Pokemon S01E32 Review: Kage Bunshin no Jutsu

Pokemon, Season 1, Episode 32: The Ninja Poke-Showdown / Fuschia Ninja Showdown

The sixth gym leader battle, and one that's... that's probably the most muddled gym battle. It's surprising, really, going back to these older episodes with the intent on reviewing them. A lot of the future seasons really actually do the gym battle episodes pretty well, but this one is another one that feels pretty muddied. Also, the gap between the Koga and Blaine episodes is pretty insanely long, filled with a crapton of meandering, so... yeah, I have that to... look forward to, I guess.

The thing that really ends up hurting this episode the most is that it also forces in the Psyduck's headache powers storyline into an episode that also already has a lot of set pieces -- two battles with Koga, a Team Rocket attack, Koga's little sister butting in and the entire ninja trick house sequence. It still manages to be coherent despite all that and I suppose I have to praise the episode for being pretty coherent in spite of the amount of content they try to force in, but the feel of the episode is honestly pretty bland and uninteresting. Was it that necessary that Psyduck's powers is explored in this episode, instead of say, any of the utterly boring filler episodes before or after this one? Like the Vulpix one?

Anyway, after a bunch of fluff that does help foreshadow Psyduck's role in this episode, our heroes stumble upon a gigantic Japanese mansion and follows an adorable Venonat running around the mansion, quickly figuring out that it's a trick house with invisible walls, Voltorb traps, spinning wall-doors and a trapdoor that nearly sends Ash tumbling to his doom into the ravine below. They are challenged by Koga's little sister, Aya, the lady ninja with a short skirt that owns the Venonat, but she gets swiftly dealt with via Bulbasaur's Leech Seed.

Then Koga shows up with a Voltorb smoke bomb, introduces himself as the real gym leader, and tells Ash to fight him in a 2-v-2 battle. Koga's Venonat instantly evolves into a Venomoth, and in combat with Ash's Pidgeotto, puts Pidgeotto to sleep. Ash sends out Charmander, but before the battle reaches its conclusion, Team Rocket barges in with a kabuki-themed Rocket motto (which works a lot better in the original Japanese) and... and I'm not sure why they randomly have Spider-Man powers that web up our heroes, and prevents Pikachu from using electric attacks. Like, seriously, they literally squirt sticky web from their gloves. Oh, and Psyduck keeps popping out whenever Misty is about to summon a Pokemon... despite our heroes never really showing much aversion from ganging up on Team Rocket with numbers.

Psyduck trying his god damn best to use Tail Whip and Scratch against Arbok, only to get embarrassed, is some pretty fun comedy. For whatever reason, despite outnumbering Team Rocket and Koga himself being a gym leader, Koga decides that they should retreat, and uses a giant Voltorb swarm as a distraction to run to a slanted room. Really, Koga? You have a small army of exploding Voltorbs, and you don't fight with them? Meowth uses the Voltorb as bowling balls (no, really) against our heroes in the slanted room, and kicks around Psyduck... but Psyduck ends up unleashing Disable and Confusion to levitate Team Rocket and send them blasting off, and then melt the spider goop. Everyone cheer about how great Psyduck is...

And then, almost like an afterthought, Koga and Ash fight again. I do appreciate that we're not going into the "hey, you saved our gym, have the badge for free!" trope that the Cerulean and Celadon gym ended with. Charmander and Golbat's fight is... it's actually pretty well done, as short as it is, with Charmander using a mixture of different fire moves (Flamethrower, Ember and Fire Spin) before finally taking down Golbat, earning Ash the sixth badge.

And... and I dunno. The episode itself isn't bad, but I really wished that they had given it time to breathe. The concept of Koga's little sister Aya is introduced and quickly brushed aside. The first battle happens, and again, is quickly brushed aside. I'm not sure if the episode would've worked better as a two parter, properly making Koga as a more defined character... or just taking out the Psyduck stuff entirely and make it its own full episode. I dunno. I like this episode, but I also feel like there's a lot that the episode leaves me wanting. It's not bad, it's just... lacking, I guess.

Next couple of episodes will be a bit more sporadic, due to the prevalence of filler episodes. Maybe I'll start combining a couple of episodes together, depending on how much I have to say.

Pokemon Index:

• Pokemon: Pikachu, Psyduck, Vulpix, Venonat, Voltorb, Bulbasaur, Meowth, Pidgeotto, Venomoth, Charmander, Arbok, Weezing, Golbat
• Humans: Ash, Misty, Brock, Aya, Koga, Jessie, James

Assorted Notes: 

• We get to see Brock's eyes in this episode, holy shit!
• The invisible walls in Koga's house is actually part of the game's gym mechanic in the video games. Meanwhile, the concept of a Trick House would make an actual appearance in the third generation Pokemon games.
• Dub Changes:
• Misty is a lot more mean to Psyduck in the original version, telling it to stop taking so long to drink water in the original, while the dub has her tell Psyduck that 'cold water can make a headache worse'.
• The dub misunderstands one of Ash's line telling Bulbasaur to blow away the Stun Spore, which the translation team misunderstood as Ash commanding Bulbasaur to use the move Whirlwind (which is actually, indeed, 'Fuki Tobashi/blow away' in the Japanese games).
• James compares the ninja mansion to a "Japanese restaurant" (!) in the English dub, which is frankly quite surprising considering how much effort the dubbing team takes to scrub out any Japanese word or cultural aspects in most of the early episodes. 
• There's also a lot of ninja puns that just can't translate particularly well, and I'm not going to list them all.