Pokemon S01E34 Review: Tarzan, But With Kangaroos and Nipples

Pokemon, Season 1, Episode 34: The Kangaskhan Kid / Kangaskhan's Lullaby

Yeah, this episode is... it's by far from my favourite. As we continue our trek through Safari Land (not the Zone yet!) Ash is about to capture what he thinks is a Chansey... but it's actually Officer Jenny with a god damn hunting rifle, and very nearly shoots Ash and company, who she thinks are poachers. It's... it's an interesting scene, for sure, since this bit was aired in its entirety in the dub version, but the next episode, The Legend of Dratini, never actually saw an international release for this exact same problem.

Anyway, we're still apparently in a pokemon reserve, and Ash and company get roped into Jenny's jeep as they go off to defend a Kangaskhan herd from poachers. The poachers are Team Rocket, of course, who use their bazooka (also uncensored) to unleash fireworks and drive the entire Kangaskhan herd into a stampede, straight into a gigantic net trap set up by James. I'm not sure why Ash's party nor officer Jenny do anything. Sure, the jeep's busted when they went into hard reverse, but you'd think Ash, Misty and Brock would unleash their Pokemon, yeah? Also, Jenny has a gun. But nope, they have to sit and wait before this anime Tarzan kid shows up with a boomerang and frees the Kangaskhan herd. Because that boomerang, held by a scrawny kid, is more powerful than the claws or teeth of kangaroo godzilla-dinosaurs.

Not a huge fan of Tarzan's design, honestly, who looks very much like Generic Anime Character 101. The Tarzan and the Kangaskhan herd beat up Team Rocket, and turns out that the Tarzan kid is the 'child' of the lead Kangaskhan, who is almost twice the size of everyone else. And then, because of plot convenience and lazy writing, we get exposition on the kid's backstory when his real human parents show up, and explain that the Papa accidentally dropped the kid from a helicopter, because Papa is an idiot who hangs the kid out of the helicopter window. Oh, and there's a parachute on the kid, for some reason. And when they tell this to Jenny, apparently "Tarzan" is registered in the reserve's directory, so... what? I'm genuinely baffled, honestly. I get that they're going for an exaggerated caricature based on old-school gag mangas, but I didn't find the parents funny as a kid, and neither did I as an adult.

Our heroes, rescuing a baby Kangaskhan, ends up meeting Tarzan himself, leading to a bunch of jokes about sucking on breasts that's censored in the English version. Tarzan is utterly confused, since he has memories of Mama-Kangaskhan being his mother, but also of the human-Mama being his mother. His dad straight up just clubs him and knocks him out with a log, which is honestly the only time his antics have proven funny to me in the episode.

And... and I kinda get where they're going for. It's a Tarzan or Jungle Book dilemma. If you're raised by clearly intelligent animals, do you return to your human society? But the episode doesn't have any sort of story it wants to tell beyond "hey, let's parody Tarzan and make the parents batshit crazy", none of the drama feels like it works... and thankfully the episode quickly dumps this whole drama in favour of Giant Team Rocket Kangaskhan Robot. With a jeep stuck on the underside of the Kangaskhan Mecha, just becuase.

With the aid of Jessie's impression of a Kangaskhan cry and James popping out of Mecha-Kangaskhan's mouth to shoot every single god damn Kangaskhan in the herd with a tranquilizer rifle (again, gun!), Ash and company arrive to try and take down Mecha-Kangaskhan. Tarzan's boomerang, Bulbasaur's vine whip and Squirtle's skull bash all fail to slow it down. (Also, poor Squirtle, what the shit, Ash) and it takes a combination of Pikachu's thunderbolt, Charmander's flamethrower and Tarzan being lucky and knocking away the fuel cap for the mecha that ends up setting the robot on fire.

And still it doesn't blow up, and what does make Mecha-Khan blow up is Papa and Mama flying their helicopter and charging straight into the giant robot. For some reason. As Tarzan cries, Papa and Mama rise up from the rubble, dressed in Tarzan outfits as well, planning to live in that place with Tarzan and his Mama-Khan. And... and I wonder why they had to dress up like Tarzans as well instead of capturing Kangaskhan, or building a house there, or something, but... I guess that's the joke? That these parents are just utterly batshit crazy?

The Mecha Kangaskhan fight was fun, but this episode mostly hinges on the utterly exaggerated, but not-at-all funny pair of parents. The drama on Tarzan's backstory is also poorly told and resolved, and for an episode focusing on Kangaskhan, the only time it's shown to be the parenting Pokemon that it should be ends up being briefly in a flashback, and it's otherwise a dumb herd. Yeah, definitely and easily one of my least favourite episodes from the first 80-episode season. 

Pokemon Index:

• Pokemon: Pikachu, Mankey, Venomoth, Victreebel, Vileplume, Bellsprout, Tangela, Weedle, Kangaskhan, Meowth, Venonat, Oddish, Bulbasaur, Squirtle, Charmander
• Humans: Misty, Ash, Brock, Officer Jenny, Jessie, James

Assorted Notes: 

• Tarzan's Papa, and to a lesser extend Mama, are drawn in the style of the classic gag manga, Tensai Bakabon (The Genius Bakabon), as is his penchant to go on idiotic, random jokes. The two of them only ever being referred to as Papa and Mama also echoes Bakabon.  
• Dub Changes:
• A couple of jokes get altered due to their content. When first meeting Tarzan, the remark that causes Misty to blush and conk him in the head is originally Tarzan looking as Misty's boobs and asking her "may I suck on breasts?" which is why she ended up being so embarrassed. The dub cuts away the pan to Misty's chest (although the zoom sound effect was kept in for some reason) and changes Tarzan's rudeness into asking if Misty is "Pokemon or peoples" (sic). 
• Similarly, the scene where Papa opens his shirt randomly while talking to Tarzan was meant to be another breast-feeding joke in the original Japanese (one that doesn't work particularly well), but the open shirt thing was treated as one of Papa's eccentricities, with no reference to breastfeeding. 
• The dub cuts out Papa's line in the flashback about how maybe their kid is 'with the stars', casually remarking that his child is dead, replacing it with the much more hilarious "maybe if you've been holding him this wouldn't have happened."
• Tarzan gets his name changed to Tommy in the dub, presumably because they didn't want to get into any sort of copyright fighting nonsense. 
• As with the previous episode, this episode takes place in the Safari Zone in the dub, when in the original, it's actually a plot point that they haven't reached it yet. 
• Interestingly, while they dub over every other instance of Kangaskhan's voice in the episode, the lullaby flashback uses Kangaskhan/Garura's original Japanese voice.