where she’s given the opportunity. Left to her own devices, she would probably remain self-centred, arrogant and superficial, but not outright evil. James, of course, has baggage of his own… and that’s what Holy Matrimony is all about.

I love Holy Matrimony, because from the perspective of Ash, Brock and Misty the whole episode is one great big long “WTF?” It all begins when they stop to look at a “missing person” sign by the road, and an elderly gentleman in a suit pulls up in a limousine to ask whether they recognise the boy in the picture (I presume he has been monitoring the sign in case anyone showed an interest in it). The picture is years old, but it’s unmistakably James, so the butler piles them into the limo and drives them to an enormous mansion, which, according to the butler, is just the doghouse. He leads them into the even more opulent actual mansion and explains that the master and his wife have just passed away, and that if their son, James, does not marry his betrothed within twenty-four hours, he will lose his inheritance. Team Rocket, as usual, have been watching. James is reluctant to get married, but Jessie and Meowth like the sound of this “fortune” business, so they dress up in ‘invisible costumes’ – flimsy black gauzy things – so they can manoeuvre James like a puppet. These… seem to work on the butler, and they drag James inside, where his insane parents promptly spring from their coffins, very much alive, and reveal his fiancée, Jessiebelle – a terrifying Southern Belle version of Jessie, from whom James had fled as a youngster.

The psychological implications are nothing short of mind-boggling.

Jessiebelle brings James downstairs into what she claims is the family’s vault, but is actually some kind of exercise dungeon in which she plans to whip James into shape. James’ parents reveal that they could see Jessie and Meowth the whole time, so they drop smoke bombs and flee while Jessiebelle calls out her Vileplume and drowns James and the kids in Stun Spore. At this point, James’ childhood Pokémon, Growly the Growlithe, manages to break out of the ‘doghouse’ and charges in to save him. The group retreats to the doghouse, where James explains everything to Ash, and when Jessiebelle and Vileplume arrive, Pikachu and Growly attack them together and chase them off. James rejoins Jessie and Meowth, leaving Growly behind to take care of his parents, and Ash, Brock and Misty leave the mansion with Jessiebelle hot on their tail, begging them for help in finding James.

James and Growly being ludicrously adorable, by Bandotaku (http://bandotaku.deviantart.com/).

When James fills Ash in on his backstory, we learn that his parents arranged his engagement to Jessiebelle because they wanted her to teach him how to behave like a proper aristocrat, something he had absolutely no interest in doing. He ran away from home rather than marry her, and eventually fell in with Team Rocket. James likes wealth and luxury well enough but, as his final scene with Jessie makes clear, he’d rather be free than rich any day – presumably he hopes to get money and power as a member of Team Rocket, but even once Jessiebelle has been scared off, he’d rather stay a criminal than go home, where he could have those things, just for the asking. It seems likely that he joined Team Rocket as a gesture of rebellion against the order of society as much as anything else. As the same time, though, he does care for his parents in a somewhat neurotic way; although he professes to hate them and their upper-crust lifestyle, he would rather leave Growly at home to protect them than bring his loyal friend along on his journey. What’s really interesting about Holy Matrimony, I think, is that it seems to take a broadly positive view of James and his life choices. We’re almost certainly supposed to sympathise with him in his arranged marriage to Jessiebelle, whom he doesn’t love and can’t even tolerate, his relationship with Growly presents him as a genuinely decent trainer, and the final scene between him and Jessie on their hot air balloon even seems to suggest that the life they live really is the choice that makes the most sense for them. As in The Bridge Bike Gang, they affirm that their freedom is more important to them than anything, and the episode seems to be okay with that.

