Pokemon S01E15-16 Review: Don't Be Mean To Fishies

Pokemon, Season 1, Episode 15: Battle Aboard the St. Anne; Episode 16: Pokemon Shipwreck

The Pokemon series as a whole doesn't really have a lot of obvious two-parters, but this one is easy to lump together. I also don't have a whole ton to say about either of them, too, so it's pretty neat! Our heroes start off this particular two-parter by looking at the massive cruise ships docked in Vermilion Harbor, with a brief fantasy of Misty in a bikini (as you do) before talking about how harsh reality is since they ain't got no cash. Of course, suddenly James and Jessie suddenly show up in full ganguro make-up (fake tans, bright hair, white lipsticks) and dressed as schoolgirls. Yes, even James -- and honestly, while I didn't get it at the time, it's this little habit as well as his flamboyant voice that got most of the dub-watching fandom basically noting that James is... well, he's certainly not straight.

It's still a pretty fun scene, with Jessie trying to basically foist a bunch of S.S. St. Anne tickets on them, while all James says is CHOOOOO! Translated quite well in the dub as "cooool!" With our heroes going up the ship and marveling at their good luck, James makes a brief comment at what a pretty girl he makes, before they make their report to their big scary boss. It's the first time we've seen Giovanni, Boss of Team Rocket, who's in shadow and looks all ominous and stuff, complete with a spiffy orange suit. He's cool and sounds far, far more competent than his colourful underlings, especially with the talk about how he had set up this St. Anne party to steal the attendants' Pokemon. Giovanni has also apparently replaced Meowth as his 'pet' with a Persian, a fact that shocks poor, poor Meowth to the core.

The party itself is mostly static shots, with a few little focuses here and there. I am curious, though, to note that most of the Pokemon we see (Starmie, Charmander, Squirtle) are those that have previously been prominently featured in the show, so is there like a limit on character models they are able to use at this point in production? In any case, though, Ash witnesses a gentleman fight with a Raticate, and then fights him with his own Butterfree, leading to a draw.

As this goes on, we get a fun scene where James and Jessie are acting as waiters, and then james gets suckered into buying a Magikarp by a swindler-looking dude that tells James that, hey, Magikarp will lay a lot of eggs, and you can sell all those eggs, and poor James just gets suckered into buying Magikarp and a whole kit of fish care goods. We check in at them with Jessie and Meowth whacking James in the head for being a fucking moron.

Meanwhile, the gentleman asks Ash if he's perhaps willing to trade Pokemon -- Ash's Butterfree for the Raticate. It's kind of funny at how Brock basically goes into hubba-hubba mode at seeing the gentleman's lady friend and the thought of "fostering friendship" through trading, so Ash, with the a-okay of the closest thing in that place to a role model, basically agrees to the trade, complete with a fancy machine. And... and I know Ash's kind of an idiot most of the time, but the one thing he's been consistent at is being a good friend and trainer, so this bit honestly always felt unnatural and done just so that we could have the whole moral of "trading with strangers is bad, yo". Ash then gets all morose and thinks if the other dude will take good care of Butterfree or just trade it to another person since he's so willing to trade away his other Pokemon.

Of course, TEAM ROCKET ATTACKS! And it's not just the main trio either, it's a whole army of Rocket Grunts equipped with backpack vacuum machines! It's actually one of the pretty rare cases of seeing anything more of this mafia organization than the main Rocket trio, so it's neat! Their vacuum cleaner backpacks are strong enough to suck up everyone's pokeballs, and only pokeballs. Nothing else.

Of course, the major flaw in robbing a gathering of Pokemon trainers is that... you're robbing a gathering of people who have fire lizards and rock snakes literally latched onto their belts. In a show with a larger budget, like later seasons of Pokemon, you'd probably have the grunts call out their own Pokemon, but here they just get absolutely beaten the shit up by the army of Pokemon. It's a shame that the limited budget is painfully clear in this episode, because most of the attacks are just "have ten of the same species pile up as a pyramid and blow away grunts". Hell, even the Pikachu segment uses multiple reused animation from episode two.

Still, the team attacks do serve for a particularly important plot point, which is Ash calling out Butterfree and sending out Raticate, realizing with full force that one of his buddies have been traded away. Ash ends up finding the gentleman, who... who pretty graciously actually agrees to trade back. Good thing that dude's reasonable!

