Pokémon Origins: Episode 3

Silph's magnum opus, Team Rocket's ultimate goal: the Master Ball. — Silph’s magnum opus and Team Rocket’s ultimate goal: the Master Ball.

Because I am me, I had a great deal of fun with the episode in which Ash challenges the Viridian Gym. Among my bigger regrets for that series, though, are that Ash never got a chance to confront Giovanni, his battle being delegated to Jessie and James instead, and that Giovanni himself didn’t get the kind of characterisation many other anime Gym Leaders enjoy in their keynote appearances. Episode 3 of Origins has the chance to rectify this deficiency, and it does so with gusto. Let’s take a look.

Red persuades Blue to help out against Team Rocket with his impeccable debating skills and smooth negotiating manner.

After winning his Rainbow and Soul Badges, taking on Team Rocket once more in Celadon City, and evolving his Charmeleon into a Charizard, Red finds himself in Saffron City, the home of the region’s leading producer of Pokémon-related supplies and technology, Silph Company. Red and Blue briefly team up to rescue a woman being harassed by a pair of Team Rocket grunts, and learn that she is the secretary of Silph’s president. Team Rocket has taken over the company headquarters in order to force Silph’s scientists to perfect the prototype Master Ball by performing unethical experiments on large numbers of wild Pokémon, and she has been given orders to escape and return with reinforcements. Blue, though he seems to understand the worrying implications of a world where Team Rocket can commission Master Balls, doesn’t see what any of this has to do with winning Badges or becoming Champion and has no intention of sticking his neck out for anyone, though Red eventually manages to… ‘persuade’ him to escort the secretary to Celadon City and raise the police. Red himself, meanwhile, is unwilling to let the Pokémon in the building suffer for even a moment longer than necessary, and decides to take a more direct approach: a frontal assault with all his Pokémon. As we know from the games, this is a resounding success. Red frees the imprisoned Pokémon and scientists from the Silph laboratories, then makes his way to the president’s office to confront Giovanni. If Giovanni is frustrated by what he admits is the total ruination of his plans, he doesn’t show it, and is prepared to leave without a fight, but Red is having none of that, and vows to thwart Team Rocket’s plans wherever they go. Irritated by Red’s presumptuousness, Giovanni calls on his Nidoqueen, who Double Kicks Charizard through a wall and counters his Flamethrower with Surf, causing an explosion that takes out most of the building’s top floor. When the dust settles, Nidoqueen and Giovanni are standing unfazed, while Red and Charizard are lying crumpled on the floor. Giovanni, almost disappointed by the ease of his victory, comments that Red’s failure to achieve more with Charizard is “a pitiful waste of such gifts.” Red demands an explanation for Team Rocket’s actions, and he replies that Pokémon are a business, and success in business requires sacrifice – if Pokémon must suffer, then so be it. Red angrily retorts that Pokémon should be a trainer’s friends, to which Giovanni points out, looking to Charizard, that Red is perfectly willing to let his ‘friends’ suffer as well. Red has no answer to that, and Giovanni leaves by helicopter, cleanly escaping all police action.

Red's team nearly gets swept by the most badass Rhyhorn ever. — Red’s team nearly gets swept by the most badass Rhyhorn ever.

Fast-forward to Viridian City. Red is effervescent at the prospect of meeting and learning from the strongest Gym Leader, whom Blue has already defeated, and is horrified when he realises that – spoiler alert – the leader is Giovanni himself. He refuses, point blank, to acknowledge Giovanni as a Gym Leader at all, and instead challenges him as “the enemy of all Pokémon.” Accordingly Giovanni, who had been perusing a selection of Pokéballs like the one we saw in Brock’s Gym, remarks that he won’t accept Red’s challenge as a Gym Leader either and instead selects two Ultra Balls from a hidden compartment. Red knew Giovanni’s specialty ahead of time and came prepared with Grass-, Water- and Fighting-types, but his Pokémon simply aren’t powerful enough – Giovanni’s Rhyhorn crushes his Victreebel, Kabutops, Snorlax and Jolteon almost without effort, before his Hitmonlee manages to force a tie. Throughout the battle, we get snippets of Giovanni’s inner thoughts on the battle – he finds Red utterly infuriating, but doesn’t quite know why; nor can he account for his disappointment that Red isn’t as challenging an opponent as he’d anticipated. Though he hides it well, his smugness steadily fades to agitation and then intensity, until with only one Pokémon left on each side, Giovanni realises that the battle will come down to Charizard and Rhydon, and gloats that Red has made a critical mistake by not saving a Pokémon better suited to this fight. Red replies that he always meant for Charizard to be his last, whatever happened, since the whole battle will mean more to him if he finishes it with his partner. Giovanni’s façade cracks – he’s visibly furious now at Red’s overconfidence – but then he notices that Red throws his Pokéballs in the same way as Giovanni himself used to as a child, and he finally understands the emotions Red has triggered in him. Giovanni recognises himself in Red (complete with a flashback scene in which Giovanni is revealed to have once owned a Charmander), and has been inspired by him to find excitement in their battle that he hasn’t felt in years. He grows even more intense as he realises that Charizard really is a match for his Rhydon, and finally is left with a sense of satisfaction when Red manages to overcome him. Apparently no longer mindful of their earlier conversation, Giovanni offers Red the Earth Badge – and, when Red refuses to accept it from the leader of Team Rocket, continuing to deny his status as a Gym Leader, he turns to his attendants and orders them to spread the word: Team Rocket is dissolved, and all of their operations are to cease immediately. Red’s expression softens as he comes to perceive Giovanni’s change of heart, and accepts the badge. Giovanni encourages him to continue seeking greater strength, since only one as strong as the Champion will have any hope of completing the Pokédex quest. As Red leaves, Giovanni muses on his own future, apparently hopeful now for some sort of redemption.

Like a snake's, Charizard's jaw can stretch to incredible angles when he prepares to launch a Flamethrower. — Like a snake’s, Charizard’s jaw can stretch to incredible angles when he prepares to launch a Flamethrower.

