Anime Time: Episodes 39 and ???

Pikachu’s Goodbye – Snow Way Out

Ash’s location: Switzerland.

A Pikachu colony living wild and free. Screenshots from filb.de/anime.

Oh, no. Not this episode. Please, not this episode. I still tear up just from remembering this one. You’re meant to be together, Ash, don’t you see that!?

*Ahem*

Ladies and gentlemen, Pikachu’s Goodbye.

Ash and his friends, travelling through deep woodland, encounter a large group of Pikachu, whom Ash’s Pikachu tries to befriend. Except for one very young Pikachu, they all flee, but when the little one comes to talk to him, the rest begin to gather around as well… until Ash decides to stick his ugly mug in and scares them all off again. Pikachu is depressed for a while, but when the group sets up camp later on, he gets his chance to be a hero. The little Pikachu he met before falls into a fast-flowing river, and he jumps in to save her… and… fails miserably, getting swept along with her in the current. Luckily, the rest of the Pikachu colony manage to snag them by grabbing onto each other’s tails and forming a chain, anchored in a tree by the side of the river. Pikachu is once again accepted into their culture, and joins in as they sing Pikachu songs under the light of the moon. Brock makes a remark about how wonderful it is for Pikachu to be with his own kind, which… is kind of a douchebag thing to say, actually, because it gives Ash the idea of leaving Pikachu behind and presents him with a horrible dilemma that keeps him from getting any sleep, and really Brock would have to be pretty much the most insensitive person on Earth not to realise that would happen, but hey, whatevs. While Ash is staring glumly into the campfire, he hears a Pikachu screaming, and runs back to where he left them. Team Rocket, of course, have shown up and trapped all the Pikachu in a shockproof net, declaring “everything in this forest is public property!” “And we’re members of the public!” As they fly away in their balloon, Ash gets Pikachu to chew a hole in the net, then uses the net Jessie and James had thrown at him, Misty and Brock as a trampoline so all the Pikachu can jump out safely. Pikachu finishes off the balloon, and another half-assed plot is foiled by our plucky heroes. The Pikachu all start celebrating, and Ash smiles sadly before going back to the campsite to pack everything up. Pikachu follows him, but Ash tearfully tells him not to make this any harder than it already is, and runs away.

"Isn't Pikachu having a wonderful time here in the woods with his own kind? Yep, Pikachu sure would have a swell life if he just stayed here. Far away from civilisation. Without Ash. Oh, I'm sorry, Ash, what were you saying?" — “Isn’t Pikachu having a wonderful time here in the woods with his own kind? Yep, Pikachu sure would have a swell life if he just stayed here. Far away from civilisation. Without Ash. Oh, I’m sorry, Ash, what were you saying?”

No, Ash, no! What are you doing? This is your best friend! Pikachu’s your soulmate! Screw Brock and Misty; they’re douchebags and they’re only going to leave you anyway! You’re going to cry yourself to sleep and then wake up in the morning and Pikachu won’t be there, every night and every morning for the rest of your life, and you’ll regret it forever! No other Pokémon is ever going to understand you like Pikachu does; heck, no human is ever going to understand you like Pikachu does! You’ll never truly be happy again without him, DON’T YOU SEE THAT?!

I’M FINE!

I’m fine.

Where’s my handkerchief…?

Anyway. Just when Ash thinks he’s run far enough, the whole Pikachu community run up over the crest of the hill, with Ash’s Pikachu at their head, and cheer as he runs back to his trainer. The world is set to rights, and that, I can guarantee you, is the very last time Ash gives even a second’s thought to what life would be like without Pikachu.

The second of today’s episodes, Snow Way Out, has always aired as episode sixty-something, but that’s clearly a lie since Togepi still hasn’t joined the team and Charmander hasn’t evolved yet; it’s probably meant to have happened shortly after Pikachu’s Goodbye. At a fork in the road, Ash decides to lead the group over a mountain, despite Brock’s objections, and gets them all lost in a blizzard. Meanwhile, Jessie is singing to James and Meowth about how much she loves snow, because during her ridiculously impoverished childhood her mother used to make food for her out of snow and-

"No, Misty. It's too late for him now. We have to save ourselves!" "But we can catch up with him if we-" "Can't you see this is something he has to do on his own?" — “No, Misty. It’s too late for him now. We have to save ourselves!” “But we can catch up with him if we-” “Can’t you see this is something he has to do on his own?”

Wait, what?

Anyway, they fire up the balloon, say their motto, and realise that the balloon is floating away with all their food. Jessie declares that she will make snow rolls with soy sauce, and they build an igloo and attempt to stay warm through the night with the power of imagination. That is pretty much their contribution to this episode. Back to the kids. To Ash’s annoyance, Brock wants to build a snow cave and bunker down for the night because, really, trying to get off the mountain at night in a blizzard is not Ash’s best plan ever. Unfortunately a blast of wind blows Pikachu down a slope, and Ash chases after him. Brock tells Misty not to follow, because… because he’s sure Ash will be just fine on his own, and knows that splitting the party never has any negative consequences, I guess? Wow, Brock is being a real douchebag in these episodes. Ash finds Pikachu dangling off a cliff and has Bulbasaur save him, but realises they can’t climb the slope to get back up to Brock and Misty. They decide to dig their own cave. Charmander blowtorches his way into a snowdrift, Ash calls out Bulbasaur and Squirtle, and they all seal up the entrance with packed snow before gathering around Charmander’s tail to stay warm. After a couple of hours, Charmander’s flame begins to fail. He insists he’s fine, but Ash recalls him, Bulbasaur and Squirtle, despite their protests, and… takes off his jacket and wraps their Pokéballs in it to keep them warm… because… okay, yes, whatever. Ash and Pikachu argue for a while, until the wind blows a hole in the cave mouth. Ash chooses to block it with his body rather than with more snow, and orders Pikachu to get in his ball. Pikachu refuses point blank, while Bulbasaur, Charmander, Squirtle and Pidgeotto rebel and burst out of their Pokéballs. Ash gives in, and they all huddle together for the rest of the night. In the morning, they find Brock and Misty, and learn that they had a warm, comfortable night after Onix tunnelled into some hot springs. Apparently they never tried to find Ash. They have, however, found Team Rocket’s balloon. Brock has his Vulpix fire the thing up, and the kids drift safely down from the mountain on the wind.

