I Need A Break

So, I am currently up to my eyebrows in ancient Greek history assignments written by clueless first-years (note to anyone in my tutorial groups who’s reading this: obviously I don’t mean you; I mean all the other clueless first-years in the class), and will continue to be for some time, as well as having all of my own work to do (which, I will remind you, is SERIOUS SCHOLARLY RESEARCH of a totally non-fake variety), and I also need to figure out where the heck I’m going to go to do my MA (or MSc, it sort of depends on a lot of stuff) next year.

What this all adds up to is that I need a break.  And it is quite possibly going to be a long one.  As in, it may be, like, two months before my life settles back into enough of a semblance of normality that I can return to my usual three-day update schedule.

Now, two months is quite a while, and I don’t want to leave this place totally abandoned for that whole time, so I am going to try to post stuff now and then… just not regularly, or often.  It might not even be about Pokémon, necessarily, but I’ll be sure to tie it in somehow; I’m surprisingly good at dragging Pokémon into discussions on other topics.  I will also continue answering any questions people send me – if you’ve been reading for a while, you should be able to guess at the kind of questions that will provoke a lengthy response, so if you get bored waiting for me to say something you can totally just prod me and see what happens.

I do sincerely mean to go back to a regular update schedule eventually.  I just sort of have to prioritise my real-life academic career over my pseudo-academic Pokémon-related internet ramblings… at least until I get some of my actual work done.

Legendary Pokémon: Final Thoughts

Dialga and Palkia are so awesome, not even their own trading cards can contain them, as these illustrations by Shinji Higuchi and Sachiko Eba attest.Although I hadn’t quite had it in mind originally, these entries on the Pokémon Power Bracket eventually evolved into something akin to a discussion of what I think legendary Pokémon should and should not be. Given the direction this project ended up taking, I suppose that I now ought to talk about these questions in more general terms and lay out, once and for all, what opinions I hold on these mysterious creatures and why.

So, what is a legendary Pokémon, anyway?

Put simply, a legendary Pokémon is one that breaks the rules. It is normally impossible to legally obtain more than one of the same species on a single game without trading. With the exception of Manaphy, none of them can breed in captivity; even Manaphy requires the aid of a Ditto. They don’t evolve, something Professor Rowan comments on in Diamond and Pearl; of more than six hundred Pokémon, about one hundred don’t evolve, and almost half of those are legendary. While most Pokémon are normally portrayed as partners (or at least potential partners) to humanity, legendary Pokémon are typically more aloof, appearing to hold humans in disdain, and will join their strength only to truly exceptional trainers. Most are figures of myth and legend; their existence is often difficult to verify. Many play roles in the balance of nature that are of global or even cosmic significance.

Let’s face it, though, you don’t care about any of that. You care about how good they are at bludgeoning your enemies into a bloody pulp.

Official Nintendo art of the cataclysmic three-way murder-off between Groudon, Kyogre and Rayquaza.Legendary Pokémon are significantly tougher and have more powerful attacks than the vast majority of ordinary Pokémon (Dragonite, Tyranitar, Salamence, Metagross, Garchomp and Hydreigon have stat totals that match or exceed those of some legendary Pokémon, and are often called ‘Pseudo-Legendary’ for this reason). Big numbers don’t make the Pokémon, of course: consider Articuno, whose type combination carries a number of crippling weaknesses and whose movepool is small and inflexible. Most members of the lowest ‘tier’ of legendary Pokémon are like this: theoretically powerful, but limited (there are also a couple, like Entei and Regigigas, who are just plain bad, but that’s really a topic for another day). That’s all well and good. It’s the really powerful ones that concern me: Mewtwo and Ho-oh and the like; Kyogre and Arceus most of all. These Pokémon clearly aren’t meant to be ‘balanced’ in any meaningful sense – possibly not even against each other. They don’t merely have a slight edge over mortal Pokémon; they can steamroll entire teams if played competently. Now, I’ve always contended that game balance has never really been a ‘thing’ in Pokémon anyway; I simply don’t believe it was ever part of the designers’ aims. However, it doesn’t take a genius to see that this legendary élite will quickly take over any context to which they are introduced; Nintendo themselves recognise this and ban most of them from official tournaments and in-game battle facilities. Outside of official contexts, however, any ban-list must be self-policing, which is a recipe for chaos – particularly since Nintendo’s ban-list, while a reasonable starting point, is riddled with flaws (they regularly ban Phione, for goodness’ sake). Some fan communities produce and regularly update tier lists to define which Pokémon should and should not be allowed, but one need only consider the vitriol directed against Smogon University for banning Blaziken to see that this is hardly a perfect solution. Some would consider it the height of lunacy to ban Celebi while allowing Excadrill (as Nintendo does); others would think it perfectly rational. As a result of all this, I cannot help but regard legendary Pokémon as a negative influence on the games’ ability to function as intended.

"What? Create a godlike primordial being out of the celestial ether? Sure, kids, I didn't have anything planned for this weekend anyway."It is partly for this reason that I expect rather a lot of them elsewhere. Legendary Pokémon are, well, legendary; that is, they are the subject of legends, myths, traditions and tales. As a result they are a fundamental part of the culture, history and philosophy of the Pokémon world and serve to expand our understanding of that world. Provided they do a good job of it, tell a good story, I am generally willing to give them some latitude to act as game-breakers when they take the field; they’ve ‘earned it,’ in a sense (especially ones that aren’t actually game-breaking, like Zapdos and Suicune). This is not always an easy thing to judge. I maintain that it was the second generation that got it right, with the story of Entei, Suicune and Raikou, who were killed in the fire that destroyed the Brass Tower and drove Lugia away from Ekruteak City, and then resurrected by Ho-oh with incredible new powers. These Pokémon all have a history that ties them in with the past of their home region and its visible remnants, while hinting at fantastic powers beyond what ordinary Pokémon can harness. Articuno, Zapdos and Moltres contribute to the general feel of the games with their aura of mystery, but don’t do so with the same eloquence or sophistication as their successors, while many later legendary Pokémon simply go too far. Ever since Ruby and Sapphire, Game Freak seem to have gotten it into their precious little heads that a good plot must be ‘epic’ and that one of the requirements of ‘epic’ is an impending apocalypse (neither of which is actually true), so naturally they’ve been designing legendary Pokémon to match – Kyogre and Groudon, Dialga and Palkia, Arceus, Reshiram and Zekrom – as though their games won’t be complete without Pokémon capable of destroying the nation, the world, or even the universe. This isn’t even a flawed concept, in principle. The flaw is in the way it interacts with the games’ premise and central tenet: “gotta catch ‘em all.” If these Pokémon truly were as remote and aloof as they are often portrayed, present in the game as forces to be deflected or mitigated, I would not have any major objections to them; many of them have interesting stories, and they could definitely add something to the setting’s cosmology. The problem is that once something exists in Pokémon, you have to be able to catch it; otherwise the whole mess falls apart.

The mighty Lugia cares not for your pathetic human fourth wall! (Artwork again by Shinji Higuchi)

As I’ve mentioned in recent weeks, Game Freak seem to have in their minds a sort of dual conception of many Pokémon like this, a disjunction that must eventually be resolved. When we hear about them through myth, there seems to be a tacit suggestion that these Pokémon are powerful, but not gods as they are depicted in the stories; it is implied that there is an element of exaggeration in what we are told, and we are clearly intended to have this in mind when we capture them and use them in battle. When we actually see what they are capable of, however, these caveats vanish. Kyogre and Groudon are treated, by characters we have no reason to doubt, as an utterly serious long-term threat to the stability of not just Hoenn but the entire world. Dialga and Palkia really are capable of unravelling the universe at Cyrus’ command. On my copy of Black version, all of these Pokémon are mine. I cannot command them to unleash their full powers and rewrite the universe in my image, because their Pokéballs cut them off from their cosmic abilities through mechanisms that are never explained, but I still own them in a legally binding sense. When, exactly, did this start being okay? And how can it possibly be reconciled with their established backstories and characterisation? Reshiram and Zekrom, for their part, are a step in the right direction since their entire point is to be partnered with humans, but the writers still feel this bizarre need to talk up their power to apocalyptic proportions, apparently heedless of the fact that the plot still works without the possibility of Unova being wiped off the map. In Black and White, the threat N presents is primarily an ideological one: that he will use his partner dragon to claim the necessary moral authority to command all the people of Unova to release their Pokémon. The fact that he could destroy the world if he wanted to is a ludicrous embellishment that only undercuts what the story is actually about (especially since N would never do that anyway). What I am trying to get at here is that I feel Game Freak’s desire for legendary Pokémon to have this degree of cosmic power is totally irrational, and does little to add to a series that is, fundamentally, about partnership and discovery. Their existence, again, is not a problem per se; the problem lies mainly in the need to shoehorn these cosmic beings into the standard format of the Pokémon games when they could be left on the periphery, contributing to the background, aesthetics, character and stories of the setting, perhaps as enemies or allies, but not as ‘partners’ in the sense that mortal Pokémon must be.