Pokémon has always liked the idea, and has grown more fond of it in recent years, culminating with the player’s battle against N in Black and White, that Pokémon battles are a way for trainers and Pokémon to express their convictions to each other, a subtle but powerful medium of communication that functions on the level of one’s deepest emotions and most firmly held beliefs. Neither of Red’s battles with Giovanni have practical aims. In Saffron City, Giovanni fully intends to leave, and Red can’t really stop him (this should be contrasted to the way the same events are portrayed in the games, where it is only Red’s defeat of Giovanni that forces him to withdraw), but he fights Red anyway because he wants to send a message: this is beyond you, I am beyond you, and you must learn your place. Likewise, Red’s motivation for challenging the Viridian Gym apparently goes out the window once he realises who his opponent is; he cannot have any reasonable expectation of breaking Team Rocket’s power with one battle, but he continues his course in order to make a statement of his opposition. Similarly, while Giovanni makes it clear that he takes his duties as a Gym Leader seriously – he mentions his earlier battle against Blue, noting that he accepted that challenge despite being unimpressed by his arrogance because Blue’s potential intrigued him – he makes it equally clear that his battle against Red is something else entirely; he is again trying to put Red in his place. Red’s decision to save Charizard for last is likewise built as much on symbolism as on strategy. Their climactic battle can be seen as a parallel to his first Gym challenge against Brock – the lessons Red first learned from Brock, Giovanni now relearns from Red. The same rising intensity and heightened synchronicity between trainer and Pokémon prompt a similar realisation: “Pokémon are not just tools” (whether “for battle,” as Red realises in the first episode, or “for business,” as he tells Giovanni repeatedly in this one). Giovanni’s choice of Pokéballs is also significant: his initial selection implies that like Brock he is considering his opponent’s experience level in order to select appropriate Pokémon for a difficult but not insurmountable challenge, as he presumably did for Blue, but when Red declares that he does not consider this a real Gym battle, he instead picks two hidden Ultra Balls – this should be taken to mean that he is not moderating his own strength but now intends to crush Red with the full power of his two mightiest Pokémon. This fact takes on a greater significance when we consider a fragment of gossip overheard by Red – that the Viridian Gym Leader has never needed even half of his true strength to defeat a challenger. While this is likely hyperbole, it must prompt us to wonder just how long it has been since Giovanni has needed to invest himself truly in a battle, in the way he does with Red. Perhaps spending too long without a real challenge is what causes Giovanni, little by little, to lose touch with his Pokémon and come to act with the callousness evident in his encounter with Red in Saffron City.

At the end of their battle, Giovanni is taken aback when Red refuses to accept his Earth Badge, even though both sides made it clear from the start that this was not a battle between a Gym Leader and a challenger. For Giovanni, though, the significance of the battle – the meaning of the conversation – changed greatly over its course. His initial intention to break Red’s insolence lost its relevance once he started to liken Red to a young version of himself, and the battle instead became about finding himself and recapturing the energy and excitement of his youth. A badge, aside from its importance to entering the ranks of the Pokémon League, is also a memento of a trainer’s battle with the leader who confers it and, as Red says before bringing out Charizard, that trainer’s understanding of the leader’s beliefs: Giovanni offers it because he wants Red to remember their battle as he undoubtedly will, as well as his new understanding of Red’s beliefs. Red’s refusal is tantamount to a statement that their battle did not carry the same significance for him, and that he has no wish to remember it fondly – so Giovanni gives him a reason to (contrast, again, the way the games portray his decision to disband Team Rocket: he feels that, after losing even at his full strength, he is no longer worthy to lead). In spite of the dramatic change Red brings about in him, though, Giovanni is still the same man who built Team Rocket; his final exhortation to Red is not the kind of sage advice about love for Pokémon that one normally expects from a defeated Gym Leader (after all, this would surely be hypocritical coming from Giovanni), but focuses particularly on the importance of accumulating greater strength. Giovanni’s comments to Red after their battle in Saffron City make it clear that he considers struggle, ambition and sacrifice to be paramount, and none of those things are incompatible with Red’s idea of what it means to be a trainer; in fact, Giovanni would likely say that Red clearly sees the importance of all three. As Red says before their battle, all Gym Leaders practice different philosophies for living and working with their Pokémon, having in common only their love for their Pokémon – something Giovanni, once again, shares.

There’s only one more episode to go in the Origins mini-series. The Elite Four awaits… as do further challenges beyond…

Pokémon Origins: Episode 2

After defeating Brock, Red continues his journey through the classic storyline – such as it is – of the first generation. Most of this is related to us through a voice over by Red himself, with the help of dialogue boxes in the style of the original games (all direct quotes, of course), covering his victories over Misty and Lieutenant Surge, his initial skirmish with Team Rocket, Charmander’s evolution to Charmeleon, and a variety of other minor events from the games (mercifully, he sees fit to leave out all the Pokémon he is capturing during this time – we’d be here all day otherwise). Red’s narration is bland, conveying only the barest hint of his own feelings about any of the events in question, and gives little detail. I find myself questioning why things like receiving a bike voucher from the chairman of the Pokémon Fan Club even needed to be brought up if no attempt is going to be made to elaborate on them – and find myself answering that the only effect can be to call to mind viewers’ own memories of those same events. Maybe for some of us, the Magikarp Red mentions buying outside Mt. Moon became a valued team member when it evolved! It reminds us, essentially, that this is our story too. If the whole show were just Red’s rather dull, functional account, though, there wouldn’t be much point in watching, so the story picks up again with a sequence that the writers thought worthy of special attention: Red’s experiences in Lavender Town and the Pokémon Tower.

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Pokémon Origins: Episode 1

Professor Oak introduces us to the mysterious creatures of his world.

For those not familiar with it, Pokémon Origins is what might be called a ‘reboot’ of the Pokémon anime. Released late last year, it is a four-episode miniseries which follows the adventures of Red – the protagonist of the original Pokémon games – and is closely based on the events of Red Version, Blue Version, and their third-generation remakes, Fire Red and Leaf Green (the visuals mainly taking their cues from the latter pair of games). This stuff is pure nostalgia fuel, for people who were introduced to Pokémon by Fire Red and Leaf Green, for those of us who are old enough to have clear memories of when Red and Blue were first released, and, hell, probably for Game Freak and the animators too. Each episode opens with the CONTINUE/NEW GAME/OPTIONS screen and ends with the SAVE screen from the original games, the first episode begins with Professor Oak’s “introduction to the world of Pokémon,” followed by the battle between Nidorino and Gengar familiar from the opening cinematic (on Red’s TV), and even the dialogue often quotes directly from the games. This last point, if you ask me, may have been pushing it a bit far, since the English translations of Red and Blue didn’t exactly have the best-written dialogue in video game history – the quotes stand out for being, frankly, a little wooden. Enough of the general style, though; let’s talk about the plot.

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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.

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.

Anime Time: Episodes 58 and 59

Riddle Me This – Volcanic Panic

Ash’s location: Cinnabar Island! FINALLY!