Okay, I could whine for a bit about how there are no Pichu in the community of wild Pikachu and that makes absolutely no sense, but I think we all know that’s a cheap shot since Pichu didn’t exist when this episode was made, and anyway these episodes are about Ash’s relationship with his Pokémon in general and Pikachu in particular, so let’s talk about that.

Can’t… think… too… adorable… must… look… away…

Pikachu’s Goodbye and Snow Way Out prominently display Ash’s sense of responsibility, which seems to be a significant part of what being a trainer means for him. He is supposed to keep his Pokémon happy, healthy and strong, and faced with a potential life-or-death situation his top priority is to protect them (I’m not convinced that wrapping his Pokéballs in his jacket actually affords his Pokémon any additional protection from the cold, but clearly Ash believes it does, and cares more about that than about keeping warm himself). Way back in I Choose You, Ash related to Pikachu as a master to an underling, and Pikachu very nearly died; the traumatic events of Ash’s first day as a trainer have almost certainly stayed with him, and I suspect those memories may be a factor in his overwhelming instinct that he has a duty to keep his Pokémon safe, especially Pikachu (nearly losing Metapod in Challenge of the Samuraimight well be weighing on him too). This doesn’t apply so much to battles; any reasonable trainer will pull a Pokémon out of a fight if it’s taking too severe a beating, and Ash is no exception, but he’s generally fine with having his Pokémon stay in and tough it out until things get truly dire. This is presumably because Ash, like most humans in the Pokémon universe, regards battles as being beneficial for Pokémon on some level; it’s how they grow stronger and learn about their own powers. The moment he begins to feel that one of his Pokémon is in genuine danger, though, Ash will act quickly and often recklessly to deal with the threat.

This piece is by Pikachu6123 (http://pikachu6123.deviantart.com/) and is so adorable that my head is actually about to explode.

An important point for these episodes is that this relationship I’m describing, as sweet and loving as it generally is, is still a relationship where Ash sees himself as the superior – almost like his Pokémon are his children. In Snow Way Out, this is obvious; he takes it upon himself to shut his Pokémon up in their Pokéballs to protect them, even when they make it clear that they would rather stay outside and endure the cold with him. Honestly, I can’t help but wonder whether this gently, quietly patronising attitude is part of what sticks in Charmander’s craw so badly after he evolves into Charmeleon. In Pikachu’s Goodbye too, Ash agonises over what’s best for Pikachu, watching him immerse himself in community life and weighing up the obvious benefits Pikachu would enjoy if he stayed against the friendship they share and their experiences on the road together. However, he never takes what would seem to be the obvious course of action by asking Pikachu about it. He listens to what Brock has to say on the subject, he spends hours making up his mind, and he eventually decides to leave Pikachu behind because he genuinely believes that Pikachu will be better off without him, but throughout the episode he seems to consider it entirely his decision. He also seems to feel that the downsides of releasing Pikachu are entirely on his side; he’ll lose his best friend and most powerful ally, but is prepared to endure that so Pikachu can reap the obvious benefits. Again, you could make a parent-child comparison out of this; once they’ve taught their children everything they can, most parents want their children to leave and make their own lives, because it isn’t right for them to be under their parents’ thumbs forever. I suspect Ash’s logic here, while obviously different, is nonetheless parallel.

Pikachu himself never seems to have considered leaving Ash even for a moment. He clearly enjoys his time spent with the wild Pikachu, but more as a nice break and a good way to spend some down time than anything he’d actually want to do long term. Near the end of the episode, when Ash is packing up to leave, Pikachu bounces out of the bushes ready to leave with him, giving not the slightest hint that he suspects anything is wrong, and won’t hear anything Ash has to say on the subject of parting ways. Likewise, in Snow Way Out, Pikachu refuses Ash’s direct order to get into his Pokéball, and all the other Pokémon burst out of their Pokéballs soon after, reminding Ash that they don’t actually have to do anything he says. They follow his orders because they trust him, but if he’s clearly doing something stupid, they are quite capable of ignoring him, because as far as they’re concerned, they’re not his children; they’re his friends. This, I think, is the lesson Ash is supposed to take out of these episodes. Although his heart’s in the right place, his ideals are often rather simplistic. In this case, while few trainers understand better than Ash the need to care for Pokémon and raise them with kindness, Ash doesn’t quite realise yet how independent a Pokémon’s mind can be and how important it is to consider each individual’s distinct values and desires. Luckily, Pikachu loves him enough to be patient while he learns.

Anime Time: Episodes 25 and 29

Primeape Goes Bananas – The Punchy Pokémon

Ash has been messing around with only five Pokémon for three episodes now, and it’s time for him to get a new one to refill his party (what, use Krabby? Don’t be ridiculous!). Unfortunately, the Pokémon he winds up catching to fill his sixth slot… presents certain methodological issues for Ash’s training style; put it that way.

(…he’s insane!)

Primeape. Artwork by Ken Sugimori; six rings for the dwarf lords in their halls of stone, one ring for Nintendo on their dark throne, etc.

So, on the way out of Saffron City, Ash stops at a payphone to check in with Professor Oak and show off his Marsh Badge. Oak gives him a kindly old man smile and a “well done,” but explains that Gary already has five badges, a few dozen Pokémon, and a Krabby about five times as big as Ash’s. Ash isn’t really that far behind in terms of badges, but clearly his efforts at capturing new Pokémon aren’t even on the same scale as Gary’s, and the Professor is noticeably disappointed. I’ve argued this before, but it bears repeating: I believe Gary’s training style (catching and regularly using dozens of Pokémon) represents what’s normal and expected, at least for a full-time trainer, while Ash is something of an oddball. Misty and Brock are broadly supportive of Ash’s more idiosyncratic style, but hearing about how many Pokémon Gary has caught gets Ash in the mood to capture something – and, wonder of wonders, a wild Mankey chooses this moment to appear before the group. Mankey seems like a far less volatile Pokémon than the games make him out to be, more mischievous than irritable, and Brock shares a rice ball (which the English translation charmingly refers to as a “donut”) with him. Of course, while Mankey is eating, Ash – because he is Ash – decides to lob a Pokéball at him. Mankey blocks the Pokéball with the rice ball and furiously prepares for battle. I can’t help but think he’s insulted – not only did Ash attack Mankey while he was eating, he apparently didn’t think battling Mankey was worth the effort and figured a Pokéball right off the bat would be all he needed. Mankey’s subsequent behaviour reinforces my belief; he isn’t happy with just beating Ash up, but also steals his hat and imitates him in a mocking dance. This doesn’t ring of self-defence to me; this is a deliberate response to a personal insult. Now, I’ll repeat part of that in case you missed it: Mankey steals Ash’s hat.