I can't believe I just wrote an entire entry about legendary Pokemon without mentioning how much I hated "Arceus and the Jewel of Life"! I must be going soft...Which legendary Pokémon are effective additions to the world, in my view (aside from the second-generation ones I’ve mentioned)? Mewtwo is one; though the extent of his powers is difficult to gauge, his backstory was clearly written with ideas of morality and identity in mind, and he also allows us to ask interesting questions about the relationship between humans and Pokémon. This, I think, is the sort of thing that Pokémon is actually rather good at, simply because the basic premises of the franchise are so interesting from an ethical standpoint. Regirock, Regice and Registeel, though I’ve always felt they are distressingly emotionless, making them difficult to relate to, have a fascinating backstory that gives us a new perspective on the way people related to Pokémon in the past, and what that might mean for the future (arguably, the very thing that bugs me about them actually makes them more effective, their alien countenance emphasising how far they stand apart from humanity). They recognise, as well, that the power to shape worlds is not actually a requisite for winning the fear or adoration of an ancient civilisation. Tornadus, Thundurus and Landorus, too, have destructive and protective powers that function on a local rather than a regional or global scale; they are deities of folktale, not epic, a smaller scale of things to which Pokémon, by its very nature, is eminently better-suited.

These, then, are my thoughts on the class which includes the most powerful Pokémon in the game. They are, in essence, Pokémon of legend, and so it is by those legends that I try to judge them first: by their power as stories, and their capacity to expand our understanding of the Pokémon world. I fully expect, as always, that many readers will disagree with my priorities and conclusions. I don’t aim to be ‘right;’ that is a lost cause in anything so subjective. I aim, as ever, to make you think, and I can only hope you have enjoyed my latest attempt as much as I have.

Thank you for reading, and to all, a good night.

The Pokémon Power Bracket – Final

http://www.pokemon.com/powerbracket

Hmph. Bloody Rayquaza. It’s almost as if the global Pokémon community isn’t interested in the opinions of a random blogger! I’ve half a mind just to sit in a corner and sulk… on the other hand… I suppose it’s only one more entry. I’ve started, so I’ll finish. Rayquaza vs. Mew: here we go!

Not so fast.

Wait, what?

…Jim, is that you?

I can’t let you do another entry on these two pokemon, especially since the pokemon community have shown themselves to be completely ignorant by allowing this pairing to get through to the final!

But my readers will expect it! Anyway, this is my blog and I’ll do another entry on whatever two damn Pokémon I please! Now get back to proof-reading!  “Best friend,” my ass…

Look chris, you have done a great job, really, talking about all of the legendary pokemon but still look what happens… fighting it out for the ‘best legendary pokemon’ honour. mew and rayquaza!

Well… yes. But that isn’t my fault! I did everything I could to drag Rayquaza through the mud; you saw that!

Obviously, your efforts were not good enough. So i have decided it is my turn and I’ll put this entry up before you even have a chance to change it! MUHAHAHAHAHAHA

You can’t- wait, what are you doing? No, stop thatxpklxasugheiuiyhfrdewseqxrcdtfgvyhjni 

eoshn;ergbselbyhledetbhaedol

franeg;“srjhndjhbo ,ostbh’oCURSEYOU,YOUSONOFASTRUMPETtjp9o;rjke96rk’inkgashnh’w

*huff**puff* Look, this is getting us nowhere. Why don’t we do the blasted entry together?

You’ve had your chances…

*thwack*

*thump*

Good, now that he has been dealt with, I will get to the point of this entry- why mew and rayquaza should not be anywhere near the top two legendaries….

So, you of the pokemon world have decided that of all contestants, Mew and Rayquaza are the two ‘best legendary pokemon’. Well, obviously not you, the educated and respected readers of such high quality blogging as this one here. You all know that there is no way that these two should have gotten anywhere near that top spot, beating out amazing concept pokemon like Darkrai and Shaymin, heavy-weights like Mewtwo and Arceus (how did they do that again?) and my personal favourite, Deoxys. 

In this entry, we’ll take a look at each pokemon’s road to the finals and evaluate which of these two completely overrated pokemon deserves to not lose to the other.

First up, let’s take a look at Mew and its road to the final. Mew is described as having the DNA of every single pokemon in its own body. Originally, this was perhaps conceived of as the origin of all the existing pokemon- everyone was descended from Mew. However, as the pokemon franchise has been (rather clumsily) expanded over the years, the writers seem to have replaced this possible origin theory completely. In the games, since the ’Mew glitch’ was fixed, Mew has only been available through nintendo giveaways and so, for those of us who nintendo does not visit regularly, there was no way of obtaining it. In battle, Mew is on a par with the ‘baby’ legendaries such as Manaphy, Celebi and Victini, sporting a decent 100 base stat for every in-game attribute. This is both a hindrance and a blessing. Mew is good enough that it can do pretty much anything you might want it to; however, there will always be something better at doing the job for which you use mew. Mew’s appearance is vaguely humanoid but retains enough alien-like properties to remain an admittedly quite cute pokemon. This along with the facts that Mew was the first unattainable but attainable (if that makes sense) legendary pokemon and played a prominent role in the first, and most popular, pokemon movie are the only distinctions from the other ‘baby’ legendary pokemon. Surely something better could have taken its place?!

In its road to the final, Mew took on four other pokemon: Heatran, Deoxys, Groudon and Celebi. Heatran lost because, come on, everyone has a heatran and it’s a 4th generation pokemon. Those ‘genwunners’ don’t even know what it is! Deoxys, i’m sad to say, probably fell to a similar fate- kicked out by fair-weather fans who sadly out-number those of us who actually know what is going on (or am i just a little biased?). Groudon. How did groudon even get that far?! It is a terrible pokemon as far as legendaries go! And the showdown with Chris’ beloved Celebi can be seen purely as a ‘design-off’ since both pokemon have the exact same stats and I would suggest that the voters’ familiarity with Mew pushed him past the line… I guess, given his opponents, that Mew has arrived in the final shouldn’t be too surprising. He didn’t have much to beat in the end…which is the opposite of his opponent….

Rayquaza…. when Chris told me he had made it intro the semi-finals I was shocked. Why? Well for a start, look at the damn thing! it looks like a metal flying snake in drag! And that pink lipstick neither brings out its beady little eyes nor does it go well with its emerald green metallic shell. It is an abomination to look at. It is redeemed, I guess, a little by its stat-line. Rayquaza is on a par with the other major legendaries such as mewtwo, palkia, dialga, lugia, ho-oh, etc. But that only makes him equal to these pokemon in terms of his best feature, there is no way he should be beating any of them! He is not special- everyone who has a 3rd gen game can get him. His type (dragon/flying) is not unique but is the most popular of fully evolved dragon types- and it is not even a particularly good typing! Oh, there is the minor plus that he has an in-game ability which negates weather effects which are inevitable if you are battling using legendaries. But really, how the hell did this thing get through?! This isn’t even mentioning his absurd role in the ‘plot’ of emerald which Chris has explained in earlier entries better than I ever could… 

Now, Rayquaza’s road to the final looks similar to Mew’s in terms of his opposition: Azelf, Palkia and Lugia all have their upsides but overall, none of them are magnificent. However, in the semi-final Rayquaza took on Mewtwo. How the hell did he get past mewtwo?!  Mewtwo matches rayquaza in stats and availability, has a sleek humanoid design which leaves Rayquaza’s for dead and does not create an absurd plot with his in-game antics. Add this to Mewtwo’s gen one status, his role in the first movie and his ALL-AROUND-BASSASSNESS (I MEAN HE WAS CREATED BY HUMANS TO BE AWESOME, HOW DOES A LADY-MAN SNAKE THING BEAT THAT?!) 

Ahem. 

Sorry, got carried away there. There was no reason Rayquaza should have beaten Mewtwo…

O readers, you have failed the pokemon world, you have failed chris and, worst of all, you have failed me. But you can seek redemption right now. Make sure that mew wins this final. Mew may not be the most powerful of legendaries, nor the coolest nor the cutest but it is a far better pokemon than that dressed up drag queen of a dragon (Haha- Drag-on, I see what they did there). Chris will be back with you next time. Sorry for the intrusion.