Finally for today… in The Purr-fect Hero, Ash, Misty and Brock stumble into a primary school that’s been expecting some Pokémon trainers to visit, but the other trainers have cancelled at the last minute. Brock immediately volunteers the group to replace them because he thinks the teacher is hot, and they let all their Pokémon out to play with the children. Most of them have fun but one, Timmy, seems disappointed because the only Pokémon he wants to meet is a Meowth – the Pokémon that once saved him from a wild Beedrill. Appearing just when we needed them, Team Rocket show up with their latest plan to steal Pikachu: present a Pokémon Magic Show and make him disappear, replacing him with Meowth and then escaping before Ash realises that they’re not really performers. This they do, but unfortunately Timmy is so excited to run up and meet a Meowth that, in the confusion created by Weezing’s Smokescreen, he gets caught up in Team Rocket’s magic box and Pikachu is left behind. When Jessie and James take him out and realise their mistake, Timmy is convinced that their Meowth is the same wild one who saved him long ago. Jessie and James convince Meowth to play along, because “we’re not in the business of destroying children’s dreams! Well, not yet…” Meowth ‘saves’ Timmy and returns with him to the school, where Timmy’s classmates crowd around him excitedly, but the adoration goes to his head and a “that’s right!” slips past his lips. Misty hears him and becomes suspicious, and Meowth flees back to Jessie and James. Timmy follows, so Ash has to go as well… right into an ambush in a dead-ended rocky valley. The ensuing battle starts a rockslide, which forces Team Rocket to retreat and nearly flattens Ash and Timmy, but at the last moment a wild Meowth appears and Mega Kicks a boulder in two, saving them. Everyone returns to the school safe, and Timmy declares his intention to become a trainer one day, with Meowth as his partner. Team Rocket’s Meowth tells Jessie and James that being a ‘hero’ was nice, but they need him more, so it’s for the best.

Best. Meowth. Ever.

Meowth, distressingly enough, is the brains of the operation. He’s normally extremely cynical, and quite honestly is probably more evil than either of his human compatriots. Meowth gets a whole episode devoted to his backstory, Go West Young Meowth, much later in the series, and that will probably get an entry all to itself, so I’ll try to keep this short. The Purr-fect Hero brings out one of Meowth’s most important character traits: his desire for attention, affection, and adoration. Meowth is incredibly prideful but also rather insecure; whenever he speaks directly to the Boss (whom he seems to regard as being formally his trainer), he is reminded, painfully, that he has fallen out of favour with Giovanni and been replaced by a Persian. It’s hardly surprising, then, that he finds the prospect of being treated as a hero – deservedly or not – rather attractive. After returning to Jessie and James, though, he seems somewhat exhausted and glad to have gotten away from it all, and his comment at the episode seems to suggest that he’s happiest being with people who actually need him, rather than the kids, who have only been tricked into viewing him as a hero. Although traditionally ‘noble’ ideas like honesty and charity tend to make Meowth gag, his pride demands, in the end, that he earn the admiration he feels he deserves – besides which, he does seem to care for Jessie and James as well, though he rarely admits it and would generally prefer them to think he looks down on them.

Honestly, I’m beginning to wonder whether calling Team Rocket ‘villains’ is entirely warranted. They’re antagonists, certainly, but their villainous actions typically serve as ‘spanners in the works’ rather than anything critical to the story, and although they appear in every episode, I imagine most of the plots could be reconstructed without them fairly easily. Moreover, when an episode does focus on them, Jessie, James and even Meowth are normally portrayed in a fairly positive light, all things considered. To cut a long story short (or at least, as short as I am apparently capable of making these things) I think the most natural designation for Team Rocket is ‘anti-villains’ – they have a villainous streak, but are in many respects genuinely sympathetic, and would probably live a much easier life if they just gave up and started backing the other team.

Anime Time: Episodes 33-34

The Flame Pokémonathon – The Kangaskhan Kid

Ash’s location: The wilderness sometimes euphemistically referred to as “Fuchsia City.”

These two episodes aren’t really all that interesting, and the second is one of those ones that pops up now and again to make me wonder what the writers were smoking, but they’re chronologically the first ones after the Ninja Poké-Showdown so I suppose I’d better get them out of the way… here we go.

Lara Laramie and her Ponyta. Screenshots from filb.de/anime.

So, anyway, the set-up of The Flame Pokémonathon is that Ash, shortly after winning his Soul Badge, is caught by a girl named Lara Laramie trying to capture a Tauros on land he thinks is the Safari Zone but is actually a Pokémon ranch owned by Lara’s family. Though she’s initially annoyed, once the mistake is cleared up Lara is happy to show Ash and friends around the enormous ranch and even invites them to stay for a Pokémon race the next day, a fantastic competition with honorary membership in the Laramie clan as the prize. According to Brock, the Laramie dynasty is world-famous, and all breeders know and respect their name and the quality of their Pokémon, so this is no small thing. Lara will be riding her Ponyta in the race to uphold her family’s honour, and one of her toughest opponents will be another breeder who works on the ranch, an obnoxious fellow named Dario who works with Dodrio. Unfortunately, Team Rocket also have a horse in this race – figuratively speaking. Jessie and James want a way in with the Laramie clan, so they’ve made a deal with Dario to help him win the race in exchange for the influence he will soon gain. That night, Meowth spooks the Tauros herd, then snipes Lara’s Ponyta from afar with a slingshot when she comes to calm them down, making Ponyta throw Lara off and break her arm. Lara asks Ash to ride in her place the next day, gambling on Ash being able to win Ponyta’s trust with his experience as a trainer so she won’t burn him. Ash duly enters the race, along with – just for the hell of it – Misty and Starmie, Brock and Onix… and Pikachu and Squirtle, who plod steadily along in last place, Pikachu practically having to push Squirtle up the hills in the course. Team Rocket follow, sabotaging other racers with slingshots and pit traps, and Onix glumly surrenders when the course crosses a river. Jessie and James have to attack directly at one point to delay Ash and Misty, when Dodrio’s heads start squabbling over food at a pit stop, and Misty, Squirtle and Pikachu stay behind to deal with them as Ash and Ponyta try to catch up with Dario. For all Ponyta’s speed, she can’t quite keep up with Dodrio… at least, not in her current form. Ponyta eventually decides that enough is enough, evolves into Rapidash, and streaks ahead to beat Dodrio by a nose. The race is won, Ash becomes an honorary Laramie, and there is much rejoicing.