"...so what you're saying is, no-one owns the Gym now?" "Ash, no." "Aw; you guys both had Gyms, why can't I have one?" Screenshots from filb.de/anime.

So, having spent a good four months wandering aimlessly since earning his Soul Badge, Ash is on the ferry to Cinnabar Island at last. Only… Gary Oak is on the ferry too, and he has some bad news for Ash: the island is nothing but a tourist trap; there’s no Pokémon Gym there at all! Gary turns out to be right; the island is swarming with tourists – even the famous Cinnabar Pokémon Lab has become a tourist attraction. When they wonder what makes Cinnabar Island so popular, a long-haired hippy asks them “what do tourists think is hot… and cool?” Misty realises that he means the island’s volcanic hot springs. Ash then asks him about the Cinnabar Gym Leader, Blaine, and receives another riddle, “[Blaine’s] Gym is right where you put your glasses,” which Misty again answers: in front of their eyes. Cinnabar Gym is a burnt-out ruin, abandoned by Blaine when he got tired of battling hobbyists. The hippy advises the kids just to enjoy their stay, gives them a business card for the “Big Riddle Inn,” and vanishes into the crowd. The card displays another riddle – “if you look near the swing, you’ll see my hands – or at least my face.” When Ash, Misty and Brock find that every hotel on the island is booked up for months, they stop to rest in a playground and think about the riddle, where Misty, looking past the swings, sees the hands and face of a clock – the clocktower of the Big Riddle, where the hippy gives them free rooms for a night just for managing to find the place. That night, he gets an urgent call from the Pokémon Lab, which is being attacked by Team Rocket. Ash and the others, naturally, save the day, so the innkeeper rewards them with yet another riddle: “Blaine built a Gym the tourists never see; it’s in the place where a fire-fighter could never win.” The next day, as the kids bathe in the hot springs, Togepi accidentally finds and triggers a secret door that leads them into the magma chamber of the Cinnabar volcano, where they find the innkeeper. “It’s not a hat,” he tells them, “but it keeps your head dry – if you wear it, it’s only because you already lost it.” The hippy innkeeper was Blaine all along, wearing a wig, and his new Pokémon Gym is suspended over a bubbling lava pit. He accepts Ash’s challenge with a powerful Ninetales, who roasts Squirtle with her Fire Spin, then switches to a Rhydon to counter Ash’s Charizard… who promptly gets bored, leaves the ring, and falls asleep. Pikachu, infamously, manages to circumvent Rhydon’s immunity to electrical attacks by aiming for his metal horn, but is thoroughly outmatched when Blaine summons his signature Pokémon, Magmar, who can block electricity with a shield of superheated air. Riddle Me This ends with Pikachu backed up against the edge of the arena, about to be struck by Magmar’s Fire Blast.

"Oh, the... the wig is a disguise? We, uh... we thought you were just bald..."

Pikachu survives, of course, clinging to the edge of the arena platform with his back scorched by the Fire Blast. At Brock’s urging, Ash surrenders to keep Pikachu safe. Blaine approves of Ash’s choice, noting that “if [he] had been foolish enough to continue the match, [he] definitely would have been disqualified as a Pokémon trainer,” but seems reluctant to offer Ash any hope of a future rematch. Ash and his friends return to the Big Riddle Inn, where Ash spends the next day musing on how he can overpower Blaine’s Magmar. Meanwhile Team Rocket, being Team Rocket, decide to infiltrate the volcano, armed with freeze-blasters to defeat Magmar. The blasters work… for about five seconds. When Magmar melts his way free, Meowth panics and orders Jessie and James to freeze blast the whole magma chamber. The rapid temperature change cracks the rock walls, and the melting ice creates a blast of steam that launches Team Rocket out of the magma chamber, leaving Ash, Misty, Brock and Blaine to deal with the rapidly destabilising volcano. Blaine orders Magmar to start piling up boulders to patch the cracks and stem the lava flows, but he can’t do enough alone. Ash calls on Charizard, who is sufficiently impressed by Magmar to help out. Brock gets Onix and Geodude to help too, while Squirtle and Staryu keep everyone cool, and together they manage to prevent an eruption. Magmar and Charizard give each other a smile, but are clearly eager to battle to test each other’s strength, and Blaine decides to allow Ash a rematch (many Gym Leaders would probably just give Ash a badge outright, but Blaine has high standards). Charizard and Magmar are evenly matched as far as firepower goes, and Magmar eventually drags Charizard down into the lava pit to try and win an advantage, but Charizard breaks free, carries Magmar high into the air, and hurls him back down with a Seismic Toss. Ash is overjoyed that Charizard is on his side again, but Charizard quickly puts an end to that delusion by Flamethrowering Ash in the face for interrupting his victory dance. Ash collects his Volcano Badge from Blaine (the third and final Kanto badge he will earn by winning a legitimate battle) and wonders where to go for his final challenge. Misty and Brock suggest returning to Viridian City, and the team sets off once more.

"Ice, in a volcano? That's freezer burn!" ...I'm not making that one up; he actually says that.

Can we just take a moment to appreciate the fact that Blaine burnt down his own Pokémon Gym, because he had better things to do with his time than battle tourists, and built a new one in the heart of a volcano? The man is an incredible mad genius! (Incidentally, if there is ever a live action Pokémon movie, I want Christopher Lloyd to play Blaine.) Of course, because this is one of my Anime Time entries, and because my Anime Time entries are all about analysing a children’s cartoon to a far deeper extent than the creators ever imagined, let’s take this opportunity to expand my developing thesis on the role of Pokémon Gyms in society.

We’ve already seen with Sabrina and Koga that a Gym Leader’s responsibilities to the Pokémon League are extremely hazily defined and probably impossible to enforce. Blaine’s case makes me wonder whether he’s answerable to anyone at all. Gary Oak claims that there hasn’t been a Pokémon Gym on Cinnabar Island “since [his] grandfather’s days as a trainer,” which is probably an exaggeration since I doubt Blaine is much older than Professor Oak, but it’s clear that the Cinnabar Gym has been out of the public eye for years, if not decades. Blaine’s Volcano Badge is still recognised as legitimate by the Pokémon League, though, and no-one calls Ash out for trying to qualify with a Badge from a Gym that closed before he was born. Nor has anyone attempted to set up a new Cinnabar Gym in Blaine’s absence. The innkeeper of the Big Riddle is also the first person to get a call when the Cinnabar Lab is attacked by Team Rocket. Clearly enough people are in on Blaine’s secret that he can continue to act as Cinnabar’s official Gym Leader, no questions asked, but not so many that his activities can become more than a vague rumour. This isn’t quite as strange as Koga’s situation; Blaine’s presence almost certainly does benefit Cinnabar Island during emergencies. However, it seems like taking challenges – which, in theory, is an official Gym’s primary role – is a relatively minor part of Blaine’s life. He appears extremely disdainful of weak challengers; we know that he closed the original Cinnabar Gym because he was tired of battling tourists, and unlike Brock, Lt. Surge, and even Sabrina, he is extremely reticent to offer Ash a rematch until Ash has helped him prevent a disaster. Blaine battles whom he wants, when he wants, probably handing out fewer Badges than any other Kanto Gym Leader, and it’s possible that the only people he ever invites to battle him are trainers he’s vetted personally using his innkeeper persona. At the beginning of Riddle Me This, it’s Blaine who chooses to speak to Ash – I suspect he’s checking him out, even then, evaluating his worth as a challenger.