I may be totally wrong here but in the last post you were asking why Giovanni would want a gym and the financial side of it. What if the gym’s are somewhat akin to the games in that if a challenger loses they have to pay out? I know (or at least think?) that it is never really mentioned in the anime, but what if the same rules applied? This could explain why the Cerulean gym needs the ‘shows’ to generate funds (because without Misty they obviously aren’t that competent)? Just a thought

That’s a very good point… it goes both ways, of course – the Gym Leaders would have to pay out if they lose – but the Cerulean Gym example does support that.  We see Ash lose Gym battles, and he never pays up, but Ash’s financial situation is vague at the best of times anyway.  I guess it depends on how tough you think Gym Leaders are supposed to be: we know from context that they’re meant to be tough but beatable, but do we imagine that they lose about a third of their matches?  Or more like one tenth?  They would have to win many more matches than they lost in order to pay even for simple things like maintenance (and Blaine manages to keep his Gym – which undoubtedly has ridiculous maintenance costs – despite spurning weak challengers).  We also have to question the amount paid by a defeated trainer – in the games, this varies according to the level of your strongest Pokémon and the number of Badges you have. Does this seem realistic, or would there be a standard wager that amateur trainers can easily afford?

Honestly the whole economic situation of the trainer lifestyle is totally opaque to me.  Paying out to a trainer who beats you is only going to move money around between them, presumably they have to buy food, and it seems clear that you don’t have to be rich to be a full-time trainer, so obviously they must be making money somewhere, but they don’t really produce anything, so who’s paying them?

Anime Time: Episode 63

The Battle of the Badge

Okay!  Last badge!  We are PSYCHED!  GO ASH!  WHOOHOO!

So, Ash, Misty, Brock and Pikachu enter Viridian City.  Misty remarks that it’s been a whole year since they were last there, which I mention because it’s one of the few instances in the series where we get actual references to time passing – this particular one tells me that Ash probably has his twelfth birthday while preparing for the Pokémon League, since he’s only a few weeks shy of eleven when he leaves Pallet Town, and is the basis for my estimate that the kids travel for about five days between episodes (obviously there’s some variation – for instance, no time at all passes between Riddle Me This and Volcanic Panic – but assuming their ‘adventures’ are mixed fairly evenly with their ‘down time,’ it should be about five days on average).

Well, I thought it was interesting.

 I've decided that Giovanni has decorated his Gym and door guards in a vaguely classical style because he's (presumably) of Italian descent, but doesn't know enough about the Roman army to make his soldiers actually look authentic.

Anyway, when Ash is about to walk up to the Viridian Gym, he’s interrupted by his dear sweet archenemy, Gary Oak.  Gary actually has ten badges already; he’s just going after an eleventh for bragging rights (another telling little detail: there are at least twelve official Gyms in Kanto, since we know Gary never won a Volcano Badge either).  Gary waltzes past Ash, throws a few choice insults his way, and struts up to the door guards, who are inexplicably decked out in the kind of Greco-Roman mish-mash that makes classicists like me cry ourselves to sleep – bronze breastplate, leather skirt, etc – but armed with halberds, of all things, which are blatantly Renaissance weapons (I promise that this will be my last barely-relevant tangent for this- oh, who am I kidding?).  These imposing fellows let Gary in, but refuse to admit Ash, declaring that only one challenger at a time may enter… so we follow Gary for a while instead.  The Viridian Gym Leader turns out to be Giovanni, the mysterious Boss of Team Rocket (what a twist!) though this is lost on Gary, who doesn’t know him.  He overpowers Giovanni’s Golem with his Nidoking, and boils a Kingler with his Arcanine’s Fire Spin, prompting Giovanni to test out his newest and most powerful Pokémon, whom Gary’s Pokédex is unable to identify.  He even invites Gary to use both Arcanine and Nidoking together to fight the armoured monstrosity, but both are paralysed by its mysterious powers and flung roughly against the wall of the Gym.  Then, just for fun, Giovanni has his Pokémon incapacitate Gary and his cheerleaders before leaving to take care of other business.

 Mewtwo in his badass armour. I'm not even totally sure what this is for; he certainly doesn't need it for protection. I think Giovanni claims that it helps Mewtwo to control his powers.

Meanwhile, Togepi has gotten lost and been carried halfway across the city by a wild Fearow.  Misty, of course, searches everywhere in panic, but Team Rocket find Togepi first.  Jessie suffers great personal injury trying to grab Togepi as she wanders across a plank suspended between two tall buildings, but manages to secure her.  Overjoyed at finally having stolen a rare Pokémon, she, James and Meowth go in person to present their spoils to Giovanni, who stares blankly at Togepi and asks “what… exactly does this Pokémon do?”  Jessie, James and Meowth confer, and realise that they have absolutely no idea what powers Togepi possesses, if any, and Jessie answers “it… would certainly make a handsome paperweight!”  Giovanni is about to eviscerate them for their incompetence, but is notified of an emergency and has to hurry away to fetch his super-Pokémon.  For lack of anyone more capable, he instructs Jessie and James to man the Gym and tosses them three Pokéballs before exiting.  Togepi, who has wandered off in the meantime, finds her way to the front doors of the Gym, where the kids have met up again after completing their search.  They hear her voice and haul the doors open to find Togepi, safe and unharmed… and Gary and his cheerleading squad, unconscious and scattered around the arena.  As Ash tries to learn from Gary what happened to him, Jessie and James appear, declare that they are now the Gym Leaders, and challenge Ash to a battle.  Just to make things more interesting, Meowth has rigged special trainer boxes that transmit the pain felt by the battling Pokémon to their trainers, reducing Ash to crippling agony when Jessie’s borrowed Machamp pummels his Squirtle into submission, and her Kingler shrugs off Bulbasaur’s attacks.  When he calls Pidgeotto, however, and hits Jessie’s Rhydon with a mighty Double Edge, Jessie realises that her box has the same set-up as Ash’s.  Gary snatches the control remote from Meowth to keep him from turning off Jessie’s box, so she panics and calls Arbok and Weezing into the fight as well.  Ash objects to her using five Pokémon at once and has Pikachu join the others and blast them with his best Thunderbolt.  Giovanni’s Pokémon flee the arena and, while Jessie, James and Meowth flail uselessly, Togepi finds Meowth’s remote and starts playing with it.  Jessie’s trainer box explodes and flings Team Rocket out of the Gym, dropping an Earth Badge on the way.  Well… Ash never even met the Gym Leader… and his challenge was marked by flagrant rule violations on both sides… and no-one ever actually conferred the Earth Badge on him… but what the hell, a Badge is a Badge, right?

 ...is it just me, or is Jessie's Machamp kinda TOWERING OVER her Rhydon? I'm pretty sure Machamp are roughly human-sized, but Jessie would barely come up to his waist... then again, I wouldn't put it past Giovanni to load 'em up on steroids...

It turns out Giovanni was the Viridian Gym Leader all along!  I realise this is probably old news to almost everyone reading this, since he’s the Leader in all the games set in Kanto as well but, of course, I find this really interesting.  In the games, Gym Leaders tend to be portrayed as pillars of the community, and this tends to hold true for later seasons of the anime as well, but in the Indigo series things are often much weirder – most notably for Sabrina, Koga and Blaine.  Giovanni adds another bizarre perspective to things: this Gym Leader is a mob boss.  I think it’s fair to assume that the Pokémon League either doesn’t know about what he does in his spare time or doesn’t care… and which option you think is more likely says a lot about what you think of the Pokémon League.  If they don’t know, then this adds support to my overall impression that there is fairly little League oversight in the way Gyms are run.  One also has to wonder whether the League might be dangerously incompetent.  True, Giovanni is a criminal mastermind and probably very good at covering his tracks but, on the other hand, he is at the head of an organisation that often works in direct opposition to the Pokémon League and regularly tramples on every value they stand for.  If the body responsible for the regulation of Pokémon training can’t sniff out the head honcho of a crime syndicate devoted to the abuse and exploitation of Pokémon within its own ranks, something has got to be badly wrong here.  The alternative possibility – that the Pokémon League knows exactly what Giovanni is up to and just doesn’t care – is even more frightening, possibly implying that significant factions of the League’s management are in Team Rocket’s pocket.  I think some combination of the two is probably in play: many overworked League officials are willing to get lazy with their background checks, or keep inspectors out of the Viridian Gym’s private areas, in exchange for a little ‘incentive.’  After all, plenty of Gym Leaders are eccentric – he probably just has a few little projects going in the basement that he doesn’t want to be public knowledge.  Can’t do any harm to let that slide, right?

 "Ohmygod Gary! Here, let me hold you..."

