Pokemon S01E27-28 Review: Project Runway & Hypno's Lullaby

Pokemon, Season 1, Episode 27: Hypno's Naptime / Hypno and Pokemon Regression; Episode 28: Pokemon Fashion Flash / Vulpix Breeder Showdown

A very bland filler episode, even by the standards of 'hey, we gotta fill an episode quota" segment. As our heroes go into the stupidly named YoYoYo Town (HopHopHop Town in the dub), we're quickly thrown into the plot of the week, which is... missing children all over town! As our heroes meet a despairing mother and the officer Jenny of the town, our heroes end up getting roped into helping to solve the mystery, with Ash having flashbacks to his own mother, and Brock just really wanting to get into Jenny's short skirt. While investigating, our heroes find out that the Pokemon in the Pokemon Center are all lethargic, even Magikarp, who the cast point out that the most defining thing about Magikarp should be its liveliness.

Following the handy-dandy sleep wave sensor that Jenny apparently has but doesn't mention during the course of the investigation, our heroes track the sleep waves to a mansion on top of a big building, which is apparently the anime's version of the Pokemon Fan Club, filled with seemingly rich and affluent people, who are gathering around a Drowzee and Hypno.

Turns out that three days ago (which was when all the incidents started to happen), one of their two Drowzees evolved into Hypno, and it's... it's actually an interesting thing that would make sense to happen in a world with these fantastic monsters. The Pokemon Fan Club use Hypno to help cure their insomnia, substituting sleeping pills, but since Hypno's hypnosis is meant to be used on Pokemon, Brock theorizes that changing wavelengths and using Hypno's attack so much have caused the side-effects that led to all the Pokemon nearby becoming drowsy, and the children to go missing.

Misty gets to become a guinea pig, and turns out that all of the children, like the hypnotized Misty, have been hypnotized into acting as Pokemon. Why this particular effect only manifests in Misty and the kids, and not the fan club members, the episode never explains. They find the missing children in the city's park, which Officer Jenny never thought to look for, and somehow they figure out that Drowzee can cancel out the hypnotism, which... I'm not sure why? It works on Misty, though, but when our heroes bring Drowzee out, Team Rocket attacks. In the comedic highlight of the episode, the dub has Team Rocket note that they are using silly tricks (like getting Hypno to hypnotize himself with a mirror) because they had to fill up the half-hour time quota. We get an un-exciting battle with Pidgeotto getting an increasingly-rare appearance to blow away Team Rocket, and all the kids and Pokemon are returned to normal by Drowzee.

The final scene is Psyduck, still having a headache, and Brock's attempt to impress Nurse Joy ends up with them bringing Psyduck along for the ride. After discovering that Psyduck always has a headache thanks to the pokedex, Brock and Misty argue who should look after Psyduck (apparently it's just a wild Psyduck in the Pokemon Center?) and Misty's pokeball rolls towards Psyduck... who pops into the pokeball. Hooray! I love Psyduck. At least there's something good that we got out of this episode. It's otherwise easily one of the more boring ones we've seen so far.

I think we're about due for a bunch of pretty bland episodes, if memory serves right. Sure, this episode ends with one of our team members capturing a Pokemon, and Vulpix certainly has a bigger role in this episode than Psyduck did in his debut one, but... I dunno. This episode was one I was never a huge fan of as a kid, and even less of a fan now watching it. It's supposed to be Brock's focus episode as he wants to look for a mentor to learn pokemon breeding under, which, prior to actually introducing the breeding mechanic in the next series of games, tended to be interpreted more as general pokemon care.

And the huge, huge conflict between the ally-of-the-week, renowned breeder Yuki (Suzie in the dub) and Team Rocket's little sham operation, is whether inner beauty is more important, or gaudy, flashy makeup. And... and it leans so heavily on the former and ends up feeling particularly preachy. The moral really doesn't end up being supported particularly well by the episode itself, though. Yes, Team Rocket's wacky makeovers involves random clown makeup and shaving two of three Dodrio heads bald and stuff, but other than the Dodrio and Raichu in the first scene featuring them, Team Rocket's customers seem to be pretty happy with the work they got. Hell, even Misty is happy with the makeover they gave her. More interestingly, James and Jessie enjoyed the shit out of hamming things up and making the world beautiful.

Meanwhile, for all the talk that the episode has about 'inner beauty', the episode really doesn't give us any real conclusion to Misty and Ash constantly mocking poor Psyduck for looking dumb (he actually had the sense to call in backup in this episode, good duckie!), and the spotlight pokemon that is supposed to represent the breeding techniques to exemplify inner beauty, Vulpix... was apparently a long-time champion of Pokemon beauty competitions and stuff.

Throw in the fact that it's pretty clear that Brock's motivations is less about learning about being a breeder but more with breeding with Yuki (if you know what I mean), and that the only reason Team Rocket's beauty shop ends up being irredeemable evil is the random villain rant that Jessie pulls spouts.... honestly, if Meowth and Jessie wasn't so eager to jump into a villain rant, Team Rocket's little makeup salon wouldn't have looked particularly bad. It's one of those episodes where the thing Team Rocket is doing ends up being evil only because you slap on "...and then we steal all their pokemon!" at the end of the master plan.