He steals Ash’s hat.

Ash won his hat in a competition by sending in an ungodly number of postcards. It is a piece of exclusive Pokémon League merchandise, emblazoned with their official insignia and probably worth more than all of Ash’s other worldly goods put together, and gives him limitless street cred (or so he would have us believe). He can deal with not catching Mankey but he will not abandon his hat. Damn right, too. Behind each and every one of history’s great men and women is a nice hat. Unfortunately Mankey is simply far too acrobatic for Ash to catch him, and he doesn’t try to use any of his Pokémon to help (Mankey stole his hat; this is a matter of honour). At this point Jessie and James show up for their daily attempt to steal Pikachu, and Jessie gives Mankey a good solid kick when he gets in the way. This… turns out to be a mistake. See, as we’ve seen already, although Pokémon in the anime do need to gain battle experience to evolve, the actual moment of evolution is often triggered by strong emotion. Mankey hasn’t actually defeated a single Pokémon yet, so he hasn’t ‘gained experience’ in this episode… but being kicked aside by Jessie makes him furious enough to push him over the edge and evolve him into Primeape. The situation quickly deteriorates and soon everyone’s mind is focused on that timeless adage, “I don’t have to outrun the Primeape; I just have to outrun you!” Eventually Ash decides that, damnit, he’s a Pokémon trainer, and trainers don’t run from Pokémon – they battle their asses and catch them! Primeape is remarkably unconcerned by Bulbasaur and Squirtle’s attacks, but Charmander’s Rage allows him to grow stronger and stronger as Primeape pummels him, and he eventually strikes back with a devastating Flamethrower (with Ash’s hat still sitting on Primeape’s head – luckily, Pikachu dives in to rescue it at the last minute). Now that Primeape is weakened, Ash manages to catch him in a Pokéball… but soon learns that controlling him is something of a tricky proposition.

Mankey and Primeape, by Ninjendo (http://ninjendo.deviantart.com/ – not to be confused with Nintendo). Because she is a good person, Jen has drawn Mankey with Ash’s hat, in memory of this episode.

Ash thinks about using Primeape a couple of times during the next few episodes. However, he never actually pulls him out because it’s not worth the risk and, frankly, Primeape Goes Bananas has left some pretty heavy mental scars on the poor kid. A few days after leaving Celadon City, however, Ash and company run into what they assume is a wild Hitmonchan jogging down the road, occasionally stopping to practice a flurry of jabs. Ash wants to catch the Hitmonchan – and fair enough, too – but instead of just having Pikachu fill his face with lightning like he usually does, he decides to have Pikachu engage Hitmonchan in a boxing match. This goes about as well as you might expect. I could tie this in with one of my pet theories by saying that Hitmonchan would never acknowledge Ash as a worthy trainer and submit to capture unless he was beaten at his own game, since there are no other skills he respects, but at some point my ideas get too far-fetched even for me, so this time I’m just going to go with the good old standby, “Ash is a moron.” During the battle, a man named Anthony – who turns out to be Hitmonchan’s trainer – arrives to berate him for letting his guard down and finishes up the battle. His daughter, a young woman named Rebecca, appears soon after to beg Anthony to come home, but he ignores her and returns to his ‘gym’ (the “Fighting Spirit Gym”, which is more like a real-world gym – and a pretty dingy one at that – than a Pokémon training facility). Rebecca explains that Anthony is obsessed with winning an upcoming tournament for Fighting Pokémon, the P-1 Grand Prix, and has basically ditched his family so he can train with Hitmonchan (y’know… kinda like how Ash leaves his mother all alone for months at a time). Because he hopes someday to go on a date with her, Brock declares that their group will help Rebecca. His hare-brained scheme is for him and Ash to enter the tournament themselves and defeat Hitmonchan… using his Geodude (a Pokémon weak to Fighting-type attacks) and Ash’s notoriously insane Primeape. I’m honestly not sure how they imagine this would help, assuming it even worked, but hey, at least they’ll be doing something.

Meanwhile, Jessie and James also want to get in on the tournament so they can win the fabulously expensive championship belt, so they beat up another contestant, leave him trussed up and gagged in the men’s room, and steal his Hitmonlee. The tournament begins, and Ash’s Primeape is matched up against a Machop, who beats him up for a while and then lobs him straight out of the ring with Seismic Toss. Ash runs to break Primeape’s fall, and thus manages to earn his trust; Primeape then leaps back into the fray and becomes pretty much unbeatable for the remainder of the tournament. Jessie’s Hitmonlee wallops Brock’s Geodude in the first round, predictably enough, and goes on to win all of his matches as well, as does Hitmonchan. When Hitmonchan and Hitmonlee fight in the semi-final, Meowth slips under the floor of the ring and uses some glue to slow Hitmonchan’s steps and give Hitmonlee the edge. Then… Rebecca inexplicably leaps in front of Hitmonchan to block a Mega Kick, and Anthony has to leap in front of her to keep Hitmonlee from pulverising every bone in her body. I think this is supposed to be the moment when he learns his lesson and becomes a good family man again. I don’t know; the whole moral of this one is pretty screwy. Anthony surrenders, and Jessie faces Ash in the finals. Meowth tries to cheat again, this time by electrifying the floor at a prearranged moment when Hitmonlee leaps into the air, but Pikachu spots him mucking around beneath the ring and sabotages his plan, levelling the playing field. Primeape does his thing and beats Hitmonlee to a pulp, winning the P-1 Grand Prix and the bejewelled championship belt.

Then… then Anthony compliments Ash on his Primeape’s awesomeness and suggests “hey, why don’t you let me train it for a while? I’ll turn it into a true P-1 Champion!”