This shot has nothing to do with the plot whatsoever. I just think it's hilarious.

The Pokémon League, evidently, doesn’t care. The fact that Blaine even bothered to build a new Gym implies that he does take challenges from time to time; Ash can’t be the first person ever to present a Volcano Badge to the Indigo Plateau, so someone at the top must know about him, and whoever does know is apparently totally happy with one of Kanto’s official Pokémon Gyms being a hidden volcanic death-trap that is closed to the public except by special invitation. Blaine hates tourists and refuses to battle any, but surely any visiting trainer is by definition a ‘tourist,’ and surely his job is to battle all comers? Even most islanders don’t know about the Gym, so he isn’t helping to educate local trainers either, but surely that’s part of his job too? If Blaine gets any sort of League funding, he doesn’t seem to be earning it, but that secret volcano base wouldn’t have paid for itself (I suppose he could have claimed insurance on the original Gym, but it seems to be common knowledge that Blaine himself burned the place down, so I sort of doubt it). Either Blaine is independently a millionaire (unlikely) or he receives some sort of no-strings-attached grant from the Pokémon League just for being an official Gym Leader. The Dark City episode shows that there is a fair amount of League oversight in the process of establishing an official Gym. However, I suspect that once a Gym has that magic League authorisation, it’s not all that easy to revoke it (if nothing else, it would be difficult to deal with trainers who’d defeated the Gym in question). I would further speculate that, when the Pokémon League was originally formed, the first Gym Leaders were all those trainers who were so powerful that their opinions and philosophies couldn’t be ignored – the League began, essentially, as a partnership between them. Although the organisation has undoubtedly evolved since then, its core institutions have probably not changed all that radically – so, if my current train of thought is accurate, when Blaine became a Gym Leader he may have gained the right to access and allocate a small but significant portion of the Indigo League’s resources and income at his own discretion. Depending on exactly how we imagine that Pokémon training, as a discipline, is viewed, this right may well be inalienable – to use a real-world analogy, you can fire a professor, but revoking his PhD isn’t so straightforward; perhaps ‘Gym Leader’ is simply something that Blaine is, whether the League likes it or not.

I realise I’m beginning to make stuff up now, but I simply can’t leave Blaine’s autonomy unexplained. He does hardly anything a Gym Leader is expected to do, yet he is inexplicably still a Gym Leader. Much as for Koga and Sabrina, I have to assume there is some way of accounting for this. I cannot presume to know whether I’m right, but hopefully my theories are, at least, entertaining.

Anime Time: Episodes 55-57

Pokémon Paparazzi – The Ultimate Test – The Breeding Centre Secret

Ash’s location: Belarus.

These episodes happened. They were a thing. Let’s talk about them. Looks like we've got a badass here, guys. Screenshots from filb.de/anime.

One day, as the kids are eating, Ash glimpses what he takes for a rifle scope poking out of some nearby grass. Thinking quickly, he knocks Misty and Brock down and summons Squirtle to flush out the gunman… who turns out to be just an egotistic young photographer named Todd. Todd quickly gets over the misunderstanding and invites everyone back to his cottage for pancakes. He tries to get some shots of Pikachu eating, but Pikachu gets nervous and fries him. He explains that he refuses to take pictures of Pokémon posing, since his art is to capture a Pokémon’s natural image – and, far more strangely, is only interested in Ash’s camera-shy Pikachu. When the group leaves, Todd follows stealthily, but Ash playfully springs into all of his shots, and complains that Todd is being disrespectful to Pikachu’s feelings. He persists, since he was hired to ‘capture’ Pikachu by a tearful old couple, figuring they must have once owned a Pikachu themselves. When Ash and the others fall into a pitfall trap (courtesy of the ‘old couple’), Todd notices that Pikachu and Ash are positioned perfectly for a photo… until the bottom of the pit crumbles and Ash falls into an old aqueduct pipe. Todd leaps in after him and gets Ash to grab the end of his tripod before he is swept away, soaking the camera (so he has learnt A Valuable Lesson). Team Rocket appear and start lobbing grenades as Ash dangles over a sheer drop, but Ash twists the camera around to get them to pose, and James forgets to throw the grenade in his hand. Once Ash is rescued, Todd sets up his (spare?) camera to take a photo of himself with his new friends, but trips as he dashes to join the picture, bowling the others over and ending up with a naturalistic, unplanned scene of laughter. Todd joins the team briefly after this, and will be with us for the rest of the entry.

Seems legit. I couldn’t care less about this episode, and I couldn’t care less about Todd, who is a transparent tie-in to the photography game in which he stars, Pokémon Snap, though I suppose his insistence on photographing Pokémon as they appear in nature, which the episode presents in a positive light, is at least a fairly admirable way for someone in his position to do business. If there’s anything about this episode that interests me, it’s Pikachu’s reluctance to be photographed, which none of the other Pokémon Todd is offered seem to share. Pikachu has never before, in my recollection, been shown to be particularly shy or self-conscious; in fact, aside from his initial rocky start with Ash, he’s generally very friendly. Then again, he’s never been the subject of a photographic study before, and he may find Todd’s somewhat obsessive manner off-putting. Ash’s irritation at Todd for not respecting Pikachu’s wishes is, of course, entirely in-character.