And then, throw in the fact that the show never really gives us any actual answer why 'inner beauty' is better than flashy makeup... yeah, sure, Koffing and Ekans trip on their gaudy dress, but we've established that not all Pokemon are here to battle. And, yeah, the clown makeup and everything tends to look pretty silly, but what if the Pokemon themselves enjoy it? I dunno. The fact that Vulpix herself is a pokemon praised for its external beauty throughout the episode, but ends up being the one that shows inner beauty > outer beauty is a completely bizarre sequence to me. Honestly, considering how utterly out of place Psyduck's first psychic powers being unleashed ended up being, it's a real sign of poor planning that they didn't have Psyduck show that, hey, even a doofy dumb waddling duck can be beautiful on the inside.

Again, a competently-written episode trying to actually explore this topic would focus more on Psyduck as the doofy-looking one. Hell, Misty was even trying to give Psyduck an exterior makeover! But any real attempt at exploring it ends up getting shrugged off because Vulpix is super powerful, you guys, it can launch Fire Spin! The episode isn't entirely unenjoyable, because Team Rocket's antics are hilarious in this one... but the episode as a whole is a bland mess. Vulpix herself is handed over to Brock without any real logical reason, and I'm not sure why Yuki jumps from "inner beauty! Appreciate your pokemon!" to "well, take care of my prized fire fox because she's friendly with you."

Pokemon Index:

• Episode 27:
• Pokemon: Pikachu, Charmander, Psyduck, Magikarp, Oddish, Cubone, Meowth, Drowzee, Hypno, Staryu, Pidgeotto
• Humans: Brock, Ash, Misty, Officer Jenny, Nurse Joy, Jessie, James
• Episode 28:
• Pokemon: Pikachu, Squirtle, Charmander, Bulbasaur, Caterpie, Bellsprout, Staryu, Koffing, Ekans, Raichu, Dodrio, Meowth, Chansey, Vulpix, Psyduck, Venonat, Pidgey, Weepinbell, Oddish, Nidoran Male, Butterfree, Rattata, Slowbro, Sandshrew, Geodude, Paras, Cubone, 
• Humans: Misty, Brock, Ash, Jessie, James

Assorted Notes: 

• So why didn't Meowth get sleepy like all of the other Pokemon outside of Pokeballs?
• How incompetent is officer Jenny (and all of the parents) for not even looking into a park that's apparently smack dab in the middle of the city? 
• Boy, it's really fortunate that the only water Pokemon that Hypno hypnotized was a Magikarp who splashes around in puddles, and not some other species that would actually try and swim in the nearby lake, huh?
• It's pretty weird, huh? Celadon City is one of the bigger cities in the original games, but we basically breeze past it with the single Erika gym fight. Like, I don't expect them to adapt every single thing from the games (this isn't the Adventures/Special manga, after all), but really? This episode could've easily been set in another part of the city, but nope, got to make up the minimal-effort Yoyoyo Town. 
• The Pokemon Center has a random bizarre UFO stapled to the roof, which I thought was weird as shit. 
• It is very, very ironic, huh, that this episode basically condemns putting accessories on Pokemon as basically being equivalent of being a negligent parent, but subsequent games (and anime episodes adapting those games), particularly Generation IV and V, would actually have their Pokemon Contests involve heavy dress-up and selecting accessories for your Pokemon. Even one of the newer games, the Let's Go series, has you be able to customize your Pikachu or Eevee with clothes!
• Pokemon massage would actually be introduced in the Generation II games as a service you could pay to make your Pokemon's happiness increase.
• The Japanese version has a brand-new ending song, Nyarth no Uta (Meowth's Song), which, while isn't my favourite, is way more memorable than the 151 one. 
• James and Jessie's flamboyant costumes aren't just "lol crossdressing", but a reference to the two main characters of the well-known shojo manga The Rose of Versailles, which prominently featured a woman being 'raised as a man'. 
• The recurring flamboyant man in this episode is listed as okama-san in guidebooks, which (to non One Piece viewers) is a relatively broad term that refers to either a male homosexual, a male transvestite or some variation of a not-straight man. 
• Dub Changes: [Ep. 27]
• Even the dub team apparently realize how banal this episode is, with Team Rocket cracking several jokes about "filling the half-hour" and "time constraints". 
• Brock notes that the children and Misty are affected with what appears to be a variation of atavistic regression, called Pokemon Regression. The dub changes this to a very charmingly dumb-sounding "Pokemonitis"
• Dub Changes: [Ep. 28]
• James and Jessie call themselves "Mademoiselle Musashi" and " Comment allez-vous Kojirone" in the original, whereas the dub just have the voice actors half-ass a French accent. Yes, I know 'comment allez-vous' isn't proper French, but hey.