Quite aside from the fact that Primeape already is a P-1 Champion… he and Ash have finally started making some progress towards a healthy relationship, the whole point of the exercise was to get Anthony to cut down on training to spend time with his family, and Primeape would, without a doubt, be Ash’s strongest Pokémon by a significant margin once they trusted each other enough for Ash’s superior tactical expertise to be a factor (yes, I just credited Ash Ketchum with “superior tactical expertise” but I’m comparing him to an insane man-ape-pig). The truly boneheaded thing about all this is that Ash says yes. Before I saw this episode again, I had planned to tie this back to the argument I made when I looked at Bye Bye, Butterfree, and point to this as a natural and healthy example of a trainer and Pokémon parting ways once they’ve each learned something from one another to allow the Pokémon to get on with its own life, but when I watched it I realised that, actually, no, this conclusion pretty much undoes everything positive Ash and his friends have just achieved. We can’t even really say anymore that getting rid of the insane Primeape is a plus because Primeape actually likes Ash by the end of the episode, enough that his eyes water when he waves goodbye. So instead I’m going to take this episode as showing the effects of addiction to Pokémon training on a person’s family. Honestly, Rebecca is getting off fairly lightly compared to Brock and his siblings, Ash’s mother, and Sabrina’s parents (oh, Sabrina’s parents…) but it’s clear that her family is suffering from all the hours Anthony spends with his Hitmonchan rather than looking after them. Now that the tournament is over, he’s happy to make promises to be a better father in the future, but what will happen when the next big event is coming up? Especially now that he’s managed to sweet-talk Ash into feeding his addiction by handing over a proven Fighting Pokémon champion?

This ending just annoys me. I hope you’re happy, Ash.

Anime Time: Episodes 19-21

Tentacool and Tentacruel – The Ghost of Maiden’s Peak – Bye Bye, Butterfree

Yeah, yeah, I know, I missed episode 18. Beauty and the Beach was banned in most Western countries because James wears a set of fake boobs to enter a beauty contest (yeah… he does that sometimes) and it doesn’t air on the official website with the rest of the series because they’re trying to pretend it never happened. I’m sure I could probably find it on the internet if I could be bothered looking but I really, really can’t. I’ve read episode synopses and it doesn’t look like Beauty and the Beach is all that interesting an episode anyway, so I’m not convinced it’s a great loss. Maybe someday I’ll do a few of the banned episodes all together. Anyway.

Continue reading →

Anime Time: Episodes 15-17

Battle Aboard the St. Anne – Pokémon Shipwreck – Island of the Giant Pokémon

Fresh off Ash’s victory at the Vermillion Gym, Ash and his friends are given free tickets by a pair of teenage girls to a lavish Pokémon trainers’ convention aboard the world-famous luxury cruise liner, the St. Anne! THERE IS NO WAY THIS COULD POSSIBLY BE A SCAM!

This is going to be a boring day for art since I couldn't find any relevant fanart for these episodes; here's Sugimori's Raticate art instead.

We quickly learn that the ‘teenage girls’ were Team Rocket in disguise (yes, James too), and that they were giving out free tickets to all the trainers they could find on the orders of their shadowy Boss, Giovanni, who appears for the first time in this episode. The Boss (who seems to be the closest thing Meowth has to a formal ‘owner,’ but has come to prefer his Persian – this will be a constant source of insecurity to Meowth during the series) is displeased with the time and energy they have expended failing to catch Pikachu, but still seems to have enough confidence to put them in charge of the ambush planned on the St. Anne. His confidence, of course, is misplaced – not only do the Team Rocket goons fail miserably to steal even a single Pokémon, James also loses a ludicrous amount of money buying into a Magikarp-breeding pyramid scheme, and the entire ship capsizes and sinks with Jessie, James and Meowth still on board (not to mention our plucky heroes). This, of course, is all totally incidental as far as I’m concerned. I want to talk about what happens in the meantime: Ash encounters a dapper gentleman with a top hat and moustache, whose name is never given, challenging other trainers to exhibition battles with a powerful Raticate. Ash, being Ash, takes up the challenge and finds that Raticate and his Butterfree are very evenly matched; however, just as Butterfree begins to gain the upper hand with Stun Spore, the Gentleman – to Ash’s annoyance – recalls his Raticate and suggests calling it a draw. The Gentleman later proposes a trade, his Raticate for Ash’s Butterfree, which Ash hesitantly accepts but later regrets. Luckily, the Gentleman reluctantly agrees to trade back at the end of the episode, just as the ship is sinking.

When you think about it, Pokémon trading is a pretty bizarre practice from the perspective of a trainer like Ash, who regards each and every one of his Pokémon as a close personal friend (which I think counts as further evidence that Ash’s way of doing things is actually quite unusual, since Pokémon trading manifestly isn’t). The Gentleman’s ideas about trading are interesting ones – he believes that trading Pokémon is a way of deepening and widening new friendships and spreading relationships between trainers all around the world; basically, a form of social networking. You could argue that he’s running what amounts to a scam here, proposing a trade for the first Pokémon he could find that was stronger than his Raticate and then dazzling the Pokémon’s kid trainer with some pretty rhetoric, but since he does agree to trade back when Ash asks him, I think it’s more likely he actually believes it. Misty’s perspective on the situation is almost as interesting because it shows, I think, that she relates to Pokémon in a very different way to Ash: although she is sympathetic when he begins to regret trading away Butterfree, her response, “look on the bright side; you got a Raticate!” seems to indicate that she doesn’t really understand the depth of Ash’s attachment to his Pokémon yet. I’m kind of disappointed to miss Brock’s opinion; Ash does ask him before the trade, but he’s too busy getting goo-goo-eyed over the Gentleman’s lady friend to offer a coherent response. For a person like Ash, trading away a Pokémon is basically signing away the health and wellbeing of a close friend to someone else. If Ash’s attitude is at all typical, you wouldn’t expect Pokémon trading ever to happen except between good friends but, again, this is manifestly not the case. I think this indicates that for a ‘typical’ trainer, a Pokémon is less like a friend and more like… not a possession, but… perhaps a colleague, co-worker, or subordinate – basically, someone with whom you have a formal, rather than an emotional, relationship. I should qualify that, like most complex issues, this is probably more of a spectrum than a dichotomy; Ash is at one end, and trainers like the Gentleman at the other, but a lot of people probably fall somewhere in the middle.