In the Ultimate Test, Misty makes a suggestion to Ash: “you haven’t gotten a badge in a long time… maybe you should make another Gym Leader feel sorry for you.” Ash furiously challenges her to a battle but Todd interrupts to suggest that Ash try taking the Pokémon League entrance exam, and conducts them to a testing centre where he can sit it. Also at the centre are Nurse Joy #84, and a disguised Jessie and James. Joy tells the kids a bit more about the test: it’s an alternative way to earn membership in the Pokémon League, which is great for people who are too old, sick or busy to travel between towns for badges. The first two sections of the exam are theoretical: one section of true-or-false questions, another of pictures and silhouettes to identify (how can anyone tell the silhouette of a Jigglypuff, seen from above, from that of a Voltorb?). Ash manages to come third-to-last, out of more than five hundred candidates, ahead of only James and Jessie (who is disqualified for insulting the examiner). The third section is a three-on-three battle against the examiner, using only rental Pokémon. Ash gets off to a good start, defeating the examiner’s Flareon with a Weezing, but his Arbok tries to Wrap a Jolteon and gets filled with spikes for her trouble, and his Meowth is frozen solid by a Vaporeon. James, meanwhile, tries to take down a Graveler with a Pikachu’s Thunderbolt, and is then disqualified for calling out both his remaining Pokémon (an Ivysaur and a Charizard) at once. He refuses to return the rental Pokémon, but the examiner commands the Pokémon to turn on Jessie and James, and Ash finishes them off with his Weezing’s Explosion. Team Rocket’s presence has apparently invalidated the whole exam, and Ash is offered a chance to retake it, but can’t be bothered.

He even laughs at them. Oh, how I loathe him.

This is one of those episodes that really start me thinking. It gets me thinking because it offers a way to bypass the eight Gym battles normally necessary to become a member of the Pokémon League and compete in the Indigo tournament – in other words, to bypass what is normally the point of a good chunk of each game. There is nothing in the exam that even requires you to own Pokémon at all. Joy mentions that the exam provides a way for those hampered by age, sickness or full-time employment to join the League, but there isn’t necessarily anything that prevents someone in such a position from owning or training Pokémon – only from travelling to collect badges. In fact, the exam is very deliberately set up to strip trainers with powerful Pokémon of any advantage they might have, by forcing them to use rental Pokémon only. The implication seems to be that the exam is meant to invite people who aren’t Pokémon trainers at all to become members of the Pokémon League. This in turn implies that the League isn’t purely a sporting organisation, that it has reasons for wanting to attract hobbyists, academics, and specialists to its ranks, and that there are benefits to membership beyond simply being able to enter tournaments (just about any random ten-year-old can become a trainer, so it stands to reason that there are some restrictions on non-members… one hopes). Membership in the League may be the first step to finding employment with them, or a beneficial addition to one’s credentials in searching for other jobs (heaven knows, anyone seeking to enter the Pokémon healthcare profession would need one heck of a resume to break the Joy family’s iron grip on all the senior positions). What I mean to suggest is that the Pokémon League is responsible for general Pokémon-related affairs in Kanto, not just the practice of competitive battle, and therefore benefits by having a roster of sanctioned experts in fields such as Pokémon breeding, human-Pokémon relations, and Pokémon ecology, upon whom it can call for consultation, and who in turn benefit from enfranchisement. Pokémon trainers likely make up the bulk of the League’s membership – after all, the entrance exam is implied to be extremely challenging, and Ash scores dismally despite his generally decent knowledge of Pokémon, so it is by no means an easy way in, as Jessie and James seem to think – but it seems clear that other people with quite different interests in Pokémon are a significant minority.

Making animals live in cages is bad, mmmkay? As they continue their journey through a small city, the kids see an advertisement for a breeding centre that claims to be able to evolve Pokémon. Todd says that centres like this are the newest big thing, so Ash decides to check it out. The woman working the front desk gives a ludicrous spiel about “Pokémon love power! Love love love!” but people seem to be getting results, so Misty decides to leave Psyduck there to see if they can’t knock some sense into him. Soon afterward, the kids meet a restaurant owner who’ll give a free meal to anyone who can show him his favourite Pokémon… Psyduck. Misty decides to double back to the breeding centre and, finding it closed, the kids slip in the back door. All the Pokémon, including Psyduck, are caged in a dark room. As Todd starts taking pictures to document what’s happening, the kids overhear the centre’s owners in the next room gloating over their plan to steal all these Pokémon. As Misty attempts to free Psyduck, Jessie and James arrive to steal some Pokémon themselves, and the ensuing argument attracts the attention of the owners, Butch and Cassidy, Jessie and James’ hyper-competent rivals with far higher standing in Team Rocket. The duos start quarrelling, and the kids slip away, but the centre’s security system cages everyone except for Misty, Pikachu and Togepi. Jessie and James are caught as well trying to retrieve a Victreebel, which supposedly belongs to James… even though we’ve never seen it before… and it promptly begins a long-running gag by trying to eat its trainer… Anyway. Butch and Cassidy call the police, and Officer Jenny #319 arrests everyone. Misty, however, returns the next day in disguise and distracts Cassidy so Pikachu can slip inside and grab Todd’s camera, which she uses to prove Butch and Cassidy’s guilt. The breeding centre is shut down and the kids all go to the restaurant for their free lunch. Finally, Todd leaves the group to go climb some mountains, but not before finally pointing Ash in the direction of Cinnabar Island.

"To infect the world with devastation!" "To blight all peoples in every nation!" "To denounce the goodness of truth and love!" "To extend our wrath to the stars above!" "Cassidy!" "Butch!" "Team Rocket, circling Earth all day and night!" "Surrender to us now, or you'll surely lose the fight!"

There’s no single theme I really want to draw attention to in this episode, but there are a couple of little points, so I’ll comment on each. The breeding centre, first of all, is interesting. How do Butch and Cassidy actually run this place without being caught? They could probably delay people who asked for their Pokémon back, possibly for days, but eventually someone would surely grow suspicious. We do see them handing Pokémon back to trainers, so obviously they don’t steal everything. The centre is marketed towards people who are too busy to exercise and pamper their Pokémon, so it’s possible they target people who could go for weeks before getting concerned. When that happens, they claim to have lost the paperwork… and only once several people are seriously annoyed do they pack up and vanish with all the Pokémon. It seems possible that some amateur trainers might neglect their Pokémon to an extent if they think the breeding centre is taking care of things; indeed, when Misty first decides to leave Psyduck in the breeding centre, Ash suggests that she’s just trying to ditch him. Misty, interestingly, insists that she caught Psyduck and she’s going to stick with him; she just wants to see if the breeding centre can accomplish anything with him in a couple of days. This is interesting because – remember – Misty didn’t catch Psyduck at all. He just… kinda climbed into her empty Pokéball. Despite this, and although she doesn’t really like him very much, Misty apparently does feel responsible for Psyduck. For better or worse, he came to her and she is his trainer, and that is just the world she lives in and has to accept, which I think is an interesting perspective and testifies, if nothing else, to Misty’s stubbornness. Finally, Butch and Cassidy. I like these two. Unlike Jessie and James, they’re actually credible villains, and generally presented as coming near to success with their fairly intelligent plans. In that, they fulfil the same dramatic function that Jessie and James would, much later, come to fill in their scarily competent Unova incarnations (and, similarly, they don’t appear all that often; overexposure would make their defeats stand out a little too much). I think I may bring them up again in the Viridian Gym episode, but for now, I’d just like to point out their importance in demonstrating that Team Rocket as a whole is in fact a very real danger.