The next big question is one that Misty actually raises in the episode itself: why would Team Rocket want to own a Gym anyway?  Jessie responds haughtily that she wouldn’t understand; Team Rocket’s plans are too far-reaching and intricate for the likes of them (which, Meowth explains, means that she doesn’t know either).  It is difficult to imagine that Giovanni could actually steal Pokémon from challengers without blowing his cover – moreover, he had ample opportunity to take Gary’s Arcanine and Nidoking (who had, remember, just defeated two of Giovanni’s own Pokémon) but chose not to, so it certainly doesn’t seem like that’s his game here.  The obvious motive is money; Showdown in Dark City implies that official Pokémon Gyms can expect to be profitable, since that’s the Yas and Kas leaders’ primary reason for wanting official status.  Then again, some Gyms (notably Cerulean and Celadon) run separate businesses too; as a result I’m very unsure as to whether most Pokémon Gyms are funded by League grants or by their Leaders’ own personal wealth (and I quietly suspect that Giovanni created the Viridian Gym in the first place, sinking a significant portion of his ill-gotten fortune into setting it up).  The simplest argument, though, is that if the Viridian Gym existed for anything so transparently mercenary as direct profit, Jessie would know about it; there’s simply no reason for her not to.  Having a respectable public persona, too, seems like an obvious benefit, but one which Giovanni doesn’t choose to take advantage of.  It seems likely that owning an official Pokémon Gym simply gives Giovanni space to do various illegal things in secret, a place to keep Mewtwo under wraps, for instance, and work on upgrades to his cybernetic armour (taking challenges, of course, provides him with opportunities to test Mewtwo’s strength, though this is probably not routine business).  We also see that he has a number of caged Pokémon in there (incidentally, the fact that anyone would ever bother to put a Pokémon in a cage suggests quite strongly that Pokéballs just won’t cut it – they apparently wouldn’t be effective at restraining Pokémon that really want to break free).  Paradoxically, the best way to keep this stuff out of the League’s sight is by doing it right under their noses, in an official Pokémon Gym.  It seems reasonable to imagine, further, that Gym Leader status is an asset in itself; Giovanni could probably expect to be consulted about policy decisions and notified in advance of any important developments in League business, information he might be able to use to Team Rocket’s advantage.  Finally, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Giovanni simply enjoyed taking challenges.  He does genuinely seem pleased by Gary’s strength, and it’s a basic truism of the series that powerful trainers seek powerful opponents; running the Gym might actually be something of a hobby for him, which would imply a whole slew of interesting twists on his characterisation.

 I wish we got to see more of Giovanni; the other Gym Leaders are all interesting, but his particular situation, I think, is the one with the most potential for elaboration.  If nothing else, it would be fantastic to have more evidence for how he treats his role as a Gym Leader (perhaps fairly casually, if he’s willing to let the notoriously incompetent Jessie, James and Meowth stand in for him – but, then again, whatever emergency he needed to deal with, it apparently required both his own personal attention and Mewtwo’s, so it’s clearly not an ordinary day for him).  The bare facts of his situation themselves, though, are more than enough for me to play with; we can learn a few rather worrying things about the Pokémon League from this episode, and this has to impact on the way we view them elsewhere in the series.

That’s the last I’m doing on Anime Time for a little while – now, there’s one more week to go of the Pokémon Power Bracket, so I’ll do another entry on that and then, I think, wrap it up with a sort of retrospective on legendary Pokémon in general.  After that… I think I need another break, but we’ll talk more about that as it comes.

The Pokémon Power Bracket – Semi Final

http://www.pokemon.com/powerbracket

So, what I didn’t anticipate when I started doing this was that I would wind up talking about a lot of the same Pokémon over and over again.  I am getting to the point where I have, quite honestly, said most of what I care to say about Celebi, Mew, Rayquaza and Mewtwo.  If you’ve been reading this so far, you all know that I’m edgy about time travel but much less bothered by Celebi than I am by Dialga, you all know that I think Mew’s backstory is blatantly contradicted all over the place, you all know that I think Mewtwo’s angst is all about stuff that shouldn’t matter in-universe anyway, and you all know that I think Rayquaza deserves to die in a fire for replacing the climax of Emerald version with a massive deus ex machina.  You can almost certainly guess for yourselves by now which way I’m going to vote in the two semi-final matchups.

This is why, instead of discussing what these Pokémon are like and which ones I prefer and what my reasons are, I’m going to do what I do best and MAKE STUFF UP!

Celebi vs. Mew

 

So, here is what we all know about Celebi.  She is a time-traveller, supposedly from the future, who brings life and light to forests (she is particularly associated with the Ilex Forest in southern Johto), and appears only in times of peace.  Stories say that she occasionally leaves mysterious eggs from another time in the deepest parts of the woods, and that “so long as Celebi appears, a bright and shining future awaits us.”  My take on Celebi – which may or may not have any relation to what Game Freak actually had in mind – is that she is the ultimate self-fulfilling prophecy: a paradox being with the power to engineer the circumstances of her own birth at the end of time.  Celebi brings back Pokémon eggs from the future in order to seed the world with the genes and species that will one day give rise to her own ancestors, while protecting and nurturing the forest ecosystems that will allow them to thrive.  One such egg is her own, brought from the future and hidden deep within the Ilex Forest, which will one day be the place of her birth, and sustained through its millennia-long gestation by the vibrant energy of the entire living forest.  Celebi dances through history in intricately choreographed steps, using her formidable psychic abilities to influence events, pushing war and industry away from her precious homeland while gently nudging the people of Johto towards veneration of nature.  Occasionally she comes into contact with humans directly; occasionally she even decides she admires them and submits to capture, staying with them for years or even decades, learning to see the world through their eyes, until they either part ways with her or die, and she loops back on herself to continue her work.  Far in the future, perhaps helped along by human genetic manipulation, a species of Pokémon will evolve that possesses an unusually intuitive sense of time, able to pick out the paths of causality and predict future events with a precision that would leave the dim-witted Psychic Pokémon of our era wide-eyed with amazement.  Eventually they will develop the ability to make tiny hops through time, a few seconds forward to avoid an attack, or backward to undo a mistake.  Under their descendant’s guidance, their powers will grow more phenomenal with every generation, ultimately giving rise to the impossible: the final prodigy who will take her own egg and travel back in time to ensure the sequence of events that led to the creation of her own species.  That is the “bright and shining future” Celebi promises: the only possible version of history that culminates with the birth of the immortal guardian of the forest, who will always lead humanity into harmony with nature.

 

If Celebi is the end, Mew, of course, is the beginning.  Most famous for being Mewtwo’s ‘mother,’ Mew is a mysterious Psychic Pokémon from South America, who was for a long time believed to be extinct, or simply nonexistent.  It turned out, of course, that Mew not only did exist but possessed something akin to a genetic library of all other Pokémon species, an asset which gives her access to all of their powers.  The scientists of the Pokémon world began to theorise that Mew was the common ancestor of all Pokémon, in flagrant defiance of the way evolution actually works (see this entry).  We, of course, also know that Arceus was the first Pokémon and not Mew, and that his first creations were Dialga, Palkia and Giratina, followed by Uxie, Mesprit and Azelf.  Moreover, we know that many Pokémon are unequivocally not descended from Mew, or from any other Pokémon: Grimer comes to mind.  Given these facts, here’s my take on Mew.  I believe I’ve mentioned before that I think of Mew as the first living thing created after Uxie, Mesprit and Azelf; her claim to fame, therefore, is that she is the first living thing with a complete soul: knowledge, emotion, and will.  As for Mew’s ‘genetic library,’ my immediate thought is that she must have been ‘programmed’ in advance with the DNA of every species of Pokémon ordained by Arceus.  I’m pretty sure that’s not what anyone ever had in mind, though, either for Mew or for Arceus; I am quite convinced that evolution (in the real-world sense) is supposed to be a thing in the Pokémon world.  I want to define, then, a very different role for Mew: she really is a genetic library.  Her special power – and, indeed, her duty – is to copy and absorb the genetic information of all Pokémon she encounters, building up a ‘library’ of gene sequences that, between them, record the form, traits and powers of every species that has ever existed (of course she was found in the jungles of South America – she would linger in places of the greatest biodiversity).  She can use this borrowed DNA as a blueprint to Transform into any Pokémon she has observed, or learn techniques from every element.  Further, she was gifted by Arceus with incredible defensive powers, including invisibility and her signature telekinetic shield bubble, ensuring that her precious genetic library will be preserved for all eternity.  As long as Mew exists in the world, extinction will never be forever; she can Transform into every Pokémon that is or was, using all their abilities, and from her genes any of those Pokémon could be resurrected.  She is the holy grail of evolutionary biology, and the scribe who documents for Arceus the history of the world he set in motion.