The contestants assemble.

The next episode, the Kangaskhan Kid, is one of those episodes that really make you wonder who writes this stuff. The initial set-up is a bit lazy in that it recycles what happened in the last episode: once again, Ash sees a rare Pokémon (a Chansey) in what he thinks is the Safari Zone, but it turns out to be Officer Jenny #74 wearing a ridiculous hat and she arrests him for poaching. Again, Ash is immediately forgiven, and Jenny deputises the kids when an alert sounds to warn her of actual poachers (Team Rocket, of course) attacking a herd of Kangaskhan. When they arrive in Jenny’s jeep, they narrowly avoid the stampeding herd, which Jessie and James soon trap beneath a net. Luckily, the Kangaskhan have a far more competent protector than Jenny on hand, in the form of an eight-year-old boomerang-wielding wild child dressed in animal skins, who frees the Kangaskhan and sics them on Team Rocket before swinging back into the jungle yelling “kanga-kangas-KHAN!” at the top of his lungs. While the kids are trying to figure out what on earth has just happened, a helicopter lands nearby a young woman and her ugly midget husband disembark. The pair are searching for their son Tommy, whom the moron of a husband dropped out of the helicopter as a toddler. It has apparently taken them several years to remember where they dropped him and come looking. Jenny takes one look their photo of Tommy and says “Oh! You must mean Tomo! His address is listed right here in the Safari Zone directory! Yeah, he’s totally in my carpool!”

We all get together at his place for poker on Wednesday nights. I'm sorry, how is this weird?

…okay, the carpool part was a lie but she actually says the rest of it.

Anyway, they build a makeshift litter for Tommy’s parents, who are far too rich to be expected to walk, and go off into the jungle to find him. When the kids find an injured baby Kangaskhan and try to help it out, its cries draw Tomo/Tommy, who attacks them and demands to know whether they are people or Pokémon. The kids try to explain who his parents are, and he temporarily goes mad trying to decide whether his mother is the human who gave birth to him or the Kangaskhan who raised him, then flees into the jungle. The kids have no time to chase them, because Jenny has been alerted that Team Rocket are attacking the Kangaskhan herd again, this time using a… a giant robot Kangaskhan that uses a fake roar to attract the real Kangaskhan – all but one of whom fall for it – and then subdues them with tranq darts. Tommy attacks with his boomerang, which predictably does absolutely nothing, and Charmander sets the robot on fire, which doesn’t help either, but Tommy’s parents arrive in their helicopter and perform a kamikaze strike that destroys the robot. As Tommy mourns his parents, they crawl out of the wreckage, battered but miraculously alive, clad entirely in animal skins, and announce that they have decided to live with Tommy and the Kangaskhan in the jungle so that he can keep both of his families. So… yeah.

Rapidash being awesome, by Dr. Karayua (http://dr-karayua.deviantart.com/).