So, yeah. These episodes happened. They were a thing. That is all.

Class dismissed.

Anime Time: Episode 54

The Case of the K-9 Caper

Ash’s location: Rhode Island.

The illustration on Growlithe's card from the Secret Wonders expansion of the TCG, by Kagemaru Himeno.

I can’t remember ever actually seeing this episode as a kid. I was missing out; I really like this one. It makes for a great opportunity to get back into one of my old favourite subjects, the ethics of Pokémon training, and to start asking new questions about whether the series considers Pokémon to be ethical agents in themselves, or merely instruments of their trainers. Seriously, if I had my way this is what the whole series would be about.

Ash and company are innocently strolling through the woods when they hear the cry of “stop, thief!” and see a suspicious-looking man carrying a bag of loot fleeing pursuit. Ash, not one to take this sort of thing lying down, commands Pikachu to stop him, but the more observant Pikachu has noticed that the man is carrying a handgun and, to Ash’s annoyance, refuses to attack… until a Growlithe bursts from the undergrowth and tackles the thief, causing him to drop his gun. Pikachu merrily begins blasting away and brings him down, but the nine other Growlithe who arrive immediately afterward, led by Officer Jenny #40, don’t seem particularly happy. It turns out that Ash and Pikachu have just interrupted a training exercise and assaulted a plainclothes police officer. Whoops. Jenny quickly gets over it once she realises it was an honest mistake, and invites Ash, Misty and Brock back to the police station for a hot meal. This particular Jenny runs the academy that trains Kanto’s police dogs, specially drilled Pokémon capable of taking on humans with firearms at relatively low risk to themselves. Jenny and Misty both admonish Ash for ordering Pikachu, who has no such special training, to attack an armed man, which annoys and offends him. He asks for Jenny’s permission to enrol Pikachu in her training program so he can become stronger. Jenny warns him that the training is difficult, but gladly allows it. The next morning, she wakes Ash and Pikachu at 4am for a race against one of her Growlithe – and Ash and Jenny will be running too, because a trainer should never expect more of his Pokémon than of himself. Ash and Pikachu are faster than Jenny and Growlithe, but are defeated by their obstacle course (which Jenny completes in her high heels). While Ash and Pikachu recover, Brock tries to remind Ash that Pikachu is great even without special training. Ash responds that he wants Pikachu to keep getting even better, though Pikachu himself doesn’t seem so sure anymore.

You have to hand it to them... they've got style. Screenshots from filb.de/anime.

Then Team Rocket crash through the wall of the academy in the Mutt Cuts van from Dumb and Dumber, pull on some gas masks, and start blasting away at everyone with canisters of Gloom spores.

I really feel sorry for other anime shows that have to trudge through the bleak desolation of existence without Jessie and James to brighten their lives.

This week, Jessie, James and Meowth have gotten it into their heads that it would be a good idea to steal all of Jenny’s Growlithe and use them to commit crimes, because the irony is just too delicious to pass up. Jenny insists that her Growlithe would never be party to Team Rocket’s criminal schemes, but Jessie and James seem unconcerned, and pull out more gas canisters – this time to dose everyone with helium. Between the overpowering stench of the Gloom spores and the helium raising the pitch of her voice, the Growlithe can’t recognise Jenny’s scent or the sound of her voice, and stop responding to her commands. Jessie and James then change into police uniforms, produce voice synthesisers and use Jenny’s own voice to command the Growlithe to arrest her, which they do, taking ropes in their mouths and tying her up. Meanwhile, Ash, Brock and Misty have stupidly left their Pokéballs back in the station’s dormitory, so Pikachu is all they’ve got. Jessie tries to command him too, using Ash’s voice, but Pikachu is not impressed; Brock claims that Pikachu knows Ash by what’s in his heart, and can’t be fooled by a cloud of foul-smelling gas and a voice synthesiser. Pikachu unloads a Thunderbolt on the Growlithe, but there are just too many for him to handle on his own and he quickly runs out of power. Jigglypuff appears, tries her song, finds that the helium renders her enchanting voice powerless, and wanders off again. Finally, Jessie orders one of the Growlithe to attack Jenny, but as it bites down on her wrist, she looks into its eyes and invokes the Power of Friendship to remind it who she is. Team Rocket try to command the others to deal with her, but their synthesisers choose this moment to malfunction, and the Growlithe turn on them and chase them away. The episode ends with Jenny commending Ash and Pikachu on the strength of their partnership: “you two recognise what’s in each others’ hearts, and that’s what count. I’ll try to keep that in mind.” Also Brock uses one of the discarded voice synthesisers to deliver an incredibly creepy ode to himself in Jenny’s voice. Because he is Brock.

Lock and load, bitches.

Let’s talk about these Growlithe. Jessie, James and Meowth have – for once – actually come up with a pretty damn solid plan for their daily mischief. To a human, it seems ludicrous that a Growlithe could have trouble telling Jessie in a police uniform apart from Jenny – who is, after all, their trainer – but humans rely on sight a lot more than most animals do and consequently have unusually good vision compared to other mammals. Most mammals – like dogs – compensate with their keener hearing and sense of smell, and this episode suggests that many Pokémon are much the same. Once Team Rocket have deprived the Growlithe of their usual means of identifying their masters, they have only their sub-par vision to fall back on, and they are left following orders given in the voice they were trained to obey. Then Pikachu comes in. Pikachu isn’t fooled; although Ash sounds and smells nothing like himself, Pikachu can recognise his trainer anyway – not immediately, he has to think about it for a few seconds, but he gets there. I suppose the obvious explanation is that Pikachu is simply much more intelligent than the Growlithe (an attribute that is sorely neglected in the games’ portrayal of many Pokémon). He’s been paying attention to what’s going on, and although he doesn’t exactly understand what Team Rocket have been doing to confuse him, he knows they’re an underhanded lot and is on his guard for tricks. As a result, he’s able to decide to ignore what his trainer’s voice is telling him and do what he figures makes sense, whereas the Growlithe latch onto a voice they know and follow its orders, even though Jenny has been standing right there the whole time and they should know who she is even if they can’t hear or smell her clearly. What’s interesting is that the Growlithe eventually figure it out too – or, at least, one of them does – by staring into Jenny’s eyes and having a touching flashback montage of all their happy times together. The obvious explanation – the Growlithe aren’t as intelligent as Pikachu – doesn’t quite seem to make sense anymore; the tone of the scene doesn’t fit with Growlithe suddenly putting together the information and figuring out that Jenny’s voice is being faked. It’s a lot more consistent with Growlithe knowing who she is the whole time and only now wondering why he’s being ordered to attack her.