Rayquaza vs. Mewtwo

 

Oh, yes… Rayquaza… my old enemy.  What do we know about him?  Well, he lives high above the clouds in the ozone layer, where he flies forever, feeding on water vapour and other rarefied substances.  Because Rayquaza lives so high above the earth, his existence was totally unknown until he descended during the events of Emerald version.  Even the myths of Groudon and Kyogre’s first battle seem to have forgotten him, mentioning only the Red and Blue Orbs that calmed the titans.  However, he is in fact the only one who can calm them once they start fighting.  Alone, either Pokémon can be pacified by the matching Orb (or awakened by the opposite Orb) but once their attention is fixed on each other, neither Orb helps.  My version, then… Rayquaza was set to act as the guardian of the sky, to protect the world from any threats from outer space – meteors, for instance (as in Mystery Dungeon), or flares of cosmic radiation – but also to guard the sky against threats from below.  Kyogre and Groudon were made to sculpt the surface of the earth and will awaken every century or so, independently of each other, to shake things up a little before returning to sleep.  For both of them to wake up at the same time is much rarer, and will lead to a catastrophic battle; their instincts drive them to make the world around them resemble themselves, and they will sense  each other’s opposite powers as threats.  They will fight on and on, their clashing weather manipulation powers creating storms and cyclones that grow more powerful the longer they stay awake.  Eventually – after weeks, months or even years – the chaos will disturb Rayquaza’s domain in the stratosphere, causing him to descend and nullify their weather powers with his Air Lock aura.  With their powers dampened, Groudon and Kyogre simply cease to view each other as threats and return to their slumber in their own time.  The Orbs were created by an ancient civilisation with Rayquaza’s assistance, after the survivors of an earlier cataclysm witnessed him calming the titans.  They are similar to Arceus’ plates, in that each embodies and reflects the power of an element in its most passive form.  The proximity of the appropriate Orb allows Kyogre and Groudon to feel at peace, as though surrounded by boundless ocean or land, and renders them gentle.  Once the Orbs began to be used to control the titans, it could be ensured that they would never be awake at the same time.  Rayquaza no longer needed to calm them, and retreated into the stratosphere.  The sky dragon faded from legend, and eventually the purpose of the Orbs was forgotten too… until Maxie and Archie, misunderstanding the stories that the Orbs were used to “control” the titans, used them to awaken Groudon and Kyogre.  Feeling as though surrounded by powers opposite to their own, both Pokémon lashed out… and you all know the rest of the story.

 

Mewtwo, of course, is Mew’s ‘child,’ created from Mew’s DNA by human scientists including Blaine and Mr. Fuji using advanced genetic manipulation techniques with the aim of building the ultimate fighting Pokémon.  Unfortunately, Mewtwo rebelled against his creators, destroyed the old laboratory on Cinnabar Island where he was born, and escaped.  He is now considered to be the most savage and violent of all Pokémon.  Journals found in the burnt-out Cinnabar mansion suggest that Mew gave birth to Mewtwo, which doesn’t seem to fit the image found elsewhere of Mewtwo being grown in a tube.  Also, the games do not support the story given by the movie that Giovanni and Team Rocket were backing the scientists who created Mewtwo (though they don’t necessarily contradict it either).  So, what do I make of all this?  Well, the first thing that strikes me as unusual is that Mewtwo was supposedly a genetically ‘upgraded’ version of Mew… whose DNA already contains the genes of all other Pokémon.  What could the scientists possibly add to that?  I can think of two answers.  The first possibility is that Mewtwo is part human, which would have interesting implications for the way humans view Pokémon: apparently, when told to create the ultimate Pokémon, they do it by adding human DNA.  The other possibility – the one I’m actually going to run with – is that they didn’t actually add anything at all, but created Mewtwo by shaving off most of what they considered “junk DNA” – the genes of all the other, less combat-ready Pokémon assimilated by Mew over the years, as well as the regulatory genes that allow Mew to do her thing in the first place.  Mew reproduces by parthenogenesis (‘virgin birth’), passing on all the DNA she has ever collected to her child to ensure that her work need not by interrupted by such trivialities as age and death.  When the scientists who had discovered her began to tamper with the embryo’s DNA, however, her body detected the changes, decided that it had made some kind of mistake, and jettisoned Mewtwo prematurely in order to try again later, forcing the scientists to incubate him in his tube (this may well have happened several times, each time resulting in an unviable embryo, before Mewtwo was successfully incubated).  As a result, Mewtwo is missing huge amounts of the DNA Mew collected, but still retains many of the instincts that allow her to fulfil her purpose.  He knows that something is badly wrong with him, and that despite his awesome powers he is fundamentally incomplete, but he cannot understand why, and could not correct the problem if he did.  No wonder his mental health leaves something to be desired.

Feel free to let my heavily embellished versions of events sway your votes, or not, as the whim strikes you.  Me, I’m just trying to make sense of what I’ve got and establish a nice, internally consistent version of the setting.  I hope I’ve managed to avoid contradicting myself so far…

Anime Time: Episode 62

Clefairy Tales

This episode is… tricky.

By “tricky” I mean that I’m not sure whether it’s the worst episode ever… or what the whole series should have been like.

I’ll… I’ll just give you the plot, shall I?

 ...I'm so sorry; I just couldn't resist.

So, they episode opens on Jigglypuff, who is strolling around the woods one night, singing to herself, leaving behind a trail of comatose forest Pokémon, with doodles all over their faces… but it’s not just the forest Pokémon that are being affected by her song.  A machine part falls from the sky and lands on her head, and she looks up to see a large yellow sphere hurtle through the sky and crash nearby in the woods.  Jigglypuff goes to investigate, and encounters a large group of Clefairy piling out of the sphere…

A few days later, as Ash, Misty, Brock and Pikachu relax outside an ice-cream parlour, a Clefairy approaches their table and starts doing the sort of cutesy things Clefairy are known for.  Misty declares that she must have this Clefairy, but the Pokémon isn’t interested in fighting, and bounces off, with the kids in hot pursuit.  Eventually, she slips away from them, and they return in defeat, only to find that their backpacks – and their ice-cream – have been stolen!  They go to the police station to report the theft to Officer Jenny #442, and quickly learn that they aren’t the only victims: dozens of people are lined up outside the station, complaining of increasingly bizarre thefts.  A bike horn, the buttons from a coat, the candles from a birthday cake… Misty wonders out loud who’d steal rubbish like this, and immediately gets an answer.  “ALIENS.”  The speaker is a scientist – and I use the term loosely – named Oswald, an enthusiastic conspiracy theorist whose self-proclaimed mission is to expose the hidden truths that the government doesn’t want people to know.  Oswald posits that these miscellaneous items are being purloined by Aliens for Alien Reasons, and produces a scrapbook filled with the standard blurry photographs normally used as evidence for this sort of thing.  The chef whose candles were stolen points to one picture and says that he recognises it, prompting Oswald to ask, hysterically, where he saw it and when, and whether the aliens took him aboard to probe him (no, I’m serious).  The chef stammers out that he saw the spacecraft over the forest three nights ago… which is just when the thefts began.  Oswald triumphantly joins the group and leads Ash and friends through town, sweeping the area with a bleeping ‘scanner.’

 THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE! Screenshots from filb.de/anime.

Then a pair of silver-skinned aliens land their spaceship in front of the group, calmly walk out, pick up Pikachu, and leave again.  Ash, apparently, is as dazed as I am by the way this episode is going and just blinks as they kidnap his best friend.  As the ship takes off, the kids notice that it’s being held up by a crane cable, and Ash sends Pidgeotto to snap it.  The aliens, who have stuffed Pikachu into a shockproof glass case, turn out to be Team Rocket in costume, and it looks like they’re ready to have their standard crushing defeat inflicted upon them, but instead something quite different happens.  A Clefairy appears, closely followed by an extremely irate Jigglypuff.  Oswald’s scanner starts making louder bleeping noises, and he declares that “according to my scanner, Clefairy is an alien!”  In fact, “Jigglypuff is also an alien!”  When Misty questions the scanner’s integrity, it indicates that she is also an alien, so she knocks it out of Oswald’s hand in irritation.  Meanwhile, the Clefairy steals Pikachu’s case and flees, casting a Light Screen to block Team Rocket’s pursuit before disappearing down a manhole.  Jigglypuff follows, bringing the team with her.  The manhole leads them into an underground hangar, where the Clefairy seem to have repaired their ship by cannibalising items stolen from the townsfolk, and constructed a massive rocket booster to relaunch it – and they’re going to use Pikachu to power the blasted thing.  Ash and Misty run to save Pikachu, Brock leaves to find reinforcements, and Oswald decides to stow away on the ship.  When they find Pikachu, still locked up, several Clefairy appear to guard him, but Jigglypuff bitchslaps them into submission before stalking off.  While Ash and Misty try to release Pikachu, Oswald and Jigglypuff find the bridge, where Jigglypuff furiously attacks the Clefairy captain.  Oswald starts playing with the controls and snaps the main joystick – Jigglypuff’s black marker, which she uses as a prop while singing due to its vague resemblance to a microphone.  Jigglypuff immediately grabs it and bursts into song, putting everyone on the ship to sleep, then leaves just before the launch countdown completes.  A machine whacks Pikachu with a hammer, prompting him to pour out electricity into the ship’s systems and begin the launch.

 YOU HAVE ANGERED JIGGLYPUFF, FOOLISH MORTALS.

