Pokemon S01E30 Review: Magnet Stalker

Pokemon, Season 1, Episode 30: Sparks Fly For Magnemite / Do Magnemite Dream of Electric Mice?

So we get another filler episode that I really, really liked as a kid. The plot of this episode is honestly pretty nonsensical, but the atmosphere of Gunju/Gringy City has always enamoured me as a kid, from the shadowy, abandoned town, the smog-filled skies and when our heroes eventually make it into the pretty creepy looking factory and getting scared shitless of the bizarre Magnemite and later the Grimer/Muk swarm. I dunno... as a kid, I really love works of fiction that are set in these sort of industry-gone-bad settings. The fact that this episode features a couple of my favourite Pokemon, the Magnemite and Grimer lines, is also a huge bonus.

The actual plot for Magnemite is... it's a bizarre one where the concept is pretty interesting, but the execution is very lukewarm. Pikachu is sick, and apparently electric Pokemon turn into electromagnets that discharge electricity randomly when they're sick. It's a fun little detail for world-building, and this ends up causing Pikachu to get stalked by a Magnemite, who's portrayed as ominous and creepy in the early parts of the episode. I do also like how Brock compares Pikachu's huge electric charge as being comparable to hormones or pheromones in less fantastical creatures.

The villains of the week are a swarm (a pack? A herd? A gloop?) of Grimer that clog up the resident factory, shutting down the local pokemon center and trapping the staff of the factory. Because Officer Jenny is honestly kind of incompetent, our heroes go into the factory and get chased around by the Grimer herd and their Muk boss. Love the animation for the Grimers, too -- they really do end up feeling like walking piles of gloopy sludge.

And as our heroes are literally up against the wall, in a particularly hilariously bad moment of "the script writers really didn't give a shit", everyone acts like the sick Pikachu is the only Pokemon there that can fight against the Grimer swarm. Not any of Ash's other four Pokemon, not Misty's, not Brock's. It's honestly quite lazy writing, and an off-hand "all our other Pokemon are injured" would be easy to implement, but still lazy. Of course, deus ex Magneton shows up as Magnemite summons a gigantic swarm of Magnetons to zap the Grimer swarm back into the ocean. Ash faces off against the Muk, and a combined thundershock from Magnemite and Pikachu ends up weakening the Muk enough for Ash to capture, which is... honestly something I didn't see coming as a kid, because you'd think that Magnemite is the one that our heroes would be interested in capturing.

Instead of using Muk as his sixth Pokemon, though, apparently Muk's stench leaks out of the pokeball, causing Ash to send Muk over to Professor Oak, leading to the first of many gags of Muk tormenting the poor professor. There's also a random 'respect the environment, children' preachy moral attached to the end.

We also get a fun sequence with Team Rocket's constant fuck-ups, although this is an episode where they self-sabotage themselves all the time and didn't even get to fight the kid trio. First, the power outage causes the air-purification machine that powers Jessie and James' diving suits to shut down (some fun dialogue from Meowth here), and later on, their Mecha-Gyardos' giant magnet attracts a swarm of Magneton that sinks their vehicle. Oh, Team Rocket.

Ultimately... it's an episode that honestly doesn't hold up particularly well. Magnemite's plot felt random, there are some genuinely bizarre plot contrivances, and it's one of those "let's tack on a pokemon capture at the end to make the episode feel more significant. It's one that I enjoy a lot as a bit of a guilty pleasure thanks to the atmosphere, though. 

Pokemon Index:

• Pokemon: Pikachu, Magnemite, Meowth, Grimer, Growlithe, Spearow, Sandshrew, Muk, Magneton, Rattata, Oddish, Nidoran Female, Bellsprout, Sandshrew, Raticate, Pidgey, Fearow
• Humans: Ash, Misty, Brock, Jessie, James, Nurse Joy, Officer Jenny

Assorted Notes:

• That Japanese title is an awesome one, and I'm sad they changed it to a very generic one in the dub. 
• This is going to be a series of episodes that's loosely based on areas in the game while also explicitly saying that it's a brand-new area. In this case, it's the Power Plant. 
• In the final shot of the cured Pokemon in the Pokemon Center, there is a very off-model and tiny Raticate that barely reaches the knee of a Sandshrew next to it. 
• Dub Changes:
• In a particularly bizarre one in the dub, our heroes refer to Muk as "an adult Muk and its child!" even though there is only one Muk remaining. 
• Ash's comment about 'stalker' was originally him confusing stalker (sutaruka) with 'skirt' (sukatto), which is a pun that's stretching it even in Japanese. The English dub some got away with Ash thinking that Magnemite is a streaker, which is a lot funnier. 
• The Meowth nurse suit sequence involves a pun between nasu (to change into) and naasu, the Japanese pronunciation of the English word 'nurse'.