Anyway, while Team Rocket's operatives are all blown away, the St. Anne has been accidentally steered into a bad patch of the sea. And while this is intercut with Ash's trading segment, the captain of the St. Anne is a hilariously bad captain, telling everyone that, oh, everything is totally going to be fine, just as he lowers a life raft with only him on board, and later on going on about how "hey, anyone who's not on a life raft, please sound off!". It's kind of curious, though. I don't know enough about sailing to know if it's logical or not, but since the St. Anne wasn't punctured like the Titanic, and that it's just bad weather that's causing the danger, wouldn't a bunch of rubber dinghies be more dangerous than the ship? I dunno.

Whatever the case, the rocking of the boat as Ash chases around Butterfree's pokeball while it tumbles about, as well as Team Rocket chasing Magikarp's pokeball, ends up getting knocked out as the St. Anne flips backwards and sinks down into the ocean. Episode 15 is pretty good, actually! It manages to tie in the whole "Team Rocket attacks the ship" plot with Ash's whole trading regret sequence relatively well, and other than some animation budget issues, I do feel that content-wise this episode's pretty well-done.

Episode 16 starts off with... a pretty morbid scene of Officer Jenny throwing flowers into the ocean of where the St. Anne sunk, listing off the names of the dead, whose lives burned bright and all that. Of course, that's not the case -- the St. Anne's still intact, albeit balancing precariously upside-down above a bottomless ocean trench. We get to see both Ash and Team Rocket wake up, all confused (Team Rocket has a swimsuit suntan fantasy too), before they realize that they are the wrong way up. It's a pretty cool bit of setting, too, walking on an upside-down ship. The animators probably loved it too, considering how most of the work for this bit would just be mostly backgrounds.

Of course, Jessie and James don't take the time to listen to Meowth properly explain their situation, and Jessie calls out Ekans to unleash some Acid to open out a hole in the ship... and, of course, this causes the sea water to flood in. Ash, Misty and Brock are faring a lot better, with Brock pointing out the flaws of them actually swimming down to get out of the ship. The imaginary spot of Ash swimming down and running out of air while trying to open a locked door is pretty scary!

Misty sends out Goldeen to look for something, and she finds a bunch of blocked exits... and Team Rocket, who very nearly suffer the same fate as imaginary Ash! Our heroes get a brief jumpscare when Goldeen brings up the waterlogged Team Rocket to the stairwell that they are waiting from, and Team Rocket instantly jump up, ready to rumble. But the added weight of half a dozen Pokemon end up causing the ship to shake and lose its balance, and we get a comedic bit of everyone trying to balance themselves, with the entire cast of Pokemon being forced to run to one side of the ship or the other, until Misty calls everyone to stop being idiots and recall their Pokemon. Misty forces everyone to shake hands and make up... except for Pikachu, who is a dick and zaps Meowth.

Using Misty's knowledge of building model ships, she directs them to a place where the hull should be the most thin (wait, what? Does model ships tell you that?). There's a couple of sequences where they have to use their Pokemon for help, and at one point Brock calls out Onix to form stairs, and I call bullshit on six tiny dog-sized Pokemon causing the ship to rattle, but a gigantic rock snake is a-okay. We do get a bit of an extended bit of Bulbasaur helping our heroes passing a burning room and James being a drama queen. That was entertaining.

They reach the spot Misty knows is thinnest, and Ash calls out Charmander to burn through the ceiling and... they really should've prepared water Pokemon before they did it, huh? Not just because our heroes don't know that Team Rocket doesn't have any, but because, well, it's honestly stupid for them not to be prepared before they pull the plug. Our heroes zip out with the aid of Squirtle and Misty's party of water Pokemon, but Team Rocket panics because they don't have any... until James remembers that he has the seemingly-useless Magikarp! He acts like a big ham and the saviour of the group, until... until they realize that Magikarp can't swim, it can only splash!

St. Anne finally falls to the depths of the ocean, while our heroes manage to apparently cobble a raft together. Brock talks about the legend of Noah (!) and Ash sends out Pidgeotto to scout out for land. Instead, Pidgeotto finds Team Rocket... apparently Magikarp is enough to float them out of the depths of the ocean.

In a surprisingly dark (but hilarious) bit of comedy, the hero trio are about to 'bury' Team Rocket in the sea, praying for them (even Pikachu!) and pushes them off the raft before they wake up and everyone shouts "AAAA ZOMBIE". Meowth actually gets pushed into the water and has to scramble on-board, leading to a hilarious scene where Pikachu stares angrily and snaps his fingers. Pikachu's been increasingly just a cute good guy, but I really, really love moments like this where we're reminded that the character was originally an ass.