Up above, Officer Jenny asks Brock “do you really expect me to believe a bunch of Clefairy stole those things to make a spaceship?”  Right on cue, a huge section of the road retracts to form a launch ramp and the spaceship blasts off into the sky, leaving a trail of random stolen objects behind it.

This… this may well be my favourite scene of the whole series so far.

Pikachu’s electricity overwhelms the ship’s power core and his glass cage shatters.  As Ash and Misty wake up, the spacecraft begins to lean and wobble in its flight, so they quickly find their stuff and attempt to leave.  Bulbasaur, impressively, manages to snare a nearby skyscraper with his Vine Whips and swing them all onto the roof, more or less unharmed, as the spaceship passes it.  From the roof, Ash and Misty watch the ship sail off into the sky and reflect on what has been just about the most bizarre day of their lives as trainers.

Some hours later, the Clefairy ship crashes again near a lake.  As a crowd of people gathers around to see what’s going on, Oswald emerges, wearing a makeshift cardboard space suit and asking, in a muffled and heavily accented voice, “is this the planet of the Clefairy?”  Behind him, the Clefairy crew spill out of the ship to begin their crime spree anew…

I don’t know what the writers were on when they did this one, but I want some.

 I wonder how long it takes him to realise he's not on another planet? Hours? Days?

Clefairy are weird, weird Pokémon.  With few exceptions, they don’t have much contact with people, suggesting that most of them don’t really buy into the idea of the implied partnership with humanity which I am convinced is the basis of the way most Pokémon relate to us.  That could be indicative of a number of things, up to and including an entirely independent civilisation with its own culture and morality.  The anime really likes the “Clefairy are from space” angle, which I think was only a fairly minor detail in the games – some dude suggests that Clefairy might be from space because of their connection with the Moon Stone – but does seem to have been at least in the back of the designers’ minds from the beginning.  Whereas Clefairy and the Moon Stone suggested that they arrived on Earth riding a meteorite, however, Clefairy Tales has them piloting an honest-to-goodness spaceship.  One might initially assume that it wasn’t originally theirs, that they stole it from someone else, but they’re shown to be able to repair the damn thing using an incredibly eclectic array of parts pilfered from random townspeople, so clearly they know its technology inside out – and the thing only failed to fly in the end because Jigglypuff put the crew to sleep and Oswald sabotaged the controls.  This isn’t just intelligence; this is technological genius.  Coupled with the belief – which, if you accept my theories, is typical of Pokémon – that human ideas about morality are exactly that, human ideas… and we have a largely amoral (though not malicious) race of highly intelligent, technologically advanced Pokémon with formidable magic and, just for fun, the ability to use Metronome.  It’s a recipe for total chaos.  Quite honestly, I think these Clefairy would make fantastic recurring villains, partly because of the fact that they’re not really villainous, just genius kleptomaniacs with mysterious goals.  Figuring out where they’re from and what they’re up to could be a fascinating storyline in itself.

 "Visit Earth, they said; observe the fascinating local culture, they said... silly backwards little planet; remind me to nuke the place from orbit..."

Funnily enough, I don’t think it’s ever actually proven in the anime that the Clefairy come from outer space.  Everything seems to imply it, Seymour in Clefairy and the Moon Stone believes that all Pokémon came from space originally, and Oswald assumes that the Clefairy in Clefairy Tales are attempting to return to their homeworld.  On the other hand, though… there are plenty of Clefairy on Earth who apparently do not have spacecraft or other advanced technology, but simply worship meteorites and draw power from cosmic phenomena.  Their presence draws me toward one of two explanations.  The Clefairy may have been stranded on Earth somehow, losing most of their technology, so that some of them ‘went native’ and fully committed themselves to staying here, while others devote all their time and energy to rebuilding from scratch the starships they will need to return home (of which the ship from Clefairy Tales is perhaps only an early prototype).  Alternatively, the Clefairy may have been from Earth all along – again, there’s no proof that they aren’t – and simply developing a space program of their own in the same way as humanity did, their zeal further increased by their strange affinity for the cosmos.  As for where and how… well, they manage to construct an underground hangar in the middle of a city (and get their crashed ship inside, unseen) in the space of three days; I can only imagine what they could do out in the wilderness with several months to work with.  One final point I want to address briefly is that there are no Clefable in this group at all; not even the leader has evolved.  This implies that they do not have – and may never have had – ready access to Moon Stones.  I’m not sure that this necessarily favours one of my explanations over the other, although it does seem to suggest that the Clefairy in Kanto are divided into distinct groups, and that trade and exchange between these groups is not without restrictions.  If I were in a particularly speculative mood (which, let’s face it, is pretty much my baseline) I might even suggest a division into ‘religious’ and ‘scientific’ factions: one group focussed on community, tradition, and ritual, who use their Moon Stones to enhance their magical abilities through evolution, and another group focussed on exploration, discovery, and technology, who devote their energies to building spacecraft (or repairing them, depending on your interpretation).

This episode, like A Chansey Operation, is utterly crazy.  It’s not totally inconsistent with the rest of the series, which is extremely light-hearted, but it was clearly written with a rather different tone in mind.  I can only imagine how differently Pokémon – both the anime and the whole franchise – might have developed if the entire series had been so wholeheartedly zany.  As matters stand, though, I can’t help but love this episode for providing me with so much material that is so fun to work into the other details of the setting.  Perhaps in that respect it’s good that it stands out the way it does.

Anime Time: Episodes 60-61

Beach Blank-Out Blastoise – The Misty Mermaid

 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, eat your hearts out. Screenshots from filb.de/anime.

With Ash’s Volcano Badge in hand at last, it’s time to leave Cinnabar Island… but our hapless heroes are about to miss the last boat of the day!  As they run for the ferry terminal, a Wartortle appears out of nowhere and crashes into them, knocking everyone to the ground.  Pikachu calls on Squirtle to interpret, who immediately decides that this is an emergency worthy of BADASS SHADES, and leaps into the ocean with the Wartortle.  The kids steal a motorboat and follow.  They soon reach an island, with a beach filled with snoring Squirtle and Wartortle, and a single Blastoise.  Brock is excited by the possibility that they have found the mysterious breeding grounds of the turtle Pokémon, but there’s something off about the scene.  When Ash and Squirtle run up to Blastoise, they fall asleep too, so Pikachu attempts his universal solution – electrocute everything – and wakes up Ash, Squirtle, and most of the wild turtle Pokémon.  When Ash has recovered, he claims to have heard music echoing within Blastoise’s shell.  Misty, true to form, decides that whatever’s going on here, getting mixed up in it is more trouble than it’s worth, and suggests they leave, but Ash and Brock want to figure out what’s going on.  They establish, through conversation with all the Squirtle and Wartortle, that Blastoise fell asleep while swimming a few days ago, and was dragged back to shore by the others, who all fell asleep too once they reached the island, except for the one Wartortle who went to Cinnabar Island to find help.  Brock examines Blastoise with a stethoscope, but the huge turtle Pokémon wakes up during the process, stretches his arms, swivels his cannons… and finds that he has a blockage stuck in his right cannon.  A round, squishy, pink blockage that begins singing when he tries to dislodge it.  Everyone falls asleep again under Jigglypuff’s spell, and Team Rocket show up to try and snatch Blastoise with their Gyarados submarine’s grabbing arm.  When the turtles wake up and find Blastoise gone, Ash’s Squirtle assumes command using his BADASS SHADES and rallies his brothers.  Meanwhile, Team Rocket fall asleep themselves, and their sub sinks.  The turtle Pokémon retrieve it, along with Blastoise, allowing Ash and Misty to resuscitate James and Meowth, who are grateful, and Jessie, who screams “they’re our mortal enemies; how DARE you be grateful they saved our lives!?”  Team Rocket promptly hop back into their submarine, which rolls onto the beach and starts grabbing for Pokémon.  The Wartortle can’t stop it, but Pikachu and Squirtle together manage to extract Jigglypuff and awaken Blastoise, who has the strength and firepower to grapple with the submarine and blast it away.  Squirtle even manages to rescue Jigglypuff, who winds up on the submarine somehow.  Peace is restored in the turtle kingdom, and the kids go on their merry way.

 How has it escaped Kanto's government that a Jigglypuff in the wrong place at the wrong time could doom entire ecosystems? This one very nearly deprived the region's primary Wartortle colony of their leader.