These guys seriously never get old. Wait; does James have breasts in this scene?

Pokémon follow orders; this we know. The Growlithe, in particular, are probably being trained to follow orders from any police officer (or perhaps simply from any Jenny; there are non-Jenny police officers in this episode, but I get the impression that the Jennies are the ones who most often work with Pokémon), so they aren’t necessarily supposed to have the same deep personal relationship with their handlers as Pikachu does with Ash. There’s a further point to this, though. Jessie and James are both quite convinced that they will be able to order the Growlithe to commit robberies, and Jenny is equally convinced that the Growlithe would never do such a thing. The story is structured so as to suggest to us that Jenny is actually wrong – her comment is immediately followed by Team Rocket successfully taking control of her Pokémon and ordering them to restrain her. The difference between their views is that Jenny regards the Growlithe as moral agents in and of themselves, capable of understanding that certain actions are ‘wrong’ and refusing to take part in them, while Jessie and James think that they’ll be able to order the Growlithe to do just about anything once they establish themselves as authority figures (and I feel I should emphasise again that the structure of the episode immediately shoots Jenny down). I’m reminded of Ekans’ dialogue in Island of the Giant Pokémon – “Pokémon not bad; Pokémon do bad things because Master bad” – which suggests that, although Ekans and Koffing are totally aware that they are aiding their trainers in committing morally repugnant acts and would never do such things on their own, this is trumped by the principle of loyalty to their masters. The Growlithe – who have been taught to view anyone who knows how to command them as ‘master’ – would find themselves in just the same position if they were taken by Team Rocket. When you think about it, this has to be the case in order for Team Rocket even to exist as an organisation: their modus operandi is to steal Pokémon for use in other crimes with more direct rewards. This could hardly be practical if a significant number of stolen Pokémon were likely to rebel against trainers who committed crimes. As Pikachu and Growlithe remind us, though, Pokémon are in fact capable of understanding that an action is ‘wrong.’ It’s much easier for Pikachu – probably because Ash places an unusual amount of emphasis on treating his Pokémon as friends and individuals – though even Growlithe, raised specifically to be part of a squad, can do it when ordered by a new ‘authority figure’ to attack an old one.

In short, Pokémon do understand human morality – it’s just that most of them are used to thinking that it doesn’t apply to them. They simply don’t see themselves as moral agents – thinking about that stuff is their trainers’ job – unless they’re been strongly encouraged to, one way or another. I think this is what Brock and Jenny are talking about when they say that Ash and Pikachu “understand what’s in each other’s hearts;” Pikachu recognises Ash not merely as his trainer, but as an objectively good person, and would continue to emulate Ash’s moral character even if they were somehow torn apart. As she acknowledges at the end of the episode, Jenny and her Growlithe could stand to learn a lot here.

Anime Time: Episode 50

Who Gets to Keep Togepi?

Ash’s location: Sweden.

Ash realises with a start that he doesn't know where he is any better than I do. Screenshots from filb.de/anime.

This episode gets an entry to itself not so much because I think it’s really interesting, more because it was sort of awkwardly left over after I blocked out all of the others for this chunk of the series, and I suppose it is a fairly important one. I may yet think of something clever to say in this entry, though – I never really know until I write the damn things. Here goes nothing…

At the beginning of this episode, Ash calls Professor Oak to check in. The professor has a gift for Ash: the latest patch for his Pokédex, which contains updated information on dozens of species of Pokémon. Ash delightedly downloads the upgrade and goes on his way. He, Misty and Brock briefly discuss the possibility of heading for another Pokémon Gym… after all, it has been eighteen episodes (close to four months, by my reckoning) since Ash earned his Soul Badge… but they have something way more important on their minds today: the egg Ash found at Grandpa Canyon. As the party’s breeder, Brock has been responsible for looking after the egg since Ash found it, going so far as to sleep with it to keep it warm. Misty’s hoping it will hatch into a Tentacruel, a Pokémon she inexplicably finds adorable, while Brock wants a Golem (you’d think a Pokémon breeder and a Rock-type specialist would know better than to expect a fully-evolved Golem from an egg… I mean, I know the games hadn’t laid out the mechanics of Pokémon breeding yet, but surely there are reasonable assumptions you can make), and Ash is simply praying that it won’t be another Aerodactyl. As they speculate, they run into a pair of old women carrying baskets filled with brightly-coloured Pokémon eggs. When Ash insists that he doesn’t want one, the women fling their baskets in the air, knock Ash’s egg from Brock’s hands and reveal themselves as Jessie and James. With eggs flying everywhere, they manage to grab the real one while the kids are sorting through the fake ones, and abscond. James wants to cook the egg so they can have a decent meal for once in their miserable lives, but Meowth wants to mother it instead, keeping it warm in the remote log cabin they suddenly seem to own. Meowth spends all of his attention on the egg, singing to it, cuddling it, bathing with it, and genuinely seems to find a spark of actual decency in himself. However, Ash, Pikachu, Misty and Brock eventually track Team Rocket down and attack their cabin, leading to a confused mêlée in which the egg is tossed back and forth across the room several times, until it eventually ends up in Pikachu’s hands… and starts to hatch. Everyone crowds around to look, Misty butting in to get closest.

I would like to point out that the “who’s that Pokémon?” silhouette for this episode, which appears at just this moment, is Aerodactyl. I never noticed this as a kid, but it made me laugh out loud when I saw the episode again.

Even having seen this episode before, I was still a little disappointed that she wasn't an Aerodactyl.