Anyway, the ship flips upside down and sinks, and due to the captain’s gross incompetence no-one notices that a few of the passengers were still on board. There’s still plenty of air in the ship, but it’s steadily filling up with water from the bottom, and it’s balanced precariously on a huge spire of rock over a deep ocean trench…

Fun fact: in the beta version of Red and Blue, Gyarados' English name was "Skulkraken." It works on so many levels, each more terrifying than the last! Artwork by Ken Sugimori; render unto Nintendo what is Nintendo's, etc.

Pokémon Shipwreck is kind of a ‘meh’ episode, if you ask me. It’s basically supposed to be about Ash’s party and Team Rocket having to work together to escape their mutual dilemma, but it’s actually about Ash’s party working together to escape their dilemma while Team Rocket cling to their coattails and scream incoherently. Suffice to say, they eventually escape the ship by blowtorching through the hull with Charmander’s Flamethrower and swimming to the surface with the help of their Water Pokémon (Team Rocket use the Magikarp James bought on the St. Anne and nearly die, but to Pikachu’s immense displeasure they recover). Once they’re all on a raft cobbled together from the debris of the St. Anne, James throws a fit, kicks his Magikarp, and renounces his ownership of the useless thing… which, of course, prompts it to evolve into a Gyarados, summon its brothers, and go all you-ain’t-in-Kansas-no-more on their asses, which leads to the next episode, Island of the Giant Pokémon…

I love Island of the Giant Pokémon. If I had my way the whole damn series would be done like Island of the Giant Pokémon. The set-up is that Gyarados’ waterspout separated Pikachu, Bulbasaur, Squirtle and Charmander from the rest of the group on an island which is, for no immediately obvious reason, inhabited by Pokémon of unusual size (hereafter known as POUSes). Ash, Misty and Brock do stuff in this episode too but it is irrelevant and distracting, because this is the episode in which everything the Pokémon characters say is subtitled, which means we get a closer look at their personalities. Squirtle is laid-back and irreverent, and has something of a black sense of humour (among other things, he upsets Pikachu and Charmander by joking that Ash might have been eaten by wild Pokémon). Bulbasaur is stoic, pessimistic and cynical; he’s the one who suggests that Ash might have abandoned them, which I think speaks to the way he views humans in general. Charmander… well, Charmander is kind of boring, actually. He seems nice. He’s quite trusting, maybe a little naïve. Mostly he just goes along with Pikachu (who, as we know from the rest of the series, is defined mainly by fierce loyalty to his friends). Odd that there’s no foreshadowing of the problems Ash is going to have with him after he evolves into Charmeleon in episode forty-something; maybe they hadn’t planned that far ahead yet. And then… there’s Ekans and Koffing. They’ve also been separated with their trainers, along with Meowth, who orders them to attack Pikachu and his friends when they run into each other. Ekans and Koffing seem to be portrayed as not particularly bright, even by Pokémon standards (especially Koffing, who mostly parrots Ekans); their dialogue is subtitled in broken English, and their worldview is basically “we do as our masters tell us”… and Meowth, they are most emphatic, is not their master. They claim that if Pokémon do bad things, it’s out of loyalty to bad masters (contrast Meowth, who points out that his master is never around and he’s as rotten as Jessie and James on his own); they apparently understand morality but think it either isn’t important or doesn’t apply to them. Alone, Meowth is easily overpowered and tied up, while Ekans and Koffing join the group. As they eat dinner, and Squirtle taunts Meowth with the promise of food if he’ll just apologise (which, of course, he refuses to do), they hear a loud rumbling sound and are nearly crushed by a rampaging POUS. Pikachu goes back to untie Meowth as the others leg it (like Ash, he’s a kind soul), and they eventually spend much of the night running away. Then… then there is this one wonderfully mad scene in which, later that night, the whole group stops at a bar.

When I was a kid, I could accept this without any problem. As an adult, I've played Pokémon: Mystery Dungeon. Then again, even in Mystery Dungeon I'm pretty sure they never go to a bar and get wasted. Screenshots from www.filb.de/anime. In the middle of the jungle. Run by a Slowbro. Bulbasaur and Squirtle get totally hammered and start drunkenly arguing over something (hard to say what, since this scene doesn’t have subtitles) while Meowth quietly passes out, and Pikachu and Charmander try to comfort Ekans and Koffing, who have been reduced to tears (and are presumably pretty deep in their cups themselves). At a random bar in the middle of the jungle run by a Slowbro.

…I’m not even going to question it; I’m just going to accept it.

They all go to sleep together, curled up with Ekans coiled around everyone else. This is a lovely scene; it illustrates very well how ready Ash’s Pokémon are to trust, even when Ekans, Koffing and Meowth have been their enemies for the whole season so far – or perhaps it’s more appropriate to say that Ekans and Koffing work for their enemies. Off-duty, they’re no more hostile than anyone else. Anyway, the next day, they try to negotiate with the POUSes they encounter, fail miserably, wind up getting chased by them, and eventually run into Ash, Misty and Brock being chased by more POUSes, as well as Jessie and James in a mine cart dragging another one behind them (they… had an interesting couple of days, put it that way). Everyone reunites, there is much rejoicing on both sides, and all the POUSes trip over each other, get tangled together, and are completely destroyed – they’re robots, it turns out, and the whole thing is a theme park called Pokémon Land (a theme park, incidentally, run by Giovanni, who gets a call shortly afterwards to tell him of its destruction).

Again, I wish every episode were like Island of the Giant Pokémon. Most of Ash’s Pokémon are surprisingly expressive considering they can’t really speak, and Pikachu in particular builds up a reasonably developed character by sheer weight of screen-time alone, but the characterisation of and relationships between all the Pokémon characters we see in this episode are just wonderful stuff, if you ask me. That they never did this again is probably one of my biggest regrets for the whole series.

Anime Time: Episodes 10-12

Bulbasaur and the Hidden Village – Charmander: The Stray Pokémon – Here Comes the Squirtle Squad

Okay, last entry was so long this is starting to get ridiculous, so I’ll try to blaze through the synopsis of these three episodes as quickly as I can so I can spend more time on commentary; here goes nothing!

Bulbasaur surveying his domain, by Vermeilbird (http://vermeilbird.deviantart.com/).