So, not for the first time, we see in this episode that evolved Pokémon are considered the natural rulers of their species: Blastoise is the oldest and the strongest of the turtle Pokémon on the island, and probably the most knowledgeable and experienced.  There is no shortage of reasons he should be in charge, really, and it mirrors what we see in plenty of other episodes… so why do I even care?  Well, Ash’s Squirtle is neither old nor powerful… more knowledgeable than the rest, maybe, but Wartortle are supposed to live for hundreds of years, so who knows?  When Squirtle marshals the other turtle Pokémon to go after the submarine, they obey instantly and cooperatively, treating him without question as a commander.  Misty and Brock seem to think it’s his BADASS SHADES, and, well, I guess that’s not impossible, but I think it’s giving them too little credit; I’m pretty sure Pokémon are consistently portrayed as being more sensible than that.  What Squirtle does have is experience of the wider world, something the other turtle Pokémon probably lack since their community is implied to be fairly insular, as well as powerful allies with a wide range of capabilities (he’s also familiar with their enemies).  If nothing else, the turtle Pokémon recognise that humans are very useful friends to have; as a result, they will readily accept a human-trained Pokémon as a leader because Squirtle is likely to have experience thinking on his feet and dealing with unusual situations, and because he can keep things going smoothly with Ash and the others, whose assistance might be important.  This brings us back, in the end, to the BADASS SHADES: a human item, and an outward symbol of Squirtle’s experiences in and ties to the human world.  As far as insignias of rank go, they’re an unusual choice, but I think they represent what it is about Ash’s Squirtle that really makes the other Squirtle and Wartortle accept him as a leader so unquestioningly.  My mind wanders back to that one strange line from Ash’s Pokédex in the first episode: “wild Pokémon are often jealous of human-trained Pokémon.”  I’m gradually beginning to believe this statement is actually false, or at least oversimplified, and possibly even propagandistic (but that’s another entry entirely).  Pokémon and humans are both stronger together; this has been the franchise’s stance from day one, and echoes through its every iteration – games, anime, manga, whatever – and wild Pokémon do recognise that.  They don’t necessarily want to be partnered themselves, but many of them will still treat human-trained Pokémon with a certain respect, and may defer to their experience in crisis situations.

Moving on…

 The Magical Mermaid relaxes in her lagoon.

As Ash, Misty, Brock and Pikachu strike out for Viridian City, Misty realises that her Horsea isn’t getting enough freedom and exercise (something which never seems to be a problem for Goldeen – I’m pretty sure Misty’s Horsea is just a bit frail and sickly), so the kids decide it might be a good idea to visit Misty’s sisters in Cerulean City and let Horsea relax in the huge pool at the Gym for a few days.  When they reach Cerulean City, they learn that the Gym is advertising a new ballet, featuring a talented water dancer returning to Cerulean after a long absence.  Misty soon learns, to her shock, that she is this legendary ballerina.  Lily, Violet and Daisy explain that their traditional shows haven’t been pulling the crowds like they used to lately, so they’ve decided to spice things up by writing a water ballet to be performed underwater!  Tomorrow!  Please help us, Misty, or the Cerulean Gym will be ruined!  Misty will play the ballet’s star, the Magical Mermaid; Lily and Violet will be the evil pirates who intrude on her peaceful lagoon, and Daisy will play the handsome prince who arrives at the climax to save the day… and clearly the sisters do need Misty as the Gym is ludicrously short-staffed – they aren’t just the actresses; they run everything at these shows, ticket sales and all.  The ballet is performed in an enormous glass tank filled with water.  Misty, as a budding Water Pokémon Master, can hold her breath for a crazily long time, and the show is structured to give her moments out of sight of the audience to use her underwater breathing apparatus.  The show goes well initially, with Misty’s underwater dance holding the crowds enthralled, but when Lily and Violet are cued to enter, two quite different pirates appear, wearing… interesting… costumes: who else but Team Rocket?  Their motto is a huge hit with the crowd, who think it’s all part of the show.  Ash and Brock maintain the illusion by taking Daisy’s cue to leap into the pool to help.  Weezing floats harmlessly to the surface, but Arbok proves to be quite an impressive fighter underwater, and manages to corner Starmie, Seaking and Squirtle.  The sisters’ much-ridiculed Seel, however, saves the day, outmanoeuvring Arbok and hammering it with an Aurora Beam before evolving into Dewgong and deep-freezing the lot of them.  The kids haul all the Water Pokémon onto a platform in the centre of the pool so Pikachu can blast Team Rocket with impunity in a grand finale that makes the show a huge success, revitalising the Cerulean Gym’s business overnight.  In thanks for her part in saving the Gym, Misty’s sisters confiscate her Horsea and Starmie so that they’ll have enough Pokémon to keep performing the show.  Truly, their gratitude is an example to us all.

 ...you quickly learn to stop questioning it.

Every time I see these three I wonder how the hell they can possibly be allowed to run a Pokémon Gym.  They’re clearly more concerned with ticket sales than with challenges, and regard their Gym’s fate as resting on the success of their next water ballet, not on their ability to train Pokémon and instruct other trainers in doing the same.  The Misty Mermaid does go out of its way to point out that they are decent Water Pokémon specialists – when Seaking and Horsea initially attempt to tag-team Arbok, and Seaking lands a nasty Horn Attack, Ash comments on its skill, to which Misty responds “thank my sisters; they trained it.”  However, when push comes to shove, much of the effectiveness of the climax, and of Seel’s evolution into Dewgong, is drawn from the fact that Lily, Violet and Daisy have completely and blatantly failed to comprehend Seel’s potential, ever since they declined Ash’s challenge in the Waterflowers of Cerulean City on the grounds that Seel wasn’t strong enough to be worth trying (Seaking, who seems to be their star battler, had been injured in a previous battle with one of Ash’s Pallet Town rivals).  They do little, if anything, to earn our respect, and serve mainly to demonstrate that some Gyms are indeed more challenging than others.  They’re also making me change my mind again on a question that has me go back and forth repeatedly; whether Pokémon Gyms enjoy any sort of league funding.  Like Erika, the Sensational Sisters seem to run a successful business; then again, their Gym is unusually lavish – hardly as expensive to build and maintain as Blaine’s, but the start-up capital for their huge aquarium, water fields, and auditorium must have come from somewhere.  My working theory is that the sisters inherited the Cerulean Gym from their infinitely more capable parents, and the Pokémon League would rather allow their incompetent but largely self-sufficient Gym to continue as it is than attempt to revoke its official status and replace it with a more efficiently-led one.  This, I am convinced, would be a long and difficult process, possibly with nasty effects on the League’s internal politics, and would eventually result in a Gym that didn’t cover nearly as much of its own funding.  For aspiring Water Pokémon trainers looking for a place to practice, just having a large purpose-built pool is probably far more important than having competent instructors anyway, so the League may be happy to let the sisters maintain a fairly hands-off approach to running the place and concentrate on their water ballets.

So, my theme for these two episodes was that they are both about Water Pokémon.  Yep.  Totally planned it that way and didn’t just stick them together because I had other plans for the episodes on either side.  Um.  So there are only two episodes left in this block, and they’re both getting entries of their own.  The last one is the Viridian Gym episode.  The other one is… interesting.  See you next time.

The Pokémon Power Bracket – Quarter Final

http://www.pokemon.com/powerbracket

Okay; things are heating up.  We’ve only got eight of these damn things left, and if I know me like I think I know me, I’m bitter, jaded and cynical enough to come up with good reasons to hate all eight of them, so let’s see which ones I hate the least!

Celebi vs. Darkrai

 

I’ve been largely positive about Celebi so far, while expressing a more neutral view of Darkrai.  To make things fair, and also more interesting, I think it would be best now for me to talk about the problems Celebi causes: namely, the problems inherent to time travel powers.  Very few authors can pull off a time travel plot without stumbling at least once and creating a situation that contradicts either itself or the established ‘rules.’  Writing a good time travel plot takes a great deal of forethought and tremendous attention to detail.

I will remind you that this is Nintendo we are talking about.

Celebi is far less blatantly ridiculous than Dialga, Palkia and Arceus, and can’t just rewrite the universe on a whim the way they can, but with the ability to move through time at will, one imagines she could alter history quite significantly if she had a mind to.  Since time travel is a natural ability of hers, she can probably avoid, instinctively, most of the pitfalls that fill time travel stories about humans (such as ‘whoops, I just prevented my grandparents from meeting,’ ‘whoops, killing Hitler just made everything worse,’ and the ever-popular ‘whoops, I stepped on a butterfly and caused the extinction of humanity’).  One also presumes that, as a legendary Psychic Pokémon, she is at least as intelligent as a human, possibly much more.  What’s more, her stated raison d’être is to ‘watch over the forest from across time,’ which seems like it can only mean adjusting historical events in order to protect and preserve forest ecosystems.  The very existence of a creature with powers like this fundamentally changes the way the whole setting has to be viewed, especially since the relationship between nature and civilisation is one of Pokémon’s most important themes, and it only becomes worse if we contemplate the possibility of Celebi using her powers on behalf of her trainer (see this recent entry for my reasons for not being too bothered about this sort of thing).

