Pokemon, Season 1, Episode 7: The Water Flowers of Cerulean City
The episode is Ash's second gym battle, and it's... problematic, I think, but not in the way that the Pewter City gym is handled. The whole Brock/Muno storyline is just problematic from a writing standpoint, whereas you can just pile everything in this episode to "Misty's sisters are Grade-A bitches". Which, at least, is partly intentional. The episode starts off with Misty trying to dissuade their little group from going to Cerulean City, trying to scare them off by saying that it's haunted, and then making an alternative that they should go to Vermilion City and its huge cruise liners instead, but Ash has a one-track mind.
In a brief scene of some competence, Team Rocket steals a huge machine, and both Ash and Brock see the aftermath with a brief scene with Officer Jenny. It's interesting that Brock tries to flirt with Jenny, but in a normal and subdued way, not in the full-on horndog way that he would be later in the series. I do like that Ash remembers episode 2, and just pulls out the Pokedex to shut this particularly paranoid Jenny down.
We also get a brief conversation between Ash and Brock, with Brock noting that he has no idea about who the gym leaders of Cerulean City are... but he knows all their special moves. Somehow. I'm not sure how you manage to do that, Brock. And for all of Ash's talk about wanting to win with his own power back in Pewter City, he nags Brock to tell him about all of the Cerulean leaders' secret moves, which Brock refuses to do on his pride as a former gym leader. It's... it's weird. Brock then removes himself for the rest of the episode, going off alone to do... things. Things that are never actually specified by the episode, so that's a lazy bit of writing, there.
We then get an extended scene of Ash going into the gym, which is... apparently a stage where people are crowded to see three sisters perform water gymnastic dance things. This gym is also apparently a huge aquarium (with non-Pokemon fish, what heresy is this?). Ash then gets to meet the three Cerulean sisters and... they're kinda unpleasant people. Not outright mocking or dismissive, and I'm sure they're a fair bit more unlikable in the dub, but they quickly dismiss Ash until he reveals that he's a trainer from Pallet Town.
And then they tell Ash that, eh, they don't want to fight, all their Pokemon are in the Pokemon Center because they were wiped out by Pallet Town trainers... and they apparently have so little respect and motivation in their job that they just basically tell Ash to take the badge and leave. Because that's apparently how they roll, instead of telling Ash to come back in a day or two or something.
And then Misty shows up! She reveals that she's the youngest sister of the Cerulean siblings, and then her sisters immediately take to basically putting her down. They call her out on returning back home after leaving to 'become a great trainer', calls her a failure, calls her not as pretty as them, and then calls out her poor taste in men. Wow, they're bitches, huh? I really wish Misty showed up five minutes earlier, so she can call out her sisters on apparently spending the last week losing so much that they lost the will to fight or something.
Ash and Misty's gym battle begins, because apparently... they can just have substitute gym leaders or something, I guess? Pikachu, adorably, doesn't want to fight with Misty, and I love that little voice-acting and animation of Pikachu refusing to go. The 2-v-2 match starts with Butterfree against Staryu (HYAH!), and it's... it's pretty neat? The fight is kind of repetitive, honestly, with Staryu just shooting water guns, Butterfree trying to use powder attacks like stun spore and sleep powder, while Staryu "washing them away" with water. Butterfree falls into the water and panics like any insect that falls into the water, leading into the second round of the battle -- Starmie versus Pidgeotto. The two's fight plays out somewhat similarly, honestly, until Pidgeotto uses a gust to knock Starmie to a wall.
And then Team Rocket shows up with a goddamn tank, and starts draining water from the pool with the vacuum machine they stole earlier in the episode, reasoning that draining the water from the pool will make all the water-type Pokemon in the gym weak and be unable to fight. Great plan, except, y'know, the Cerluean sisters only have a Seel. The Team Rocket fight is actually sort of predictable -- Pikachu gets sucked in, uses Thunderbolt, Team Rocket gets sent blasting off again, and Ash goes action hero and shuts off the machine.