In a misguided attempt to have this entry make sense, I have decided that these episodes do in fact have a theme in common, though the link is somewhat tangential: Pokémon and family. The Flame Pokémonathon isn’t the first episode that’s made me think Pokémon are often a family business, but boy, it’s a big one. Being made an honorary Laramie seems to be the only prize to be had in the Pokémon race, but just becoming associated with the Laramie name is apparently enough incentive for Dario to deal with notorious criminals in order to beat Lara. Conversely, the prospect of being owed a favour by someone inside the Laramie clan is attractive enough to Jessie and James that they don’t ask Dario to give them anything else in exchange for their help, even though they don’t really stand to gain anything from the mission itself. All of this is over a name – Dario already works with the Laramie family on their ranch, so it’s not even like it’s about getting him into the ‘company’ or anything. He just wants to be able to call himself a Laramie. Clearly these people have one heck of a reputation, and possibly some serious clout in Pokémon breeding circles. One imagines that all this goes back generations. Practically everyone in this world has something to do with Pokémon, one way or another, but it’s been my observation that a lot of the Pokémon trainers we know best are part of families whose history is closely tied up with Pokémon – Ash’s father is a trainer and his mother, from what we see of her relationship with Mr. Mime later in the series, easily could have been if she’d wanted; Gary’s grandfather is Professor Oak (come to think of it, the wording of Gary’s boast in Pokémon, I Choose You – “it’s good to have a grandfather in the Pokémon business” – seems to suggest an interesting line of thought); Misty’s sisters are all trainers; Brock’s parents are both trainers; and of course my all-time favourite example are the Dragon Masters of Blackthorn City, a family of fantastically powerful trainers who go back centuries. Obviously this doesn’t mean that big, old families have a monopoly on Pokémon training and breeding in general, but it seems likely that becoming a skilled trainer or breeder is often strongly influenced by one’s upbringing and the way one was taught to view Pokémon as a child.

Speaking of the way children view Pokémon growing up…

Yabba dabba doo.

Tomo was raised by Kangaskhan and, of course, is the series’ interpretation of the old ‘wolf child’ type; a human raised from a very young age by wild animals, the most notable literary portrayal being Tarzan. In the real world we don’t actually know a whole lot about kids like this, purely because so many reports turn out to be hoaxes, but it’s believed that they normally have great difficulty learning how to speak and are incapable of grasping many of the basic concepts of human society. Now, in Tomo’s case, the speech thing raises some interesting questions. Although very few Pokémon can actually produce human speech, most of them seem to understand it, and since Tomo can speak in pidgin English, he was clearly old enough to have started talking already when his moron father dropped him out of the helicopter. Presumably he could address his ‘family’ in human speech and they would understand him. The thing is, though… he doesn’t. He speaks to the Kangaskhan in their own language (and by the end of the episode has started teaching it to his human parents). The fact that he even remembers how to speak English at all suggests to me that he must have had regular human contact during his time in the Pokémon preservation, I assume with Officer Jenny, since she apparently knows him and even seems to have a file on him, complete with a photograph. This brings up a nagging little question: why the hell hasn’t she told anyone about him? Unless this particular Jenny is somewhat unhinged (which, let’s be fair, is a possibility), the only reasonable answer is that Kanto doesn’t consider it entirely unreasonable for human children to be raised by Pokémon (extreme, clearly, but not unthinkable). And why not? Tomo clearly has a happy life with his adoptive family and seems to make a meaningful contribution to the wellbeing of the herd. Most Pokémon seem to possess intelligence, self-awareness and social complexity that only a few animals can match, and unlike, say, chimpanzees or dolphins they also seem to be naturally predisposed to cooperating with humans. Humans, by their own nature, prefer to take control and assimilate Pokémon into their society, but Tomo (and, later, his human parents) demonstrates that the reverse can and does happen, even in the face of contact with normal human societies.

I am gradually building up a very strange view of this universe…

Next Time on Pokémaniacal: Anime Time!

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!

You’ve said before that you’re an archaeology student, so I’m assuming that you enjoy the subject (otherwise you’d be insane for studying a subject you don’t like) so would you be interested in seeing more pokemon such as Lucario, who seems to be ancient Egyptian based, or other such pokemon that are based on ancient greek, mayan or egyptian mythology, seeing as it is largely japanese mythology that makes it into the games (ie. Yamata No Orochi being Hydreigon’s inspiration)

If there’s one thing I want more of, it’s myth- and folklore-inspired Pokémon. They are The Best Ones. I don’t even care whether we’re talking about Japanese stuff, or wider Asian stuff, or anywhere else. I think one of the designers has said that there have been no Pokémon so far who are based on Greco-Roman mythology, which is the particular cultural milieu I’m interested in (though there are definitely some who are based on ideas that have Greco-Roman counterparts). I would like to see some of that. Again, though, it’s all good. Myths and folktales last for a reason; they express powerful, evocative ideas. Designs based on them have a certain inexpressible dignity… or, so I feel.

(Incidentally: at my university there is a long-standing rivalry between the Egyptian historians and the Greco-Roman historians, but I must still concede that Lucario is beyond epic)

So, in a word: Yes.