After sleeping for a night, everyone gets super hungry in the next day, and we get a sequence of Ash, Brock, Jessie and James imagining all sorts of seafood that they could turn poor, splashing-on-the-raft Magikarp could become. But when Meowth sinks his teeth into Magikarp he breaks them, and Misty informs everyone that Magikarp is just scales and bones, there isn't even any meat. This enrages James so much that he kicks Magikarp overboard, mocking him and telling him that he's worthless, and that he doesn't want him anymore.

As Magikarp karp-karps helplessly in the water... it evolves! Into GYARADOS! And this is always a pretty cool scene to me, where the seemingly useless Magikarp straight-up turns into a giant draconic sea serpent. James is no longer the thing's master, though, and Misty quickly plans an escape by sending her water team to pull the raft (why didn't she do it earlier?) but then Gyarados summons a bunch of other Gyarados-es from the sea, where they swim around together in a circle. Misty recognizes it as the bane of sailors, Gyarados's Dragon Rage... and this dance unleashes a gigantic waterspout that wrecks our heroes' boat and sends everyone flying into the air, which is another splendid cliffhanger! Episode 15 is death by sinking ship, episode 16 is death by twister... what next?

Well, we're going to have a couple of episodes off of the established game-based map of Pokemon, thanks to this particular detour. My feelings on the upcoming episodes is mostly a shoulder shrug, but these two are actually two of my favourites in the early season. Not much else to say... love the setting of episode 16, and especially the Magikarp moment. Pretty good stuff, I must say. 

Pokemon Index:

• Episode 15:
• Pokemon: Pikachu, Meowth, Persian, Oddish, Charmander, Squirtle, Rattata, Starmie, Raticate, Magikarp, Pidgey, Caterpie, Rattata, Geodude, Weepinbell, Pidgeotto
• Humans: Misty, Ash, Brock, James, Jessie, Giovanni
• Episode 16:
• Pokemon: Pikachu, Meowth, Ekans, Goldeen, Koffing, Bulbasaur, Charmander, Squirtle, Geodude, Onix, Starmie, Magikarp, Pidgeotto, Gyarados, Staryu
• Humans: Officer Jenny, Ash, Misty, Brock, Jessie, James

Assorted Notes: 

• When our heroes are stuck in the S.S. Anne, Ash looks out of the window and sees a bunch of non-Pokemon fishes swim about. Again, even more moments of random non-Pokemon animals appearing in early episodes. 
• Presumably to put in the whole 'registered to this trainer' part of the traded Pokemon, you need the machine to officiate it? We'll see multiple instances of Pokemon in the future either just being given to people, traded or released without the machine, so...
• In a nice bit of foreshadowing, Misty did make a big fuss about cruise ships in Vermilion City when trying to avoid going to Cerulean. Sure, St. Anne is from the games, but it's still a nice touch.
• Magikarp's evolution to Gyarados is the first appearance (unless I'm missing something) of how evolution is going to be portrayed from this point onwards, which is just the Pokemon being enveloped with white light, and just morphing into its new form. 
• So how did Jenny know about Jessie and James' names? Are they registered as waiters on the ship or something? But then no one ever made any fuss about the rest of the Rocket Grunts...
• For all of Ash's talk about respecting Pokemon rules back in Viridian Forest, he throws out three Pokemon at once when fighting Team Rocket. Ash really is trying to overcompensate with numbers, really. 
• The Games Don't Work Like That!
• I'm not going to note every single time this happens, since there's a lot of these cases, but Raticate is unable to use Jump Kick in the games ever, whereas Starmie is told to use "Spinning Tackle", a move that doesn't exist in the games. 
• Dub Changes:
• In an interesting aversion, the ship retains its Japanese name of St. Anne in the dub, as opposed to taking its game name, S.S. Anne. 
• The dub tends to give Giovanni's voice a metallic filter to make him a bit more menacing, which is a pretty welcome little addition. 
• The dub has James call Jessie "Jessica" when he panics in the engine room, implying that it's her full name. Other than Jessie disguising herself as Jessica several times, I'm pretty sure this is something that's eventually ignored by the dub. 
• Multiple instances of the characters noting that they don't want to die, or that they will die, is removed in the dub... although the scenes aren't actually altered. 
• Brock outright recalls the biblical story of Noah and his ark in the Japanese version, whereas in the English dub he tells it without naming the people in the story. On the other hand, the dub throws in multiple references to the Titanic, which was not present in the original Japanese.