These are the episodes in which Ash meets and catches, in rapid succession, his Bulbasaur, Charmander and Squirtle, each under unusual circumstances. Bulbasaur is the guardian of the ‘hidden village,’ a kind of halfway house deep in the forest for Pokémon abandoned by their trainers, run by a girl named Melanie, who patches them up and releases them back into the wild. Bulbasaur is initially hostile towards Ash for intruding into the village and trying to capture one of the Pokémon, an Oddish, but warms to him when he, Brock and Misty help protect the village from Team Rocket. Melanie suggests that Bulbasaur leave with Ash so he can grow stronger, and so the Pokémon of the village can get used to surviving on their own again, and Bulbasaur agrees on the condition of a battle with Ash – which, of course, Ash wins. Soon after, Ash and his friends encounter Charmander waiting alone on a rock in the forest. Ash tries to capture Charmander, but Pikachu establishes that he actually has a trainer already, so they decide to leave him and travel on to the next Pokémon Centre. That night, they overhear a trainer named Damian bragging about his huge collection of Pokémon and explaining how he finally managed to ditch his useless Charmander in the wilderness by telling it he’d be back soon. Brock is furious and Damian’s group nearly comes to blows with the heroes, but Nurse Joy #147 breaks up the fight. Since a storm is brewing, Ash, Brock and Misty go back and look for Charmander, and manage to bring him back to the centre before his tail flame sputters out. Early in the morning, Charmander escapes and wanders off to look for Damian again, but he stumbles across Ash’s group on the road and saves them from Team Rocket. Damian shows up and wants Charmander back, but Ash convinces Charmander that Damian is a good-for-nothing jerk and the little salamander Pokémon joins Ash’s team instead. Ash’s Squirtle, finally, leads a gang of juvenile delinquent Squirtle who terrorise a small town with pranks, vandalism, theft, and their awesome sunglasses. The Squirtle Squad resent humans because all of them were abandoned by their trainers, and Meowth exploits this by tricking them into thinking that he owns and controls Jessie and James (which… let’s face it, is not far from the truth). Meowth manipulates the Squirtle into capturing Ash, Pikachu, Misty and Brock, but they let Ash return to town to buy medicine since Pikachu is injured. When Ash returns as promised, he finds that they have released his friends, since they aren’t a genuinely malicious bunch. He then helps the Squirtle Squad when Team Rocket inevitably turn on them, and coordinates them to put out a forest fire started by Team Rocket’s weapons. The Squirtle are reintegrated into society as part of the local fire brigade, and the leader joins Ash to travel Kanto with him.

Whew.

An adorable Charmander by Yamio (http://yamio.deviantart.com/)

Let’s talk about Pokémon and their trainers. As I said, Bulbasaur, Charmander and Squirtle all join Ash’s team under unusual circumstances, and furthermore all of them had been abandoned by other trainers in the past (well, Charmander and Squirtle had; Bulbasaur could have been wild but I think it’s more likely that he was abandoned – how else would he have come to be working with Melanie? – and it would explain his somewhat aloof and suspicious nature), so all three of them presumably have somewhat skewed perspectives on humanity compared to wild Pokémon. Given this, it’s interesting that only Charmander acts in the way you’d expect an ‘outsider’ to act in the games – growing rapidly and later becoming disobedient. Part of the reason is probably that Squirtle and Bulbasaur had largely forgotten their trainers and washed their hands of humanity in general (except for Melanie, in Bulbasaur’s case) until Ash came along and forced them to totally rethink their attitudes towards people, while Charmander was still ‘loyal’ to Damian until making a snap decision to Flamethrower him in the head two minutes from the end of his episode. He may have regretted that choice later, and may even have come to feel he’d been forced into it – Bulbasaur and Squirtle both had other reasonable choices, but Charmander’s options, besides Ash, were going back to Damian or wandering off into an environment he wasn’t very well suited to (as he had learned the hard way only the night before). Finally, while Bulbasaur and Squirtle were both befriended by Ash specifically, it was actually Brock who did most of the work of rescuing Charmander, and Brock who decided to brave the storm to look for him in the first place. In fact, Ash acknowledges that Brock has as much right as him, if not more, to become Charmander’s trainer, but Brock insists Ash catch Charmander because… y’know, I’m honestly not sure. In short, Charmander may actually have legitimate reasons to be upset here.

Probably the single thing I find most interesting about these episodes is Bulbasaur’s insistence on a battle with Ash, which seems like a formality by that point – Ash and Bulbasaur have worked together, Bulbasaur clearly has at least some degree of respect for him, and Melanie has suggested that everyone involved would benefit if Bulbasaur joined the team, and given her blessing. Honestly, I think it seems like a formality because that’s precisely what it is: trainers catch Pokémon, and Bulbasaur is not going to go easy on Ash just because he seems like kind of a decent guy; he is damn well going to be captured, because that’s what trainers are for. Squirtle and Charmander don’t challenge Ash; they just join up because they feel he’s already earned their respect, and I think the fact that Bulbasaur does is at least partly because, as we’ll see in Island of the Giant Pokémon, he’s very stubborn and also a bit of a cynic (Squirtle the reformed gang leader, by contrast, isn’t so likely to be a stickler for tradition). What does being captured actually mean for a Pokémon, anyway? Theoretically they belong to the trainers who capture them, but we know they can break out of their Pokéballs whenever they really want to (case in point, Misty’s Psyduck, but others do it too, and not just for comic relief either), so there’s nothing stopping them from wandering off in the night and never coming back, but in practice they don’t. The very act of capturing a Pokémon normally seems to instil a degree of loyalty, which tends to remain even when it’s not such a good idea, as with Damian and Charmander. This is presumably why releasing a Pokémon is viewed as such a jerkass thing to do in the anime. Speaking of capture, when Ash first tries and fails to catch Charmander, Brock observes that he’s quite weak and tired – in theory, an easy catch. Now, what happens in the anime when you try to catch another trainer’s Pokémon is neither entirely clear nor totally consistent across different seasons, but here and now I think the only reasonable interpretation is that Charmander’s loyalty to Damian is what makes it so easy for him to break out of Ash’s Pokéball. Even for a weak or injured Pokémon, being captured still involves an element of choice: no Pokémon can be captured unless it is at least receptive to being partnered with a human (with the caveat that most wild Pokémon will still want to test a trainer’s worth by battling first). This gives an interesting perspective to Nurse Joy’s seemingly nonsensical comment, when she breaks up the fight with Damian, that it’s disrespectful to Pokémon to use them for settling personal disputes. How is it any more disrespectful than using Pokémon to battle at all? I suspect it’s meant to be implicit that practice battles and official challenges, as part of the advancement of a Pokémon’s career with a trainer, are in some sense “what they signed up for,” while “hey, Pikachu, beat up this guy’s Pokémon for me because he’s a douchebag” is unfairly bringing Pokémon into a wholly human dispute (although this particular example is something of a grey area; Damian’s mistreatment of his Pokémon could be considered just as much Pikachu’s business as Ash’s).

