Pokemon S01E20 Review: Who You Gonna Call?

Pokemon, Season 1, Episode 20: The Ghost of Maiden's Peak / The Ghost Pokemon and the Summer Festival

It's so fun to come back from reviewing the live-action Detective Pikachu movie straight to a 20-year-old episode of Pokemon!

Anyway, yeah, this episode kind of freaked me out a fair bit as a kid, mostly because it features ghosts! And it's not just Gastly either, but also an actual straight-up ghost lady. Never really been one for horror myself. Of course, looking back at this episode now it's just a whole ton of silliness, but it did creep the shit out of me.

So our heroes and villains arrive on a town that's having an annual festival, and we're quickly introduced to an old fortune teller that tells our heroes about the legend of Maiden's Peak, where 2000 years ago, a woman waited for her lover who went out to war but never returned. This has apparently caused her to spirit away men... and we get to see Brock and James seeing the pretty lady and be mystified. I guess Ash's just not at that age yet?

In a particularly fun remix of the games' ominous Lavender City theme, we get James and Brock basically be spirited away in the night, and when Jessie, Ash, Misty and Meowth go look for their respective partners, they find the two of them near a temple, all confused and seemingly 'possessed by a ghost'. This requires shock therapy from Pikachu to return them back to sanity. I do love the sequence where Jessie uses the Team Rocket motto to basically get James to answer.

The mysterious fortune teller uses some ritual seals, charging our heroes some money to stick them onto Brock and James, but the o-fuda doesn't work when the ghost lady swoops in with a massive gust of otherworldly wind, causing a very willing Brock and a completely-terrified-and-pissing-his-pants James to get levitated away by the ghost.

In a pretty badass scene, Jessie pulls out a bazooka and BAZOOKAS THE GHOST, causing her to drop James. The ghost summons a whole swarm of floating spectral skulls, and everyone panics until Ash has the bright idea of pulling out the Pokedex to try and identify the ghost. Turns out that the ghost lady is actually a Gastly... who then begins to speak with a male voice, telling them that he's not only the ghost lady, but also the fortune teller hag.

We get a pretty cool sequence of Gastly basically turning into everyone's fear with Hypnosis, turning into a mousetrap to attack Pikachu, a catnip ball to disable Meowth, a real-life mongoose (!) to spook Ekans, a mongoose with a gas mask against Koffing, a fire extinguisher against Charmander, and a fused version of the final evolutions of Bulbasaur and Squirtle to scare them.

Misty ends up pulling out a goddamn cross (as well as garlic, stake and hammer) against Gastly, in a scene I'm surprised wasn't censored in the dub. After Gastly's surprised "I'm not Dracula!" yell, turns out that they survived all the way to dawn, and Gastly's affected by the sunlight, disappearing and telling them that they should remember the ghost of Maiden's Peak.

And as our heroes enjoy the festival, we get a closing scene of Gastly... actually talking to the real ghost, comparing this annual haunting to a part-time job, which is... it's honestly kind of bizarre, but Gastly tells the real ghost that he's helping her keep her legend alive. It's... it's all a bunch of fun creepiness. Gastly himself is a pretty fun, menacing presence in both Japanese and English versions, with great voice acting that really sell that this is a playful but menacing entity. We get some genuinely fun spooky bits with what Gastly is doing as a ghost before he reveals his true identity as a Pokemon. A pretty fun spooky episode, I feel.

Pokemon Index:

• Pokemon: Gastly, Pikachu, Meowth, Ekans, Koffing, Charmander, Squirtle, Bulbasaur, Venusaur vision, Blastoise vision, "Venustoise" vision
• Humans: The Ghost, Ash, Misty, Brock, Jessie, James, Officer Jenny, Nurse Joy

Assorted Notes:

• Gastly's illusion has him turn into a real-world mongoose, which was definitely confusing for me as a kid. The English dub even has him go "mongoose, mongoose!", which I thought was funny. 
• Gastly also has Venusaur and Blastoise perform the Dragon Ball fusion dance to turn into "Venustoise", or in the Japanese, "Fushigix".
• This episode has Nurse Joy talk about a curfew where the doors in the Pokemon Center close down with metal bars and shit. Is it just in this haunted town, or is there a curfew throughout the entire region? 
• I personally never cared either way, but this episode tends to be where fans point to as an argument that James is not gay and just flamboyant. 
• Dub Edits:
• In a particularly extensive bit of editing, the 5-yen coin that James finds on the ground gets changed into a US penny.
• In the original Japanese, Brock being in a trance while he was seemingly willingly spirited away by Gastly is a bit more obvious when he goes "eh? You guys?", whereas the dub has Brock basically being willing to go with the pretty lady throughout the entire scene.