Most of the eggshell stays intact, but a set of tiny arms and legs pop out, along with a rounded, three-horned head. No-one can identify the baby Pokémon, but the kids don’t mean to hang around with Team Rocket to figure it out, so Pikachu drops a Thunderbolt and they flee the scene with their child. Once the kids get back to civilisation, they ask the Pokédex – after all, it’s just been upgraded. It successfully identifies the baby as a Togepi, but is unable to produce any further information. For some reason, the kids immediately start arguing over who owns the damn thing. Ash found the egg and Brock cared for it, but Togepi seems to like Misty best. Team Rocket soon show up, and declare that they deserve a say as well, citing Meowth’s tender care of the egg. The kids eventually decide on a six-way tournament, but Meowth declares that neither Jessie nor James ever did a thing to help look after Togepi’s egg, and consequently they have no right to compete, so instead it comes down to a four-way tournament between Ash, Misty, Brock and Meowth in an empty stadium. As Meowth stares down Brock’s Onix, he suddenly realises that he doesn’t own any Pokémon, and looks to Jessie and James for help, but they are sulking over being excluded. Meowth eventually remembers that he is himself a Pokémon, and spends the match jumping in and out of the ring, alternating between shouting commands and carrying them out. He quickly realises that he can’t harm Onix, but notices some buckets of water by the side of the field, and throws them over Onix, weakening him enough to finish up with Fury Swipes. Ash and Misty step up next. Ash chooses Bulbasaur, and Misty means to pick Staryu, but gets Psyduck in its place. Misty tries in vain to get Bulbasaur to attack Psyduck’s head and trigger his powers, but Ash instructs Bulbasaur to lick and tickle Psyduck into submission instead. Finally, Meowth faces off against Pikachu… and gets fried to a crisp in five seconds flat. When Ash tries to claim his prize, though, Togepi gets visibly upset whenever anyone other than Misty tries to hold her. He consults the Pokédex, and learns that Togepi imprint on the first things they see when they hatch – and the first thing Togepi saw was Misty.

…which… y’know, would have been a really good thing to know earlier, when the Pokédex told them it didn’t know anything else. I swear the thing was designed by a nitwit.

An adorable Togepi chasing a sparkly butterfly, by Janice268 (http://janice268.deviantart.com/).

So, aside from the fact that Brock apparently doesn’t know much about how Pokémon actually breed, what did we learn today? Well, Ash and Brock are surprisingly slow to consider Togepi’s feelings in the question of who gets to be her trainer. Misty points out from the start that Togepi likes her the best, and it’s clear from the end of the episode that Ash is willing to let that sway his decision, but that doesn’t stop them from having a tournament over her anyway. Considering that Togepi is just a baby, it does make some sense that Brock would put what he feels is best for her over what she wants, and as a breeder he is probably the best choice to care for a baby Pokémon from a purely objective standpoint. That viewpoint also makes sense for Ash if we accept my past arguments that he generally believes he knows what’s best for his Pokémon better than they do, though his motivation here seems to be more “I found it; it’s mine.” Strictly speaking, he found Togepi’s egg on a palaeontological site, which probably puts him on shaky ground as far as ownership goes, but he likely neither knows nor cares. I can’t think of any real reason Togepi should be particularly desirable to him; she clearly isn’t going to be ready for training for quite some time. He’s probably just exercising his famous stubbornness. Brock’s being a little weird about it too, since he cares for the whole group’s Pokémon anyway, and would presumably help look after Togepi as long as the three of them stayed together, regardless of who was formally her owner. I suppose Ash and Brock may have simply assumed that Misty was just making stuff up as an excuse to take Togepi for herself because she’s so cute, which… well, okay, that…wouldn’t really be out of character for Misty and might actually be true.

I think the way Rock-types and water work in the anime is that water doesn't hurt them all *that* much (though more so than it hurts most Pokémon) but screws them over by rendering them more vulnerable to standard attacks..

What this episode doesn’t tell us – and which I don’t think we ever actually learn – is where the heck Togepi came from in the first place. At the end of Attack of the Prehistoric Pokémon, while Ash is slumbering under the influence of Jigglypuff’s song, her egg just… sort of rolls down from somewhere and gently comes to a stop resting against him. I think maybe the implication is supposed to be that the egg was unearthed in the excavation, and had somehow been preserved in the same way as the fossil Pokémon who attack Ash and Team Rocket (who were supposedly in some kind of incredibly deep hibernation). As for how the egg got into the site… well, although Togepi was introduced to the games in Gold and Silver, the species isn’t native to Johto or Kanto. I suppose it’s possible that Togepi and Togetic used to live in Grandpa Canyon and were subsequently driven out by climate change – probably quite recently, since Togepi aren’t actually extinct (seeing as how every fossil Pokémon ever revealed has subsequently appeared in the show, alive and well, I’m not sure extinction is even really a thing in the Pokémon world, but let’s pretend that it is for a moment). The idea that the egg was in some sort of dormant state does make some sense in relation to the rules the games later established for Pokémon eggs, which are stimulated by the activity of other Pokémon and can gestate for an indefinite period without suffering any harm… of course, Togepi is rather pushing it to the limit.

The other thing that’s important today is how the addition of Togepi to the party affects Misty. In the past, I’ve characterised Misty as snarky, cynical and, in general, a great deal more pragmatic than either Ash or Brock, both of whom have very strong idealistic streaks. Two moments that define the difference between Ash and Misty (for me, anyway; there are others, but these are the two that stick out in my memory) are her comment to Ash after he trades away his beloved Butterfree – “look on the bright side; you got a Raticate!” – and her question to Bulbasaur when he confronts the ancient Venusaur in the Mysterious Garden – “don’t you want to have that kind of power?” Misty does have a sentimental side and we do see it from time to time, but until now her relationships with her Pokémon have tended to suppress it rather than exhibit it. Her signature Pokémon are the inscrutable, alien Staryu and Starmie, whose emotions – assuming they even have them – are impossible for the audience to see. Goldeen gets so little screentime as to be a nonentity, because she can only fight in water. I suspect Horsea was meant to provide Misty with an outlet for her softer emotions, but she falls into the same trap as Goldeen and almost never does anything. I think Togepi may have been brought in when the writers realised they didn’t have enough flexibility with Horsea (and, lo and behold, Horsea actually leaves the team permanently ten episodes later). Finally, the idea of Misty openly admitting to any sort of tender feelings towards Psyduck is almost laughable. When Togepi becomes her sixth Pokémon, however, Misty takes to her new role as Togepi’s ‘mother’ wholeheartedly. She’s as prickly and sarcastic as she ever was, but we get to see in her the same concern for Togepi’s safety as Ash has for Pikachu, which she never shows for her other Pokémon. Misty is used to thinking of Pokémon primarily in terms of their relationship with her as a trainer, but Togepi – who can’t fight – gives her the opportunity to think about Pokémon in an entirely different way, as well as indulge the stereotypically ‘feminine’ traits she’s preferred to downplay for most of her life to keep her sisters off her back.