Squirtle, wearing his trademark Squirtle Squad shades, gives us a lesson in awesome. Art by Rebecca Weaver (missninjaart.tumblr.com)

To finish up for today, I want to take a closer look at Squirtle’s street gang. For the Squirtle Squad, being abandoned by their trainers resulted in disillusionment with humanity in general, so clearly they had expectations of partnership with trainers which weren’t met – presumably power, knowledge and friendship. Again, abandonment is regarded as an unambiguously rotten thing to do, by both human characters and Pokémon; in a sense it’s a breach of the implied agreement a trainer makes with any Pokémon who joins his team. I suspect the Squirtle Squad are a Pokémon-world instance of the depressing phenomenon reported by real-world animal shelters, who invariably receive kittens and puppies in huge numbers after each Christmas – presents given to children who weren’t ready for the responsibility. Squirtle, of course, are one of Kanto’s standard starter Pokémon. It seems likely that the Squirtle Squad all belonged to new trainers who quickly realised that they weren’t cut out for the trainer’s life and ditched their starters in the wilderness. Ash and Officer Jenny #604 are quick to blame the trainers, but honestly I think the Pokémon League is just as much at fault here; obtaining a Pokémon License seems to be literally just a matter of turning ten and showing up.

What I’m driving at with this entry is that – easy as it is to dismiss Pokémon training as slavery and thereby demonise the franchise – the ethics of Pokémon training are, even from an in-universe perspective, a great deal more complicated than that, which is why I’m so glad the games finally caught up in Black and White and produced a whole storyline about whether ownership of Pokémon is morally justified. I still wish the story was a little more complex and the antagonists not so… well, cartoonish, but hey, it’s a kid’s series. Baby steps.

Anime Time: Episodes 8, 9 and 13

The Path to the Pokémon League – The School of Hard Knocks – Mystery at the Lighthouse

Yep; I’m doing these out of order, for a couple of reasons. One is that I really want to do episodes ten, eleven and twelve as a group, and spend a whole entry just on episode fourteen, which sort of leaves thirteen as the odd one out. The other and far more important reason is that I feel these three episodes have a unifying theme, which is what I want to discuss today – see if you can guess what it is.

A Sandshrew being adorable, by Celesime (http://celesime.deviantart.com/)

In the Path to the Pokémon League, Ash challenges an unofficial Pokémon Gym run by a gruff Texan kid called A.J. with an unbroken winning streak of ninety-eight battles – ninety-nine after A.J.’s fierce Sandshrew defeats Ash’s Pidgeotto. Ash decides that A.J. must have cheated to beat a Flying Pokémon with a Ground Pokémon and starts poking around the gym. A.J. is an extremely harsh master, having his Pokémon engage in constant practice fights and training exercises, and keeping them in line with his whip (A.J. has trained his Pokémon to respond to the crack of his whip, and uses it to command them in battles). All of A.J.’s Pokémon wear restraining harnesses, possibly the forerunners to the Macho Brace introduced in Ruby and Sapphire, which restrict their movements and force them to develop stronger muscles to move normally, and he has his Sandshrew swim in his pool to train away its weakness to water. Ash is horrified by his Spartan training style, but Brock observes that A.J.’s Pokémon are actually in excellent health; A.J. prepares all of their food himself and carefully tailors his recipes to the dietary needs of each species. Ash attempts to convince the other Pokémon that they can leave A.J. and travel with him instead, but they seem to find him tiresome and ignore him. Sandshrew is especially loyal to A.J.; they have been together for many years and long ago promised to grow strong together, no matter what obstacles stood in their way. The episode ends with A.J. and Sandshrew earning their hundredth victory by defeating Team Rocket, who tried to sneak in and steal Pikachu but accidentally got Sandshrew instead. As they had promised themselves, they close down the gym and leave on their own journey to start collecting badges and entering tournaments.

The School of Hard Knocks is set at Pokémon Tech, a prestigious private school in the middle of nowhere which Ash and his friends stumble into entirely by mistake on a foggy day. Rich families who want their kids to become powerful trainers without anything so messy and plebeian as a Pokémon journey will pay top dollar to send them to Pokémon Tech instead. Successfully completing each phase of the school’s program is considered an achievement equivalent to earning two Gym Badges, and graduation comes with automatic no-questions-asked membership in the Pokémon League. Kids who fall behind are subjected to distressingly rough ‘tutoring’ sessions by their classmates in order to keep them from disgracing the school, a system run by the strongest member of the beginner class, a Ground-type specialist named Giselle. Ash stumbles upon one of these sessions and rescues the supposedly underachieving student, a boy called Joe, who shows them around the school and asserts that his place there marks him as roughly Ash’s equal as a trainer, and that the school’s computer simulations predict he would defeat a Cerulean Gym trainer with little difficulty. Misty soon shows him the error of his thinking by effortlessly crushing his Weepinbell with her Starmie, ‘Grass beats Water’ be damned. Giselle shows up and gives Joe a condescending lecture on how a Pokémon’s level is just as important as type match-ups, and goes on to prove it by defeating Starmie with her Graveler. She mocks Ash’s ignorance and inexperience, provoking him and Pikachu into a battle against her Cubone to defend their ideals of Pokémon training based on friendship. Despite her confidence in Cubone’s immunity to electrical attacks, Pikachu prevails by spinning Cubone’s skull helmet backwards and blinding him, a tactic Giselle’s study of conventional Pokémon battling had left her completely unprepared for. Giselle is considerably more gracious in defeat than victory, and concedes that she is still a beginner as well, while Joe decides to start his career over with a Pokémon journey like Ash’s, since Pokémon Tech is not for him.

KidScribbles' (http://kidscribbles.deviantart.com/ - seriously, go look) gloriously tragic interpretation of the events of Mystery at the Lighthouse.