Now, I must be able to think of something positive to say about Darkrai… surely… I’ve mentioned that I disagree with the route Game Freak have chosen to take with his characterisation – and really, of all the legendary Pokémon they could have picked to cast actual doubt on the in-universe depictions of his powers and nature, did they have to pick the one whose powers don’t have massive implications for the integrity of the entire setting?  There are good things to say about Darkrai, though.  His relationship with Cresselia – ‘the disease and the cure,’ so to speak – is interesting, as is the way he deliberately stays close to her home so that her powers can counteract his own.  The whole idea of a Pokémon capable of trapping people in nightmares is chilling and evocative as well, although I don’t think Darkrai’s concept actually necessitates that he be a legendary Pokémon.  Despite everything I’ve said already, though, I honestly like Celebi better.  My main problem with her is that I don’t believe the creators have actually thought through the full implications of the abilities they’ve given her, which is sort of nothing new – and unlike Arceus, who just gives me a headache, I actually like the idea of thinking that through myself.

My vote goes to CELEBI!

Mewtwo vs. Giratina

 

Mewtwo and Giratina?  Looks like it’s time for a good old-fashioned angst-off.

Mewtwo’s angst comes from being designed as the ultimate fighting machine, using the heavily augmented genetic code of Mew, the legendary firstborn Pokémon, but raised without love or compassion.  Giratina’s angst comes from being banished by his creator to a demented shadow world where he lives his life in solitude, looking back at the world he was cast from.  Mewtwo’s story seems to be largely about the dangers of playing god (although, as I’ve already complained, Mewtwo’s creation used science that was fundamentally similar to that involved in the resurrection of fossil Pokémon, and possibly designed by the same people), and the series’ general stance seems to be that, although his creation was a mistake, he still has all the basic rights of a living creature now that we’ve got him, and is to be pitied for his painful birth and upbringing.  Giratina, by contrast, is implied to have deserved everything he got – he was “banished for his violence,” presumably by the creator god of the Pokémon universe, Arceus (who is, if nothing else, very concerned with justice).  Then again, Giratina’s position as protector the Distortion World seems, to judge from the climax of Platinum version, to be quite important to the stability of the cosmos, as the Distortion World serves to anchor our world and work against major shifts in reality.  Furthermore, Giratina is in fact free to leave the Distortion World by taking on an altered form.  I suspect there’s a lot we haven’t been told about Giratina, and for once it seems like the myths aren’t necessarily intended to represent the truth of things.  The whole ‘antimatter’ spin Game Freak put on Giratina is interesting and fits with both the space/time idea Dialga and Palkia already had going, as well as with the nature of Giratina’s apparent role, although I still think I preferred things as they were in Diamond and Pearl, where Giratina is basically implied to rule the land of the dead, and remain convinced that the ‘antimatter’ thing was a quiet retcon.  While Giratina is big on fundamental nature-of-the-universe stuff, Mewtwo is more about smaller-scale ethical questions, which I personally find more interesting, and which I honestly think Pokémon as a whole is better-suited to dealing with.  In his original context in Red and Blue, he was also interesting for being an apparently blatant contradiction of the maxim that there is no “strongest Pokémon” – even Articuno, Zapdos and Moltres could be beaten by specific opponents, but there was no Pokémon that could take Mewtwo one-on-one, full stop, arguably not even Mew.  As Mewtwo was, in-universe, created specifically to fill this position, he directly references the enormous clusterf*ck that is Pokémon’s game balance in a way that subsequent legendary Pokémon don’t, actually encouraging us to think about ideas of fairness for ourselves.

Honestly?  I actually think both of these are decent.  I’m okay with either one getting through to the semi-finals.

Mew vs. Groudon

 

I think we’ve established by now that I have problems with both of these, but am fairly lenient towards Mew in general because of her lack of apocalypse-bringing lunacy and probably more likely to be well-disposed towards her than towards Groudon.  I would like to comment, though, on something they have in common: both Mew and Groudon are paired with other legendary Pokémon who significantly overshadow them.  Mew is insanely versatile, but the fact is that there is very little she can do that Mewtwo does not do better, thanks to his ludicrous stats (she is marginally tougher than him, and can use Baton Pass, but most of the roles in which she would hope to excel are better filled by Mewtwo – even, arguably, some of her possible support roles).  This is probably intentional, given Mewtwo’s background as an engineered ‘super-Mew’ of sorts, but I think that whether it supports or hinders their flavour is questionable, since much of the point of Mewtwo’s backstory is that the scientists who created him ultimately failed in a number of respects, creating a savage creature with no kindness or mercy.  I can’t help but feel that it would be better if Mewtwo’s superiority were less clear-cut.  For Groudon, of course, it’s all much worse.  Groudon and Kyogre are clearly intended to be equal and opposite.  They are rivals who battled for millennia without a victor appearing, their feud tearing the surface of the earth as they boiled oceans and drowned continents.  One on one, it probably comes down to who moves first (even though, in principle, Water beats Ground) but in fact Kyogre is demonstrably better in a number of respects.  Groudon enjoys little synergy with his own weather effect – his primary attack, Earthquake, receives no benefit from sunlight; for boosted Fire attacks, he must choose between Fire Blast, which works with his lower special attack stat, and the relatively weak Fire Punch; Solarbeam, coming from Groudon, is just a bad joke.  Kyogre, on the other hand, can pull off the most powerful attack in the entire game with a rain-boosted Water Spout, and enjoys the benefit of accurate Thunder.  Furthermore, although their weather abilities make them both good Pokémon to build teams around, rain is, broadly speaking, a more powerful weather effect than sun, and tends to benefit more powerful Pokémon.  I find it amusing that, when Game Freak try to create legendary Pokémon to serve as evenly-matched rivals (Groudon/Kyogre, Reshiram/Zekrom), they manage, apparently by accident, to make one significantly stronger, while creating much more balanced pairs when the Pokémon aren’t necessarily meant to be opposed at all (Lugia/Ho-oh, Dialga/Palkia).  I’m not even sure any of this affects my vote much.  If you’ve been following my previous entries you’ll know my thoughts on both of these two, and as you’ve probably guessed…

My vote goes to MEW!

Rayquaza vs. Lugia

 

Urgh.  Haven’t these two plagued me enough yet?

Although remarkably different in battle – Rayquaza is an all-offensive destroyer-type Pokémon, while Lugia is one of the most absurdly resilient Pokémon in the game – these two are actually very similar Pokémon conceptually.  Both are extremely reclusive, spending most of their time in remote areas – Lugia deep beneath the ocean, Rayquaza high above the clouds – and as a result are so rarely seen that their very existence is difficult to prove.  Both are also thought of as balancing influences; Rayquaza keeps balance between Kyogre and Groudon, while Lugia is portrayed as a mediator between the legendary birds in the Power of One.  Lugia uses a mystical calming song, while Rayquaza’s power to end Groudon and Kyogre’s feud is a little vaguer but presumably has something to do with his Air Lock ability, which nullifies their power to control the weather in the area around him.  In fact, the similarities don’t end there… both conflicts – the one between Kyogre and Groudon in Emerald, and the one between Articuno, Zapdos and Moltres in the Power of One – involve disruption of the earth’s climate when forces normally in balance attempt to conquer each other and gain power.  Both imbalances are caused by a villain attempting to capture one of the legendary Pokémon in question without understanding their importance to the balance of nature.  Both plots involve magical glass orbs tied to the energies of the warring Pokémon that supposedly have the power to calm them.

Hmm.

Y’know what?  I’m starting to think Game Freak were just recycling the plot of the Power of One when they wrote Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald.  The difference is that – and yes, it is always going to come back to this when I talk about Rayquaza – in the movie, Lugia couldn’t do it without help.  Alone against Articuno, Zapdos and Moltres, he puts up a good fight but can’t overpower all of them at once.  Ash, along with Melody from Shamouti Island, is the one who really saves the day – although Lugia provides them with some much-needed muscle.  Lugia is vitally important in solving the crisis, but can’t do it alone.  In Emerald, the player’s agency in ending the battle between Groudon and Kyogre is nothing more than going to get Rayquaza; once he arrives on the scene, the plot is essentially over.  It is now my contention that Emerald not only ripped off the plot of the earlier movie, but did so poorly, and with blatant disregard for Pokémon’s long-standing emphasis on partnership and co-operation.

So, yeah.  No surprises here.

My vote goes to LUGIA!

Any plans to review the Elite 4’s and Gym leaders of the games in a similar manner to how you reviewd the champions? (obviously not individually, that would take forever)!

Well, I might… with a few exceptions, though, those guys don’t get enough characterisation to be particularly interesting, so if I did, I would probably focus on quite different ideas – changing notions of what Gym Leaders and the Elite Four represent as the games develop, that sort of thing.  I’m not totally sure there’s actually enough there to make a whole series of entries out of it, but I guess it might be worth a try.