It's honestly a bit of a distraction and a bit of an anticlimactic end to the gym fight, and I can see why they usually find a reason to write Team Rocket out of most gym leader battle episodes. But Ash wins the Cascade Badge anyway, because the sisters talk about how "oh, if Ash used Pikachu from the start, he would've won". Honestly, that's... that's the sort of "if" reasoning that's pretty bullshit. "Oh, if Misty had borrowed Brock's Onix, she would've won". "Oh, if Misty had used Starmie's psychic attacks she would've won". I dunno. The ending always felt anticlimactic to me, and the fact that Ash quickly just lords over his victory over Misty -- and that Misty's sisters continue to put her down even as they regroup with Brock and leave -- is a pretty unsatisfying end to this episode.
Man, is Ash the only character in this world with a decent family?
And then Misty shows up! She reveals that she's the youngest sister of the Cerulean siblings, and then her sisters immediately take to basically putting her down. They call her out on returning back home after leaving to 'become a great trainer', calls her a failure, calls her not as pretty as them, and then calls out her poor taste in men. Wow, they're bitches, huh? I really wish Misty showed up five minutes earlier, so she can call out her sisters on apparently spending the last week losing so much that they lost the will to fight or something.
Ash and Misty's gym battle begins, because apparently... they can just have substitute gym leaders or something, I guess? Pikachu, adorably, doesn't want to fight with Misty, and I love that little voice-acting and animation of Pikachu refusing to go. The 2-v-2 match starts with Butterfree against Staryu (HYAH!), and it's... it's pretty neat? The fight is kind of repetitive, honestly, with Staryu just shooting water guns, Butterfree trying to use powder attacks like stun spore and sleep powder, while Staryu "washing them away" with water. Butterfree falls into the water and panics like any insect that falls into the water, leading into the second round of the battle -- Starmie versus Pidgeotto. The two's fight plays out somewhat similarly, honestly, until Pidgeotto uses a gust to knock Starmie to a wall.
And then Team Rocket shows up with a goddamn tank, and starts draining water from the pool with the vacuum machine they stole earlier in the episode, reasoning that draining the water from the pool will make all the water-type Pokemon in the gym weak and be unable to fight. Great plan, except, y'know, the Cerluean sisters only have a Seel. The Team Rocket fight is actually sort of predictable -- Pikachu gets sucked in, uses Thunderbolt, Team Rocket gets sent blasting off again, and Ash goes action hero and shuts off the machine.
It's honestly a bit of a distraction and a bit of an anticlimactic end to the gym fight, and I can see why they usually find a reason to write Team Rocket out of most gym leader battle episodes. But Ash wins the Cascade Badge anyway, because the sisters talk about how "oh, if Ash used Pikachu from the start, he would've won". Honestly, that's... that's the sort of "if" reasoning that's pretty bullshit. "Oh, if Misty had borrowed Brock's Onix, she would've won". "Oh, if Misty had used Starmie's psychic attacks she would've won". I dunno. The ending always felt anticlimactic to me, and the fact that Ash quickly just lords over his victory over Misty -- and that Misty's sisters continue to put her down even as they regroup with Brock and leave -- is a pretty unsatisfying end to this episode.
Man, is Ash the only character in this world with a decent family?
Pokemon Index:
- Pokemon: Pikachu, Meowth, Goldeen, Seel, Butterfree, Staryu, Starmie
- Humans: Brock, Ash, Misty, James, Jesse, Officer Jenny, the Cerulean Sisters,
Other Notes:
- The Cerulean gym aquarium features non-Pokemon fish! One of the few times that real-world animals actually show up in the Pokemon anime instead of their Pokemon counterparts.
- Cerulean's Jenny claims to be the sister-in-law of Viridian's Jenny... and... sisters-in-law don't really have any sort of genetic connection unless we're going full-on Game of Thrones.
- I don't point it out every time, but the background music in the opening scene for this episode is the Cerulean City theme from the games and I'm a big fan.
- I do love the brief bit of Brock talking about laundry early on in the episode. He is such a parent.
- Staryu goes HYAH! like a deeper-voiced Bruce Lee, but Starmie goes HAa-aah like it's just so tired of the world.
- Dub Changes:
- In the Japanese version, the Pokedex entry for Staryu identifies it as a "hermaphrodite", and how it can have a relationship with either male and female Pokemon. Ash remarks that this is strange, while Misty tells him it doesn't matter who someone falls in love with. Surprisingly progressive, actually. The English dub removes all references to gender, and instead makes a generic entry about Staryu's gemstone.
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