The last episode I want to look at today is Mystery at the Lighthouse. This episode starts with Ash capturing a Krabby, his seventh Pokémon, which of course vanishes back to Professor Oak’s lab. In order to check up on Krabby the group walks to the nearest building, a lighthouse, and request the use of the owner’s phone. The owner, a researcher named Bill, invites them inside via intercom and directs them to his phone. Once Ash has established that Krabby arrived safely, they meet Bill himself, a somewhat unhinged cosplayer who has trapped himself in a particularly Byzantine costume of a Kabuto, in order to… research its behaviour. Or something. Once freed, he shows them his current research project – he’s broadcasting a reply to the call of an unknown ocean Pokémon he recorded some time ago, inviting it to come to the lighthouse and meet him – and, wonder of wonders, tonight is the night! Bill hears his mystery Pokémon calling out to him, and the group sees its immense form emerge from the mist (it’s pretty clearly a Dragonite, a Pokémon Ash’s Pokédex seems to be familiar with in the very next episode, but it’s also ten times the size of a normal Dragonite, so it might be a weird subspecies). Unfortunately Team Rocket, lurking on the cliffs below the lighthouse, attack the Pokémon with bazookas (James, interestingly, is quite distressed; I think this is the first episode to portray him as markedly less immoral than Jessie), enraging it. It swats Team Rocket, smashes the top of the lighthouse, and then leaves in a huff. In the morning, Bill tells Ash and his friends that he feels privileged even to have seen the mysterious Pokémon and gives them a few words of encouragement. They set off for Vermillion City, and Bill spends the rest of the day quietly sobbing in his basement, having lost an opportunity he will probably never get again (or at least, this is what I imagine to have happened).

So, who’s picked up on the theme?

The theme these episodes have in common is different ways of living and interacting with Pokémon. The series focuses primarily, of course, on Ash’s relationship with his Pokémon, but as the opening scenes of Mystery at the Lighthouse point out, Ash’s training style and philosophy are actually quite unorthodox. Brock and Misty note that it’s entirely normal or even expected for full-time trainers to capture dozens of Pokémon before settling on a few they like (if they ever do at all). This is more or less how Gary’s campaign is described, and it’s implied that the other two Pallet trainers are doing the same thing, while Ash’s comparatively small roster has more in common with those of the numerous small-time trainers who stay in their hometowns (the interesting thing about this is that the one who behaves in a manner more consistent with a typical player of the Pokémon games is actually Gary, not Ash). As far as Ash is concerned, the most important thing for a trainer is having a strong emotional bond with your Pokémon, and if you get that right the rest is just bells and whistles (I swear there are moments when Ash thinks you can win a battle with the power of friendship). This isn’t to say that others are cruel or neglectful, but it’s hard to imagine Gary treating all or even many of his Pokémon with the affection Ash does, and Ash’s relationship with Pikachu regularly earns comment for their remarkable closeness. The first character in the series to demonstrate a comparable friendship with a Pokémon is, funnily enough, A.J., who is as inseparable from his Sandshrew as Ash will eventually become from Pikachu – they’re a lot more alike than Ash would probably admit. For Ash, though, being a Pokémon trainer is about exploring the world and making new friends, while for A.J. it’s about endurance and determination in the face of suffering and hardship, which is why he works his Pokémon so hard. The episode still portrays him sympathetically, though, since he genuinely cares for his Pokémon and works them hard because he wants them to be healthy and strong.

Contrast, for instance, Giselle. Although Giselle is clearly intended to be arrogant to the point of being obnoxious, and although she expects very high standards from her human friends, she appears to be at least tolerably kind to her Pokémon and believes that responsibility for defeat rests squarely on the shoulders of trainers, not Pokémon. A.J. would probably react to a loss by working the Pokémon harder, because his first responsibility as a trainer is, well, to train; Giselle would be more likely to react by studying harder herself and researching new tactics, because her first responsibility as a trainer is to command. Giselle’s general attitude implies a rather condescending view of Pokémon. They’re objects of study to her, more like underlings or even tools than partners, but she’s smart enough to know that mistreating them won’t get her anywhere. The implication is that she represents the philosophies of Pokémon Tech as a whole, which is why Joe decides to leave when he comes to admire Ash’s way of doing things more, but – Giselle’s own character flaws aside – the episode as a whole seems to view this outlook as just as much a viable alternative as A.J.’s, with the caveat that each trainer has to make his or her own way.

As this evocative depiction by Spectrolite (http://spectrolite.deviantart.com/) attests, Cubone are pretty complex Pokémon themselves in terms of the emotions they play to, but this, sadly, is just one of many things I don't have time to discuss today.

Finally, we have Bill, who as a researcher has no interest in owning Pokémon at all. For Ash, and for most other trainers, the first step in making friends with a Pokémon is to capture it, which seems like it would actually be a fairly counterintuitive notion for someone who isn’t a trainer. Ash automatically assumes that Bill wants to catch the mystery Pokémon he’s looking for, but Bill can’t think of any reason why he would and just wants to meet it. He’s like Giselle and the rest of Pokémon Tech in that his relationship with Pokémon has a huge intellectual component, but at the same time he’s very different in that they study Pokémon in order to make more effective use of them, while Bill actually seems to look up to Pokémon and admire them. His bizarre cosplay fixation, for instance, is part of an attempt to understand Pokémon from their own points of view. In short, someone like Giselle cultivates an intellectual approach to Pokémon so that they might benefit from association with humanity, while someone like Bill cultivates that same approach so that humanity might benefit from association with them. At the same time, Bill’s final speech at the episode’s conclusion makes clear that he regards trainers as vital to the continuation of Pokémon research. This is partly a statement of practicality – trainers are the ones who catch Pokémon, and often the ones who discover new species as they explore – but also an assertion of the importance of embracing different ideas and worldviews (a theme which, years later, was wholeheartedly taken up by Black and White).

Wow, this was a long entry. Okay, quick summary: because Ash is the main character of the anime, it’s easy to forget that his experience of Pokémon is in fact an atypical one. These episodes, among others, show that the relationship between Pokémon and humanity is actually a far more complex one than Ash’s rather idealistic interpretation might suggest. This is another of those recurring themes that I’m probably going to comment on more as I move through the series – as well as something I’d like to see more of in the games!